SPACE.com -- Tom Hanks on 2001: The Odyssey and the Ecstasy
Tom Hanks on 2001: The Odyssey and the Ecstasy
By
Executive Editor, Space and Science
30 December 2000
In 1968 moviegoers for the first time experienced the cinematic epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Written by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke and directed by Kubrick, the film opens with the dawn of the human species on the plains of Africa and continues in the 21st century with the first piloted voyage to Jupiter and humanitys final evolution at the hands of an extraterrestrial intelligence. The cast of characters includes Dr. Heywood Floyd, a scientist who must respond to the discovery of a 4 million-year-old black monolith on the Moon; and astronauts David Bowman and Frank Poole, two members of the crew of the Jupiter-bound spaceship Discovery, which is controlled by an intelligent, talking computer named HAL.
At the films climax Bowman the lone survivor of HALs murderous loss of sanity arrives at Jupiter where he confronts the monolith, is propelled through
intergalactic space in a bizarre and spectacular light show and, finally, is transformed into a luminous fetus that Clarke called the "star child." Upon its release, 2001 was panned by critics, but soon became a cult favorite. In the years since, the film is nothing less than an icon for space fans, who still praise its realistic portrayal of spaceflight.
Is 2001: A Space Odyssey more than just a great space movie? On the brink of the real 2001, SPACE Illustrated editor Andrew Chaikin talked to one of the films most ardent fans actor, writer and director Tom Hanks, star of Apollo 13 and creator of the HBO miniseries From the Earth to the Moon. Thirty-two years after its premiere, Hanks explains why Kubrick and Clarkes masterpiece is still an extraordinary film in any category, and why there is still inspiration to be found in its portrayal of humanitys future in space.
Q: Do you remember the first time you saw 2001?
Hanks: I decided on a Friday night in the summer of 1968 that I was going to see it the next day. I was in junior high school. I had months of anticipatory buildup before figuring out that, Hey, Im old enough; I can save my money over the week to afford the bus ride, the ticket and something to eat at the theater. So I decided to go, and I probably got an hours worth of sleep between that decision and actually being there. I saw it at the
Cinerama Dome Theater in Oakland, California. I went by myself, sat right down in the middle of the theater, and watched the movie.
Q: How did it hit you? Were you overwhelmed?Well, you know, it was kind of like having never gone to the opera, and then at age 13 going to a Wagnerian opera for the first time. How do you take it all in? It was such a riot of imagery and storytelling that it was unlike any motion picture I had ever seen before. Mostly because of Kubricks narrative, which didnt have any spoken words for half an hour. In every other movie prior to that, it had always been (Hanks launches into a melodramatic narrator voice) -- "At the dawn of man, the primitive beast that will soon rise to the heavens." And 2001 didnt have anything like that.And yet I was able to comprehend what was going on somehow. Like the rival ape factions fighting over that water hole. And my God, when that bone gets thrown up in the air and you make that transformation into an orbiting bomb the greatest time-cut in the history of cinema and the "Blue Danube" started up, I mean, I was in heaven. I felt as though the universe were expanding before my very eyes.
Q: To me, the lack of dialog is the power of the film; the story is transmitted into the nervous system by some other means.
Hanks: This is very true. For example, Bowman and Poole [the astronauts aboard Discovery] did not interact the way guys in movies interact. Bowman didnt say, "Hey Frank, any news on the fusion grids?" "Yes, looks like theyre going to be up at full power." There was none of that. They didnt even nod at each other; they just started eating dinner, which I thought was fantastic. It had the absolute total ring of authenticity.
Q: What impact did it make on you in terms of mood? Theres a sense of optimism about the spaceflight scenes like that glorious rendezvous by Orion shuttle with the space station, but thats very different from the subdued feeling aboard Discovery. Im sure youve heard people say that Bowman and Poole seem less human in some ways than HAL.
Hanks: I understood the pressure these guys were under, what a hard job this must have been. I did not think it was miraculous fun that Frank Poole ran around and around that centrifuge for his exercise. I actually thought -- man, thats got to be monotonous. The scene that blew me out of my hut when I saw it was Franks birthday greeting from home -- because he had no joy whatsoever in the experience. This guy just sat there looking at it with a dead expression.
Q: What did that mean to you?
Hanks: That meant isolation and loneliness. And a kind of merciless professionalism that had to keep emotion in constant check, otherwise these guys would, number one, go nuts, and number two, wouldnt even get to make the voyage in the first place. For me, it elevated David Bowman and Frank Poole. If you were going to be 18 months out into space on the way to Jupiter, you had to be one of the most mentally tough and accomplished human beings on the face of the planet.
Q: How about the light show at the end?
Hanks: Everything that happened once Bowman leaves the Discovery, I didnt understand what was going on, but it certainly did look cool. And then when they put in those quick shots of the tortured face of David Bowman as hes screaming inside the helmet, then I was able to figure out -- okay, this is happening to him, and its not just some cool ride.
Q: Did anybody ever sit down and explain the whole thing to you?
Hanks: No. I was able to piece that together by a couple of readings of Arthur C. Clarkes novel, after I had seen the movie two or three times. Because the standard saying was, "Oh, that black thing, thats God." Thats what everybody was saying. The black thing was God and it takes the astronaut on a trip. And I was saying, cmon, no, its not God. Im not sure what it is, but its not God. But reading the novel -- I ended up studying that thing backwards and forwards. I had to go back and do that, because I was driven to distraction by the movie. I was infected with the virus. I mean, on one hand it was such
a pleasure to take in. It was so inspiring to look at. All this stuff about space was just the greatest stuff in the world and the reality of the physics that Kubrick paid attention to, I appreciated so much.
