10 things you might not know about “2001: A Space Odyssey”

The Washington Post

Fifty years ago this week, Stanley Kubrick’s epic “2001: A Space Odyssey” opened, first in Washington, D.C., and then New

York. The influential film, which won an

Oscar for its pioneering special effects, has been called Kubrick’s “crowning, confounding achievement” and a “quantum leap” in technological achievement by film critic James Verniere, who notes that Steven Spielberg called “2001” the Big Bang of his filmmaking generation.

Timed to the anniversary, author Michael Benson’s latest work, “Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arther C. Clarke and the Making of a Masterpiece” (Simon & Schuster), debuted Tuesday, and within Benson’s devotional telling is a wealth of intriguing facts and anecdotes.

Here are some things you probably don’t know about “2001,” according to Benson and other sources.

1. “2001” was originally going to show a precursor to the internet. Kubrick’s intrepid band of futurists, Benson writes, “had seemingly already visualized important aspects of (a) new technology’s implications.” The film’s props would include a “2001 newspaper to be read on some kind of television screen.” And if the prop, which had a New York Times logo, had appeared in the film, it would have been “read by an astronaut on the iPad-type tablet computers” aboard the ship Discovery.

“Had Kubrick followed through and actually presented the newspaper in this way,” the author writes, “there’s no doubt that ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ would be remembered today as an important harbinger of the internet.”

2. The filmmakers also envisioned a world with self-driving cars. “In early chapter drafts,” Benson writes, “the character who would become David Bowman is named Bruno,” and he rides a “computer-guided Rolls” along the “autohighway” bisecting the great “Washington-New York complex,” child and dog in tow.

3. Neither Kubrick nor collaborator-author Arthur C. Clarke believed they had ever seen a great sci-f i f ilm. Kubrick’s two-page introductory letter to Clarke teased the “possibility of doing the proverbial ‘really good’ science fiction movie.” Clarke’s reply: “The ‘really good’ science fiction movie is a great many years overdue.”

4. The creation of the iconic monolith was a years-long process. Early on, Clarke pointed Kubrick to his story “The Sentinel,” in which a survey team discovers a “diamond-hard crystal pyramid of alien origin, which has clearly been on the lunar surface for millions of years,” Benson notes.

Plus, Kubrick initially wanted the “alien object” — what became the mono- lith — to be clear, like a “transparent tetrahedron.” Kubrick urged that it be made of Plexiglas, but the material didn’t create the desired effect and the immense, expensive, clear monolith was trashed, replaced by a black monolith that reflected every smudge and flaw.

5. The same year Kubrick began picking Clarke’s scientifically inventive brain, so was NASA. Traveling from his home base of Ceylon/Sri Lanka, Clarke went to Washington in May of 1964 to meet with top NASA officials. The Apollo project director, Benson writes, solicited the author’s ideas on what the space agency should do after a moon landing was accomplished.

6. “2001” went through a run of working titles. Kubrick and Clarke, having seen MGM’s big Cinerama production “How the West Was Won,” privately titled their would-be semi-documentary “How the Solar System Was Won,” and then “How the Universe Was Won,” Benson writes. Other possible titles included “Universe: Tunnel to the Stars,” “The Star Gate,” “Jupiter Window” and “Earth Escape.”

7. “2001” ran way over schedule and budget.

Kubrick told Clarke in 1964 that he was set to work on a film that would take “about two years to complete,” and a later deal eyed a late 1966 or early 1967 release with an initial budget of $5 million. By the time the film opened April 2, 1968, the budget was about $12 million, according to Box Office Mojo.

8. Prose and pictures likely influenced the fetal imagery. Part of the film’s source material was Clarke’s 1959 short story “Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting,” in which a narrator says that the 21st century does not begin in 2000, but rather Jan. 1, 2001. As Benson notes, that story ends with an awesome sound — “the thin cry of a newborn baby” — but it’s “the first child in all the history of mankind to be brought forth on another world than Earth.”

9. The movie began in a bra factory. The first frames of “2001” were shot in early 1965, in an abandoned bra factory in New York. Inspired partly by “Universe,” Kubrick used paints, inks, paint thinner and high-intensity lights to create surreal spacey effects.

10. Simulated spaceflight was less daunting to some than airflight. Kubrick and two of his “2001” stars, Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, had a fear of flying, according to Benson.