Reading 'Space Odyssey': Part One
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Proof of purchase. Benson's new book joins my Kubrick/2001 collection.
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“Stanley was simply much more intelligent than other directors, and in a nonlinear way. You found that anything could happen at almost any time. Despite all the careful preparations, he designed 2001 with an air of flexibility, and that's what made the picture brilliant. Directing is all management of human relations, logistics, details, and so on. On top of all that, Stanley still found room for a kind of danger – even a kind of bravery or recklessness. He wasn't the obstinate, solitary genius of popular imagination. He needed people to bounce off, and he would often turn around and ask if he was doing the right thing.” - Gary Lockwood, Actor
“He is working about 20 hours a day, and practically sleeping in the studio. My publishers are screaming for the book, and if they don't have it in a few weeks, I am liable to lose at least a hundred thousand dollars. Stanley, however, refuses to release it, and he doesn't take time to look at the MS. He is doing his best, but really working to exhaustion, and is utterly unapproachable.” - Arthur C. Clarke, Author
“Every day that I was working on that movie, I felt that I was working on some very extraordinary, unusual event that I was contributing to and that was really important in some way. It was like going to church.” - Douglas Trumbull, Special Effects Coordinator
“He was close to crying. I mean, he didn't cry, but he said, 'Oh God, this is just terrible.' He felt terrible – terrible, terrible- and we had rented a house, so very early in the morning, like four, he said, 'Listen, let's drive there, and at least have something to do.' So we went to that house on Long Island – which was splendid – and I remember I had a handbag and an evening dress, and I just fell on my stomach on the bed and fell asleep completely. Only to wake up to the radio, where the guy was reading the news and saying, 'They're standing around the block for Stanley Kubrick's film.' And they did. There was the first performance of the day, twelve o'clock or something like that, and there were huge queues, and [on the radio] they said, 'This is a fantastic film.' And from then on it rained praise.” - Christiane Kubrick, Artist, Spouse
By now I thought I knew everything of importance about one of my favorite films, Stanley Kubrick's brilliant 2001: A Space Odyssey. Longtime readers know that I used the movie as a visual yardstick for my PS3 back in 2009 and that I reviewed the narrative of the film in detail last year (see here and here). I have seen 2001 dozens of time, though not as frequently in the past decade. I own five biographies on Kubrick and four other books about 2001 specifically, so I possess a fairly good understanding of both the director and the motion picture.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the film's release. So I was interested in reading Michael Benson's new book Space Odyssey to refresh myself about this magnificent film. Subtitled Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece, Benson's book surprised me with the breadth of its detail and with a new understanding of the creators and the process of making the film.
At times Benson's book reads like a novel, the events he describes vividly capture the making of the movie in crisply written descriptions of action, motive, mishap, mastery, and dialog. It opened my eyes anew to the film's difficult gestation, its innovative production, and the interplay between Kubrick, Clarke, and many others who assisted in the end result, certainly one of the greatest movies ever made. Quite simply, the story of 2001 has never been fully told in the deft manner Benson presents in Space Odyssey. The facts are successfully woven into what could easily be a film unto itself.
In 1964, Arthur C. Clarke was at the height of his career. He was successfully writing scientific and futuristic articles as well as science fiction novels and short stories. His greatest novel, Childhood's End, was widely acclaimed. He lived rather leisurely and comfortably in Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka). He was the president of the Ceylon Astronomical Association, toured the world lecturing for part of the year, kept an office in New York City for business matters, and was a scuba diving enthusiast. But, for reasons I will leave out for the sake of simplicity, he just couldn't keep his finances in order. He was constantly borrowing money to maintain his global lifestyle.
That same year, Stanley Kubrick's masterful dark comedy Dr. Strangelove was released to broad critical acclaim and good box office sales. It would recoup more than four times what it cost to make. His career was beginning ride a wave of successful film-making. He was in a position to become independent of Hollywood producers and society. He still needed studios for distribution, but they were eager to work with him on his own terms – as long as his films continued to make money and garner critical acclaim.
For reasons unspecified in any of my books on the subject including Benson’s, after Dr. Strangelove Kubrick decided to read science fiction and scientific books about spaceflight which resulted in the focus of his next motion picture. He eventually came across the work of Clarke and wrote him to arrange a meeting in New York, where Kubrick and his family were currently living in a Manhattan penthouse. The letter made basically two requests: 1) could Clarke recommend a good telescope, Kubrick was about to purchase one and 2) “the possibility of doing the proverbial 'really good' science fiction movie.”
