The Ultimate Trip: The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey

When I was first approached by New Millennium publishing with writing an article on the making of 2001, we were fast approaching the actual year 2001 and I , like many fans of the film, contemplated how influential the film had been on the film industry and society itself. Many of the speculative components of the film were realized. Kubrick’s film anticipated flat screen computers (ie: ipads), video phone transmissions, ATM cards, voice recognition technology, orbital living habitation and nuclear powered interstellar vehicles and satellites. After 2001, the look of films had also changed. Kubrick developed camera systems and utilized the use of video hardware to play back footage in real-time. Kubrick’s production design and effects innovations brought filmmaking into the modern age. As movie making entered the digital age in the late 20^th century, It became relevant to look at the enormous influence that this film has had on the creative arts. It has inspired filmmakers, scientists, inventors, writers and musicians all over the world and remains (arguably) Kubrick’s most accessable and accomplished works.

Originally Published in Sci-Fi & Fantasy FX, issue #49

the ultimate trip

A look back at the greatest science fiction film of all time

By Paul Taglianetti

“I tried to create a visual experience, one that bypasses verbalized pigeonholing and directly penetrates the subconscious with an emotional and philosophical content... I intended the film to be an intensely subjective experience that reaches the viewer at an inner level of consciousness, just as music does... You're free to speculate as you wish about the philosophical and allegorical meaning of the film.”

-       Stanley Kubrick

“If God did not exist, Man would be obliged to invent him.”

-       Voltaire

It's almost here. The very year immortalized by director Stanley Kubrick on film. Released in 1968 to theatres around the world, 2001: A Space Odyssey is thirty two years old this year, yet its visual power and profound insight into the human mind and the wonders of the infinite have not diminished. It is a film mired in controversy to this day and has been the subject of constant speculation and debate. The origins of this odyssey can be traced back nearly forty years to a then unknown independent film maker who had not yet quite reached his plateau of critical and financial success as a director...

Kubrick during the filming of "Killer's Kiss" in NYC

 Stanley Kubrick was born in July 1928 in the Bronx section of New York. An average student in standard academics, Kubrick excelled at photography and had an insatiable curiosity about the world around him. Eventually, at the age of sixteen, he landed a job for LOOK magazine after snapping a photo of a newsstand owner on the morning following FDR's death. He soon sold the photograph to the magazine for $25, and ultimately worked for the journal for nearly four years, travelling around the world. It was during these years as a photo journalist that he developed his skill and passion for photography. In'1950, through a former friend, Alexander Singer, he came in contact with a film production company interested in creating documentaries under a running time of ten minutes. Kubrick created Day of the Fight, an eight-minute look at the world of middleweight boxer Walter Cartier. He followed up that film with another documentary, The Flying Padre (1951), about a New Mexican priest who travels to Indian villages in a small Piper Cub plane. Ultimately, Kubrick would embark on his first feature, Fear and Desire (1953) with money invested by relatives. A surreal film about a small platoon of soldiers in an unspecified war caught behind enemy lines, Fear and Desire clearly showed Kubrick's ability to photograph stark and daring images. Although Kubrick came to disown the film (it is not currently available on video), it contains some beautiful photography and an early appearance (as an actor) of film director Paul Mazursky.

Still image from Fear and Desire, Kubrick's first film which demonstrated his skill as a photographer

Kubrick and his small crew from "Fear and Desire"

   From there Kubrick ventured into the genre of film noire. Killer's Kiss (1954), which was funded from money acquired by family investors, showed Kubrick's assured hand as a photographer and storyteller. Kubrick followed it with The Killing (1956) (co-scripted by hard­boiled crime novelist Jim Thompson).  Later Kubrick scored a major critical hit with Paths of Glory (1957), considered by many film critics to be the greatest war film ever made. It was through his association with Path's lead actor Kirk Douglas that Kubrick was brought on to Spartacus (1960) to replace director Anthony Mann who was dismissed three weeks into shooting. The success of Spartacus allowed Kubrick a certain amount of creative freedom away from the Hollywood system and for his next project he decided to shoot in England.  Lolita (1962), based on the Vladimir Nabokov novel, also proved to be a major critical and financial success and it was after completing this film that Kubrick decided to permanently set up his production company, Hawk Films, in England.

   Stanley Kubrick had just enjoyed a critical and popular success with the socio-political black comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964) in which the filmmaker tackled the extremely controversial subject of nuclear war. For his next project he would choose another hot topic: space exploration. 

SPX supervisor Wally Veevers sets up a miniature effects shot for Dr Strangelove

Kubrick approached MGM President Robert H. O'Brien with an idea in collaboration with Arthur C. Clarke about man's first contact with extraterrestrial life. Kubrick decided to base the story on Clarke's short story The Sentinel (written in 1948 and originally titled Sentinel of Eternity). 

Kubrick with speculative science fiction writer Arthur C Clarke during the pre-production on 2001: A Space odyssey

The short story concerns a lunar expedition in the year 1996. A geologist on the mission notices a glowing object at the top of one of the nearby peaks. He eventually discovers that this bizarre, pyramid-shaped artifact is of extraterrestrial origin and placed on the lunar surface as a beacon to alert its creators when man has mastered space travel and reached the moon. 

sentinel of eternity short story that 2001 was based on

Clarke on the Aries lander interior set with Kubrick

Clarke was considered one of the finest literary masters of science fiction as well as speculative science-fact as early as 1945 Clarke postulated the invention and deployment of global satellites used primarily for communication purposes. In this early phase, Clarke and Kubrick would spend nearly two years developing The Sentinel into a screenplay. The working title for the film would be Journey Beyond The Stars, although the actual title of the film went through several iterations. A few that were thrown out were Planetfall, Tunnel to the Stars, and Universe. Kubrick eventually settled on the title, 2001: A Space Odyssey, echoing the literary masterpiece The Iliad. Kubrick initially set up the 2001 production company, called Polaris, in New York, but O'Brien's support eventually moved the entire operation to England when shooting became imminent.

Pre-Production

“Had I been present at the creation, I would have given some useful hints for the better ordering of the Universe.”

-       Alphonso the Wise (c. 1270)

   Kubrick became known for his acute sense of accuracy and impeccable attention to detail and this was evident to nearly everyone involved in the process. Apart from writing and directing his own films, he is renowned for overseeing every aspect of the production: from designs and storyboards to editing and sound mixing, advertising and color timing of prints. As this project would be his most technically challenging to date, he immediately enlisted the services of scientists and designers who could bring a sense of realism to the film's visuals. Chief among these individuals were Frederick Ordway III, special consultant for the Alabama Space and Rocket Center and industrial and scientific designer Harry Lange. 

Kubrick and consultant Frederick Ordway on the Space station 1 set in England

Lange and Ordway were currently working on a book for Prentice Hall Publishing called Intelligence in the Universe. Serendipity would bring the two together with Clarke and Kubrick in New York to discuss the film project. Kubrick also became aware of Ordway and Lange's work with famed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun at the NASA Marshall Center and utilized their talents and insights for the film's massive technical requirements. Ordway, Lange and several other members of the crew would spend considerable time at Kubrick's behest visiting industrial and governmental institutions all over the United States, gathering scientific and technical data on space travel. It was during the pre­production period that Lange and Ordway developed much of the film's vehicle technology such as the Orion shuttle and the Aries orbit to lunar surface craft.

