2001 SE in the works!!! (1 Viewer)

[Britton]

We don't need any discussion about George Lucas polluting yet another thread. Go over to the Star Wars or THX 1138 bitch fests for that.

The BBC documentary about 2001 sounds fascinating and I really hope it shows up if this SE DVD becomes a reality.

 

[Kevin M]

The video phone isn't all that bad IMO but when I mentioned the furniture in the "Space Wheel" that is what I was referring to, the furniture in the station.

 

[Ricardo C]

Wow, that went completely over my head the first time I read it. That's what I get for skimming :b

 

[Kevin M]

..but true. It's absolutely off topic.

 

[Jack Johnson]

quote from Jim Barg:

"It took me 3 separate library borrowings of 2001 to make it through the film, and I preferred Clarke's novel (and 2010) at the time only because the reader is told what's going on, instead of the viewer making his own conclusions."

--end quote--



Jim:


For the record, the Arthur Clarke novel of 2001 was actually based on the screenplay from the film, which Clarke and Kubrick wrote together. The screenplay, if I remember correctly, was only inspired by a Clarke story...

So, Clarke's book is something of a novelization of the original screenplay...and it's only his interpretation of it. I don't believe Kubrick had any involvement with the novel, so it's not a "pure" representation of the themes of the film according to both collaborators on the original screenplay.


--Jack

 

[Peter Kline]

The original story, a short one, was called "The Sentinel".

As far as my comment on GL, probably too harsh. But constantly "updating" a film is a fairly new phenomena... done to not necessarily make it better but to squeeze more money out of people who feel more comfortable seeing the same old same with a "twist". Hollywood has fallen into the trap of appealing to a laziness in the movie going public. Don't explore new ideas and stories, just rework old ones ad infinitum or in this era "fix" films by changing special effex. My rant is no over. Sorry.

 

[Michael Harris]

All the sets and props were a logical extension of what was known at the time "2001" was made. Given the size and importance of Pan Am to the history of civil aviation who would have thought that they would have gone belly up. When watching "Silent Running" some years in the future will American Airlines still be around?

When I saw the Kubrick exhibit the only prop that really jumped out at me was the Hamilton watch. Very analogue, very large, and very clumsy. Guess quartz LED/LCD technology at the consumer level was not visible in the mid-sixties.

What I find interesting about the progression of clothing is how little has really changed since the mid-sixties. Sure there have been fashion fads but men still wear suits and ties with only lapel and tie width changing and for women its seems to be a matter of hem lengths.

Every viewing of "2001" confirms, for me, the genius that was Stanely Kubrick.

 

[Tiago_J]

Well, the ship designs and all that stuff, they're brilliant, but my reaction was on the uh, "high-end technology" computers, where the users have to insert perforated cards into the machine. That's just waaay to 70's and really hard not to notice. It kinda dates the film. Not that I care.

Alien is my all time nr 1 movie and one of the main reasons why I absolutely love this form of art.

 

[Jay Pennington]

Um, unless this is a spoof, Pan Am is still around:

http://www.flypanam.com/[/url]

I seem to remember Pan Am going "belly up" then being resurrected years later.

Besides, we can't compare "today" with 2001 because we're already 3 years past that.

Edit after further research: okay, the site above is a totally new company; the original died in 1991. But the new company uses the old logo, so who's to say they won't have shuttles to orbiting space stations someday?

 

[Michael Harris]

One of the assets that was sold when they went bankrupt was the name. It was tied up in litigation for a while due to Lockerbie bombing related law suits and now it is a name attached to a mostly charter airline.

 

[Jim Barg]

Correct. And I preferred Clarke's version at the time, truthfully. Guess it was just easier to digest in words than to see changing colors onscreen...

 

[Dennis Pagoulatos]

Ricardo: But HD-DVD really IS coming in 2 years now. (No foolin'! ) You'll be able to run out and buy a player in early 2006, mark my words. Take your pick: Blu-Ray or HD-DVD, but they'll be out there, with the software to back them up. You bet your bippy that 2001 will be released in HD, and it won't be a long wait, trust me.

Now to make "2001" a reality in terms of space travel, you've gotta land on the moon, and no one's done that yet afaic.

-Dennis

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Please forgive me for continuing on this tangent.


