The moonwatchers that (almost) were

By February 1965 the "Dawn of Man" section of 2001 was still in its early stages of pre-production, and the final look of the ape-men (or men-apes) was still not agreed upon - this happened only in 1967. On February 17 Stanley Kubrick approached actor Robert Shaw and asked him if he was interested playing the Moonwatcher character; Shaw was fresh from its international breakthrough with the wildly successful second installation of the James Bond franchise, 007 - From Russia with love (1963), where he had played a russian spy.

Here's an extract of the letter that the director wrote to Shaw:

I am enclosing a sketch of an Australopithecine man-ape from Raymond Dart’s “Adventures with the missing link”, without wishing to seem unappreciative of your rugged and handsome countenance, I must observe there appears to be an incredible resemblance.

Robert Shaw in a publicity still for From Russia with love, 1963

I got hold of a copy of the book mentioned by Kubrick and there is only one "sketch" that fits the description:

Australopithecine sketch from R.Dart's "Adventures with the missing link", The Viking Press, 1959; p.232

This apparently puzzling piece of alternative casting could be understood considering that, by then, the role of Moonwatcher was still conceived as a "cameo": indeed, an annex to the contract signed by MGM for 2001 in early 1965 mentioned not only Shaw but also Toshiro Mifune, Albert Finney, Jean-Paul Belmondo, Richard Kiley, Jose Ferrer and even Gary Lockwood (who ultimately played Frank Poole) as tentative Moonwatchers. All these actors shared (with obvious differences) the same degree of physical strength and atlethicism that an early version of an ape-men was, supposedly, in need of.

left to right, top to bottom: Toshiro Mifune, Richard Kiley, Albert Finney, José Ferrer, 

Jean-Paul Belmondo, Gary Lockwood

It is unclear if Kubrick actually wanted one of these actors to really play an apeman, or was, more likely, trying to appease MGM's hunger for star names to 'enhance' the status of a sci-fi flick and set it apart from the b-movie reputation that the genre movies enjoyed at that time; on this regard, for example, in 1964 Kubrick was in talks with Paul Newman for the role of the lead astronaut. Besides that, Kubrick obviously admired Shaw as an full-fledged actor beyond his appearance, as he considered him also for his aborted Napoleon movie, that he intended to shoot after 2001.

"Six degrees of separation" trivia: the screenplay of the first Kubrick movie Fear and Desire was written by Howard Sackler, who would later write an early draft of Jaws (1975): it was him who came up with the idea of the “Indianapolis” speech that was unforgettably delivered on screen by Robert Shaw himself, who (he was also a novelist and playwright) reworked and cut down the dialogue that had previously been expanded by John Milius.

Robert Shaw delivers his famous “Indianapolis” speech in Jaws

Anyway, as we all know, Moonwatcher was eventually played by Dan Richter, who brought along his talent as mime in order to, essentially, create the character from scratch, therefore departing significantly from the "rugged appearance" concept. (I spoke with Dan for my article How did they shoot the leopard scenes?).

Apeman costume test for Dan Richter (source)

Before Richter, even scottish comedian Ronnie Corbett was considered to play the role, apparently because he had played a Gibraltar barbary macaque in war film Operation Snatch, as he recalled speaking on the Graham Norton TV show.

Ronnie Corbett - © Getty Images / Tony Evans

"The theory [behind Operation Snatch] was if there was a sudden drop in the population of barbary apes, the UK would lose control of Gibraltar. So they had soldiers playing barbary apes to make it look like there were loads of apes.” [...] “Kubrick really did ask to see me. He saw me in the Gibraltar (film)." Corbett laughed (source).

The comedian then went through weeks of tests with the 2001 make-up department, headed by Stuart Freeborn, for costume and make-up. "It was a horrible experience," [...] "They put two straws up my nostrils so that I could breathe and then they covered my whole face, including my eyes, with warm plastic." When he was given a pad to communicate with the plastic on his face, he wrote on it: 'Get it off!' [...] After this frightening ordeal I never did get the part in the end, but I can't remember why not, or what happened next. (source)

Investigating the myths around the '2001'-Pink Floyd connection

Pink Floyd and Stanley Kubrick in 1966-67 (source 1 and 2)

The recent release of a new Pink Floyd album (The Endless river) prompted me to complete an article that was in the making for almost a year: an investigation on the links between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Pink Floyd, particularly about the purported request (by Stanley Kubrick) to have the band write the soundtrack for the movie, and the coincidences between the 1971 song Echoes and the "stargate" sequence. Credits for the original source and inspiration for my further investigations to Mikhail Vadalà, author of the fine blog Rashōmon, and his 2013 article.

