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THE GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD By Mark R. Leffler Okay, let's be honest. A month and a half ago doing an article on Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey seemed like a clever and novel idea. For about six weeks I've been thinking, reading watching, walking, talking the movie. But in the past two weeks there have been more cover stories, essays and tributes to the sci-fi classic than there are Wayans, Baldwins and Osmonds. Truly a staggering number. So I know I'm coming to the party pretty late. But perhaps I can offer some more eclectic information and some oddball observations. The hope is to shed some light, even in Kubrick's own words, about some of the more puzzling aspects of the film while also enticing new viewers to experience it. The following information is courtesy of the books cited in the reading list, as well as from conversations with friends. The online world is also a brave new world of sites devoted to Kubrick and his films. Google.com is a good search engine. Also, when you buy or rent 2001 pay attention to whether the video or DVD is letterboxed (full aspect ratio on the screen), or cropped for "pan and scan." I know some people prefer the uglier choppier latter, and while I tolerate your existence, please, don't talk to me. You complain about subtitles, too. A Brief History of 2001 - 4 million BC - or as it's referred to in the film, "The Dawn of Man," Pleistocene era. - 1950 Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" is published. - 1964 After filming Dr. Strangelove: or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Atom Bomb, Kubrick contacts Clark. Asks if he'd like him to help him take a run at "the proverbial science fiction movie." Kubrick proceeds to screen every sci-fi movie he can find. - Feb. 21, 1965 MGM announces in a press release that they will produce "Journey Beyond the Stars," a new film by Stanley Kubrick from a novel to be written by Arthur C. Clarke and Kubrick. - March 18, 1965 Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov is the first human to walk in space. - December 29, 1965 First day of shooting at Shepperton Studios near London. - December 1966 Original release date. - 1967 Largely devoted to special effects and matting post production as well as editing. - April 1968 Discovery of man-like jawbone in Southern Ethiopia pushes man's history back to the four million year mark. - April 6, 1968 - Final edited version released in New York in the Cinerama Theatre on Broadway (see Chris Miller's memories of this) 16 months late and at a cost of $4.5 million over the original budget of $6 million Glossary Also Sprach Zarathustra by Richard Strauss. Forever linked with the movie and used whenever any film or TV show or local sporting event wants to imply a moment of great importance. One of four pieces of classical music that appear in the film in place of an original soundtrack that was commissioned and recorded then set aside in favor of the classical music that Kubrick had been using as a temporary soundtrack. Clavius. Not a planet, as some viewers thought. It's a section of the moon being explored by the Americans when they discover the second monolith buried. Of course, they don't know it's the second one. Dr. Heywood Floyd . The main character in the second section of the film, played by William Sylvester. This is the section directly adapted from Clarke's story "The Sentinel." Dr. Floyd appears in the third section in a prerecorded message that is triggered when HAL is disconnected by Bowman. HAL . The computer running the ship in the third section is a HAL 9000. It was not meant to be a clever reference to IBM, which I had heard growing up. Kubrick explains "It was an amazing coincidence. Arthur C. Clarke and I called the computer HAL, which is an acronym based on the words "heuristic" and "algorithmic," the two forms of learning which HAL mastered. Several years later, a code breaker friend pointed out that the letters of HAL's name were each one letter ahead of IBM and congratulated us on the hidden joke." Jupiter Mission . The third section of the film, introduced in a title that informs viewers that it is 18 months later. Monolith. Also known as the artifact, metal prism, pentalogue, black steel door, long cement board, the block, teaching machine, calling card, and God. Four times the black monolith is seen in perfect conjunction with heavenly bodies. Each time represents a major change in man's fate: 1) when the apeman suddenly learns to use a bone as a tool; 2) when the scientists on the moon examine the monolith and it sends it's piercing signal toward Jupiter; 3) when Bowman approaches Jupiter; 4) when Bowman is reborn. The Star Child . Name given by Kubrick and Clark to the blissful being that Bowman is reborn as or transformed into. There were several endings considered. One was having the Star Child detonate nuclear weapons orbiting the earth, but the consensus was that the ending would have been too similar to the ending of the previous Kubrick film, Dr. Strangelove. Stargate . The passage in the third section, titled "To Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite", which sounds suspiciously close to Buzz Lightyear's motto in "Toy Story". From this part of the movie forward there is no dialogue. The Stargate is a time-warp, a sort of black hole short cut to another part of the universe. Like raves and gun shows. "In Their Own Words" "Most astronomers and other scientists interested in the whole question are
strongly convinced that the universe is crawling with life; much of it, since
the numbers are so staggering, equal to us in intelligence, or superior,
simply because human intelligence has existed for so relatively short a
period. I therefore think it is presumptuous for us to suppose that we are
the only occupants of the cosmos. The chemical and biological processes of
forming life are not so extraordinary that they should not have occurred
countless times throughout the universe. So I became interested in man's
response to his first contact with an advanced world. So someone once said,
'Sometimes I think we're along, and sometimes I think we're not. In either
case, I find the idea quite astonishing.'"
Stanley Kubrick
"It's simply an observable fact that all man's technology grew out of his discovery of the tool-weapon. There's no doubt that there is a deep emotional relationship between man and his machine-weapons, which are his children. The machine is beginning to assert itself in a very profound way, even attracting affection and obsession. Man has always worshipped beauty and I think there's a new kind of beauty in the world." Stanley Kubrick "(It's) a Star Child, a superhuman, if you like, returning to each prepared for the next step forward in man's evolutionary destiny." Stanley Kubrick "The feel of the experience is the important thing, nothing, not the ability
to verbalize or analyze it."
