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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)
2001: A Space Odyssey is a 1968 epic science fiction film produced and directed by Stanley Kubrick, who co-wrote the screenplay with Arthur C. Clarke. Its plot was inspired by several short stories optioned from Clarke, primarily "The Sentinel" (1951) and "Encounter in the Dawn" (1953). The film stars Keir Dullea, Gary Lockwood, William Sylvester, and Douglas Rain, and follows a voyage by astronauts, scientists,…
Directed by Stanley Kubrick · Shot by Geoffrey Unsworth · Cut by Ray Lovejoy · Music by Richard Strauss, Johann Strauss II · Ratio 2.2:1 · 143 min
How it was made
- Kubrick hired Graphic Films Corporation, NASA's go-to production designers, as consultants; artists Con Pederson, Lester Novros and Douglas Trumbull mailed research-based concept sketches on the physics of space travel and storyboarded the space-flight sequences, and Trumbull went on to become a special effects supervisor on the film.
- The 1960 NASA-favoured documentary short Universe was a direct visual model for Kubrick; he cast its narrator, Douglas Rain, as the voice of HAL, and consulted co-director Colin Low on animation camera techniques.
- Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke wrote the screenplay and the tie-in novel in parallel rather than adapting one from the other, starting from a shared 130-page prose treatment; Clarke favoured explicit explanation in the novel while Kubrick stripped dialogue and exposition from the film to keep it, in his words, 'a visual, nonverbal experience'.
- The film began as an adaptation of Clarke's short story 'The Sentinel', with the 'Dawn of Man' sequence drawing on a separate Clarke story, 'Encounter in the Dawn'; the two spent most of 1964 reading science and anthropology books together before combining several short-story plots into a single script.
Behind the scenes
Elsewhere
More by Stanley Kubrick
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