50 FACTS for 50 years
In honour of iconic film’s golden anniversary this year, 50 fascinating facts about 2001: A Space Odyssey
Something always happens when I watch Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 sci-fi masterpiece, 2001: A Space Odyssey, which I’ve now seen more than 50 times.
I’m age 13 again, sitting with my dad, John Peter Howell, inside Toronto’s long-gone Glendale Theatre on Avenue Road, a cherished widescreen Cinerama palace. It’s Jan. 22, 1969, and we’re there on my birthday to see a film I’ve been dying to see for months.
I was transfixed and enchanted. The film continues to work its magic on me with its amalgam of science fact and fancy — although it seemed very real back in 1969. There’s a moon landing in 2001 of a spindly-legged lunar module called the Aries, a more elegant version of the Eagle lander that was used for the historic Apollo11mission that same year.
This is the film that made me want to become a movie critic. I never get tired of seeing 2001, and I always discover something new in it every time I watch.
The film’s story of mankind being nudged towards progress by mysterious extraterrestrials opened my eyes to the power of cinema to tell a story mostly through visuals, without ponderous words explaining what it all means — although some viewers (and MAD magazine) did complain about being left in the dark.
Allow me to share my obsession with you. In honour of the film’s 50th anniversary this year, I have compiled 50 fascinating facts about 2001: A Space Odyssey. In doing so, I promised my col- leagues not to write about my favourite film anymore … you know, just like HAL 9000 had promised to be infallible.
Open the pod bay doors, and prepare to geek out: 1. The germ of an idea for 2001 came from the short story “The Sentinel” by sci-fi writer Arthur C. Clarke, who would become Kubrick’s great collaborator on the movie. “The Sentinel” was published in 1951 in a pulp sci-fi magazine called 10 Story Fantasy. The cheesy cover story for the issue was titled “Tyrant & SlaveGirl on Planet Venus.”
2. The Oscar-nominated NFB short Universe, directed by Roman Kroitor and Colin Low, had a gigantic influence on the making of 2001, so much so that Kubrick nearly gave his film the same title. Kubrick borrowed the NFB’s innovative ink-generated special effects and also hired its visual effects wiz Wally Gentleman, and narrator Douglas Rain, who would memorably voice 2001’ s rogue computer, HAL 9000.
3. Besides Universe, other titles considered and rejected by Kubrick and collaborator Arthur C. Clarke included Journey Beyond the Stars, How the Universe Was Won, Tunnel to the Stars, Earth Escape, The Star Gate, Jupiter Window and Farewell to Earth.
4. Early audiences found the movie baffling. There were reportedly 241 walkouts from the April 2, 1968, world premiere at the Uptown Theater in Washington, D.C. The fleeing patrons included actor Rock Hudson, who
muttered, “Will someone tell me what the hell this is about?”
5. Kubrick was rattled by the mixed response to the first screening in Washington and to another in New York City the following day. Thinking the 161-minute running time might be the reason, he went back to the editing room and trimmed 19 minutes from the film, reducing it to a more audience-friendly 142 minutes.
6. One influential movie critic was seriously unimpressed. Pauline Kael, writing in Harper's Magazine, dismissed 2001as “trash masquerading as art” with “third-rate” special effects: “It’s a bad, bad sign when a movie director begins to think of himself as a mythmaker, and this limp myth of a grand plan that justifies slaughter and ends with resurrection has been around before,” she sniffed.
7. Kael’s savage pan didn’t hurt the movie. It topped the North American box office for 1968, coming in ahead of Funny Girl (No. 2) and The Love Bug( No. 3).
8. Part of the reason for the film’s popularity is the head-spinning “Star Gate” sequence near the end, to which hippies reportedly would drop acid while sitting in the front row. Urban legend or not, a canny adman — maybe a Mad Man? — capitalized on this by creating a psychedelic poster of a giant eyeball with the brilliant tag line, “The Ultimate Trip.”
9. Apollo 8 crew members Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders saw 2001 before their historic Christmas Eve 1968 orbit of the moon. They later told author Arthur C. Clarke they were tempted to jokingly radio back the discovery of a large black monolith.
10. The film’s dark-screen overture, set to Gyorgy Ligeti’s atonal “Atmospheres,” essentially tells the film’s story in three minutes, entirely by sound. It is mysterious, ominous and thrilling.
11. Pink Floyd was originally considered for the film’s soundtrack, but the band declined, citing other commitments. This may explain why Floyd’s “Echoes” track syncs with 2001’ s “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” segment. 12. Dan Richter, an actor and mime artist who plays smart ape MoonWatcher in the “Dawn of Man” sequence, studied real apes to learn their moves. He became the “smart ape” in real life, teaching his moves to the other “Dawn of Man” actors. 13. Legend has it that makeup ace Stuart Freeborn, who died in 2013 at the age of 98, did such good job on the apes that Oscar voters didn’t realize they were actors. Hence there was no gold for makeup or costume, but the film did win an Oscar for special effects. 14. The famous “match cut” scene in which Moon-Watcher’s hurled bone suddenly turns into a spacecraft thousands of years later is one of the most famous such edits in movie history.
15. The satellites seen in Earth’s orbit immediately after the bone toss carry nuclear missiles. They represent five countries: the U.S., the Soviet Union (now Russia), China, Germany and France. But not Britain, even though 2001 was filmed in England.
16. There’s just one deliberate joke in the entire film, and it’s an unspoken one. It’s the scene where moon-bound U.S. space official Dr. Heywood R. Floyd has to read ridiculously complicated instructions for using a zero-gravity toilet. Audiences laughed back in ’68, not so much now.
17. The clothes for most people seen in 2001 are form-fitting and utilitarian, representing the belief in 1968 that space travel would be a common occurrence by the 21st century. But they’re stylish and high-class nonetheless: Hardy Amies of Savile Row, the official dressmaker for Queen Elizabeth, designed the duds.
18. 2001 is mostly a silent movie, apart from the soundtrack’s classical music. There are just 40 minutes of spoken words in the film’s 142-minute running time, and the first words aren’t heard until 25 minutes in. That’s when an elevator attendant, played by actress/model Maggie London, tells Floyd upon his arrival at Space Station 5: “Here you are, sir, main level please.”
19. A few seconds later, Floyd gets a proper welcome to Space Station 5 from a Canadian: Vancouver-born Chela Matthison, who plays the receptionist who assists him in meeting up with the station’s manager. Floyd has clearly met the receptionist, identified as Miss Turner, before. “Very nice to see you again,” he tells her.
20. Voice print identification on the space station anticipates our 21st-century security paranoia. So does Floyd’s secret journey and his deliberate disinformation hints about an “epidemic” aboard the moon. Something freakier is afoot: signs of alien life have been found.
21. Floyd makes a telephone call from space to his earthbound young daughter “Squirt,” played by Kubrick’s daughter Vivian. The calls costs $1.70, a figure that made audiences laugh in1968, because it seemed so high. The call in the real year 2001would have cost $8.54, according to the online Inflation Calculator. The sum still makes people laugh, because it now seems so low.
22. Floyd actually makes two calls to Earth, but the second one was deleted from the film. He calls the pet department of Macy’s department store and orders a long-tailed “bush baby” to be delivered as a birthday gift for Squirt, who had requested one.
23. It’s breakfast time when Floyd arrives aboard Space Station 5, but the Russian scientists he meets and greets while walking through the lobby are all drinking as if it’s happy hour, sipping what looks like whisky and also vodka. No wonder the very serious Floyd turns down their offer of alcohol.
24. One of the female Russian scientists Floyd chats with creates a humorous continuity error in the film. She’s seen in one take sitting on a chair with a blue sweater draped over it. In another take, the sweater is missing. Kubrick deftly covered up the flub by inserting a female voice on the PA system announcing that “a blue lady’s cashmere sweater has been found in the restaurant and can be claimed at the manager’s desk.”
25. Another flub is when Floyd eats his in-flight meal on Pan Am’s Orion spacecraft en route to Space Station 5. He sucks on straws to consume the meal — which includes liquid portions of ham, fish, cheese and veggies — and the food is seen dropping back down the straws, which wouldn’t happen in the zero gravity of space.
26. The food looks unappetizing, but perhaps not as much as the promotional kids’ meals offered by the real Howard Johnson’s restaurants to promote 2001. One of the offerings was clams with french fries, available for the out-of-thisworld price of 95 cents.
27. The “Grip Shoes” used by the flight attendants aboard the 2001 spacecraft are made with Velcro, unheard-of for footwear in 1968, but commonplace now.
28. Kubrick destroyed most of the models used for the spacecraft after
filming, out of fear that other directors might “borrow” them for their own films. But a model of lunar lander Aries escaped the wrecking ball. It came from a private owner, who sold it in 2015 to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences for more than $340,000 (U.S.).
29. “Fake News” starts here: Floyd congratulates colleagues at the Clavius moon base for successfully concocting a cover story about an epidemic at the base, to hide the fact of a momentous discovery.
30. Floyd meets other Canadians on his travels. His companions in the moonbus, as they travel to the site of mysterious black monolith found buried on the Moon, were played by Canadian actors Sean Sullivan and Robert Beatty.
31. Jupiter-bound Discovery One’s lead astronauts Dave Bowman (Keir Dullea) and Frank Poole (Gary Lockwood) were originally supposed to journey to Saturn, as they do in Clarke’s source novel. But Kubrick feared his special effects team couldn’t properly depict Saturn’s rings, so he switched planets.