Robert McCall's production art for Space Station One which was used on the film's one sheet poster as well as much of the promotional material released later including the music album and press kit

   Kubrick had viewed every science fiction film he could get his hands on (Alexander Korda's Things to Come was recommended by Clarke, but Kubrick disliked the film intensely), primarily screening for content but also to examine the many effects techniques which were used up until that time. According to many of his collaborators, Kubrick was very surprised that nearly all of the films in this genre failed to depict space travel in a convincing manner. It was his feeling that most filmmakers used the genre primarily for explorations of fantasy but never for a realistic depiction of the future. Another goal of Kubrick's was (from a technical standpoint) to create visuals that would not be dated by time or advancement of future film technologies. He began to search out the most talented artisans working at that time to help bring his vision to the screen...

one of Harry Lange's designs for the Moonbis miniature

  It was at The New York World's Fair in 1964 that Kubrick viewed a film by Los Angeles-based Graphics Film Corporation called To the Moon and Beyond. It featured some intriguing and visually arresting images of space travel and the planets. Based on their work on the film, Kubrick hired Graphics Films to create some preliminary artwork for 2001. One of their employees–Doug Trumbull–created much of the artwork for the GFC film and really admired Kubrick's concepts and ideas. Although the firm eventually departed from the 2001 project (due to their great distance from Kubrick's base of operation), Trumbull approached Kubrick for a job on the project and was hired, first as a graphic artist and illustrator and eventually as one of the four main supervisors of the Visual Effects. 

Artist/FX co-supervisor Douglas Trumbull works on the Moonbus miniature 

Con Pederson, who also worked on To the Moon and Beyond, was also hired as one of film's lead visual effects supervisors. “Kubrick saw the film and was interested in the space effects in it and phoned Graphic Films,” notes Pederson. “To the Moon and Beyond took about five or six months to put together. I don't recall its exact length, maybe ten minutes. It weighed a lot–I had to haul it to the Fair myself.”

   “(Kubrick) said he was planning a science fiction film and thought we might be interested,” recalls Pederson. “In speaking with Stanley I remarked that Dr. Strangelove was one of my favorite films. He was elated at that, as though he'd never heard a compliment like that before. He invited me to New York to see the script and discuss the project. His studio apartment near the southwest corner of Central Park was lined with large storyboard paintings of fanciful worlds and spacecraft. I read the script in a nearby hotel room and was enthralled by it, as well as by the fact it was based on an Arthur Clarke short story I remembered reading some years earlier in my science­ fiction fan youth.”

    Many filmmakers have often commented on how similar filmmaking is to a military campaign, and certainly Kubrick was no exception to this analogy. For his army, Kubrick would assemble some of the most creative and talented minds in film production. His team included chief production designer Tony Masters; co-production designer (with Harry Lange) Ernest Archer; art director John Hoesi; director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth; second unit DP John Alcott; first assistant director Derek Cracknell; camera operator Kelvin Pike; chief mechanical effects supervisor Wally Veevers who designed many of the film's intricate camera and dolly systems and visual effects rigs; executive producer Victor Lydon; editor Ray Lovejoy; visual effects supervisors Con Pederson and Tom Howard (a veteran of MGM films and Oscar Winner for Tom Thumb) and Douglas Trumbull. Initially, Kubrick had hired a man named Wally Gentleman from the National Film Board of Canada to supervise the effects. Gentleman had worked on the effects for a film called Universe, a short made by the infamous B-unit of the Canadian National Film Board. Gentleman eventually had to drop from the project due to illness but was involved heavily in pre-production.

original Discovery one ship design created in pre-production reserach phase

  Universe was a ten minute documentary­-like tour of the universe from our own planet into the far edges of the known galaxy at the limits of mid-century astronomical observation, passing by planets and star clusters. It contained stunning effects for its time. So impressed was Kubrick by the look of this film, he had a print ordered which he screened for himself as reference in England. Many on the crew who have seen Universe believe this film was the visual inspiration for 2001.

still image from Nation film board of Canada's film "Universe", a film that inspired the visual look of 2001

still image from National film board of Canada's film "Universe",effects by Wally Gentlemen

   Kubrick also hired talented costume designer Hardy Amies, who designed gowns for Audrey Hepburn and the Royal Family, to design the film's futuristic clothing. 2001's remarkably realistic space environment suits were the creation of a British firm located in Manchester, England called Frankenstein Ltd. which was in the business of creating real life hazardous environment gear and protective suits. Master Models Ltd. of London created 2001 's unique space helmets.

enviroment suit control module

   Other technicians would soon join Kubrick's consortium. His visual effects team would include amongst its ranks some of the industry's most talented artists. In addition to those mentioned above, the FX team included cameraman Bruce Logan; animation cameraman Richard Yuricich; technician Brian Johnson, technical animation specialist Jim Dickson; cameraman Zorin Perisic; graphic and effect designer Colin Cantwell; visual effects cameraman Bryan Loftus; John Jack Malick, and David Osborne. Several techniques would be utilized to create the films innovative effects including motorized mounts for shooting miniatures, slit-scan techniques for film’s climatic “Star-gate” sequence and front screen projection system which were relative new at the time. Some miniatures were photographed as high resolution stills and filmed on motorized animation stands and optically composited over star field backgrounds

   Filming on 2001 began on December 29th, 1965 in England at Shepperton Studios. For nearly three years 2001 occupied all nine stages at the MGM Borehamwood studio and would sometimes borrow stage space from the Elstree EMI studios. When MGM became overrun, production returned to the stages over at Shepperton some fifteen miles away in suburban West London (close to Kubrick's actual residence). It was decided by Kubrick to give the film its proper scope and to literally fill the screen. 2001 would be shot in SuperPanavision 70 (65mm negative) with a screen aspect ratio of 2.35:1. Eventually the film was billed by MGM marketing as a Cinerama feature. Although the film never used the 'three-strip' projector exclusive to the Cinerama technique it was shown in Cinerama theatres throughout the United States as well as regular venues.

The Dawn of Man

The film opens on a wide-open vista of an arid desert in an unnamed region of Africa during the Pleistocene era. The title The Dawn of Man appears and the viewer is introduced to a tribe of prototype man. Not quite Homo-erectus but clearly at the stage of human evolution where he has formed factions yet has very little understanding of his surroundings. 

Moonwatcher costume being prepared for filming the Dawn of Man sequence

Rival tribes are introduced and it is clear that early man has yet to master the ability to even defend himself from the dangers of nature or his own kind. The incredibly life-like simians were the creation of Stuart Freebor, a British make-up artist (whose incredible synthetic creations would be seen again in Star Wars some ten years later). Freeborn was assisted by British make-up artist Colin Arthur who helped create the mask's elaborate mechanics.

Stuart Freeborn works on one of the elaborate masks for the Dawn of Man sequence

 Freeborn's original concepts for the Early-man make-up were more Homo Erectus in outer appearance. Essentially these would be modern men who had just learned to walk erect but had shed their vestigial full-body hair. Their facial appearance would be somewhat ape-like, however. Ultimately the “naked-ape” concept had to be disregarded due to censorship issues involving the showing of genitalia. 