Did Kubrick ask Pink Floyd to score 2001?

The most unlikely rumor regarding 2001 and Pink Floyd regards the purported request made by Kubrick to the band to write the soundtrack for the movie; according to other versions of the myth, the Floyds themselves asked to score the movie, but the director refused. How likely is such a thing to have ever happened?

First of all, in all the major works (articles, essays, books) written in the last two decades about Kubrick's musical choices for 2001, there is no mention of any contact whatsoever between Pink Floyd and the director; also, the Floyd do not appear in any of the papers held in The Kubrick Archive in London.

Jan Harlan, Kubrick's brother-in-law and music expert, started working with him when the director was choosing the soundtrack for 2001, in mid-1967. Here's a recent interview:

Interviewer: I heard a rumor that Kubrick was originally thinking of putting Pink Floyd as the soundtrack?
Jan Harlan: Before my time. I don't think it is true. I've never heard about it. It may have been true later, or no. I don't remember, if I ever knew, I would have forgot.

Kubrick's eldest daughter, Katharina, does not rule out altogether the possibility, as her answer during a recent Q&A session on Reddit suggests:

Reddit user: Is there any truth to the rumor that your dad approached The Floyd to possibly do some of the sound scapes for this film and they declined due to schedule conflicts? 

Katharina Kubrick: I was aware that Stanley listened to anything and everything that might be useful in his movie. It is entirely within the realms of possibility that he considered Pink Floyd at some point.

This remark about Kubrick's attitude toward soundtracks fits perfectly with this excerpt from a Kubrick 1966 interview with Jeremy Bernstein, made when principal photography of 2001 was well underway:

[...] Kubrick told me that he thought he had listened to almost every modern composition available on records in an effort to decide what style of music would fit the film. Here, again, the problem was to find something that sounded unusual and distinctive but not so unusual as to be distracting.

In the office collection were records by the practitioners of musique concrete and electronic music in general, and records of works by the contemporary German composer Carl Orff. In most cases, Kubrick said, film music tends to lack originality, and a film about the future might be the ideal place for a really striking score by a major composer.

While shooting the 'centrifuge' scenes for 2001 (spring 1966) Kubrick played Chopin to set the mood for Gary Lockwood shadow-boxing sequence.

Pink Floyd, circa 1967 (source)

Were the 1967-Pink Floyd 'major composers', sounding 'not so unusual to be distracting'?

Surely they were not as famous as the post-1970 Pink Floyd, a band with a number one album in the UK (Atom Heart Mother) and a soundtrack for Michelangelo Antonioni's counter-culture classic Zabriskie Point. By December 1967, Pink Floyd's catalogue consisted only of two singles (Arnold Layne and See Emily Play, released in March and June) and one album (The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, released in August). With the album later peaking at number 6 in the UK charts, it's impossible to prove that Kubrick was unaware of Floyd's existence: considering that, for example, it was Kubrick's wife Christiane who casually discovered György Ligeti's music (later used to a great lenght in 2001) while listening to the radio in that very same August of 1967.

One might point out that, after all, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn did include two 'space rock' songs like Astronomy Domine and Interstellar Overdrive; especially the first, with astronaut-sounding voices and lyrics mentioning planets, could - theoretically - have aroused Kubrick's curiosity and interest. These songs (the first songs that sounded somewhat like the future Pink Floyd would) caused a thematic association to sci-fi that the members of the band denied or rejected in later years.

This does not mean that Kubrick and the Floyds did not get in touch, ever: there are at least two documented contacts between Kubrick and the Pink Floyd (and in particular with their leader until 1983, Roger Waters).

Atom Heart Mother vs. A Clockwork Orange

While working on his next project after 2001, A Clockwork Orange (1971), Stanley Kubrick got in contact with Pink Floyd for the possible use of the 24-minute suite Atom Heart Mother (from the namesake 1970 album). Here's Roger Waters recollection of the affair:

He just phoned up and said that he wanted it. [...] we said "Well, what do you want to do? and he didn't know. He [said he] wanted to use it 'how I want, when I want'." [...] and we said right away "Right, you can't use it".