32. Canadian director James Cameron ( Titanic, Avatar) says he loves 2001, which he first saw at Toronto’s Glendale Theatre in 1968, shortly after it opened there. But he doesn’t really like the film, because it lacks “emotional balls.”
33. Discovery One’s supposedly “infallible” HAL 9000 computer turns homicidal after botching a maintenance diagnosis for a telecommunications antenna. But the cocky HAL screws up even earlier, when he’s playing chess with astronaut Frank Poole. He claims checkmate will occur in two moves; it would actually take three.
34. HAL was originally supposed to be a computer named Athena, with a female voice. Kubrick changed his mind and instead hired Winnipeg-born actor Douglas Rain, a Stratford Festival stage legend. Rain recorded his lines while barefoot, resting his feet on a pillow to maintain HAL’s relaxed tone.
35. Print magazines — and Playboy nudes! — make it to space. A rare production image from 2001, not seen in the movie, shows a space-suited astronaut reading Playboy aboard Space Station V, under the mildly disapproving gaze of a flight attendant. The image appeared in a Japanese program book.
36. In 1965, after the U.S. Mariner IV robotic probe began sending photos to Earth of the surface of Mars, a worried Kubrick contacted Lloyds of London to see if he could get an insurance policy against Martians being discovered before the release of 2001.
37. Many of the corporations seen in 2001 survived until the 21st century, among them Hilton, Howard Johnson’s and AT&T. But a notable fail is Pan Am, the airline insignia for the Space Clipper Orion that carries Floyd on the first leg of his top-secret trip to the moon. Pan Am went bust in 1991.
38. Pan Am is also seen on a blink-and-miss illuminated poster on Space Station 5, an advertisement for a Bahamas Underwater Hotel, which resembles a three-tier UFO submerged in water.
39. The back seat movie mon- itor that Floyd watches — or rather dozes before — aboard the Orion spacecraft looks identical to ones now common on passenger planes. Kubrick filmed a mini sci-fi drama to play on Floyd’s monitor, using concept cars made by General Motors for the film, and also a judo match for a film watched by a flight attendant.
40. Another of the visionary products is a tiny colour TV set made by RCA Victor. Such a device wasn’t available for the public until 1984, some 16 years after 2001came out.
41. The astronauts aboard the Discovery One spacecraft, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, watch a BBC news program with devices that look a lot like iPads, which didn’t arrive in the real world until 2010.
42. Actor Keir Dullea admitted in a Toronto Star interview this year that even though his character Dave Bowman is a highly skilled technician who can deactivate a killer computer, in real life he’s hopeless with electronics: “I am so terrible with computers. I can just about email, that’s about it!”
43. Those groovy pink Djinn chairs and sofas on the space station became a design hit. For a time after the film’s release, they were made and sold by a company in France called Airborne, which is now defunct. The silverware used by the Discovery One astronauts has also become a coveted style item and it’s still in production today.
44. “I bring a personal message from Dr. Howell,” Heywood Floyd tells scientists at the top-security Clavius Base briefing on the moon. When I heard this at age13, I nudged my father: “Dad! Did you hear that?” Note: this is cool only for people named Howell.
45. The mysterious black monolith known as TMA-1 emits a sound remarkably like a computer modem. History’s first internet sign-on?
46. The deep space showdown scene between astronaut Bowman and HAL 9000 when the computer refuses to acknowledge the command, “Open the pod bay doors, HAL,” was rigorously checked for scientific accuracy. Kubrick’s team verified that it would be possible for humans to survive in space without a helmet for a few seconds — as long as they held their breath, as Bowman does.
47. Symbolism alert! The aligned planets and monolith at the beginning of the Douglas Trumbull-designed Star Gate psychedelic sequence form a crucifix. This is no accident.
48. Kubrick originally wanted to show the aliens near Jupiter. He and Trumbull devised a plan to have actor Richter wear a special polka-dot suit to facilitate photo manipulation. It anticipated today’s motion-capture film technology.
49. Kubrick always resisted explaining the plot of 2001, especially the meaning of the Godlike black monoliths. But he came close to giving the game away in a 1968 interview with Clyde Gilmour, then the movie critic for the Toronto Telegram (and later the Star). He told Gilmour the monoliths were artifacts devised by “creatures of pure intelligence, with unimaginable power … Obviously, this is fairly close to a definition of God.”
50. The MAD magazine parody of 2001, titled “201 Minutes of a Space Idiocy” published in the March 1969 edition, is one of the humour mag’s all-time most popular movie spoofs.
Sources: Too many to list, but two recent publications greatly assisted: Michael Benson’s definitive 2018 volume Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece; and Piers Bizony’s 2015 Taschen coffee table opus, The Making of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. Twitter: @peterhowellfilm