Actor Keir Dullea poses with proto-man design which was ultimately discarded

Freeborn came up with a more ape-like creature and Kubrick approved the design. The director insisted that the masks had to be completely life-like and believable. Freeborn devised an internal mechanism inside the mask which allowed the actors to articulate the lip of the mask by simply manipulating the musculature of their own faces. This gave the actors the ability to snarl and curl up the upper lip without any external cabling or wires, which would have been cumbersome and have to have been hidden.  

Dawn of Man sequence being shot in front of custom designed front projection screen

   Actors that met certain physical requirements were sought out for this sequence by the production. In order to maintain the illusion that these were simian creatures the actors had to be of slim build with extremely slim waists so it would not be apparent that they were men in skins.  The leader of this tribe of ape-men was Moonwatcher, played by former mime artist Dan Richter who taught at the American Mime School, the American Academy of Dramatic Arts and the Gene Frankel Theatre Workshop in New York. He also spent four years touring the United States, staging mime shows in major cities and at universities. Richter was living and performing in England when he was chosen for the film to play Moonwatcher.

   Many of the ensuing scenes in the Dawn of Man sequence were created with a process called Front Projection (known by many in the effects industry as the Alekkan-Gerrard method).  The actors playing the simian/humans were acting on stage in front of a special screen designed to reflect an image, which was being projected at a certain angle from in front of the actors.  A background plane of the desert was photographed and transferred to an 8x11 transparency and then projected onto the front screen material.  A lighting grid was set up and calibrated to match the exterior shots.

front projcetion set begining constructed for 2001's Dawn of man sequence

   It is during this sequence that we are introduced to the film’s most mysterious element, the monolith.  The monolith went through several design changes through the course of the production.  One of the most intriguing early concepts was a crystalline form. It was to have been cast in clear acrylic and not completely opaque. However, initial castings showed many imperfections in the surface and methodology was abandoned.

   Here is a description of the monolith from an early draft of the script:

A10

EXT CAVE-NEW ROCK

It is a cube about fifteen feet on a side, and it is made of some completely transparent material; indeed, it is not easy to see except when the light of the sun glints on its edges - there are no natural objects to which Moonwatcher can compare this apparition. Though he is wisely cautious of most new things, he does not hesitate to walk up to it. As nothing happens, he puts out his hand, and feels a warm surface.

   From this sequence we segue nearly four million years into the future. A myriad of orbital satellites appear floating above the Earth. Although it is never fully elaborated on, Arthur C. Clarke has maintained (in his book and subsequent interviews) that these are orbital weapons–another prophetic bit of conjecture. The original narration (which was, of course, ultimately dropped) also states that these are orbital weapons. The following is an excerpt from the film's original narration piece for this sequence:

B1 Earth 200 Miles above

Hundreds of giant bombs had been placed in perpetual orbit above the Earth. They were capable of incinerating the entire Earth's surface from an altitude of 100 miles,

Matters were further complicated by the presence of twenty-seven nations in the nuclear club. There had been no deliberate or accidental use of nuclear weapons since World War II and some people felt secure in this knowledge, but, to others, the situation seemed comparable to an airline with a perfect safety record; it showed admirable care and skill but no one expected it to last forever.

   Suggesting massive technological advancements, Kubrick fills the space above Earth with these machines. The majority of the satellite and ship designs were the creation of co-production designer Harry Lange and consultant Fredrick Ordway, whose experience in aerospace technology gave the film an incredible feeling of authentication.

2001 orbital weapons sattelite design

The Orion III Clipper and Space Station One

Enter into the frame the space transport, the Orion Pan AM Clipper, on a rendezvous with Orbital Space Station One, a circular outer space habitat perpetually circling the earth. Close examination of the model indicates that the station is incomplete (sections can be seen unfinished). Perhaps Kubrick is suggesting that man is constantly evolving, changing and constructing-even in an optimistic environment such as this. For the shots of the Orion approach, a still photo of the smaller ship was photographed on an animation stand which had the ability to track back and thus change the perspective of the ship as it moved closer to its destination. The space station was a model six feet in diameter, which was shot separately. The stars were also photographed separately and carefully matted together with the other elements. “Johnny Alcott was assistant to Geoff Unsworth but did a lot of the model and photo-blowup photography,” recalls Pederson. “I would keep an eye on some of the lineups. Stanley would approve the lighting from Polaroids if he was busy on a live shoot on another stage. Wally Veevers set up all the motorized track work, with George Merritt's engineering department at MGM providing the hardware.”

   During the docking procedure, the audience is treated to a glimpse of the Pan Am Clipper interior. The ship is shuttling Dr. Heywood Floyd (William Sylvester) to Space Station One on his way to the Clavius moonbase. The cockpit features an array of computer monitors which display vector graphic read-outs of non-descript computer data. Douglas Trumbull, whose background was in graphic design and airbrush artistry, was charged with the task of creating these (faux) digital displays. Without the benefit of actual computers and the methods to play them back clearly, Trumbull set up an animation stand and created the graphics by traditional animation techniques. The graphics monitors were made of rear­ screen reflective material and dressed to look like actual monitors. The graphics were photographed on 35mm film and optically reduced to 16mm then projected from behind the set. Some of the graphic animations were designed and created by Colin Cantwell who later went on to design some of the early spaceship prototypes for Star Wars.

simulated vector graphic animation screen for 2001

   One of the interior scenes shows Dr. Floyd quietly sleeping in his passenger seat while his pen drifts weightless next to him. A kindly Pan Am flight attendant reaches out and places it in his pocket. This fairly simple looking effect was accomplished by veteran British effects master Wally Veevers. The pen was suspended on a thin filament in the distant shots where the wire would be out of focus. For the close ups it was glued lightly to a sheet of acrylic which was completely transparent. The attendant reached out and simply removed it from the sheet.

   To visually illustrate how the attendants were able move in a weightless environment, a rotating set of the ship's galley was constructed. The foreground segment rotated with the camera to give the impression that the shot was “locked-off.” The actor simply walked on a treadmill in the background set piece. The camera was locked down in the front section, and then the actress essentially walked in place, thus giving the illusion of “walking on the walls.”

   After the docking of the Clipper, Dr. Floyd disembarks onto the Space Station. There is visual evidence of Earthbound references here, a Hilton concierge booth can be seen in the background as well sign for a Howard Johnson restaurant (plus, of course, the Pan Am emblem on the side of the Clipper). The clear intent here was to create a realistic future so emotional connection to the surroundings. It can also clearly be seen that Dr. Floyd is speaking on a Bell videophone to his young daughter on Earth (played by director Kubrick's real life daughter Vivian). Ordway actually visited Bell Atlantic labs to research their experiments with long range voice and picture transmissions.

Kubrick on the moonbase conference room set with actor William Sylvester

a collection of 2001 polaroids taken by Kubrick on set to check light levels

Clavius and the TMA-l

Now leaving the station, Floyd embarks on the Aries Lunar lander, which will take him to the Clavius moonbase. The Aries IB Earth orbit to surface craft was designed specifically for lunar landings, which is evident from the design of the outer hull and the landing gear researched carefully by Fredrick Ordway and Harry Lange.

