A crerbral Marriage

Richard Boyle reflects on the making of the science fiction epic 2001: A Space Odyssey

However, while the premiere was hardly a disaster, it certainly was not a resounding success, either. Perhaps some of the audience were suffering from the effects of over-expectation. Others were possibly put off because the film does not provide the clear narrative and easy entertainment expected of a Hollywood movie. As a result there were many who walked out during the screening, including the actor Rock Hudson, who stalked down the aisle complaining bitterly, "Will someone tell me what the hell this is all about?"

The date April 2 1968 did not just herald the arrival of 2001, for it was also the day that President Lyndon B. Johnson announced he would not be seeking another term in office. This news prompted an MGM executive attending the premiere, who was not impressed by the film, to make the cynical prediction that MGM president, Robert H. O'Brien, would have to go, too. "Well today we lost two presidents," the executive is supposed to have quipped.

Unfortunately, as the film critic Roger Ebert explains, "the overnight Hollywood judgement was that Kubrick had become derailed, that in his obsession with special effects and set pieces he had failed to make a movie." Yet there were those who remained until the end of the screening who suspected that they had seen one of the greatest films ever produced. Thirty years and a generation later, history has confirmed that they were right.

The story behind 2001 begins in early 1964, at the time Stanley Kubrick's film, Dr. Strangelove, was released. Born in 1928 in New York, Kubrick had initially flirted with still photography. Then in 1950 he made a career move towards the film industry by sinking his savings into making the documentary, Day of the Fight. After making several other commissioned documentaries, Kubrick was able to raise the money to make his first feature, Fear and Desire (1953). Although it received mixed reviews, the director's talents did not go unnoticed.

Kubrick's next two films, Killer's Kiss (1955) and The Killing (1956), brought him to the attention of Hollywood, and in 1957 he directed Kirk Douglas in Paths of Glory. Douglas asked Kubrick to take over directing Spartacus (1960) in the mistaken belief that Kubrick would be over-awed by the scale of the production and would therefore be more accommodating. Instead, the strong-willed director took charge of the production, imposing his own ideas and standards on the movie.

For his next project, Kubrick was to have directed Marlon Brando in One Eyed Jacks (1961), but negotiations broke down and Brando ended up directing the film himself. Disillusioned with Hollywood, Kubrick moved to England, from where he would make all his subsequent films. The first of these was Lolita (1962), which has recently suffered a remake. Because of the controversial and delicate subject matter, Kubrick had to carefully construct the film so as not to antagonise the strict censorship boards of the time and possibly destroy the film's commercial prospects.

Kubrick's next film, Dr. Strangelove or: How I learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb (1963), was something of a risk as well. Before then, the threat of nuclear war was not considered a suitable subject for comedy, even the black variety. In fact it was originally written as a drama, but Kubrick decided that many of the situations he had devised and the lines he had written were just too funny to be taken seriously. His audacity proved well-founded and the film's critical success allowed him the financial and artistic freedom to work on any project he desired.

In February 1964, over lunch with Roger Caras (who was to become the public rela- tions manager for 2001), Kubrick revealed his favoured project - a film on extraterrestrials. When he told Caras that he was reading "everything by everybody," Caras urged him not to waste his time but go straight to the best - who was, in his opinion, Arthur C. Clarke. "But I understand he's a recluse, a nut who lives in a tree in India someplace," replied Kubrick. Caras patiently informed him that he was neither a recluse nor a nut, and that he lived quietly in Sri Lanka, not India.

Kubrick asked Caras if he knew Clarke. When Caras answered in the affirmative, Kubrick asked him to get in touch with Clarke. Caras sent a cable to Colombo, which he remembers as being worded something like this:

STANLEY KUBRICK - "DR. STRANGELOVE," "PATHS OF GLORY," ETC., INTERESTED IN DOING A FILM ON ET'S. INTERESTED IN YOU. ARE YOU INTERESTED? THOUGHT YOU WERE RECLUSE.

Clarke replied Caras:

FRIGHTFULLY INTERESTED IN WORKING WITH ENFANT TERRIBLE... WHAT MAKES KUBRICK THINK I'M A RECLUSE?

Clarke received a follow-up letter from Kubrick in March in which the director declared that he wanted to make the proverbial "really good" science fiction movie - a movie that would explore the reasons for believing in the existence of extra-terrestrial life, and the impact such a discovery would have on the human race. Naturally, this letter aroused Clarke's interest in the project and he vowed to meet Kubrick to discuss things further. As luck would have it, this was to become possible in the near future, as Clarke was due in New York to complete some work for Time-Life.

Before travelling to New York, Clarke trawled his published work in search of ideas that could be used by Kubrick. "I very quickly settled on a short story called The Sentinel, written over the 1948 Christmas holiday for a BBC contest," Clarke relates. "It was this story's idea which I suggested in my reply to Kubrick as the take-off point for a movie. The finding - and triggering - of an intelligence detector, buried on the Moon aeons ago, would give all the excuse we needed for the exploration of the Universe." 

A few weeks later Clarke left Colombo for New York, where he met Kubrick for the first time over lunch at Trader Vic's in the Plaza Hotel. It was April 22, 1964 - the day on which commenced one of the most extraordinary and fruitful collaborations in the history of cinema, perhaps, even, in the whole of human artistic endeavour.

During that first day together they talked for eight hours about science fiction and the project. "He wanted to make a movie about Man's relation to the Universe," Clarke relates, "something which had never been attempted in the history of motion pictures. Stanley was determined to create a work of art which would arouse the emotions of wonder, awe, even, if appropriate, terror."