Despite the refusal, Atom Heart Mother ended up featuring twice in A Clockwork Orange - even if only in form of an album cover in the record shop of the Chelsea Drug Store, as shown in this great article by John Coulthart that kindly agreed to let me use the following pictures from his original investigation.

look carefully under the number '2' ...


... it's the cover of Atom Heart Mother....

... that appears also in the upper shelf of the store, above the clerk.

It is unclear whether the cover featured in the store had anything to do with Floyd's refusal, as the director probably approached the band during post-production (principal photography ended in February 1971 and the movie was released in the U.S.A. in December). Also, being the Chelsea Drug Store an actual music store at the time, and not a scenic design full of props, some of the albums might have been there in display already; but the special place given to two 2001 soundtracks makes me think that Kubrick had the last word.

HAL vs. Roger Waters

Almost twenty years after Clockwork Orange, it was Roger Waters' turn to contact Kubrick, asking him to use HAL's voice for his track Perfect Sense – Part I that had to appear in his third solo album Amused to Death. In a 1991 interview given before the release of the record, Waters explains that the inclusion of HAL's snippet had a clear thematic reason, as Amused to Death was a sort of concept-album inspired by the very same 2001; but Waters had not actually requested  permission to use the snippet from the movie.

Jim: Uh, the song Perfect Sense, the song begins with the HAL computer from (the movie) "2001 (A Space Odyssey)"...

Waters: Shhhh, (Roger laughs) don't tell Stanley Kubrick!

Jim: ....it's having it's breakdown, and then it flashes back from that to the monkey discovering weaponry.

Waters: Ya.

Jim: Explain that. Explain that, how that happens in there?

Waters: Well, that was the starting point for that song, was the image from the beginning of "2001". [...] Which I thought was really powerful. I remember everybody rushed out and bought "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (by Richard Strauss) immediately after the movie came out cause it's such a great piece of music and um, it's stayed with me in the intervening..., how old is that movie? Twenty years, twenty five years? It's a..., it's a long time ago anyway.  Um... so the HAL scene, ...actually when I came to..., I - I started putting..., putting monkey noises over the beginning of it, and it didn't sound right, and then [...] I got the - the laser disc out of "2001". And remember "Daisey", you know, where the..., the..., where he breaks down and he starts to sing "Daisey, Daisey", and gets slower and slower, I was watching the beginning of that scene and I thought "this is great, we'll try this". Hope they don't sue me, they probably will, you know what they're like [those Hollywood types]?

Here's another interview from 1992 where Waters explains his connection with 2OO1:

Interviewer: I remember Pink and 'The Wall', always watching TV, sitting there and zapping. Um, so was it Roger Waters, not so very many years ago, always watching TV?
Roger Waters: Um, no, I've never watched an enormous amount of television. But however, a number of the songs on this record are based on my response to specific bits of news or... or documentaries that I've seen. Um, but the beginning of the idea of the album came from the song Perfect Sense Part 1, uh, where ... so, so the image of the monkey comes from the opening shots of '2001: A Space Odyssey', the Stanley Kubrick, uh, movie, uh, where the chimpanzee, or it's not a chimpanzee, but an early man, if you like, discovers the bone and he can use this bone as a weapon. And that song precedes through a brief history of, eh, the human race until we find ourselves returning to the Garden of Eden at the end of the song ... to have another war.

It's no surprise that basically all the cover art for Amused to Death and the related singles featured monkeys or simians of some sorts:

In a 1993 interview Waters explains that he eventually did ask Kubrick for the permission, only to receive a refusal:

I was wondering what was before that, and what the guy was yelling at the beginning of that. I'm trying to figure out exactly what that was.

[...] A number of people know that I often put messages on records that I make. There’s one on The Wall and a few other bits and over that particular piece of “Perfect Sense Part I”, we had a bit from 2001. You know the Kubrick movie. The bit where Dave is turning off the HAL 9000 computer and the computer is saying “Stop Dave”, I don’t know if you remember it and there’s all this breathing in the background. It’s a great scene and it’s been sampled and used on a million different rap records. 