Aries lander design from 2001's pre-production phase

The Aries model was about two and a half feet in diameter.  Many of the shots of this ship were done on an animation stand and composited into various backgrounds depending on the angle Kubrick wanted.  The Clavius Moonbase interior where the Aries docks was, in fact, a model nearly thirteen feet deep. Several control rooms can be seen in the periphery where actual actors were filmed separately and composited into the final shot. Upon arriving at Clavius, Floyd conducts a brief conference with the station’s scientific advisors and administrators and then immediately departs to the site of the excavation, location of the film’s mysterious monolithic structure (called the TMA-1 for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly, named after its proximity to the Tycho crater).

Aries 1B lander model during construction

A giant lunar surface was sculpted in clay by supervisor Doug Trumbull. It measured nearly thirty feet across. For the actual excavation shot, Kubrick shot actor Sylvester and his survey team (in environment suits) approaching the monolith. Since the camera was ‘locked-off” Kubrick was able to composite the miniature portion of the lunar surface with the actual live action set of the excavation without a visible discrepancy in the joining area.

Kubrick shooting the Pan Am clipper cockpit interior shots

Jupiter mission: The Discovery eighteen months later

After the monolith directs its radio emission toward Jupiter, an exploratory spacecraft, the Discovery One, is dispatched to investigate the phenomenon. Leading the mission is Commander David Bowman, played by American actor Kier Dullea. Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Dullea first appeared on screen in Hoodlum Priest (directed by Empire Strikes Back's Irvin Kirshner) in 1961. He received notice for his starring role in David and Lisa (1962) and received both the BAFTA and Golden Globe award for best newcomer for that film.

Kubrick with actor Kier Dullea on the Discover One set

   His second in command, Dr. Frank Poole, was played by American actor Gary Lockwood, a former college football star. Lockwood was born in Van Nuys, California and became very well known as a television actor, appearing on such popular shows as Mission Impossible, Gunsmoke, Earth II, and Emergency Room. Most science fiction fans will remember him best from the Star Trek episode Where No Man Has Gone Before. 

   Inside the Discovery’s main command module is one of the film’s more fascinating environs–the centrifuge set. Kubrick reasoned that astronauts on a long interstellar journey would require artificial gravity to sustain them and to prevent muscles from atrophying. Artificial gravity in this case is created by a large, drum-like module within: the ship that perpetually rotates. Production hired British firm Vickers Engineering to build this massive structure, which would eventually cost nearly $750,000. The structure took nearly three months to build and was approximately forty feet in diameter. It required a tremendous amount of scaffolding built around it so that crew members and technicians could access any part of the set to make lighting adjustments. Outside observers often commented on how much it resembled a Ferris wheel from the exterior. Apart from the sheer mechanical difficulties, the Discovery centrifuge set presented considerable challenges to the lighting and electrical crews. How do you keep the lighting throughout the set consistent when the set is always turning? The crew solved the problem by mounting the lighting array in a circular formation near the center of the rotational axis.

Kubrick directing actors from outside the Discovery centrifuge set

The camera was secured in the center of the set by creating a thin channel running up the center. The centrifuge was built with a channel running all the way round the casing. An array of flaps was used to cover up the gap so it was not visible in camera shot as it followed the actor. The flaps were made to remain closed throughout the complete rotation. Then the camera was placed on a mount, which poked up through the channel, but was not actually fixed to the centrifuge. When the centrifuge was set to make its rotation, it revolved past the camera. Each part of the set passed by while the flaps opened to make way for the camera mount and then closed immediately after.

   The design of the Discovery ship itself was based on considerable study done by Lange and Ordway in pre-production. Every detail and component on the Discovery was carefully researched for its functionality and logical purpose by the design and research team. To gather information on potential long-range spacecraft, the 2001 team relied on materials and data provided by National Aeronautics and Space Administration and several high tech companies in the private sector. For information on the Discovery's nuclear propulsion system, Ordway traveled to General Electric’s Missile and Space Vehicle Department in Philadelphia. Kubrick was quite fascinated with a scientific study conducted by Freeman Dyson, a professor of physics at Princeton University, which described interstellar spacecraft propelled by an engine core which emits controlled pulses of exploding nuclear material.

These scientific theories were utilized in the ship design of the Discovery, as described here in the shooting script:

Cl

DISCOVERY 1,000,000 MILES FROM EARTH.

SEE EARTH AND MOON SMALL.

WE SEE A BLINDING FLASH EVERY 5

SECONDS FROM ITS NUCLEAR PULSE

PROPULSION. IT STRIKES AGAINST THE

SHIP'S THICK ABLATIVE TAIL PLATE.

SEVERAL CUTS OF THIS.

Discovery One full scale miniature model on mover rig

  Con Pederson was also involved with designing the ship. “I worked on part of the Discovery design, specifically the superstructure behind the command module,” recalls Pederson. “I didn't think the preliminary look was up to date. I worked on that for a while and Stanley liked it, and I asked Harry Lange and Tony Masters in the Art Department to refine the construction details. In my view, Harry really set the look of the film. He also had been at Huntsville, though we hadn't met there. Also I spent quite a bit of time with Stanley storyboarding the final Discovery sequence itself. Despite all the script versions we were well into shooting before the story was locked down.”

2 views of the Discovery one miniature

   The main command module contains the centrifuge and the living habitats for the astronauts as well as the EVA/Pod bay station. In between is a long section of storage modules, which stretches to the rear module containing the nuclear core propulsion system. To show the vast expanse of this enormous craft the miniature department built the Discovery to nearly fifty feet in length. The large command module at the ship's bow was six feet in diameter. The miniature EVA pods were thirteen inches in diameter to keep them in scale with the Discovery. Such a large and unbalanced miniature would prove to be difficult to move and keep steady. Wally Veevers and his crew built stabilizing mounts that the ship could be securely faceted to. It was photographed always in a stationary position. The camera that photographed it would dolly in the opposite direction of its actual movement to suggest forward momentum.

Discovery miniature on soundstage

Jim Dickson recalls the track and rig system built by Veevers for the Discovery: “Stanley ordered (Veevers) to produce 150 feet of precision dolly track 30 feet in the air on a giant stage for [the] miniature of the very long space craft move. He did it and exclaimed to me that it was accurate to .010 across the distance. It was enormous, with scaffolding from everywhere. Then Stanley decided to put it back on the ground without shooting a frame. We had a few drinks over that one.”

The HAL 9000

The instruments and systems of the Discovery are controlled by the higher functions of the Hal 9000 (short for Heuristic Algorithmic Learning computer­–Hal is also alphabetically three letters up from IBM). HAL's outer appearance design turned out to be quite simplistic. Essentially a red eye encased in a rectangular panel, HAL's appearance is a brilliant example of the filmmaker's sometimes minimalist design sensibilities. HAL's control panel consisted of many screens installed onto the set of the centrifuge with 16mm projectors behind them to project the images of HAL's read­outs. It was also used for HAL's main screen which receives the transmissions from mission control (The voice of mission control was Frank Miller, who was in reality a US. Air Force Traffic Controller, hired by Kubrick to provide a convincing voice for the Mission Control center). HAL represents man's next great advancement as an evolutionary species, a tool that replicates the mind of a human being. Kubrick and his team carefully researched advanced computer technology, particularly the work of

Professor Marvin Minsky at M.I.T., whose groundbreaking studies in the field of artificial intelligence were inspirational to the director.

