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Just months before his death in 1999, film director Stanley Kubrick, called Rev. Gene Phillips, S.J. to ask a favor.

"He asked me to send pictures of monk outfits with hoods for a scene in his new movie, Eyes Wide Shut," Phillips said, "He said it was going to be for a costume ball."

Being one of the elite group of 25 to interview the reclusive Kubrick was only one of Phillips' accomplishments. Phillips, 65, a professor of English and film at Loyola University of Chicago for the past 30 years, has also rubbed elbows with filmmakers including Alfred Hitchcock, Howard Hawks and Joseph Losey.

In 1972, Phillips boarded a plane to New York City to meet with the master of suspense, Alfred Hitchcock, while he was there promoting his new movie, "Frenzy."

Hitchcock, who was fearful of priests from his years in Jesuit Boarding school, nonetheless trusted Phillips enough to meet and talk about his career. Despite Phillips' all-star record with some of the world's greatest, he has talents of his own. He is also a writer and focuses many of his books and articles on filmmakers he has interviewed throughout his career.

Phillips has two books coming out within the next six months: "Creatures of Darkness: Raymond Chandler, Detective Fiction and Film Noir," with a release date in October, and "Stanley Kubrick Interviews," an edited compilation of the 25 Kubrick interviews, which will be out in February 2001.

Phillips' love affair with the silver screen started as a child growing up during the Depression.

Phillips' father couldn't afford to take his whole family of seven to the cinema. Fortunately, Phillips was the youngest, and according to his father's rule, the youngest child accompanies him to the movies.

Each Sunday, Gene and his father would make their way to the local theater in Springfield, Ohio, his father unaware that each film was having a profound influence on his son's future.

As a child, Phillips recalled going with his father to Pennsylvania to visit his grandfather, who was both legally deaf and blind.

"I was very impressed by the fact that here was my grandfather who could hardly see or hear, and wanted to go to the movies," Phillips said.

Three generations of the Phillips family sat together in a theater, while the voices of Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant rang through the air. Gene's father would whisper what was happening on the screen into his father's ear, who was eager to make sense out of the blurry lights he saw and faint voices he heard.

"I thought movies must be a great thing if my grandfather had all of these obstacles and still wanted to go," Phillips said. "That was my real inspiration to be involved in film."

Phillips was only 9-years-old when he saw "The Keys to the Kingdom," starring Gregory Peck as a missionary, in 1944. This film strongly affected Phillips' decision, as a 17-year-old boy, to join the Society of Jesus and pursue his life as a Jesuit.

"I went to Catholic schools and I was taught by the nuns," Phillips said. "I had the notion of education being tied up with religion, and wanted to be a teacher and a priest from a very young age."

After 12 years of training in the priesthood and earning his AB and MA from Loyola University of Chicago, Phillips found himself in New York City working toward his Ph.D. in English at Fordham University. Still interested in film, he filled his free time with graduate level courses in film history at New York University.

In the 1960s, Phillips went to London to research films from the British film archive for his dissertation. Filmmakers often started their careers in London, and Phillips found accessing them for interviews was as easy as looking up their numbers in the phone book.

"Joseph Losey was the first director I interviewed," Phillips said. "I thought I made a shambles of it because he kept barking at me."

Phillips must not have done as poorly as he thought. Over the next 40 years, some of the most distinguished filmmakers in the American and British film industry granted Phillips interviews.

But these celebrities weren't always lining up to talk to Phillips. He overcame some seemingly insurmountable odds with both Hitchcock and Kubrick. Being a priest and landing an interview with Hitchcock wasn't an easy task. "He called priests 'policeman in black cassocks," Phillips said.

Still, with Kubrick, who feared being misquoted by the media and was apprehensive about being interviewed, Phillips believes that the reason he was granted access was because of his "priest status."

"Kubrick was Jewish, and I think he kind of identified me with a rabbi," Phillips said. "He felt that I was a person who was trustworthy and who would not sensationalize what he said."

Friend and colleague of eight years, Joseph Janangelo, associate professor of English and director of writing programs at Loyola University of Chicago, agrees.

"He's an outgoing and scholarly man, not to mention, always a favorite among graduating seniors," Janangelo said. "He has the most fascinating stories, but tells them very modestly."

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