Kubrick initially had in mind exploring the possibility of extraterrestrial intelligence, the impact the discovery of such intelligence might have on humanity, and a space mission to the Moon and Mars. Clarke knew of Kubrick's work and was a particular fan of Lolita, though he planned to see Dr. Strangelove as soon as possible (it was not available in Ceylon yet). The two arranged to meet when Clarke was in NYC on other business in a few weeks.
Both men were carnivores and had a series of comfortable, inspiring, totally congenial conversations over beef cooked various ways. Clarke, who was 47, was fascinated with Kubrick's mind. Kubrick, who was 36, found Clarke an excellent guide through the subject of space exploration. They spent many evenings atop Kubrick's penthouse, watching stars through the telescope he bought at Clarke's advice. Clarke taught Kubrick how to use it and find major objects in space.
At Clarke's suggestion, his friend Carl Sagan joined in on a couple of these early discussions. Though obviously brilliant and knowledgeable, Kubrick found Sagan to be only interested in advocating his own ideas about what the basis for the film should be. This triggered Kubrick’s instant dislike for the astronomer. Clarke thanked Sagan but told his friend that his input was no longer required.
The Clarke-Kubrick collaboration resulted in a contract between Kubrick (who was becoming quite wealthy due to his film success) and Clarke (who was desperate for cash and could use the $1,000 per week Kubrick would pay him). Eventually, the director agreed to pay Clarke $30,000 for collaborating on a film screenplay and possible novel. In addition, Kubrick paid Clarke $5,000 to option the rights to “The Sentinel” which served as the basis for the film. This led to many weeks of productive work. A sort of professional friendship developed between them. Kubrick found Clarke to be an excellent “sparring partner” for approaching various narrative ideas and Clarke found Kubrick was generally pleased with his writing and very supportive of Clarke's input, which often resulted in 2,000 words each day. The two spent countless hours together personally and on the telephone.
This collaboration was the most agreeable aspect of making the as yet unnamed film. It progressed nicely through the summer of 1964, though Clarke longed for a break in order to return to Ceylon. One evening Kubrick, generally finding humor in most situations, made a joke about using “slightly fag robots” in the film. The idea unsettled Clarke. The next day Clarke worked up the courage to tell Kubrick that he was “a well-adjusted homosexual.” To this Kubrick simply replied “Yeah, I know” and continued on with their discussion. Kubrick couldn't have cared less and Clarke had a friendship that did not judge his lifestyle. That Clarke was a gay man was news to me and a great example of the many revelations contained in this book.
Enough of a narrative shaped up by the end of 1964 for Kubrick to start shopping the idea of the film around. Earlier that year, he had seen To the Moon and Beyond at the New York World's Fair. The special effects impressed him and gave him some idea of what was possible. Kubrick had a special camera flown in from Los Angeles and rented an abandoned brassier factory to shoot some simple effects scenes that would eventually make it into the final film. Kubrick experimented with special lighting techniques and filmed dripping banana oil into vats of black ink. This created random patterns resembling “star flows and galactic tendrils” that Kubrick could use as a visual aid along with Clarke’s written narrative in pitching the movie.
MGM bought the idea and agreed to distribute the film which was budgeted to be shot in extra wide screen format for $5 million. Kubrick immediately put together his core team of set and model designers and moved the entire operation to MGM studios in Borehamwood, United Kingdom. The movie, once entitled Beyond the Stars among other working titles, was now thought of by both Clarke and Kubrick as a modern day take on Homer's The Odyssey and took its official title.
The narrative had to be transferred to a screenplay even though many important elements were either as yet unfinished or not even considered thus far. Enough existed to justify the construction of elaborate, often innovative, sets. To a certain extent, from the very beginning, Kubrick was winging it, open to possibilities, unwilling to settle on anything as being finished at this stage. For the next two and half years (far longer than was anticipated) the production took up space at MGM's UK studios, sometimes using as much as 90% of available stage space.
The film's highly symbolic black monoliths were one of the first compromises Kubrick had to make. He insisted that the object take on a cube shape and be made entirely of Plexiglas, a new material at the time. This was a great undertaking, a hint of the grandiosity to come, resulting in the largest single piece of Plexiglas ever manufactured up to that time. But the results were not visually satisfactory to Kubrick and, like so many of the movie's initial ideas, this design morphed into the rectangular, dark opaque objects in the final film.
Clarke and Kubrick continued to tweak the narrative. The name for the spaceship Discovery's main computer was switched from Athena to HAL, for example. HAL was an acronym based upon an idea by MIT's Marvin Minsky. To facilitate a realistic “feel” for the film wherever possible, Clarke and Kubrick incorporated the latest scientific research in space exploration, evolution, and computer science into the screenplay. The idea that HAL would need to be disconnected was hatched early on, but almost none of the specifics as to why were worked out yet.