Kubrick on the Discovery one centrifuge set

   Despite his artificial nature, HAL turns out to be one of the most emotional characters in the film. Canadian actor Douglas Rain provided HAL's hypnotically dispassionate voice. Rain studied acting at the Banff School of Fine Arts in Alberta, Canada, and at the Old Vic School in England. He was a charter member of the Stratford, Ontario Festival Company and he appeared as Henry V in 1966. Whether intentional or not, Rain's stoic interpretation of HAL nearly manages to steal the show away from Lockwood and Dullea. It has often been debated by viewers and critics alike whether Kubrick was trying to show the breakdown to social interaction and communication due to our own technical advancements. The human actors seem to speak to each other in either quaint pleasantries or exchange technical information unemotionally. Much of this analysis comes from the interpretation of HAL, whose higher functions are meant to mimic the synapses of the human mind. Ultimately HAL discovers (after falsely predicting a fault in their communications system) that Bowman and Poole plan to shut down his higher functions (a computer lobotomy, perhaps?). HAL attacks and kills Poole while he is inserting the communications module inside the AE35 antennae. He then kills the three hibernating astronauts by shutting down their life support system.

stunt performer inside HAL's memory center

   HAL traps Bowman outside the Discovery without a helmet, forcing him to enter through the emergency airlock. Kubrick achieved this effect by hanging his stunt man on a wire rig above the camera which was shooting upward. The actor was released and then pulled back up as the artificial gravity takes hold. Although this scene drew criticism from many as being scientifically impossible, Clarke claimed the scene was very much in the realm of possibility after researching scientific experiments on animals in short term exposure to airless vacuum environments. Upon re-entering the Discovery, Bowman immediately shuts down HAL's higher functions by entering the computer's logic center. The computer brain consists of thousands of transparent, rectangular blocks four inches long and two and a half inches high. An early draft of Kubrick's script briefly explains how scientists engraved these blocks with HAL's intelligence:

C142­

CONTINUED

EACH RECTANGLE CONTAINS A CENTRE OF A VERY FINE GRID OF WIRES UPON WHICH THE INFORMATION IS PROGRAMMED.

   HAL's higher function interior or brain center would be a much more complex design task for the crew. In order to get the wide view of the interior of HAL's higher function center, the set had to be built approximately fourteen feet in height and then shot on its side. The only known injury on the entire shoot was here when a crew member broke his back after accidentally falling from the top of the set. In the film, the interior of the brain center is pressurized and kept at zero gravity. To simulate weightlessness, a stunt man had to be rigged by wires from the top of the inside of the logic center. The set was turned vertically so the camera was pointing straight up and he was hanging down by a wire from above. Lighting set up and camera angles would be crucial in this particular instance so the wires could be kept invisible. When you strap a wire harness onto someone, where the wire comes out of the clothing there are always stress lines. To avoid this sort of problem you suspend the person from the ceiling and work with the camera looking up at them so the support wires will not be in the camera's field of view.

The Stargate: Beyond the infinite

“Once having traversed the threshold, the hero moves in a dream landscape of curiously fluid, ambiguous forms.”

-       Joseph Campbell, The Hero with a Thousand Faces

The film's visual denouement is a dazzling array of light patterns which burst out from infinity over the alignment of Jupiter's orbiting moons. Bowman recovers a message from Dr. Floyd on the true purpose of the Discovery's mission to Jupiter, and, upon his arrival, he pilots an EVA pod to the floating monolith. Eventually infinity opens up before him. At first the camera stays on Bowman's face as we begin to see light reflected on the faceplate of his helmet. We then cut to the Stargate itself-an immense flooding of color and lights. The effect of the Stargate was created by a process called slit-scan photography. Developed by Douglas Trumbull, slit-scan is a process whereby color transparencies are photographed at an extended exposure rate and photographed through a “slit” or mask in front of the camera lens.

The camera is mounted on an animation stand, which has north, south, east, and west axis movement. 2001 visual effects cameraman Richard Yuricich recalls the visually stunning “slit-scan” technique developed by Trumbull: “There was a large ‘slit’–from a 16th of an inch to an 8th of an inch wide in front of the lens. Behind it was a giant light source. Between the lightbox and the slit was a series of gels (the artwork containing the various moiré patterns). The artwork was placed on a glass sheet and the glass was connected to a lead screw that would cause it to traverse east and west across the screen. The 65mm camera would be focused (on a track) on the slit and the shutter on the camera was left entirely open so the whole room had to be kept dark. The slit was then lined up in the center of the frame. The camera, with the shutter open, would wipe the imagery through that slit across the frame. So if you could imagine the camera from a distance at the end of the track and seeing this little slit off in the distance. Its height would depend on how much you cut-off on the slit. You would only see the amount of light coming through that slit.”

frame of "Stargate" sequence which uses the technique called slit-scan photography

Transparencies, which contained various color streaks and moiré patterns, were carefully picked and approved by the director for the initial shots of the gate. Technical animation specialist Jim Dickson, who worked with Trumbull on the film, explains his involvement in the “slit-scan” rig. “I was assigned by Doug to help him build the slit scan camera rig and I did that using hand tools and the help of fellows in the machine shop on the lot at MGM London, Borehamwood, Herts. I built the equipment with Doug and the machine shop and photographed every frame that appears in the film as the famous Stargate sequence. This sequence, which is near the end of the film, became very popular with grass smoking kids in the theatres at the time. It was like a trip even without pot.”

   Dickson is also quick to clear up any misconceptions regarding who came up with the slit-scan technique. “Douglas Trumbull is the sole inventor of this system as I was there to witness that fact. Others have claimed tb.at they did it first but I disagree as I witnessed what the others had done earlier and it was not the same as Doug's slit-scan.” Subsequent shots in the gate featured valleys and vistas, which were photographically treated and manipulated with extreme chroma aberrations. Some of the visuals were created to depict massive dust and cloud formations. These were created by mixing chemicals together on sheets of glass that reacted in a wide variety of colors on contact.

   Bowman is eventually drawn into the infinite by the monolith, which ultimately brings him into direct contact with the unknown intelligence. Inside a sterile white room decorated in regency motif, Bowman ages and ultimately evolves into the film's final and most enigmatic image, The Star Child. This striking final visual was the creation of sculptor Elizabeth Moore who fashioned the image to loosely resemble actor Keir Dullea on instruction from Kubrick. Her artistic talents were seen again in Kubrick's A Clockwork Orange. (Moore created the Korova milkbar's statuary). Tragically, she died in an automobile accident in 1976.

   An even more enigmatic ended was planned, one that involved an actual encounter with the absent extra-terrestrials. “Early on we were planning to do a lot of other-worlds imagery,” recalls Pederson. “For several months I had a cubby-hole on Stage 5 next to Patrick McGoohan's office (he was shooting the TV series, The Prisoner at MGM.) I was just painting bush-league Chesley Bonestell landscapes as though we had all the time and money in the world to finish the picture. My wife–we met in the sculpture department at UCLA–started doing ‘E.T.’ sculptures with Stanley's wife Christiane at her studio in Elstree. Finally, Stanley decided we couldn't make a conventional story. The film was heading toward abstraction and anything else would have been like the old guru jokes atop the sacred mountain–‘You mean, that's it? Life is a fountain??...Life ISN'T a fountain?’…So, ultimately, it was dropped.”

