re: 2001 A Space Odyssey

quote:

---

Visually stunning for its time.

Also, Incredibly boring.

---

quote:

---

This is the work of an artist so sublimely confident that he doesn't include a single shot simply to keep our attention.

He reduces each scene to its essence, and leaves it on screen long enough for us to contemplate it, to inhabit it in our imaginations.

Alone among science-fiction movies, “2001" is not concerned with thrilling us, but with inspiring our awe.

I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film, in 1968, at the Pantages Theater...To describe that first screening as a disaster would be wrong, for many of those who remained until the end knew they had seen one of the greatest films ever made. But not everyone remained.

The film did not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment cues the audience expected. The closing sequences, with the astronaut inexplicably finding himself in a bedroom somewhere beyond Jupiter, were baffling.

The overnight Hollywood judgment was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with effects and set pieces, he had failed to make a movie.

What he had actually done was make a philosophical statement about man's place in the universe, using images as those before him had used words, music or prayer.

And he had made it in a way that invited us to contemplate it -- not to experience it vicariously as entertainment, as we might in a good conventional science-fiction film, but to stand outside it as a philosopher might, and think about it.

---

quote:

---

Kubrick was revising the novel (2001) with Clarke and simultaneously preparing his shooting script … At the end of August Clarke decided that the novel should end with Bowman standing beside an alien ship. Kubrick was not satisfied with this conclusion and the search went on. - p283 Stanley Kubrick by Vincent Lobrutto

---

quote:

---

Kubrick / Clarke had a 60/40 deal on the book - p310 Stanley Kubrick by Vincent Lobrutto

---

quote:

---

I think that the divergences between the two works (2001 film and novel) are interesting. Actually, it was an unprecedented situation for someone to do an essentially original literary work based on glimpses and segments of a film he (Arthur C Clarke) had not yet seen in its entirety. – Kubrick interviewed by Joseph Gelmis 1969

---

quote:

---

Arthur C. Clarke, back in Ceylon, continued to wrangle with Kubrick about the novel, the final text of which the director still refused to approve. Each time Clarke felt sure the script and book were set, Kubrick would cable him for some more dialogue or a new scene, none of which, Clarke claimed, ever found their way into the film. … Kubrick almost certainly did delay the book in order to protect the film. The film took on its own life as it was being made, and Clarke became increasingly irrelevant. Kubrick could probably have shot 2001 from a treatment, since most of what Clarke wrote, in particular some windy voice-overs which explained the level of intelligence reached by the ape men, the geological state of the world at the dawn of man, the problems of life on the Discovery and much more, was discarded during the last days of editing, along with the explanation of HALs breakdown. - p227 / 228 Stanley Kubrick: A Biography by John Baxter

---

quote:

---

Kubrick wanted to make a sci-fi film before he even hooked up with Clarke. He based his original ideas for 2001 upon a handful of short stories written by clarke, in particular The Sentinel. Kubrick then hired Clarke to work on the film's story with him, but the book was written as the film was being made. Clarke was allowed to view rushes of what had been filmed and based many of the book's details upon what he believed Kubrick's footage was conveying. Kubrick had creative control over the book and so was at liberty to instruct Clarke on how the book should be written. Quite simply, Kubrick was the primary creative force and Clarke was a writer for hire.

---

quote:

---

So in the case of 2001, the book isn't a reliable source for determining the film's visually encoded themes.

---