Scope Samples #2

 

Mastermind and Masterpiece --- Why Did It Take Me So Long to Realize That?

Wide Worlds: 2001: A Space Odyssey

Three of us drove to Winston-Salem for 2001, my cousin behind the wheel for me being two years away from a driver license. Robby and Roland were seniors to my freshman. Roland was student council president that year, so I was amidst high cotton. Here also was my first Winston movie trip not hauled by a parent. Stench from Reynolds Tobacco beckoned us toward town and the Winston Theatre, lately retrofitted for “Ultra-Vision,” which despite label was souped-up 35mm, 2001: A Space Odyssey getting but one North Carolina engagement in 70mm (says trusted authority). The Winston’s was a newly widened and deep curve screen, leagues ahead of the Liberty which notion of scope was essentially letterbox. The only times I experienced true anamorphic was out of town. My two companions were hot for 2001, having read much about it, but I suspected from ads and articles that here was a glorified art film, sci-fi treated with unaccustomed respect. Truth it took years for immaturity to know: 2001 was ahead of me that day sure as events depicted were far in front of characters on the screen. My speed was more space travelers meeting monsters, having no cope for something so sophisticated as this. Further confession: I am but now realizing how great 2001 is. As of a mere past week, it has become my favorite 60’s feature, and among evermore all-time favorites. How oft does epiphany come so late in life? Makes me realize there is still much developing to do.

He Subdued Gorgo, So Why Not William Sylvester to Spearhead This Mission?

First, the effects … they astonished … still do. It was hard then to process what Kubrick and crew had achieved. This wasn’t simulation of space, this was space, more documentary it seemed than science-fiction. We’d not been to the moon yet, but here it seemed we had. Knowing I’d not “get” 2001 going in made high hill of the watch, plus road companions saying how one needed to read Arthur C. Clarke’s book to properly understand what was happening. This I heard further at school among science and sci-fi geeks, same type who saw more to Star Trek that I’d ever divine. It’s been necessary since 1968 to rehab off half-century mild if persistent resentment toward 2001, as in me unequal to concepts smarter boys readily grasped. If this was the future of sci-fi, then give me gothic as in vampires clawing out of graves and leave far-off galaxies to those disposed such ways. 2001 seemed a boy ritual (never knew a girl who saw it, let alone cared for it), a means of asserting smarts over other boys by figuring out Rubic cube Kubrick shaped. I for first time felt sort of left out of movie conversation. The drive home saw Robby and Roland trading insights beyond back-seat-sat-me, a position both literal and figurative. Ann had a volunteer hospital job a few years back and told me Roland was working there (as brain surgeon?). “Ask if he remembers us going to Winston to see 2001 back in 1968.” She did, and he did, or at least said he did. Might I someday encounter Roland at Smokehouse Barbecue (where everybody shows up at least weekly) and tell him how 2001 no longer confuses and mystifies me? Hope so.

It actually does still confuse and mystify me, if less so than at age fourteen. Who can claim true comprehension of eternal paradox that is 2001? Eternity of extras that is 4K of the feature taught me that Kubrick wanted to delve further into mystery he had developed, but money and time ran out, so he essentially had to release what was done. So simple after all as that? Sounds like something that might happen to Wild, Wild Planet, or The Green Slime. 2001 had flavor of a foreign film, which meant down go grosses to ultimate loss clocked by Metro. Critics panned it to start but then came groundswell of youth to groove upon “Ultimate Trip” that was 2001. Moderns have speculated on kids “smoking grass” at screenings, which maybe they did at subsequent grinds, but you’ll not convince me conduct like that went on at roadshows, not with hard ticket patronage and parents with offspring making a night or special day of attending. Lighting up amidst such order would to my mind be unlikely (unless you showed up high). Same with myth of Fantasia as drug-fueled seventies reissue, maybe at a few late shows to hippie trade (like Greensboro’s Janus Theatre), but Fantasia was still Disney, and designated family fare. So too was 2001 for that matter, a site where too many grown-ups and monitor/tattletales might easily narc cannabis consumers.

