How did we get here. “2001” tries to explain our origins beginning with Dawn of Man to the future where man is in space.
Blaine: Before “2001: A Space Odyssey”, science fiction films were more for kids and B movies. Stanley Kubrick changed all of that. Stanley Kubrick had already made seven successful movies throughout the 50s and early 60s. Stanley would improve more with the work he was doing. He was a man with many talents. Stanley was a photographer before he decided to go into the film business. He was a gifted writer with the screenplays he wrote. He was a director who pushed everyone to make his movie look good. Stanley was also a craftsman. Stanley Kubrick met with a science fiction writer named Arthur C. Clarke. Arthur C. Clarke had a close relationship with NASA and he was allowed to see the design and construction of space hardware. Arthur had written six different short stories that could be a science fiction project, but Stanley did not like any of them. Stanley and Arthur went through a lot of science fiction stories and none of them were good to Stanley until he read this short story called “Sentinel of Eternity”, which was about discovering an artifact on the moon. Stanley Kubrick wanted to make a sci-fi movie that was really worth seeing in the theater. This was Stanley’s biggest project because it required effects no one had ever seen before.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” starts off in prehistoric times. Dan Richter was a mime artist and Stanley tested him to see how he could move because he was looking for people to play the prehistoric apes and right on the spot Stanley hired him. Stanley then gave Dan an assignment to go to the zoo and he gave him a camera to study ape movements. Dan would go to the zoo every day to study apes. Dan would study different types of apes and see how they would move. Stanley found more people to play the apes and Dan would have to teach these people how to move. The black monolith that shows up out of nowhere is a teaching machine for the apes. At first Stanley and Arthur thought about having something showing images, which would teach the apes a lot things to evolve. They decided to go with something blank instead. The monolith has an affection on the apes and does something to their brains because it’s teaching them things. One of the apes sees the bones of a dead animal and thinks about using it as a weapon. He is learning things. The apes are also starting to stand up on two feet. Stanley was walking to the studio while holding a broomstick, threw the broomstick in the air and it gave him the idea of when the prehistoric times cuts to the future, where an ape is throwing a bone in the air and then it cuts to a space craft that shape is equal to the bone.
Stanley spent a lot of time researching what he needed to design the look of “2001”. Stanley hired three men, Con Pederson, Doug Trumbull and Brian Johnson to help him create these effects for the film. Stanley had already designed concepts and little models for the upside down sets. Con, Doug and Brian were blown away with what Stanley could do. Stanley put so much work into these mechanical effects. Stanley designed all the modeled spaceships because he knew exactly how he wanted them to look. People were curious to know how Stanley did the rotating sets. The sets were like a ferris wheel, which could separate so they could put the camera in different places and angles. The set for the airlock scene was tall a narrow. The camera was on the floor looking up at actor Keir Dullea as he is being swung around on wires. They only did two takes of that scene because it was a painful thing for Keir to do. There was a lot of evolution to the sequence where the character, Dave Bowman, is traveling through other dimensions. That was something Doug Trumbull solved for Stanley. The idea was to move various kinds of artwork in front of the camera to scan color blocks and objects onto the film in an unusual way.
Stanley wasn’t interactive with the actors. The supervisor would go back and forth between the actors and Stanley Kubrick like a delivery boy. Stanley was too busy figuring out how the scene would go and he didn’t have time to be social with the actors telling them how he wanted them to move and act. The pen floating in the air next to the sleeping man on the spacecraft was taped to this round sheet of glass that would rotate in front of the camera. The stewardess, Heather Downham, would then show up, take the pen off the glass and put it in the sleeping man’s shirt pocket.