With the exception of Abel Gance's NAPOLEON (1927), which was updated many times by the director over the years. While reading Kevin Brownlow's book, I lost count of the various revisions (none of which improved the film, in the author's opinion).

Back on topic:

I eagerly await any new version of 2001 that improves, in any way, upon the previous version.

 

[george kaplan]

And Charlie Chaplin's Gold Rush (1925).

 

[Jerome]

there was a DVD released two years ago in England with a documentary named "2001 and Beyond", produced by Foolish Earthling Prod in 2001. It lenghs 46' and features new interviews with Douglas Trumbull and Keir Dullea, and some behind the scenes footage of Kubrick at work on the set.

I bought it last year and it's an interesting documentary, not complete about the making of the movie, but interesting.

 

[Jack Briggs]

Regarding fashion: Peter is correct in noting that styles come and go and, often, come again. To wit --

I remember sitting in a commercial theater in 1971 while visiting Memphis, TN. It was a scratchy 70mm print being screened at a theater called the Crosstown.

Some people who had seen the film before were sitting directly behind my party. And they were discussing how fresh and futuristic the film still looked three years after its release. But, said one fellow, "Those short hairstyles look so dated!"

This was a time when a lot of high-school and college-age men were wearing long, hippie-influenced hair, often past their shoulders. The gentleman uttering the remark had hair pulled back in a long ponytail.

Guess which "look" looks quaint today? Now it would be William Sylvester's Heywood R. Floyd who looks more "contemporary" by today's standards -- and it was about Floyd, Halvorsen, Poole, and Bowman that gentleman was commenting.

Similarly, those '60s-ish hair "helmets" worn by the flight attendants on the space shuttle and lunar shuttle could very well return to vogue some day. Retro often is "in" in the fashion world.

A more accurate charge against the film's ability to be "contemporary" might be the fact of the all-female flight attendants themselves, and the fact that there are no women at the controls of any of the spacecraft. But, then, every airplane flight I've been made has had female flight attendants onboard.

So, who knows?

As for Bell Telephone, Whirlpool, and Pan-Am, they aren't fair game. Mr. Kubrick had no way of knowing those companies' fates.

Finally, the story's genesis is as follows:

* The Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel" appeared in a British SF magazine in 1949.

* In 1964, Mr. Kubrick purchased the rights to a handful of Arthur C. Clarke's short stories shortly after they agreed to work together to make the "proverbial good science-fiction film."

* Later that year, Mr. Kubrick decided he liked "The Sentinel" the best among those stories and decided to use it as the inspiration for his film. He sold the rights to the other stories back to Mr. Clarke.

* The two then began writing the story together. It was the novel-in-progress that would serve as the basis of the screenplay; the two would be written simultaneously. Mr. Kubrick would edit and provide ideas for the novel, rejecting entire chapters he did not like. The two would then incorporate all of the ideas into the screenplay. Since this was a genuine collaborative effort, the two agreed to joint credits for each work, with Arthur Clarke's name receiving top billing on the novel and with Stanley Kubrick's name receiving top billing on the screenplay. And Mr. Kubrick agreed to let Mr. Clarke get the novel published first. Consider the novel an outgrowth of the work done on the film.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

A couple tidbits to add to the above:

* Clarke himself said that credit for writing 2001 should be divided in these proportions: 90% Kubrick, 5% Clarke, 5% special effects team. Sometimes the effects team's requirements would influence the content of the film, such as their inability to depict Saturn's rings.

* The film's working title was HOW THE SOLAR SYSTEM WAS WON.

 

[MatthewLouwrens]

I've always wondered why they changed from Saturn to Jupiter.

 

[Rob Gardiner]

Douglas Trumbull eventually got it right, and used the Saturn effect in SILENT RUNNING.

 

[Patrick McCart]

There are 19 versions of Napoleon. This includes the first, "definitive" cut and the latest 5 1/2 hr. reconstruction. The last time Gance revised his film was in 1970!


As for revisions... Chaplin revised all of the films under his ownership except for City Lights, The Great Dictator, and Monsieur Verdoux. (and Modern Times was shortened before its general release)

He'd make Lucas look reeeeeallly nice in comparison.

"One edit makes a butcher. Dozens make him a hero. Numbers sanctify."