Anyway, I stupidly asked Stanley Kubrick for permission to use it as background on that particular track. He hummed and hawed for ages and ages and eventually refused me permission to use it on the grounds that it would open the floodgates and lots of other people would use it. And my presumption is that he was closing the stable door to those who bolted and fell on deaf ears. 

So, I made my own which is why you’ve got me breathing on there which is a bit like that thing and that is a backwards message for Stanley Kubric. So,“Yelnats” backwards we all now know is Stanley. [...] And the shouting at the beginning, I wouldn't like to tell you what that is but it's the "Mad Scotsman" having a quiet word with Stanley Kubric about not giving me permission to use that Kubric stuff on the record.

Roger Waters during a 2012 concert (source)

It is generally assumed, although never stated by the singer, that Waters considered Kubrick's refusal as a sort of vengeance for the Atom Heart Mother incident; anyway, this is the backwards message Waters is referring to in the interview - you can hear it in this version of Perfect Sense – Part I (Apparently it seems that in live renditions of the song made in the years after Kubrick passed away, Waters did use a HAL sample from the actual movie.)

Julia, however, in the light and visions of the issues of Stanley, we changed our minds. We have decided to include a backward message. Stanley, for you, and for all the other book burners.

Conclusion: So, where did it all come from? 

I guess that, by now, even the most ardent fan might have seriously wondered why, in those interviews where he goes a great lenght about 2001, Waters never mentioned Kubrick asking Pink Floyd to score it; but I wasn't satisfied. I wanted to know how the connection happened.

My investigation led me to the most probable first mention of the Pink Floyd-2001 connection: the year 1991, when Nicholas Schaffner wrote in A Saucerful Of Secrets, one of the first respectable biography of Pink Floyd, the following paragraph:

Roger Waters, yet to balk at the sci-fi association, went so far as to say his 'greatest regret' was that they didn't do the score for 2001: A Space Odyssey -- parts of which, particularly in the long, mind-blowing hallucinatory sequence near the end, nonetheless sound remarkably Floydian...

Schaffner does not include the source of the interview; a strange mishap, considering that the book is full of properly traced sources. It's no surprise: in the bulk of Pink Floyd interviews available on the web and in the most authoritative books I've read about the band there is no mention of such statement.

Despite this, magazines (even authoritative ones) and later websites perpetuated the legend again and again, mixing it with the truth from the Atom Heart Mother incident, and later with Waters' Amused To Death, and therefore giving some credibly to the claim.

Schaffner's remark about the 'hallucinatory sequence sounding remarkably Floydian' hit the web in the the late 90's and remained alive ever since, creating another urban legend, that states that after Kubrick's purported refusal to let them score 2001 (or after their refusal to do it, depending on which version you prefer), Pink Floyd wrote the 1971 song Echoes (from the album Meddle) synching it on purpose to "Jupiter and beyond the infinite", the final sequence of 2001.

There are many fan-made videos on the internet showing the (somewhat eerie) coincidence, and this is one of the best; if you want to do the syncronization by yourself, with your own Echoes record and a copy of the 2001 DVD/Blu-ray, follow the instructions here.

The link between Echoes and 2001 received a semi-official sanctioning when director Adrian Maben re-created the marriage of music and image, using CGI, for its 2003 Director's cut DVD of the movie Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii, a 1972 concert film featuring Pink Floyd playing at the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy (a place that, by the way, it's very close to the town I spend my summer holidays in.)

Here's two frames, one from 2001, and the second from the 2003 DVD of the concert, from the blog Rashōmon:

The fact that, by 1971, the band had already scored two movies (the aforementioned 1970 Zabriskie Point was preceded by french art film More in 1969), again gave some credibility to the claim; Pink Floyd also provided an instrumental piece called Moonhead to the BBC coverage of the Apollo 11 moon landing (July 1969). According to Wikipedia, (unfortunately there are no sources for this)

...the members of the band always denied that the synchronization was intentional. Furthermore, the technology necessary to the synchronization in a recording studio circa 1971 would have been expensive and difficult for the band to acquire.

Luckily, the creation and origins of Echoes are extremely well documented, as we learn from this Cinefantastique article:

The story behind the creation of this lengthy effort is detailed in ANOTHER BRICK IN THE WALL: The Stories Behind Every Pink Floyd Song by Cliff Jones.