   2001 became the most technically complex film of its time and the visual effects turned out (to no one's surprise) to be the most difficult and time-consuming aspect of the film's long production. Recalls then visual effects cameraman Richard Yuricich: “I showed up for the last six months of photography and I noticed everyone was pretty worn out. I ended up working with the animation camera which at the time was being operated by Bruce Logan and Zorin Perisic. They needed a third cameraman because they started a graveyard shift so that it would be possible to have the camera working around the clock if need be. Most of the photography I did was element photography, moving stars-stars moving east, moving west, stars moving north and south, rotating and so on. The instructions and directions for (the star photography) came from (Con) Pederson. He had a total handle on what was needed each day. I would get my notes from Con, which specified what he wanted me to shoot. Doug, at that time, worked upstairs in the ‘slit-scan’ department. The animation camera in my department was a 65mm Mitchell mounted on a single column Oxberry stand. Nothing was blown up. The readouts were shot with a zoom lens with a 35mm camera but all the effects elements were shot 65mm.”

   Most of the techniques used hadn't been invented yet and the effects crews often had to improvise and experiment. Yuricich explains the very unique way the animation crew created their rotoscopes. “We had a large European slide projector which had a very narrow profile and we used the light source on it to do the rotoscoping. We used a modified prism in the gate just to throw light. As long as you put the prism in the same place and you clamped the projector in the same place you were relatively ‘right on’ as far as line­ up. It was jury-rigged very well for repeat usage. It was primarily used for line-up. You'd get the cels from the ‘Blob’ department with little targets drawn on top of them and then you rotoscoped those targets down to the tabletop so you would have a line-up.”

The “Blob factory” (named by Trumbull after the “blob-like” appearance of the odd shaped mattes) is where the mattes were painted by hand by the effects crew. Those cels were brought to the animation department and photographed on the animation stand with the 65mm Mitchell camera. Yuricich explains the technique used to create the starfields: “For the stars there were ‘blob’ mattes made and when the stars were printed into one of the masters there was a bi-pack hold-back matte so that, wherever a ship or an object crossed over the stars, the ‘blob’ matte would hold back the exposure of the stars.”

“The last year I was in charge of assembling all the loose ends, star composites, held-take marry-ups,” recalls Con Pederson. “The big focus was the 'Purple Hearts' sequence, the colorized Stargate footage. Tom Howard, who headed the MGM lab, provided to Hawk Films Ltd. the space and operators for our night crew. Doug and I, and Jimmy Dickson, Richard Yuricich, Colin Cantwell were employed by Polaris Productions. I had two assistants, Ivor Powell (who later became Ridley Scott's associate producer on Alien) and Brian Loftus, to assign specific shots, usually color wedges. We worked with color negative and black and white separation masters. There are no traditional opticals in the film-no dissolves, for instance. Just a lot of handmade mattes.”

According to Jim Dickson it took quite a lot of experimentation and testing to get the effects methodology in place. “Working with Doug, I was responsible for sorting out some of the matte problems they were having as they had built up a big backlog of partially exposed latent shots. Time was passing and it was not good procedure so I performed some tests along with the help of Con Pederson and we developed all that film and did our remaining mattes and star fields on fresh stock and bipacked them later into the picture. As far as I can remember the optical shots in the film were very few if at all. All effects were double exposed or by­packed in registration printers or matte stands.”

   Visual effects shots and elements were screened nearly daily for Kubrick for approval and comment. Optical print downs to 35mm were made by Technicolor in London for editing and daily review. Dickson recalls one funny practical joke played on the normally unflappable Kubrick during one of the screenings. “Dailies were always fun; sometimes I would move things the wrong direction or make some stupid mistake. Stanley would yell from the back of the room ‘Who did that?’ and would proceed to humiliate me with verbiage. It was a pressure job although it didn't bother me as we would drive around town in Mini Coopers at lunch shooting 22-caliber starting pistols and having car chases to blow off steam! One day, I told Doug to have his gun ready during dailies as I had f* ***d up another scene. This one on purpose! When Stanley saw the scene which was the last one projected just before the lights came up in the projection room, he went nuts and yelled, ‘Who shot that scene!!!??'’ Doug jumped up and 1 jumped up and we both began yelling at each other, ‘You did it!’ ‘No, you did it! You son of a bitch!!! Take that!’ – and we whipped out our guns and started firing shots (blanks) at each other and flaying around and falling all over the floor!! It was wonderful!! You know, I think it was the only time Stanley ever smiled during dailies.”

   According to many of the crew, Kubrick had a clear mind for how he wanted the shots to look and meticulously examined all the footage. “Stanley looked at everything, of course, and seemed to favor purple and yellow a lot, remembers Pederson.” One of his traits was a tendency to hit on and stick with very simple premises-such as the extensive use of white, diagrammatic composition without much concern for perspective, exacting detail for scale in every shot, demand for depth of field and sharpness even if it may have seemed overly crisp. Over his career–which is now, unfortunately, complete–his style was that of the still photographer watching the world for the right angle. In the frame, things take place. It is a bit static compared to the fast cutting, soft-edged hardness so many moviemakers have used since television quickened the pace. The fact that 2001 (and we ALWAYS pronounced it without an ‘and one,’ by the way) is slow-moving with long shots underscores its resemblance to an art gallery experience, and not everyone goes to art galleries.

   The one thing the 2001 crew is almost unanimously agreed upon is the level of excellence achieved by the effects crew, even with today's high priced digital factories turning out slick imagery as a yard stick. “I suppose by today's standards with stepping motors and micro­processors, the world of motion control (where I o.d.’d in the seventies) one could view some of the procedures as awkward,” ­muses Pederson. “Like using still projectors to roto 70mm mattes on cels, for instance (Stanley and Doug's solution). But it's not important. It's like what an artist uses to mix paint on–a technicality. The challenging part is getting a visual concept that's worth looking at. Everything that goes into it is just nuts ­bolts.”

2001's lost music

Kubrick has always had an affinity to using pre-existing musical pieces in his films. Despite this Kubrick enlisted Alex North, whom he had previously worked with on Spartacus. However, none of North’s music was ultimately used in the final of the film. Kubrick became entranced with the beauty of Strauss' Blue Danube waltz and the Strauss classic Thus Spoke Zarathustra and decided to use these pieces to replace the original score. Danube seemed to him to match the elegant grace of the ships travelling through space to a “T.” Despite North's absence from the film, his original score from the feature was released for the first time in twenty five years and is available on CD.

Kubrick was also introduced to the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, a Romanian musician whose pieces Atmospheres, Lux Aeterna, Adventures and Requiem were featured prominently in the film most notably during the monolith and the stargate sequences. Kubrick was so enamored of Ligeti's haunting themes that he utilized his music again ten years later in The Shining.

World premiere and audience reaction

“In the history of motion pictures, a film occasionally has captured some moment of the human adventure in a manner to transcend its initial goal of entertainment. These films not only are long remembered but also become a vital part of our culture. In 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, Stanley Kubrick has created such a film. It offers entertainment in abundance. But no greater compliment can be paid a motion picture than to use it as a yardstick by which to judge other pictures in later years. 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY is this kind of picture.”

-       Robert H. O'Brien, President, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Inc., 1968 (from the forward of the 2001 souvenir book)

The World Premiere was held Uptown Theatre, Washington D.C., April 2, 1968. It opened across America to fairly indifferent reviews from critics (although some critics immediately praised it as one of the greatest films ever made). Although MGM had hoped to market Kubrick's film as a family adventure, it was actually America's counter culture youth movement which made the film popular. In some areas of the United States the film played for two years consistently–it was rare for a film at that time to play more than two months at an individual screen. The fact that 2001 is not always clearly understood may explain its success through repeat viewership. After an initial test screening, Kubrick had approximately twenty minutes excised from the film (which included interviews with some of the world's top scientific experts and space travel and scenes from the Dawn of Man segment). There are no current plans to reinstate any of the cut scenes. Kubrick has always maintained that the final theatrical release of the film was the one he was most pleased with.

   2001 was not an instant hit at the box office but, eventually, viewers started queuing up for the feature after extremely good word of mouth began to spread about this unusual film. Teenagers and college students in particular where drawn to it by the psychedelic images in the stargate sequence which many viewers went to under the influence of hallucinogenic to ‘enhance’ the experience.

“It will be the only picture ever made after which people who have seen it will say that they have never seen anything like it-and they'll be right.”

-       Kubrick's former production partner James B. Harris

In 1968 the academy of motion pictures arts and sciences nominated 2001: A Space Odyssey for four Oscars including best screenplay (Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick). Since the Academy at the time had a limit of only three names on the ballot for technical awards (there were four supervisors on the film), it was decided the award would be given to Kubrick who was credited with the direction of the effects sequences. It also won the BAFTA award for Best Visual Effects in 1968.

   Kubrick's perfectionism in regards to the film continued long after the feature was released. Richard Yuricich recalls a re­release screening in Westwood he attended with Doug Trumbull in the late '70s:  “I went into an afternoon screening with (Doug) Trumbull and the print was horrible. Doug and I went up to the booth to talk with the projectionist to see what the problem was. Then we went outside to a payphone and Doug called Stanley in England. He said to Kubrick, ‘They're showing (2001) here and the print is bad!’ and the print was pulled the next day! That's the kind of relationship they had with each other. We went in to see the film and ended up checking the print!”

Class of 2001

“Nine long years we were busy, scheming and plotting and planning in every possible way, and only just managed it, thanks be to God!”

-       Homer's The Odyssey, Book III

What happened in Sandy Plyos

Due to the overwhelming success of the film, many of 2001's crew would move on to have very prosperous careers in the film industry throughout the world.

The critical and financial triumph of 2001 gave effects supervisor Doug Trumbull an opportunity to direct his own feature, the science fiction cult classic Silent Running (1973). Trumbull later went on to direct Brainstorm (1983) and supervised the Visual Effects for Close Encounters (1977) and Star Trek: the Motion Picture (1979). His company, Entertainment Effects Group (with partner Richard Yuricich) created the visual effects for Blade Runner (1982) and Brainstorm (1983). He developed Showscan, a 65mm based special venue film format and directed the Showscan features Let's Go and The Big Ball. He directed the ride films Back to the Future: the Ride and the Luxor's Search For The Obelisk and has founded the Entertainment Design Workshop in Sheffield, Massachusetts. He was nominated for Academy Awards for both Close Encounters and Blade Runner.

   Special effects supervisor Con Pederson still works in visual effects to this day. He is one of the co-founders of Metrolight Studios in Los Angeles. As one of the lead digital artist/designers he has created effects for hundreds of commercials. His many film credits include Total Recall (1990) and Tom Hanks’ epic HBO drama on the early years of NASA, From the Earth to the Moon (1998).

   Director of photography Geoffrey Unsworth is considered one of the British film industry’s finest photographers and his work on 2001 exemplifies this. His many credits include A Town Like Alice (1956), A Night to Remember (1958), Othello (1965), The Magic Christian (1969), Cabaret (1972), Murder on the Orient Express (1978) and A Bridge Too Far (1977). During the filming of Roman Polanski’s Tess (1979) in France, Unsworth suffered a fatal heart attack. Superman: The Movie is dedicated in his memory.

Production co-designer Anthony Masters continued to work as a production designer on such diverse features as The Deep (1977), Dune (1984) and Clan of the Cave Bear (1986). He was awarded the BAFTA award for best production design (shared with Ernest Archer and Harry Lange) for his work on 2001. He passed away in 1990.

   Harry Lange eventually settled in England and continued working in film as a production designer. His list of credits includes Great Muppet Caper (1981), Dark Crystal (1992) and Monty Python's the Meaning of Life (1983). He also worked as an art director on The Empire Strikes Back (1980) and Return of the Jedi (1983). He was nominated for an Academy Award for both films.

2001 visual effects photographer Bruce Logan became one of the leading experts in visual effects photography. He was the director of photography on The Incredible Shrinking Woman (1979) and the groundbreaking visual effects film Tron (1982). He currently resides in Los Angeles and runs his own production company, mainly creating commercial work.

Jim Dickson, who worked as one of the film's technical animation specialists, went on to become a very successful director of photography. He has continued to develop elaborate camera systems and continues to work as a cinema-­photographer. He runs A. E. C. Inc. in Los Angeles where he has developed the new Circle Vision 35mm multiple motion picture camera mounting system. It allows the creation of filmed and seamless wide angle shots of any width from 80 degrees and out to a full circle at 360 degrees.

   2001 effects cameraman Richard Yuricich went on to become one of Hollywood's leading visual effects supervisors and cinematographers. His many credits include Silent Running, Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), Blade Runner (1982), Under Siege 2 (1995), Event Horizon (1997), Mission Impossible (1996), and MI:2 (2000). He was nominated for an Academy Award for his work on Close Encounters; Star Trek: The Motion Picture and Blade Runner.

   Effects cameraman Zorin Perisic went on to win an Oscar for his visual effects work on Superman: The Movie (1978) and a special achievement award from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for the creation and development of the Zoptic front projection system used on that same film.

   Make-up artist Stuart Freeborn went on to create other fantastic make-up creations in such films as Superman (1978) and Star Wars (1977) (he was chiefly responsible for creating Chewbacca's suit and mask) and The Empire Strikes Back (1980) (creating a workable and realistic Yoda puppet for Frank Oz). He is Britain's most respected make-up artist and his many credits include Dr. Strangelove, The Omen, Top Secret, Oliver Twist, Superman II and Santa Claus.

   Makeup assistant Colin Arthur also went on to an illustrious career in film make-up and special effects. Most notably creating key make-up effects for the Harryhausen epics Clash of the Titans (1981) Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger (1977) and Conan (1982).

   Editor Ray Lovejoy went on to become one of England's most talented film editors, working on other fantasy films such as Batman (1989), Krull (1983), Lost in Space (1998) and Kubrick's The Shining. In 1986 he was nominated for an Academy Award (TM) for his work on Aliens (1986).

   Second unit cameraman John Alcott eventually went on to be the director of photography on Kubrick's Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and The Shining. His last film was No Way Out in 1986. Alcott passed away in 1987 from a heart attack in Cannes, France

   Musician Gyorgy Ligeti's music appeared in two other Stanley Kubrick films–The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). Since 1959, he has been living and working in Vienna, becoming an Austrian Citizen in 1967. From 1969-70 he was a fellow of the German Academic Exchange organization in Berlin and in 1972 became Composer in Residence at Stanford University. Since 1973 he has been a professor of Composition at the Hamburg Music Academy.

   Although 2001 did not eventually contain any of his music, Alex North supplied many other films with his talents. ­Among his credits are: Spartacus (1960). Willard (1971), Rich Man, Poor Man (1976), John Huston's Wiseblood (1979), Dragonslayer (1981) and Good Morning Vietnam (1987). He passed away in September, 1991.

   Novelist Arthur C. Clarke would become one ­of the world's most well-known and widely read authors of science fiction. Clarke served in the RAF from 1941 to 1946. He first sold his science fiction writing to Astounding magazine, a mainstay for young science fiction" looking for exposure. One of his very first non-fiction books was Interplanetary flight: An introduction to Astronautics published in 1950. His fiction novels include Rendezvous with Rama (1973), Childhood's End (1953), Earthlight (1955) and Imperial Earth (1975). He lives in Sri­ Lanka, which has been his home for over thirty years.

Stanley Kubrick went on to direct some of his best (and critically controversial) work following 2001. He directed the Pavlovian socio-black comedy Clockwork Orange (1971) based on the Anthony Burgess novel, (a film also mired in controversy to this day); the Victorian Epic Barry Lyndon based on the Thackery novel The Luck of Barry Lyndon and the Stephen King horror epic The Shining (1980). After nearly seven years Kubrick returned with one of the most powerful depictions of the Viet Nam war put on film, Full Metal Jacket (1987). Kubrick's work has frequently been hailed and acknowledged for its excellence and technical sophistication. He was nominated for an Oscar for best director four times (for Dr. Strangelove, 2001, Barry Lyndon, and A Clockwork Orange) and for best screenwriting five times (for Dr. Strangelove, 2001, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and Full Metal Jacket). In 1976 the BAFTA (British Academy of Film and Theatre Arts) awarded him best director for his work on Barry Lyndon. Last year saw Kubrick's final effort as a filmmaker, Eyes Wide Shut, based on Arthur Schnitzler's novel Traumnovelle. The film (like 2001) concerned an odyssey, but one of a sexual and psychological nature. It was none the less visually stunning and strangely ambiguous, as 2001 first appeared to mainstream viewers in 1968.Just days after officially completing work on the film, Kubrick died of natural causes at his home, Childwick Bury in Hertfordshire, England, on March 7, 1999.

This December, thirty two years after its initial release, Turner Entertainment and Warner Bros will re-release 2001: A Space Odyssey in the United States, restored with a new digital sound track and improved picture quality. It will be released on New Year's Eve, 2000, in accordance with the wishes of Stanley Kubrick. “This is something Stanley himself was very, very desirous of,” said Turner Entertainment Co. president Roger Mayer, who is working on the re­release project. According to a recent press release, print elements of the 1968 film have been kept in pristine condition, and new protection elements were pulled from Kubrick's negative in 1982. “At Stanley's instigation, the color timing was freshened up a few years ago, with new 35mm and 70mm prints made,” said Dick May, VP film preservation at Warners, which holds ‘Odyssey’ through its acquisition of Ted Turner's MGM/UA library. Hopefully this re-release will introduce this wonderfully unique and technically superior film to a whole new generation of filmgoers to ponder.

   To say that the film has had a major impact on the modern film industry is an understatement. To merely state that the film is a cultural phenomenon is doing it a disservice. The feature has literally etched itself into the minds and memories of almost everyone who has seen it. Rock star David Bowie based his classic album Space Oddity on the film and has stated many times that 2001 had an impact not just on his music but his entire performance and persona. Monty Python animator Terry Gilliam, frequently spoofed 2001 in many of his animations on the popular British comedy. The American animation favorite The Simpsons also frequently had references to Kubrick within the show. One of the most memorable had Homer Simpson inside a weightless space shuttle, spinning gracefully-like the Orion Clipper­ munching floating potato chips to the tune of the Blue Danube.

   This year elder statesman comedian (and Forbidden Planet star) Leslie Nielson will star in the science fiction spoof 2001: A Space Oddity. It would also be fair assessment to say that a lot of today's modern digital film technology originates with 2001's groundbreaking visual feats. It literally broke the barrier of what was possible and impossible with its stunning effects techniques. Without the technical breakthroughs provided by Kubrick's film, Star Wars, Close Encounters, Alien and The Matrix would certainly never have existed.

   For many who remember this brilliant film, it is as relevant and baffling as the day they first experienced it. The film's many themes and arresting thought provoking visuals still seem as perplexing and mystifying as ever. It leaves the viewer in a ponderous state, seeking the answers. Kubrick refused a pat answer. If he spelled it all out, it would have no meaning. “I'd rather not discuss the film,” was usually his response to inquisitive reporters and interviewers seeking clarification on the themes of 2001.

   Kubrick rarely gave interviews, shunned the Hollywood spotlight and preferred to let his films speak for themselves. The questions and themes invoked by 2001, like the mysteries of life itself, are complex and often confusing and we are forever left to contemplate and interpret their meaning. To Kubrick, 2001: A Space Odyssey was all about the journey, not the destination.

Production Photos Copyright © 1968, 2000 MGM and Turner Entertainment.

Article/ Interview and text Copyright © 2001 by Paul Taglianetti 

Special Thanks: The author wishes to thank the following for their insights and participation with the creation of this article:

Richard Yuricich, Con Pederson, Bruce Logan, Jim Dickson, Bob Skotak, Frederick Ordway III, Rhonda Gunner, Tibor Szakaly, Brian Anthony, Mike Reccia, Lee Shargel, Hollywood Book and Poster, Hollywood Collector's World and MGM archives.

Shots compiled by Paul Taglianetti; selected shots courtesy Phil Rae, Brian Anthony, Forrest J Ackerman, Robert Skotak.

Stanley Kubrick Filmography

Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

Full Metal Jacket (1987).

Shining, The (1980).

Barry Lyndon (1975).

Clockwork Orange, A (1971).

2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1964).

Lolita (1962).

Spartacus (1960).

Paths of Glory (1957).

Killing, The (1956).

Killer's Kiss (1955).

Fear and Desire (1953).

Seafarers, The (1952).

Flying Padre (1951).

Day of the Fight (1951).

Paul Taglianetti is an educator and visual effects and digital media producer. His film credits include The Matrix, Escape from LA, Clear and Present Danger, Failure to launch, Stepford Wives, Se7en, Nomad, Jade, exceutive Decision, Switchback, One fine Day, Demolition Man, Starship Troopers: Marauder, amd Here Come sthe Boom. He has taught film and post production at Quinnipiac University and Idyllwild Arts Academy. He is a graduate of Emerson College's film program.