A hearty greetings for Day 4 of
Director Week starring Stanley Kubrick. Well we have had some Film
Noir, some satire and even a risque tale of tawdry. Clearly it is
time for some science fiction and no greater in Kubrick's collection
that the combined efforts of Kubrick's story telling and acclaimed
Science Fiction author Arthur C. Clarke (Against the Fall of
Night, The Sands of Mars, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 2010 and The Hammer
of the God) writing styles. Working in junction with one
another after being inspired by Clarke's "The Sentinel"
short story, both men worked on the screenplay and Clarke later
adapted it into his novel. This is 2001: A Space Odyssey.
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| TAKE UP THE WHOLE OF SPACE, WHY DON'T YA??!!! |
The African desert, a gathering of
early hominids (Australopithecus, an early
primate) are roused and driven from their water hole by another tribe. The next morning a huge, black
monolith appears before them. A man-ape discovers to use a bone as
both a tool and weapon. Armed with this knowledge (and several
bones) they proceed back to the water hole and bump off the leader of
the other tribe, thus reclaiming it for themselves. That doesn't
sound very Sci-fi, Jake. Hold on, it get better.
Millions of years
later a Pan Am (hey, this film was made in 1968) space plane carrying
Dr. Heywood Floyd (William
Sylvester of Gorgo, Devil Doll. Devils of Darkness and Quincy M.E.)
who explains to the US lunar outpost that Floyd and a team of
scientists have discovered an artifact dating back as far as four
million years ago. Floyd and company jet over in a Moonbus to the
artifact to discover it is a monolith based on the previous one in
Africa. 18 months later the spacecraft Discovery One is off to
Jupiter. Aboard this massive ship is Dr. David Bowman (Keir
Dullea of Madame X, The Fox, Devil in the Brain, The Starlost. Black
Christmas and 2010) and Dr.
Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood of
Splendor in the Grass, They Came to Rob Las Vegas, Star Trek, Barnaby
Jones and Night of the Scarecrow).
Both men are scientists as well as pilots navigating to the regions
of space with three colleagues in cryogenic sleep chambers. The
better portion of operations is handled by the ship's computer the
HAL 9000.
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| Hey Walt, this candy bar's got knowledge! |
HAL reports a
failure of an antenna control device and the guys head outside to
check it out when they cannot find anything wrong with it, HAL
insists it be re-attached so he can assess what is the error.
Contacting Mission control, HAL's twin computer finds nothing wrong
with the component either but HAL continually believes human error
has occurred. HAL's behavior is steadily more erratic, Bowman and
Poole need to hatch a plan on what to do. How can they disable an
AI that runs the better functions of the ship? Would a machine using
cold logic simply do away with them to save the mission?
And now some fun
facts on the flick. The original idea for the alien monolith was to
be a huge device with a translucent screen showing the apes how to
use tools and weapons but Arthur C. Clarke dismissed the idea
thinking it too naive' and better it seem as the ideas were
transmitted electronically to the lobes. Also HAL was slated to be a
mobile robot but Clarke thought it would look primitive in decades to
come so better the massive computer with the all seeing red eye.
US Air Force
Mission Controller Frank Miller was hired to give the most authentic
depiction the producers could find. Unfortunately he was nervous to
read his part and ended up tapping his foot through recording
sessions and the tapping was recorded as well. Kubrick finally ended
up folding a large towel and placing it under Miller's feet and said
tap to your heart's content now.
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| Hurry up with docking procedures... I gotta pee. |
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