The band gathered in the recording studio [Ed.note: late 1970-early 1971] with the goal of creating a song that would fill an entire side of a record. Playing to a metronome, they recorded thirty-six discrete pieces of music. These thirty-six pieces were then edited together, re-recorded and re-edited and redubbed until eight major sections remained.

At no point in Jones’ account is 2001 or Stanley Kubrick mentioned, and in fact the recording did not take its final shape until after the song had been played live on at least a few occasions, on the basis of which the group went back to further refine the album track. In other words, the final version was based on what worked best as a live concert performance, not on whether it synched up with a movie.

Also, Wikipedia is helpful in giving us more hints about the composition of 'Echoes':

1. The high-pitched electronic 'screams', resembling a distorted seagull song, were discovered by Gilmour when the cables were accidentally reversed to his wah pedal;
2. The second half of the song where Gilmour plays muted notes on the guitar over Wright's slowly building organ solo was inspired by The Beach Boys song "Good Vibrations" ;
3. In an interview in 2008 with Mojo, when asked who had composed Echoes, Wright stated he had composed the long piano intro and the main chord progression of the song, in the same interview he confirmed that Waters wrote the lyrics. Gilmour has also stated in interviews that musically the song came mainly from him and Wright.

All this basically rules out the conspiracy hypothesis: Pink Floyd did not synch Echoes to 2OO1.

Summing it up

Stanley Kubrick got in contact with Pink Floyd to request permission to use Atom Heart Mother in A Clockwork Orange, but the band refused. Later, it was Kubrick's turn to refuse permission to Roger Waters to use a sample from 2001. Although Waters was definitely fascinated by the movie, the lack of any hard proofs and the amount of circumstantial evidence goes against the claim that Pink Floyd have ever had anything to do with 2001, either for its soundtrack or, later, in syncronizing their tracks to the film.

History in the making: Kubrick & the 1966 World Cup

Stanley Kubrick had to overcome several obstacles in order to get his space vision right in 2001. But who would have thought that one of such annoyances was the 1966 World Cup Final itself?

Source: Stanley Kubrick exhibition catalogue, p.281

The following story is only one of the many recounted in the majestic Taschen's book The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, that sold out almost immediately in its limited 500€ edition. The even more limited 1.000€ version, including a signed print by 2001 art advisor Brian Sanders is still available, so hurry up and head to Taschen's web site.

the official poster of the 1966 World Cup

In 1966 England hosted the 8th FIFA World Cup, that kicked off on July, 11 with the England-Uruguay game at Wembley. By that time, the shooting of the live action sequences set in space were almost finished (the "dawn of men" section was still being planned and ended up being shot in august-september 1967), and the 2001 crew was working hard to get the special effects shots done right. This required an unprecedented amount of testing and experimentation that lasted more that 18 months, both improving old techniques and developing new methods of shooting spaceships in a "believable" way, as Kubrick was committed to a level of smooth movement and pristine look of the models previously unseen in science fiction movies.

Such commitment led to the building of the largest spaceship models ever built, such as a 54-foot model of Discovery, that was obviously impossible to move around a camera - it was the camera that moved, very slowly, around it, activated by a massive worm gear imported from a Detroit automobile plant, on a mini-railway 150 feet long. By shooting only several seconds per frame, the special effects team was able to obtain the deep-focus photography that made the model look, on the screen, pin-sharp from one end to the other. The excruciating slowness of the process was described by Kubrick himself as "like watching the hour hand of a clock".

A rare picture of the 54-feet model of the Discovery. Kubrick banned any casual photography of the larger model. Source: douglastrumbull.com

The same method was used to shoot the beautiful space-station model that, on screen, rotates so swiftly and majestically above Earth. Because of the time required to get a few seconds of footage, occasional wobbling movements of the models couldn't be spotted on the fly, and were detected only after the film was processed, sometimes weeks later - causing the frustrated fx crew to go back and shoot the sequence all over again.

One day, checking the dailies, a particularly shaky movement of the space station showed up on screen. The station suddenly seemed to "lurch from one side of the screen to another". A search in the log sheets revealed that the event took place during a long exposure sequence in the afternoon of July 30, 1966. What had happened?

The 8-feet model of the space station. Source: douglastrumbull.com

Quite simply, that sequence happened to be shot in the very day when, only 10 miles away from the MGM Borehamwood studios, England and West Germany took the field to play the World Cup final in Wembley. