2001: a space odyssey
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S U M M E R 2 0 0 8 C A S Q U A R T E R LY
by Richard Lightstone, CAS I remember it like it was yesterday: April 6, 1968. I was still a teenager when I first saw Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey in 70mm Cinerama with six-track stereo sound. To put it in perspective, the film really blew me away. On April 25, 2008, 40 years later, I was blown away again. This time at a special screening presented by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater. The event started at 7:30 p.m. and was hosted by Tom Hanks, followed by a lively discussion after the screening with actors Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, special effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull and animation effects artist Bruce Logan. The evening ended about 11:30 with the audience wanting more. This was a beautifully restored 70mm print, presented in its original ‘road show’ format. Which meant there was a 10-minute musical prelude before the curtains opened and a 10-minute ‘Intermission,’ also with music— just like I saw it in 1968. There is no doubt that 2001 is a visually stunning film, with pioneering visual effects created by Trumbull and Con Pederson and photographed by Geoffrey Unsworth. But it is the inventive and stark soundtrack that brings this great film to life. Still to this day, when you hear the first notes of Richard Strauss’s “Thus Spoke Zarathustra,” who doesn’t “see” the opening “Dawn of Man” sequence? What about when the ape-man throws the leg bone into the air, and it match cuts with the spinning satellite and then hear Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube”? Kubrick had commissioned a score from Alex North who had also written the score for Spartacus and Dr. Strangelove. Stanley used the famous classical pieces during film editing as a guide and it so delighted the executives at MGM that he kept it. One of the film’s most striking features is that there is no dialogue for the first 25 minutes, only sound effects and music. The same goes for the last 20 minutes of the film. Who could forget the haunting voice of the HAL 9000 supercomputer? Voiced by Douglas Rain. “I’m sorry Dave, I’m
afraid I can’t do that.” During filming, Stanley Kubrick had Nigel Davenport reading HAL’s lines off-camera so that Dullea and Lockwood could react to them. Apparently, Kubrick thought that Davenport’s English accent was too distracting. So after a few weeks, he dismissed him and for the remainder of the shoot, HAL’s lines were read by an assistant director who, according to Dullea, had a cockney accent so thick that lines like “Better take a stress pill, Dave” came out like “Better tyke a stress pill, Dyve.” Later, Martin Balsam was hired and recorded HAL’s voice in New York but again when Kubrick heard the recording, he wasn’t satisfied so he finally found Douglas Rain to rerecord everything during post production. In the scene when HAL is being disconnected by Dr. Dave Bowman (Dullea), HAL pleads for his ‘life’ and finally sings “Daisy.” All we hear is HAL’s singing and Dave’s nervous breathing. In a word, brilliant. This sequence was inspired by a computer-synthesized arrangement that Arthur C. Clarke had heard in 1962. Kubrick began shooting on December 17, 1965, at Shepperton Studios in England with the “Tycho Crater” excavation scene. Then in 1966, he moved production to the MGM-British Studios in Borehamwood, until completion. Kubrick feared flying so he edited most of the film on the Queen Elizabeth 2 and while traveling across the United States by train. The film’s world premiere was on April 2, 1968, at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. Kubrick deleted 19 minutes from the film just before the film’s general release on April 6, 1968. It was released in 70mm with a six-track stereo magnetic soundtrack and projected in the 2.21:1 aspect ratio. In the fall of 1968, it was also released in 35mm anamorphic with either a four-track magnetic stereo soundtrack or an optical monaural soundtrack. 2001: A Space Odyssey was sound-edited by Winston Ryder (1915–1999), who won the BAFTA Award for “Best Sound Track” in 1969. J.B. Smith was credited as the chief dubbing mixer and H.L. Bird as sound mixer. Sadly, uncredited was Robin Gregory who was the production mixer. The film received four Academy Award nominations for Directing (Kubrick), Writing (Kubrick, Clarke), Art Direction (Tony Masters) and Special Visual Effects (Kubrick). Kubrick won the Oscar in the Special Visual Effects category. Unfortunately, 2001 did not receive an Oscar nomination for sound mixing. For the record, that year the nominees were: Bullitt, Finian’s Rainbow, Funny Girl, Oliver and Star! The winner was Oliver. 2001: A Space Odyssey is best viewed in its 70mm format but for you home-theater buffs, Warner Home Video released a two-DVD special edition in Dolby 5:1 that you can enjoy over and over again. C A S Q U A R T E R LY
SUMMER 2008
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