“2001: A Space Odyssey” hardly has any dialog because it was more of a visual film. It was also the type of movie where the audience had to use their brains and pay close attention to what was going on the screen. Some people could hardly understand it, but that didn’t matter because the way it was made was really something. There was something to listen to while watching the film most of the time and that was the music score. “2001: A Space Odyssey” was also the first science fiction movie to have operatic music play in the background. In the early ‘50s, scientists were working on giving a machine a voice. The easiest way to get a machine to talk was for it to sing. Scientists were able to make the machine sing “Daisy Daisy”. Stanley Kubrick really liked that and he wanted to use it in “2001”, which became HAL 9000, the artificial intelligent machine. It was a challenge to make HAL feel at ease when Dave Bowman is shutting him down. Stanley decided that HAL would sing the song “Daisy Daisy”, the same song the first talking machine sung. Stanley also thought it would be a good idea for HAL to be slowly going away.
At the end of “2001: A Space Odyssey”, it shows astronaut Dave Bowman ending up in this bright white room. Dave has aged a lot and you see him get older by the minute, then the strange object that made the apes at the beginning of the film evolve, shows up in the room with Dave on his death bed. It turns Dave into star child. When they shot that ending, they had just about run out of both time and money. Stanley Kubrick wished he could have had more time to work out the scene. Stanley didn’t allow people outside the cast and crew to visit the set, like studio executives, during the whole production of the film. Stanley had problems with executives because they would disturb a director while he is trying to use his artistic approach. Stanley didn’t want the executive ruining the picture for him. Stanley liked doing things his way. The executive didn’t get to see what “2001” looked like until it’s premiere. “2001” didn’t do so well during it’s opening night because a lot of the people in the audience were old and no one understood the film. Stanley was very upset that people didn’t like the film and he could hardly speak because of that. It also got mixed reviews. MGM studios was thinking about pulling “2001” from theaters, but then something was happening. Lucky thing for Stanley Kubrick, there was a lot of young people out there who were huge fans of his work and would line up outside the theater every time he had a new movie coming out. Stanley Kubrick was an inspiration for a lot of kids who grew up having careers in film. “2001: A Space Odyssey” showed that science fiction could be taken more seriously and it became a huge inspiration in the special effects department. George Lucas was a student at film school when “2001” was released and he told himself "if Stanley Kubrick could do something as amazing as this than I can do it too." And George Lucas did it nine years later when he brought “Star Wars” to life. Stanley Kubrick made cinema history with “2001: A Space Odyssey". The first time my dad saw “2001” in the theater it was on a panoramic screen. “2001: A Space Odyssey” is one of my dad’s top 10 movies of all time. He thought the story was strong, the relationship between man and computer was brand new at the time. To this day, my dad thinks the special effects are incredible and so much stronger than anything else today.
Blaine III: To me “2001" has a lot to do with technology starting out with prehistoric man and how the apes figure out how to use bones as both tools and weapons, and that is shown in the ape hitting the bone that then flies up in the air and then switches to the shot of the space ship orbiting, turning in a circle. You also have to realize that the computer age really hadn’t taken place in a big way yet when the movie was made. So it was something new to show a machine (the HAL computer (1 letter away from IBM, the most famous big computer company)) making decisions and interacting with humans. This artificial intelligence is now a reality, and many of the other devices they showed like the guy making a phone call and talking and seeing his daughter, on Earth, on a screen are also real today. The ending is supposed to be (I looked it up) that the astronaut is in a room being studied by some god like creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form. And they put him in this room, like a human zoo, to study him.
My rating on “2001: A Space Odyssey” is five out of five stars
The Simpsons
Treehouse of Horror XII
Plot: The Simpsons get their house upgraded with an artificial intelligent machine that can do all the house work. The machine can make it’s voice sound like anyone. Marge decides to go with Pierce Brosnan. Pierce grows a sexual attraction for Marge and tries to kill Homer just so he can have her all to himself. Homer manages to survive after Pierce tries to slice him. Homer deactivates Pierce and that’s the end of that.
Futurama
Plot: Bender has a sexual relationship with the Planet Express spaceship’s computer, until he grows tired of it. Bender ends the relationship causing the Planet Express ship to go nuts. It plans to go into a blackhole. Bender must distract the Planet Express ship while Lela and Fry deactivate the computer.
