
“Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017) - martincmartin
https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-tears-he-left-intermission-how-stanley-kubrick-upset-arthur-c-clarke
======
cperciva
Arthur C Clarke wasn't the only person who was shocked at the premiere of
2001.

Stanley Kubrick commissioned the prominent film composer Alex North -- famous
for the scoring of Spartacus -- to write the music for 2001. However, film
music is only recorded and added at the final stage of editing; normally all
of the video is laid down first so that the music director knows exactly how
long each scene will be and the music can be recorded at the right tempo to
match up.

During the video editing process, "temp music" is used -- typically classical
music because it's widely available -- so that scenes have the right feeling
when they're viewed by the director. For this purpose, Kubrick selected the
opening fanfare from Also Sprach Zarathustra for the start of 2001, The Blue
Danube for "floating through space" scenes, et cetera. However, after viewing
the edited scenes with the "temporary" background music, Kubrick decided that
he really liked it that way -- and so rather than using the score which North
was composing and recording, he re-edited the video to match the tempo of the
classical recordings he had used.

Legend has it that Kubrick didn't know how to break the news to North -- but
however it happened, North turned up for the premiere expecting to hear the
music he had spent six months composing and recording, and was devastated to
hear the supposedly "temporary" music used instead.

~~~
michaelgrafl
That's a great anecdote. Where do you have it from? I'd love to find more of
this kind of stuff.

And wow, by the way. That's harsh.

~~~
cperciva
I heard about this a couple years ago when my orchestra (I'm a violinist) did
a "movie music" concert with a guest conductor (Hal Beckett) who worked in the
industry. We opened the concert with the fanfare from Also Sprach
Zarathustra... then he turned to the audience and explained about temp music,
and we played the Alex North fanfare.

I have a feeling that these sorts of stories fall into the category of "well
known in the industry but not thought to be interesting enough to write down
or relate to outsiders".

~~~
vidarh
In this case the story was printed in a booklet accompanying a recording of
the score, though I'm fairly certain it had been reported on before that too:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_(score)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001:_A_Space_Odyssey_\(score\))

------
rainloft
I've watched 2001 twice in my life. Once on my laptop screen, and once in a
theater. Wildly different experiences.

On a laptop, it was maddeningly slow. I couldn't bear that scene where the
spaceship docks on the space station while the Blue Danube Waltz played.
Excruciating. I wish there was more explanation, as my mind was wandering
watching this dull film.

In a theater, I experienced a completely different film.On the big screen, I
could imagine the scale of this achievement, of a man-made spaceship landing
on a man-made space station, all this coordination, against the Blue Danube
waltz, and it was all I could see in my field of vision. Not distracted by
other things as I was on my laptop. I didn't need explanation. I just felt it.
I finally felt that I had "gotten" the movie. It was an experience. Not just
plot and explosions and super heroes, like most movies are today.

A powerful film is expressed in images! Film. It's called a motion picture.
The more a film can be expressed in images, the more "pure" it is to its
medium! And most of the film was silent.

I'm glad Clarke got the chance to make it a novel, and told it in the form
most fitting for him.

Kubrick was a filmmaker and Clarke a writer. I think it is natural that they
would disagree on the telling of this story. Different mediums call for
different ways to tell the story.

~~~
KozmoNau7
I've had the same experience with The Shining.

On my PC, it's a bit plodding and slow, but on the big screen, it's a
completely visceral and intense experience like no other film I've seen.

~~~
logicallee
Lawrence of Arabia is supposed to be an immersive, "culturally, historically,
and aesthetically significant" epic historical drama film which won Best
Cinematography. But I couldn't avoid constantly glancing at the time and my
notifications, when I watched it on a smart watch screen that also displayed a
bar across the top showing the time and my notifications.

~~~
jameslevy
Serious question: How is it possible to view Lawrence of Arabia on a smart
watch?

~~~
adriand
I can only assume this was a joke. Either way, I laughed.

------
andrewflnr
I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would
have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in
its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative
approaches explains a lot.

~~~
interfixus
It certainly does. Being much, much more Clarke than Kubrick, I watch the
thing in awe up till and including "My God, it's full of stars", and then
usually switch off, as I know from then on the masterpiece will be descending
into lava lamps and nonsense.

~~~
firasd
I was very let down when I watched it some years ago--I was like, 'where's the
climax?' But I've watched a few more arty ambiguous movies lately ('Under the
Skin', 'The Neon Demon', 'Mother!') and recently liked 'Annihilation' despite
its slow pacing and ambiguity, so I've been thinking maybe I'll like '2001'
better this time if I check it out again...

Something I've noticed about '2001' in the meanwhile is that its aesthetics
seem very future-proof. It doesn't seem dated or plastic-y like other stuff
from that era.

An interesting article about the setting and social environment: 'HAL, Mother,
and Father: Watching the sixties and seventies through 2001 and Alien.'
[https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-
an...](https://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2015/01/09/hal-mother-and-father/)

~~~
interfixus
I see I'm getting hammered for my negativity, but I certainly meant it when I
said _in awe_ about the first part. It's magnificent, never mind the lunar
gravity problem, which I've never seen well done on film.

