Jan Harlan never intended to become involved in the film industry. He was happy being a businessman, but when your brother-in-law is a world famous filmmaker, these things have a way of happening.His brother-in-law was the great film director Stanley Kubrick known for “The Shining”, “Clockwork Orange” and “Full Metal Jacket”, among many others.Mr Harlan was recently in Bermuda to teach the Screenwriting in Paradise workshop alongside Jim Fernald, a screenwriting professor from Denmark. The Royal Gazette spoke to them over lunch at the Paraquet Restaurant in Paget.“I had not the slightest intention of working with Kubrick,” Mr Harlan said. “I was perfectly happy in my job. I was working in cities such as Zurich, Frankfurt, Vienna and New York. I got to know him in 1964 when he came to New York.”Years later Mr Kubrick asked Mr Harlan to come with him to Romania to help with a film he was making about the life of Napoleon Bonaparte. He needed Mr Harlan to help him organise the army scenes.“My job was to make sure Kubrick got what he needed — people, things, rights,” said Mr Harlan. “I had nothing to do with what you see on the screen. He was a great expert on the French Revolution and Napoleon. What interested him was not the history lesson. There is nothing new to be said about Napoleon. Everything is already known, but he was interested in the relevance of Napoleon to today. We make the same mistakes today that Napoleon made. He was brilliant, and had incredible charisma, but he was foolish.”Unfortunately, despite the volumes of research that Mr Kubrick amassed on Napoleon, the film never got off the ground due to a number of reasons including the high expense of filming on location and also the commercial failure of another, similar film about Napoleon. All is not lost, however. Earlier this year filmmaker Steven Spielberg announced he plans to make Kubrick”s would-be masterpiece into a television mini series.“Sure Kubrick was really broken up about Napoleon,” said Mr Harlan, “for about two weeks then it was on to something else. That”s the way it is in the film business.”Mr Harlan said the only artistic thing he did was suggest music to Mr Kubrick, but Mr Kubrick made the choices. One of the pieces Mr Harlan introduced to Mr Kubrick was “Thus Spoke Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. It became famous as the thunderous opening music for Kubrick”s film 2001 Space Odyssey.Mr Harlan acted as Mr Kubrick”s executive producer for “Barry Lyndon”, “The Shining”, “Full Metal Jacket”, “Eyes Wide Shut”, and was an assistant to the producer for “A Clockwork Orange”. He was also executive producer for Steven Spielberg”s “Artificial Intelligence: AI”, a collaboration between Mr Spielberg and Mr Kubrick.Sadly, Mr Kubrick died unexpectedly in 1999. Since then, Mr Harlan has made a documentary about Mr Kubrick called “Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures” (2001) and assisted with a 2009 book “Stanley Kubrick”s Napoleon: The Greatest Movie Never Made” by Alison Castle.Mr Harlan said the secret to artistic creation, in his opinion, is to first have an idea and then become enamoured with it.“It is falling in love and having passion that gives you a chance,” said Mr Harlan. “Then like any artist you have to be ready to fall on your nose. A great artist takes risks. The more you go to the edge the more you are in love, the more criticism you get and the more rejection. If you don”t love it, you abandon it.”He met his fellow lecturer, Mr Fernald at the European Film College in Denmark where Mr Fernald teaches screenwriting. Mr Harlan speaks at the college at least twice a year. A few years ago they worked together on the first Screenwriting in Paradise workshop held in Portugal.“It was supposed to be an annual event, but the economy in the south of Europe is horrendous, and they couldn”t afford to do it the next year,” said Mr Fernald. “So we figured we would do somewhere else that would be considered paradise.”