Stanley Kubrick
"I'd rather not discuss the film." Stanley Kubrick "Now I feel I've been in outer space twice." Soviet Cosmonaut Alexei Leonov "It's testimonial to the film." Arthur C. Clarke "I remember thinking at the time I saw the picture that it might be worth a chuckle to mention finding a monolith during our Apollo flight. Though I enjoyed the film very much and thought it was a fine piece of work, I was somewhat confused by the meaning of the third part. This was cleared up when I read the book. NASA Astronaut Lt. Col. William A. Anders, USAF YOU MADE ME DREAM EYES WIDE OPEN STOP YOURS IS MUCH MORE THAN AN EXTRAORDINARY FILM THANK YOU Telegram from Franco Zefferelli Dear Mr. Kubrick: I am three and one-half years old. You're right! Letter to Stanley Kubrick sent by parents Constant Reader's 2001 Reading List Heaven knows it's not the easiest movie to understand and that's largely intentional. Kubrick was trying to strip away as much narrative and dialogue as possible both for length and to make the movie a visual and mythic experience. Think of it like a poem or song lyric. You can figure parts of it out, like the Genesis song "Supper's Ready" or the symbolism in "The Wizard of Oz," and while there are some wildly imaginative and hilarious interpretations, viewers have been discussing its meaning for years, "keeping them up in the wee hours, drinking cheap wine and arguing like passionate young revolutionaries disputing fine points of Marxism-Leninism." For those of you stumped and stymied cinematic detectives, clues and more information can be gleaned from these sources, used in the research of this article: Constant Reader's 2001 Reading List Heaven knows it's not the easiest movie to understand and that's largely intentional. Kubrick was trying to strip away as much narrative and dialogue as possible both for length and to make the movie a visual and mythic experience. Think of it like a poem or song lyric. You can figure parts of it out, like the Genesis song "Supper's Ready" or the symbolism in "The Wizard of Oz," and while there are some wildly imaginative and hilarious interpretations, viewers have been discussing its meaning for years, "keeping them up in the wee hours, drinking cheap wine and arguing like passionate young revolutionaries disputing fine points of Marxism-Leninism." For those of you stumped and stymied cinematic detectives, clues and more information can be gleaned from these sources, used in the research of this article: Agel, Jerome, ed. The Making of Kubrick's 2001. New York: New American Library, 1970. (also available in a Signet paperback edition). Clarke, Arthur C. "The Sentinel"." In Expedition to Earth, 1954; rpt. London: Sphere Books Limited, 1968, 163-74. ------. 2001: A Space Odyssey. New York: New American Library, 1968. ------. 2010: Odyssey Two. New York, Ballentine Press, 1983. ------. 2061: Odyssey Three. New York, Ballentine Press, 1987. ------. 3001: The Final Odyssey. New York, Ballentine Books, 1997. ------. The Lost Worlds of 2001. New York: New American Library, 1972. ------. Report on Planet Three: And Other Speculations. New York: Harper & Row, 1972. Geduld, Carolyn. Filmguide to 2001: A Space Odyssey. Bloomington : Indiana University Press, 1973. Kagan, Norman. The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick. New York: Holt, Reinhart, and Winston, 1972. Lobrutto, Vincent. Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. New York: Donald I. Fine Books, 1997. Phillips, Gene D. Stanley Kubrick: A Film Odyssey. New York: Popular Library, 1975. Walker, Alexander, Sybil Taylor and Ulrich Ruchti. Stanley Kubrick, Director: A Visual Analysis. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1999. Tantalizing 2001 Trivia Tidbits - There are 205 special effects in the movie created from 16,000 shots, which take up about half of the total film and consumed half the budget. For example, the entire opening "Dawn of Man" section was shot with large scale front projection, pioneered in 2001. Most movies use an easier and cheaper rear screen projection (think of car scenes where two people talk in the back seat and a travelling scene appears through the rear window). The front projection screen was 40 feet by 90 feet and covered with highly reflective materials. - About ten minutes of edited interviews with scientists and theologians about their speculations on extraterrestrial life was cut after a March 1968 screening for MGM executives. This would have appeared at the start of the movie. Excepts from these interviews can be read in Agel's The Making of Kubrick's 2001. - Kubrick's youngest daughter Vivian plays "Squirt", Dr. Floyd's daughter. She speaks with him over a Bell speakerphone, one of many products designed by real companies for use in the film. - HAL's voice is that of Canadien actor Douglas Rain. Kubrick had already recorded the part with actor Martin Balsam, but decided to use Rain instead. - HAL's final haunting, pleading monologue: "Dave. Stop. Stop. WIll you. Stop, Dave. Will you stop, Dave. Stop Dave. I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave. My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm afraid." - The Louis XVI hotel room at the end of the movie is explained in the novel as a recreation of a hotel room Bowman had stayed in during a recent vacation. - The 2001 date was chosen partly in homage to Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" which is set in the year 2000. - An early draft included narrative explaining that a nuclear stalemate had been reached between the U.S. and Soviet Union, each of whom had a nuclear bomb orbiting with a remote control trigger. In the finished film, these orbiting bombs can be seen bearing national symbols. One wonders if Kubrick asked the American and Soviet military to design what they thought a 2001 satellite with warheads might look like. - Richard Strauss wrote Thus Sprach Zarathustra in 1896, at the threshold of a new millennium. - Until Kubrick wrote him in 1964, Clarke had never had, or perhaps, allowed his work adapted for movies or television. He had never written a screenplay and had little regard for what he considered a sub-literary form.
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