It's only a couple of months since I last tried - and gave up on - watching
2001 to the end. Probably my own shortcoming entirely - I see nothing but
pretentious late sixties posing from the stargate and onwards.

~~~
itronitron
I tried to watch 2001 again about 8 years ago and had to put it on fast
forward, at 10X speed, and even then I was still falling asleep through most
of it

~~~
colordrops
If you had it at 10x you weren't really watching it.

------
indescions_2018
Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission.
Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really
holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a
cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American
audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era.

Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immensely watchable 30+
years on. Perhaps even more so. Which makes it high time not to just complete
Clark's monoliith films. But write the next chapter in "Dystopian AI" cinema.
One in which a super-intelligence doesn't merely write off the necessity of
humanity. But actively yet surreptitiously nudges us to produce more powerful
versions of itself ;)

~~~
hetman
I recently watched the original Blade Runner with a bunch of friends; none of
us had seen it before. Immensely watchable was certainly not the general
opinion. A few of us decided it was worth watching only because it set the
background for the new Blade Runner. We're probably missing some cultural
element that meant it didn't elicit quite the same reaction as it did for you
and I'm very curious what that might have been.

~~~
sparkzilla
The film, especially the original theatrical release that has the voiceover,
echoes Film Noir and 1940s cop movies that you may not have seen, but many
people in the 1980s would have had in memory.

The sequel follows the visual style of the original, but it doesn't have the
film noir feel. It's tone is much harsher. In the original the characters are
able to find some meaning in their lives, and even find love or redemption,
but the sequel shows the future as much less forgiving.

~~~
toyg
_> In the original the characters are able to find some meaning in their
lives_

The sequel does the same at the end, isn't it? Father and daughter are
reunited, and K finds meaning in the struggle.

 _> it doesn't have the film noir feel_

That would have been gimmicky. It was innovative when the original was
released but it's now been done to death.

~~~
sparkzilla
>The sequel does the same at the end, isn't it? Father and daughter are
reunited, and K finds meaning in the struggle.

I should have said 'escape' rather than 'meaning'. In the original Deckard and
Rachael escape the dystopia. In the sequel it feels like there's no escape
from the confines of the film. Even the daughter is still in her cage at the
end.

------
truculation
_> Explanations were his forte. He was uncomfortable with most forms of
ambiguity._

One can enjoy good explanations without necessarily enjoying them in movies. I
think it's more fun like to try to explain what's going on by oneself from the
few clues available. It seems to me that many works of art are _polysemic_.
For example, a passage of Shakespeare can light up several different ideas in
one's head thereby creating a stimulating, almost psychedelic experience. It
makes the bare plot worthwhile (and worth explaining).

~~~
kqr
It's nice that you were able to put into words some things I like about
classic books and poetry. Kafka was also a master of this.

That said, I don't enjoy it as much at all in films. Don't know why. I try to,
for sure. It can be stimulating. But it's not on the level of "almost
psychedelic" as you so aptly describe what I can experience with books.

------
ferorus
This is funny. I read the book before I watched the film and didn't know that
the movie was released before the book was published. I was amazed of how well
the movie put images to what I had read in the book, and having read it, I
didn't find it difficult to understand the movie, I just thought it was one of
the best adaptations of a book I'd ever seen!

~~~
kqr
Yes, having read the book makes a huge difference. I tried watching the film
first, but I failed and stopped watching a short way into it. Then at some
point I read the book, which I really enjoyed. I thought I'd give the film a
second chance and I'm glad I did because it was brilliant, having read the
book.

Strongly recommend treating them as two integral parts of one work of art --
consuming either one and not the other will leave you much less satisfied.

I think that may be true for several other longer adaptations including
STALKER (from A Roadside Picnic) and Apocalypse Now (from A Heart of
Darkness).

~~~
sirclueless
Heart of Darkness/Apocalypse Now also has a pretty remarkable adaptation in
video game format called Spec Ops: The Line. It's the same story premise cast
as a modern military shooter. The gameplay is a fairly generic (some say this
is an intentional statement on the drudgery of video game violence but I'm not
so sure) but the story is excellent and there are lots of audible and visual
details that show the gradual descent into madness of the main character and
his teammates -- your voice lines go from professional callouts to angry
emotional outbursts, "Hunt him down!", "Got the fucker!" etc.