During this time, the film's design and effects team continued to grow as more sets were needed and various visual ideas were tested. Douglas Trumbull impressed Kubrick with his earlier work on To the Moon and Beyond and was hired to explore the film's visual possibilities. His hard work would ultimately be responsible for the film's choice to send the space mission to Jupiter rather than Saturn, as happens in the novel. Clarke, initially with Kubrick's support, was a big advocate of Saturn partly because the two planets would align for real in the year 2001 so that Jupiter could offer a gravity-assist to sling the ship out to Saturn. Years later, the Cassini space probe would make use of this alignment to reach its destination. But Trumbull discovered that it was far too difficult to visually recreate Saturn's rings and atmosphere; whereas his work on Jupiter and its moons was highly convincing, even beautiful. So Kubrick changed the destination.
Clarke continued to contribute to the film by writing (and constantly rewriting) various scenes and forms of narration that were supposed to accompany the movie, helping to explain some of the more difficult aspects to the audience. The Clarke-Kubrick collaboration always assumed the film would be difficult and complex for the audience. Yet, late in pre-production a number of narrative elements remained unsettled. One of them was the transition of astronaut Dave Bowman from the space mission phase of the film to the film's final, as yet undefined, concluding transformation phase. Kubrick did not know exactly what he wanted but he knew Clarke had not arrived at it yet. The writing continued.
Although it was not his area of expertise, Trumbull informed Kubrick of his concern for this aspect of the narrative. At first both astronauts, Bowman and Frank Poole, were going into the film's final phase. But as discussions and rewriting continued, it was decided that only Bowman would continue on. Trumbull felt this created another problem. Leaving all the other astronauts behind (including three in hibernation) seemed problematic to Trumbull. He suggested that Kubrick consider some way to “get rid of them.”
At this Kubrick grew enraged. He cursed Trumbull, reminded him of who was directing the film and told him to go back to his own business. But, as it turned out, Trumbull's suggestion was incorporated by Clarke into the script in the next few days. This fundamentally changed both the film and the novel. HAL would become a murderer and that would become the motivation to disconnect him. This is an excellent example of how the film changed shape in important ways literally as its production progressed. Kubrick was open to suggestion, although he was sometimes combative about it.
Production started in December 1965, some twenty months after Clarke and Kubrick began developing the ideas for 2001. Whenever possible, especially on important shots, Kubrick served as his own cameraman, something that union rules would have prohibited him from doing in Hollywood, another reason he chose to shoot in the UK. The first actor to be filmed was William Sylvester, who played Dr. Heywood Floyd. Unfortunately, Sylvester had trouble remembering the large stretches of the dialog written for him. Kubrick was eventually forced to shoot him in a series of short takes.
Kubrick was a chain smoker for many years. He had semi-quit primarily at the insistence of his wife, Christaine. But the stress of production weighed heavily upon him. Kubrick played a mental trick on himself to the effect that if he didn't actually buy a pack of cigarettes then he had basically quit, sort of. What he did instead was start to bum a cigarette off any member of his crew that would give him one. Crew members soon learned to carry an empty pack around with them to show Kubrick they were out whenever he came begging. It did not stop him from smoking but it severely curtailed it.
Set designs included a massive 150-foot long, 30-foot wide slightly curved structure depicting the inside of the film's famous wheel-like space station. 90-tons of gray sand was brought in to another sound stage measuring 120 by 60 feet to depict the lunar excavation site where a deliberately buried monolith was discovered. For all sets and before every shooting session, Kubrick had his Polaroid camera ready to take instant images for checking and adjusting the quality of the lighting, the angle of the shot, etc. It is estimated that Kubrick took about 10,000 such Polaroids during the course of production.
One of the most innovative sets constructed was a $750,000 centrifuge set of the Discovery living quarters and main flight deck. The entire circular set would rotate like a ferris wheel, allowing for the camera to either be locked into one position or to dolly along a slit in the middle of the set as it turned. This created two dazzling kinds of images. In the first case, the actor – walking in place as the set rotated - would seem to be moving around and upside down in the living quarters. In the second, the entire set would move around the actor as he walked or jogged through the rotating deck.
Both produced exciting results though it took a lengthy amount of time to get everything working correctly. Two weeks were spent testing and making tweaks where necessary to flawlessly capture these shots. In one incredible shot, Bowman entered the centrifuge from its central hatch access chamber, climbed down a ladder opposite Poole, who was sitting at a console table having breakfast. Bowman then walked around the set and over to where Poole was seated – sideways, defying all gravity. To capture the shot actor Gary Lockwood, who played Poole, was strapped upside down in his seat (30 feet in the air) and rotated around with the entire set while Bowman, played by Keir Dullea, walked in place as Lockwood circled around to him.