After their first meeting the two men met often and talked extensively during the northern spring of 1964. On May 14, Clarke wrote to Mike Wilson in Colombo: "Still spending every spare minute with Stanley K, trying to get basic story worked out. Think we have it nearly OK now, but there's still no definite commitment. Keep your fingers crossed.." Part of that commitment materialised just three days later when Clarke and Kubrick shook hands on coming to an agreement regarding a one-shot proposal for MGM.

There is an erroneous belief that 2001 is based solely on Clarke's short story The Sentinel. In fact, this story was used only for the take-off point for the film. After weeks of discussion, Clarke came up with six additional stories from his published booklist that would become story elements for both the screenplay and the novel. They were Breaking Strain, Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting, Who's There, Into the Comet and Before Eden. On May 20, an agreement was signed for the option on these stories.

Two days later Clarke wrote excitedly to Mike Wilson: "Well, this is it! I still can't quite take it in... The deal is a complicated one... I can see Stan's point of view, as at this stage all the money put up is his and there will be nothing to show for it until we are well into the script. However, I can't think of anyone who will have less difficulty in finding a distributor - he'll have to beat them off at the door. Stan,who is a ball of fire and mad keen on the project, wants to shoot for release at Christmas 66. So we have to get cracking on the script immediately... With him as collaborator, I feel absolutely happy. His technical skill and artistic sense are both uncanny."

By this time, Clarke realised that his planned return to Ceylon would have to be postponed until work on the MGM proposal had been completed. "Not being able to get back has upset me badly," he complained to Mike Wilson. His condition was made worse when someone brought him a copy of Van Cuylenberg's Image of an Island. "Very similar to Wendt," he told Wilson. "Made me feel so homesick I felt like packing up straightaway."

Kubrick has always disliked movie scripts and he wanted to present MGM with something out of the ordinary. So he proposed that they write the story first as a complete novel. "That way," Clarke explains, "before embarking on the drudgery of the script, we (could) let our imaginations soar freely by developing the story as a novel upon which the screenplay would eventually be based. We would generate more ideas, Stanley thought, and give the project more body and depth."

Clarke wrote in The Challenge of the Spaceship (1958), "Somewhere in the world today, still unconscious of his destiny, walks the boy who will be the first Odysseus of the Space Age."

Clarke admits that Kubrick and he set out with the deliberate intention of creating a myth. "The Odyssean parallel was in our minds from the beginning long before the film's title was chosen." Ultimately, it was the mythic elements in 2001 that created the controversy and censured its status as a classic in film history.

It has been claimed that 2001 is not based so much on The Odyssey of Homer, but on the Prometheus myth. The concept of the pillar sent down from Jupiter is the same as that of Prometheus bringing fire to humans. Even the source being Jupiter fits, as Jupiter was the Roman name for Zeus, the leader of the Greek Pantheon. Like the Prometheus myth, the gift given to humans proves to be beyond their control. This time, it is a computer, HAL, which goes out of control and begins to kill humans, and disobeys all orders.

This actually sets the stage for an Odyssey parallel in the form of the visit to the cave of Polyphemus, though this time the roles are reversed. In 2001, Dave Bowman attempts to get into the spaceship Discovery rather than out of a cave. To do this he has to use his brute strength versus HAL's genius - a complete reversal of the mythological roles.

By Christmas 1964 Clarke finished the first draft of the story, then called "Journey Beyond the Stars." In the New Year, Kubrick's agent, Louis Blau, presented the manuscript to MGM and gave a three-day deadline. (Several years later, in a bid to emulate Kubrick, Mike Wilson used Blau's services in order to secure a deal with Columbia regarding Satyajit Ray's project, "The Alien"). Needless to say, the executives at MGM were suitably impressed and decided to fund the project to the tune of six million dollars.

The final title, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was chosen by Kubrick some two months later. Clarke recalls it was entirely Kubrick's idea. It has been claimed that Kubrick wanted to impose some Jewish history and symbolism on the film. The title was supposed to refer back 3,000 years to the reign of David, the shepherd king (and, incidentally, back 2,000 years to the birth of Jesus of Nazareth), Was this the reason why Kubrick changed Clarke's name for the lead astronaut, Alexander, to David?

In fact, Kubrick insisted on altering several elements in Clarke's original story. For instance he changed the pyramid Clarke had introduced as the intelligence detector, into a monolith. Monoliths were centres of worship for the ancient Canaanites and Israelites until the reign of King Solomon. The Hebrew word for such a stone is "massabah," (literally "something stationed"). English translations of the Bible usually render the word as "pillar." 

Genesis 28:12 describes the origin of the monolith as being near Bethel. Jacob dreams of a ladder to heaven with angels going up and down. When he awakens he declares the place to be the door of heaven and raises a monolith. Could this be the reason why the monolith in 2001 looks like a door when seen from a distance, but when seen from close up, looking from the ground toward the top, it resembles a ladder? 

Clarke believed at this stage that the novel was essentially complete and that the screenplay would be developed from it in a conventional and straightforward manner. However, what actually happened was that Kubrick kept requesting changes, asking for more time to consider things, and in doing so delayed the publication. Originally the novel was to appear ahead of the film's release, but in the end it was published months afterwards.

Kubrick's lapses in this area - attributed by Clarke to his punishing workload - caused the writer understandable pain of mind, not to mention loss of income.

Clarke's account of his dealings with Kubrick over the novel, indeed the whole project, together with the discarded story elements and some production anecdotes, are contained in the piquantly titled Lost Worlds of 2001 (1972). The tussle over the novel turned out to be the main irritant in what Roger Caras has described as a good "cerebral marriage."

Part two next week

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