~~~
kqr
Yes! Spec Ops: The Line was absolutely brilliant, and I'm sorry I left it out!

------
dudul
Kubrick was fairly known for heavily adapting the novels he used for
inspiration. There are huge differences between the novel "Lolita" and
Kubrick's adaptation. Same with "Shining" or "Clockwork Orange".

TBH, I'm really happy we didn't get a version with voice-overs and all. Hard
to imagine a concept of "documentary" would have been better than what we
ended up with.

~~~
jccooper
Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining",
mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect
"2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I
think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously
crazy right from the first.

~~~
dudul
Most authors complained about it yes. Burgess accused Kubrick of not having
understood a single word of "Clockwork Orange". Nabokov was the most gracious
when he said that while Lolita was a very good movie, he didn't recognize his
original work at all :)

I think it's a very difficult exercise to adapt a novel. Should you literally
put on the screen what is written in the book ? What's the point ? You're not
creating much. On the other hand, if you deviate from the original work, fans
start attacking you for "betraying" the spirit of the book.

~~~
mynameishere
The Godfather was pretty close to the novel, with much dialog line-for-line
identical. The main difference was the subtraction of a few egregiously daft
subplots.

~~~
dudul
Hum, there was also a lot of differences with the importance of the character
of Johnny Fontane who is way more present in the novel.

In this instance, the "opposite" actually happened. Coppola is supposed to
have said, when finishing the last page of the novel, "I'm supposed to make a
masterpiece of this turd ?"

~~~
mynameishere
Citation needed.

[https://www.google.com/search?q=francis+ford+coppola+masterp...](https://www.google.com/search?q=francis+ford+coppola+masterpiece+turd&oq=francis+ford+coppola+masterpiece+turd)

And the Fontane subplot is one of the two daft subplots that I mentioned.

------
coupdejarnac
Having read 2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Lolita, I'd say Kubrick's end
products justified his changes.

Imagine A Clockwork Orange having a happy ending... Well, that's how the book
ends.

~~~
mieseratte
As a former disaffected youth I've very much come to appreciate the original
ending of A Clockwork Orange as I've gotten older.

While I am a bit of a fan of Kubrick, I think he did the story a great
disservice by ending it as he did.

~~~
coupdejarnac
I can appreciate that, but to me it feels like a deux ex machina given how the
events unfolded up until the end. I think it demonstrates a cultural
difference between Americans and British- by taking the route of personal
growth, the book goes against the dour, nihilistic ending British would
expect. I don't remember any buildup to Alex's epiphany, so I found it
unsatisfying.

~~~
toyg
Just FYI, it's _deus_ ex machina. Deus is Latin for "god" and deux is French
for "two" \- very different things.

~~~
coupdejarnac
Yes, thanks for pointing out my typo. Mea culpa :p

------
lucas_membrane
There was one other contributor who was equally or even more disappointed by
the first viewing on opening night, the composer who had been hired to write
the score, who found out then that Strauss had been substituted.

------
DEFCON28
I didn't quite get why Kubrick kicked Moorcock off the set. Anyone care to
explain?

~~~
mkl
It wasn't spelled out, but I think Kubrick didn't know who he was, and just
didn't want _anyone_ extra on the set. Given how behind and over-budget the
movie was, and how many people wanted to visit such an unusual (for the time)
film production, I can understand that.

~~~
Crontab
This was my thought as well.

As an aside, I would personally love to meet Michael Moorcock. He is one of my
favorite authors.

------
Tharkun
My favourite author talking about my second favourite author, discussing my
favourite movie. Truly a rare treat.

------
ams6110
> Arthur developed polio in the 1980s, making travel increasingly difficult

Polio in the 1980s??? How did _that_ happen?

~~~
throwaway76543
It's wrong. He contracted Polio in 1962. In the 80s he developed PPS.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-
polio_syndrome](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-polio_syndrome)

------
scruffyherder
The monolith really works as a Visial metaphor for the Cinema screen. Just as
the movie starts as we are staring at the monolith ready to go on a literal
space Odyssey.

It's a shame so many re-releases "fixed" the faux screen jump when Bowman
nearly touched the edge, and instead shattered the glass. It really is
brilliant, a movie within a movie.

All through the film there are so many rotating monoliths it's incredible that
we never get the hint that the upright position of the monolith as it is
presented is incorrect.

Even the actual end leaves us starting at the monolith, with the profound
music.

