The rumour mill had the reclusive film-maker doing science fiction. Frederic Raphael was just grateful gossip had it wrong. Even so, the text Stanley Kubrick sent in 1994 scrupulously omitted both a name and title; a little test. Raphael soon pegged Arthur Schnitzler.

Eyes Wide Open is Raphael's by turns intriguing and infuriating account of scripting Kubrick's filmic farewell: intriguing for the insights offered into Stanley's working practices; infuriating once you realise the author, for all his chumminess, is pretty full of himself. Kubrick is quiet, shy, intensely private. Raphael's just as likely to name-drop or flaunt his comfortable lifestyle as condescend to the figure he mistakenly calls "the best director in the world." (Feeble-minded criticism of both Kieslowski and Antonioni speaks volumes.)

But what makes Eyes Wide Open fascinating is its implicit explanation of what went wrong. Working under his master's dictate, surely Raphael could see the material - let alone what Kubrick had in mind - was fatally flawed? Blame should be apportioned. Kubrick refuted the suggestion that it was old fashioned. And worse, rejected utterly the suggestion that Schnitzler's narrative is (obviously) a dream. Given that he'd spent thirty years bringing it to the screen, such misreading is as sad as it is dramatic. That the film would be moribund was surely signalled when Kubrick sent Raphael, then ensconced in imagining the central orgy, photographs by the dirty old man's dirty old man, Helmut Newton.

"I feel that I have been asked for a lift by a man who claims to admire both my driving and the power of my vehicle and who then, as I accelerate, asks why I have released the hand-brake."

Still, at least we can't accuse Raphael of 20/20 hindsight: this book originally appeared under hardcovers before the film it was ostensibly about. Thus, his thoughts on the final product (like his own fee) remain tantalisingly unspoken - which is to be regretted almost as much as the fact that it wasn't science fiction after all.