The centrifuge scenes were made even more complicated but the fact that, in these days before CGI effects, multiple computer monitors inside the centrifuge had to have their own individual projectors beaming specific data readout and other technical imagery to make the set look authentic. Everything had to sync up perfectly and shooting this part of the film was a major choreographic achievement. The realistic look and feel of the centrifuge scenes did much to later “sell” the suspension of disbelief to the audience. It all looks real.
Another one of the narrative's problems was how to communicate to the audience the “glitch” that HAL experienced which ultimately led to the killing of all but one of the crew. Clarke's solution was always to take the novelist approach and provide well-written narration for the film. In this case, the narration consisted of “experts” discussing HAL's internal dilemma of keeping the true purpose of the mission a secret from the waking crew while also ensuring the overall success of the mission.
Bowman and Poole were then supposed to discuss all the information presented to them by these experts regarding HAL's problems. The scene felt wrong to Lockwood. To him, it seemed the approach was clumsy and overly verbal in what was otherwise a mostly nonverbal film. Kubrick decided right there in the middle of shooting to cancel the scene. He told Lockwood to give it more thought and bring him an alternant suggestion by the next day. Lockwood's solution ended up being what we see in the film – having the astronauts enter one of the ship's special space pods, turn off the sound so HAL could not hear them, and then have the discussion.
This left the problem of why HAL would find their activity suspicious and react psychotically as it does in the novel/film. The issue remained unanswered while the actors were running through their lines for the new scene. An associate producer happened to be observing all this when the discussion about HAL's motivations once again arose. Having not been involved in the issue previously, the producer thought of something no one had hit upon yet. HAL monitored the entire ship through various camera “eyes” located practically everywhere. Why not just have HAL read the lips of the astronauts through the window of the pod? Kubrick was delighted with the sneaky, sinister solution.
So, the narrative continued to evolve as the film was shot, often shaped by the input of actors and crew members who had nothing to do with Clarke and Kubrick's original discussions. These are other examples of the surprising revelations Benson gives us in Space Odyssey, which provides almost a day-by-day examination of the film’s production. As the book states: “On May 6 Kubrick shot Bowman's and Poole's conspiratorial space pod discussion in thirty-five takes.” Kubrick was notorious for shooting numerous takes in an attempt to capture aspects of the actor's performance not immediately apparent in the initial takes.
Critics would later argue that 2001 featured emotionless performances by the actors but in reality, says Benson, the film offers “a quietly exonerating message about the desensitizing effects of technologically mediated communications.” One subtle but significant exchange occurs between Poole and HAL while playing chess. Kubrick (an excellent chess player) based the game’s situation on an actual championship chess match from 1910. When Poole makes a questionable move, the computer explains how the astronaut could have won if he had played it differently. But one of the move locations HAL expresses is imprecise as anyone who knows chess notation can plainly see on the screen. Poole resigns without noticing that HAL is "cheating" with his explanation. As I said, this is an extremely subtle but intentional detail where Kubrick first hints to the the more discerning member so the audience that HAL is not functioning properly.
Clarke continued to fine-tune both the book and the film with several significant suggestions in March 1966, all of which Kubrick implemented in the final film. The writer smoothed out the section involving the murder of the crew and the disconnection of HAL, among other changes. The film's final form came into focus. Largely thanks to Clarke, Kubrick had a firm plan and no longer had to wing it waiting for solutions to be worked out regarding the narrative.
Eight days were devoted to filming Bowman in the odd, contemporary baroque “hotel room” that appears near the end of the film. This room is where the aging and metamorphosis of the Bowman takes place, ultimately leading to the birth of the Star Child. It was this sequence that gave Keir Dullea “an opportunity to show off acting chops that hadn't really previously been called for.” Bowman was initially traumatized, quivering, overwhelmed with shock and awe. As usual, Kubrick was open to input by the actor. Dullea came up with the idea of knocking over and shattering his wine glass on the floor during a supper shot as a pretext to seeing his much older self lying in bed. Benson writes: “While it may seem a less significant contribution than Lockwood's space pod breakthrough...Dullea's glass shatters during the most ideologically freighted final section of 2001's multipart structure...it’s a percussive moment...resounding in a metaphysical environment of humanity's propensity for error...”
Kubrick made daily notes throughout the production of 2001. During the eight days of shooting the hotel room scene, the director left written comments on Dullea's acting. “Very good acting!” and “Very Good.” are among Kubrick's reactions. Dullea's performance in the hotel room scene is perhaps the most powerful acting in the entire, generally emotionally subdued, film. If it has any rival, it might be in the so-called “man-ape" costume sequence that opens the movie known as the Dawn of Man.
Benson’s book details the many challenges associated with the film's opening sequence, to which we will turn in the second part of this review.
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