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The Making of Kubrick's 200
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years to prepare. Yet, when one sits down to put it together, one many of the pieces are missing. There is nothing striking, intellectually or visually, about gaping empty spaces where gaping empty spaces don't belong. finds that
6. Another point. The dialogue by Simonson, over the mission control circuit in C 1 48, and that of Floyd in C 1 50, must be reinserted as applicable to the revised script. And the narration in Dl. With it, the interstellar sequence can proceed without change, but will mean so much more to the viewers when they see the mysterious artifact once again:
For four million years, it had circled Jupiter, awaiting a moment of destiny that might never come. Now, the long wait was ending. On yet another world intelligence had been born and was escaping from its planetary cradle. An ancient experiment was about to reach its climax.
Alex North FILM COMPOSER I was living in the Chelsea Hotel in New York (where Arthur Clarke was living) and got a phone call from Kubrick from London asking me of my availability to come over and do a score for 2001. He told me that I was the film composer he most respected, and he looked forward to working together. I was ecstatic at the idea of working with Kubrick again (Spartacus was an extremely exciting experience for me), as I regard Kubrick as the most gifted of the younger-generation directors, and that goes for the older as well. And to do a film score where there were about twenty-five minutes of dialogue and no sound effects! What a dreamy assignment, after Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, loaded with dialogue. I flew over to London for two days in early December to discuss music with Kubrick. He was direct and honest with me concerning his desire to retain some of the "temporary" music tracks which he had been using for the past years. I realized that he liked these tracks, but I couldn't accept the idea of composing part of the score interpolated with other composers. I felt I could compose music that had the ingredients and essence of what Kubrick wanted and give it a consistency and homogeneity and contemporary feel. In any case, I returned to London December 24th [ 1 967] to start work for recording on January 1 after having seen and discussed the first hour of film for scoring.