![]() ![]() In the Kubrick Archive at the University of the Arts London, I found a directive issued to 2001’s publicity team, presumably signed off on if not dictated by Kubrick, which read in part: “Mr. All of which was true, though he was as prickly about his control-freak reputation as he was, inevitably, controlling. He was maybe outgrowing the enfant half of the equation, but the terrible persisted, his public image that of an eccentric, secretive, obsessive-compulsive genius-a European-style auteur with a Bronx accent. That film, and his audacious 1962 adaptation of Lolita, along with his bitter anti-war movie Paths of Glory (1957), had earned him a reputation as an enfant terrible. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb. Kubrick was 36 years old in 1964 and enjoying a commercial and critical success with his just-released nuclear black comedy, Dr. That MGM, traditionally the stodgiest of studios, gave Kubrick the freedom to set off toward an end point even he wasn’t entirely sure of-and this was half a decade before Hollywood would make a thing of indulging visionary young directors-is almost as astonishing as the film that resulted. Clarke may have prefigured the reaction of audiences when, with the film still two long years from completion, he described 2001’s making as “a wonderful experience streaked with agony.” It was all that, and more: a feat of sustained innovation, even improvisation, led by one of the most controlling and obsessive directors in movie history. Clarke co-authored the 2001 screenplay with Kubrick, as well as a companion novel. ![]() The British science-fiction writer Arthur C. pic playoff,” as Variety put it in early 1969. An art film made on a big-boy budget, it became the highest-grossing picture of 1968-“perhaps the most offbeat blockbuster in the history of U.S. You might have thought escapism would be in vogue, and 2001 offered that, but moviegoers in this uneasy but heady era were also in a mood to be provoked and challenged, even baffled, and they had never seen anything like 2001-literally, in terms of the film’s painstakingly realistic portrayal of inter-planetary space travel, with special effects that still hold up, and figuratively, in the sense that 2001’s elliptical storytelling was as confounding to many viewers as, for others, the film’s cosmic scale, mythic reach, and wordless, psychedelic finale were exhilarating (if still confounding). The film was finally released to the public on April 3, 1968, four days after President Lyndon Johnson announced he would not seek re-election in the face of increasing opposition to the war in Vietnam, and just a day before Martin Luther King Jr. At a subsequent press screening one skeptic was overheard sniping, “Well, that’s the end of Stanley Kubrick.” Many early reviews were just as dismissive. Some audience members had fidgeted and talked through the movie’s first private screening a few had walked out. ![]() Kubrick’s project promised the moon and then some, but executives at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer feared they had a disaster on their hands when the picture was finally ready for release, 50 years ago, in the spring of 1968. Was Kubrick nervous that IBM would recognize a critique of the corporation hidden within his film? We will presumably never know.Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey took more than four years to develop and make, at a cost of more than $10 million-a formidable price tag in mid-1960s Hollywood. “I don’t want to get anyone in trouble,” Kubrick added, “and I don’t want them to feel they have been swindled.” Caras’ reply assured him that IBM was told about recent changes to the script that pertained to HAL, and that so long as the company’s name was “not associated with the equipment failure,” they had no problem with the movie. know that one of the main themes of the story is a psychotic computer?” Kubrick asked Roger Caras, the vice president of his production company, who had been in touch with IBM about their consultation credit. And last week, Shaun Usher at Letters of Note published some correspondence about the company’s help on the film, crediting a new museum exhibit devoted to the director. Whatever Clarke and Kubrick’s intentions were with these parallels, they did ask for IBM’s help while working on the movie. ![]()
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