Q: The lack of noise in space.
Hanks: That, and the need for a false gravitational environment [on the Discovery]. And just the reality of it the way people talked to each other. All that stuff was just magnificent.But on the other hand, the way Kubrick was telling the story, and what that story was, this was a mystery I had
to solve. It was this thing I had to go back and piece together and study. And I did it all myself. My friends and I didn't enter into big discussions about the movie, I just wanted to figure out what all this stuff meant. I mean, I'm not that smart a guy and at the age of 13, it took me a couple of passes in order to be able to figure it out.
Q: You've seen the film, projected, something like 41 times.
Hanks: Something like that, yes. And I have it on DVD and laser disc now, so in fact Ive seen it a few more times than that.
A scene from Apollo 13 in which Hanks played astronaut Jim Lovell
Q: What have you gotten out of it over the years by seeing it so many times?
Hanks: Here is something great about the movie: Going back and looking at it again, there is a finite amount of time where the whole thing is explained to you. I had seen the movie 11 times before I was really able to piece together how subtle Haywood Floyd's briefing session [about the monolith] is to all those people in that white room at the Moonbase. The whole movie is explained right there. He gets up there and says, "I don't need to stress to
you what secrecy means here, what the shock to societies and cultures would be if this information got out half-cockedand, by the way, we're going to need signed oaths of secrecy from everybody." And nobody bats an eye. They all just kind of go, "Yeah, yeah, we know about that. How much longer are we going to have to keep this thing up?" "Well, I don't know, we're going to have to see how it goes."Every time I watch that I think it's this miracle of
screen acting on the actor's part because it just comes off as so conversational, but what he's saying there without having to say it is, "You guys have found something that is so big, all of life is going to change once we figure out what it is that we've come across here." You know, "By the way, our roles in the universe are forever diminished by what you guys have dug up here."
Q: Has 2001 influenced you as an artist?
Hanks: It's totally influenced me as an artist because I keep trying to emulate its ability to communicate something without the obvious verbiage. I look for it in almost every movie that I see. I look for those moments where a relationship between two people is communicated and they're not speaking to each other, like Bowman and Poole. Where the narrative of the story is moved forward without it being explained to me by way of dialog or voice-over or a didactic style of directing. I look for it in moments where I think I'm hearing one thing but in fact I'm hearing something totally different, for example, Dr. Floyd's briefing, or his conversation with the Russians aboard the space station. There's even a cadence that I try to replicate sometimes
when I'm in those scenes. I can't help but try to say, like Dr. Floyd says, "Well, as I said, I'm not at liberty to discuss it." It's the second time he's said that and now he's saying he's both embarrassed that he's got to say it again, but he's also a solid rock of impregnability saying I'm not going to give up anything here. That is an absolute primer on a certain type of screen acting, if you can recreate it. I always feel like, Oh, man, there's another one of those Dr. Haywood Floyd moments.
Q: You've had them in your own films?
Hanks: I've tried. You know, sometimes they're in there; sometimes they're not.
Q: When you got to do Apollo 13 or the miniseries, were you able to be a little bit more direct in some kind of an homage to the film? Even in some small way that only you would know about?
Hanks: In small ways, sure, yeah. Every time I'm in a spacesuit, I feel like I'm David Bowman. In Apollo 13, you know, just the way you sit there and scan the instruments, I felt like I was one of the pilots of the Aires [Moon lander].
Q: Then theres that scene in the miniseries, in the episode on Apollo 17, when Jack Schmitt takes his geology hammer and throws it into the sky.
Hanks: That was an absolute, hundred-percent homage to 2001, because I wrote [that episode]. I think it says in the script, "And like that ape in 2001, Schmitt lets fly with the hammer and it passes by the Earth." When I saw that for the first time, I got teary eyed. I thought it was just beautiful.
Q: How important is 2001 as a statement about humanity and its future in space?
Hanks: I think it still is the greatest example of the optimistic perspective that we always had, before somehow it turned [negative]. We may be laying in a fallow time right now because we found out that going up into outer space is really hard to do and it is really expensive to do and it is, in fact, dangerous. And that success is never guaranteed. But in 1968 it captured this concept of manifest destiny, that is, I think, part and parcel to the human condition. That we're never satisfied with just staying here; we always want to go explore the next frontier, and we're done here [on Earth]. There's an infinite amount of work for us to do here, absolutely. But as far as places for us to go, it's all "up and out." And big things have to be figured
out and big discoveries have to be made. And big people have to come back and dream and work in order to make it happen. And I think that's what 2001 still is able to accomplish. It still captures, I think, the concrete realities of what it's going to take in order for us to do it and it doesn't make it look pretty, it doesn't make it look easy, but it still does make it look inevitable for us. And I think that's accurate.Q: So you don't feel wistful at arriving at the real 21st century without seeing that around you, without seeing a 2001 scenario come to life?
Hanks: You know, less than I thought. I think sometime in the 1980s I did feel wistful about it, but now as we're actually here at 2001, it's not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I mean, look at the things that have gone down now. These 3-D pictures of Mars we got from robots that are walking around up there. And we're going to have this orbiting science platform [the International Space Station] pretty soon -- for good or for bad. So, we're behind schedule, but we're still up there and we're still going up there in different ways than we had before. I remember [Apollo Moonwalker] Dave Scott told me,
"There's no reason to feel that way because, look, do you know how many years existed between Columbus's voyages and the next time somebody went? It was years and years and years. It took vast amounts of time for people to come back and rethink and rebuild the ships the way they needed to do and lives were lost and people -- and fortunes -- were still squandered in order for it to make it happen, but the exploration was inevitable. Once it happens in a small way, it just takes time, that's all.
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