Independent on Sunday (London)
October 23, 2005, Sunday
2001 THE SECRETS OF KUBRICK'S CLASSIC;
NEVER-SEEN-BEFORE FOOTAGE RELEASED TO THE IOS REVEALS THE
BY ANTHONY BARNES
It is the missing part of a cinematic classic. Almost four decades ago,
Stanley Kubrick gathered the world's scientific minds and asked them to
predict the future. Their thoughts would then form the opening sequence
of 2001: A Space Odyssey, his epic about a mission to Jupiter which
becomes a life or death battle between the space crew and their
on-board computer HAL 9000.
But the interviews were never screened and the collective thoughts of
21 eminent men and women of science appeared to have been lost for
ever.
Now the musings are to be made public for the first time when they are
published next month, giving Kubrick enthusiasts an insight into his
ultimate vision for the classic film.
A recluse who died at the age of 70 in 1999 shortly after the
completion of his film Eyes Wide Shut, Kubrick had a lifelong
fascination with the possibilty that there was intelligent alien life.
He wanted to share his belief with the audience as a scene-setter for
his film by allowing them to hear the scientists' own words as they
discussed the possibility of benevolent alien cultures, the origins of
life and the future of man.
The interviews, conducted in 1966, reveal the thinking of many of the
eminent scientists in an era when man had still to walk on the moon.
Among those who contributed were the writer and academic Isaac Asimov,
the anthropologist Margaret Mead, and the astronomers Fred Whipple and
Sir Bernard Lovell. All agreed on the likelihood of there being
intelligent life on other worlds, while some spoke of the possibility
of genetic manipulation and the development of 'ultra-intelligent'
computers that could possess personality traits.
The leading mathematician Jack Good suggested the next stage in human
evolution could be the possibility of telepathic communication, an idea
accepted by Kubrick at the end of 2001 where the human body becomes
redundant.
Another interviewee, Constantine Generales, suggested the idea of the
internet. The physicist Freeman Dyson proposed that we might one day
colonise comets, and Asimov spoke of colonies on the moon, Mars or
Jupiter.
But even for Kubrick, not known for the brevity of his films, it became
clear his masterpiece would be far too long unless the sequence of
thoughts about the future was cut. The US-born director had built up an
enviable reputation with hits such as Spartacus, Lolita and Dr
Strangelove, but 2001 was a challenge to many cinemagoers when it was
released in 1968. Although dazzled by the artistic vision on-screen,
which influenced numerous other sci-fi films, they found the film
difficult to interpret.
Arthur C Clarke, who co-wrote 2001 and inspired it with his short story
Sentinel, has admitted: 'If you understand 2001 completely, we failed.
We wanted to raise far more questions than we answered.'
Kubrick, who wrote, produced and directed his films, was intrigued by
the possibility of other life forms, but was disappointed the film
world had until then tackled science fiction by portraying
blood-thirsty monsters attacking the earth.
His long-standing assistant Tony Frewin, who worked with him for 25
years, said: 'When the pre-production of 2001 began in 1965, the
position of science fiction in cinema was pretty much that idea of
Flash Gordon, Buck Rogers, bug-eyed monsters and Mars Attacks. When
Stanley decided he wanted to make a futuristic science fiction film
about the existence of extra- terrestrial life it worried him people
would see it as just a bug-eyed monster film.
'So what he decided to do was interview 21 professional scientists for
a prologue to show that considering whether there was extra-terrestrial
life was a legitimate scientific question. Before then, if you spoke of
extraterrestrial intelligence people would have simply said 'what,
flying saucers?' and all that nonsense. But the film got longer and
longer and he realised there wasn't going to be enough time for the
prologue, and the film would have to stand on its own two feet, so it
was eventually nixed.'
Although long discarded, Frewin wanted to trace the film for a DVD
release of 2001, but despite a lengthy search was unable to find any
trace. He believes it probably still exists, perhaps mislabelled and
sitting with miles of other film reels in a laboratory.
'Stanley wouldn't have given it away and he wouldn't have destroyed it.
He never threw anything away. He still had chequebook stubs going back
to the 1940s,' said Frewin.
However, during his search, he found the transcripts of the interviews
that had been prepared by Kubrick's secretary, Vicky Ward, to help him
in the editing suite. Frewin has now edited them for a book of the
complete interviews to be published next month.
Some of the interviewees have looked back at their original comments.
Professor Good stood by his, including his suggestion that computers
might have personality traits: 'My Windows 98 computer tells lies and
often forces me to shut down improperly. Such behaviour in a human
would be called neurotic.'
One absentee from the list of interview subjects is the astronomer Carl
Sagan, who went on to find fame as the author of the book Cosmos and a
spin-off TV series. He responded by saying that he wanted editorial
control and a percentage of the film's takings, which was rejected.
Copyright 2005 Newspaper Publishing PLC
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