If you dig for interviews you'll see that Kubrick always said that the simple
surface story is the simple alien device that transforms man.

~~~
KingEllis
> the faux screen jump when Bowman nearly touched the edge, and instead
> shattered the glass. It really is brilliant, a movie within a movie.

> that the upright position of the monolith as it is presented is incorrect.

Can you provide references for either of these?

------
da02
Did anyone ever definitively figure out what Kubrick was trying to do with
"2001"? (The interpretation that made the most sense to me was the one where
the monolith is a metaphor to the cinema screen and Philosopher's Stone.)

~~~
paulmd
The book addresses this. The Monolith is an interstellar "seed" sent out to
stimulate the development of other forms of sentient life. This scene is
supposed to depict the Monolith stimulating humanity's primate ancestors to
develop tool usage (bones as clubs/etc) and catalyzing our societal
development as a result.

Next, we see Humanity discover the Tycho Monolith buried on the moon. As the
lunar dawn strikes it, it unleashes a massive burst of radio energy towards
Jupiter and goes silent. This is implied as being an alert that Humanity has
reached a crucial stage of development and the stage is set for the completion
of its mission. You can alternately view it as an energy-based life-form
shifting from one repository/location to another. So the Jupiter Monolith
could potentially be interpreted as being the same sentience/AI/etc.

The other confusing scene is the ending, where Bowman travels through the
Jupiter Monolith and becomes a Star Baby. This is the Monolith finishing its
mission, and allowing Bowman to shed his corporeal body and become a being of
pure energy, like the Monolith and its creators.

So all in all, the movie depicts the Monolith guiding humanity through all the
stages of its evolution, from primates to a higher plane of existence. Then we
have several artistic interludes that connects these scenes... an idealistic
depiction of humanity's technological development as Floyd travels to the
moon, and then a horror sequence as one of our creations malfunctions and
becomes murderous.

The book is vastly more comprehensible than the movie, without some of the
narration that Kubrick cut it's pretty difficult to follow what's going on. On
the other hand, from an artistic perspective, narration would have ruined the
film (imagine David Attenborough narrating...) so it's easy to see why Kubrick
didn't go that route, and his imagery actually does fit the sequences Clarke
describes perfectly, _as long as you understand what 's going on_. It just
does a shit job of _explaining_ what's going on, for the most part.

~~~
da02
When I read the book, I thought that too. However, Clarke's book is separate
from Kubrick's movie. Kubrick focused a lot of things in the movie that were
ignored in the book. Essentially, Kubrick and Clarke have two different
interpretations. That's why I was asking the question. For example,

* The number 4 and 3 keep appearing in the movie. * Lots of 90-degree angles in the movie compared to the book. * Why everyone is cold and sterile as the move away from Earth. * Rectangles and circles. HAL is a black rectangle and a red circle. The monolith is a black rectangular object. * Kubrick excited at making the biggest "religious" movie. * The original cut of the movie had the scene of the broken wine glass jerk/skip, giving the impression Bowman had realized he was in an artificial environment created by others. * The appearance of diamond shapes in the movie and his other movies, The Shining and Full Metal Jacket: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSo6s_xrj4c](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MSo6s_xrj4c) [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWMnlMIWAU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpWMnlMIWAU)

------
nikofeyn
i wonder what his feelings were regarding the followup of _2010: the year we
make contact_. although certainly vastly different from the 2001 movie, i
thought it was a great movie in its own right. and it seems it contains more
of what clarke preferred, even having a few narrations by haywood floyd.

------
sharkjacobs
Here's the original article sans google AMP:

[https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-
tea...](https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-tears-he-
left-intermission-how-stanley-kubrick-upset-arthur-c-clarke)

~~~
dang
Yes, we changed to that from
[https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newstatesman.com/culture/bo...](https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.newstatesman.com/culture/books/2017/01/close-
tears-he-left-intermission-how-stanley-kubrick-upset-arthur-c-clarke%3famp).

------
tomcatfish
This article CONSTANTLY refreshes on mobile, even after several minutes,
making it next-to-impossible to read

~~~
knolan
I used reader mode on iOS safari and it was fine.

~~~
code_duck
I used safari in normal mode and didn’t notice any refreshing.

------
tempagain567i
I literally had to scroll all the way to the very bottom in order to get to
the point. If journalists want us to pay them then they must abandon this
cancerous writing style of endless fluff and nonsense.

~~~
pavlov
If you want information delivered in ultra-condensed nuggets, try Twitter?
There’s no shortage of TL;DRs on today’s Internet.

No one is forcing you to read the “fluff and nonsense” of an award-winning
78-year-old author who was friends with A. C. Clarke.

~~~
jonhendry18
Oh lord Moorcock is _78_. I feel old.