Sheer Physical Size of 2001 Was Enough to Dazzle Us in 1968

2001 had a narrative, and it was flexible. Not till the end do things go abstract, sufficient data so far for all to figure endings that would suit themselves. For every thousand views of 2001, there’s that many meanings to take away. No one figured things out for sure, least of all Kubrick and by his own latter admission, Arthur C. Clarke. Execution was what counted, breathtaking by admission of even those to knock the show otherwise. Do astronauts Dave and Frank arrive at respective afterlives for a finish? Seemed at least momentarily that way for me. Anyone who'll claim they’re hep to the ending is shining you on, or just showing off. Intelligent life notion is explored minus aliens. Clarke said to show them would plunge the project into same trap to trip SF since stone age of film. He and Kubrick hashed over the genre and latter pledged to upend it … nothing done before would do here. Clarke sort of liked Fantastic Voyage and 1937’s Things to Come, which Kubrick watched but wrote off as antique. He wanted no part of anything tried previous. What if he had copied, “been inspired,” by even smallest aspect of Fantastic Voyage? We’d take that like something foul in a punchbowl. Fantastic Voyage seems OK until you put it beside 2001. Thing about any SF before 2001 was them all being melodramas at core with orbit or future speculations incidental. Again, nothing about 2001 was like anything tried before or since. A surface could be aped, austerity might be mimicked, like for instance Alien which I saw this week, a horror flecked would-be 2001. Or Star Wars, into which I lasted thirteen minutes on the heels of 2001, verdict … unwatchable.

Surprise at core of 2001 is their mere suggesting life other than ours beyond Earth, this admirable realism and a big reason we believed and still believe 2001. Remarkable that here is a film rushing toward sixty and in all that time, we’ve still no evidence of life elsewhere in the galaxy. Had you asked me in 1968 if extraterrestrials would be found by the year 2001, let alone 2025, I’d have said sure, naturally, of course. At race pace the space program went in those days, we’d have all bet on a Mars landing by mid-seventies at a latest, and surely there’d be populace there. I’m a little disappointed not to have been contacted so far by other planeteers. 2001 pleases by not opting for a glum ending. Better to be confused than take a downer. I suspect if it were made (or remade) today, HAL would prevail and enslave thread left of mankind. Just like AI! creatives would cry, committee filmmaking the victor in a universe where true 2001 would have little chance at fruition. HAL is everyone’s lead because he (it?) becomes a threat and locus of conflict for 2001’s second half. Keir Dullea back when he did SF shows took to stages before worshipful mobs, spoke but six words, Open the pod bay doors, Hal, to get a roaring ovation. Was ever an actor so rewarded by so simple a line spoke so many years before? Dullea is all over extras on the 2001 4K, an ideal spokesman for the film and its still devoted audience. Here’s for sobering: Keir Dullea is eighty-nine years old, Gary Lockwood eighty-eight.

Dullea salutes often 2001 being free of CGI, all effects practical, he proudly states. Notice how old-school FX bespeaks integrity of hands-on filmmaking, a thing gone since digital dominion. We see stills of Kubrick and crew building models the size of a house to hark back on artist workshops of centuries gone, honest effort borne of man showing what hands and the mind might accomplish. In an era of increased AI, let alone CGI increasingly suspect and unwelcome, 2001 plays like Renaissance found, then regrettably lost again. As though to emphasize classical basis for what he did, Kubrick let go a well-along score by Alex North to favor composers long departed and show us again that here is music that won’t date no matter passage of millenniums. Others of modern sci-fi would follow suit, Alien’s ship captain Tom Skerritt playing classical themes to relax between bouts with a monster aboard craft he commands. So what was the before and aft of 2001? What were prior titles Robby and Roland and I reflected upon as 2001 unfolded? There were obvious inferiors to sweep aside, and then a few more-than-worthwhile forebears that for all we know influenced 2001 in perhaps subliminal ways. I’m thinking in particular of Euro-made Ikarie XB-1 (released here, if barely, as Voyage to the End of the Universe) and Planet of the Vampires, these trapped aboard combo vessels and chained to child matinees or drive-in tail ends. 2001 was sold in terms of ultra-prestige in addition to the Winston’s Ultra-Vision. Kubrick’s name would see to that.

More of Winston-Salem as showgoing landscape of dreams HERE.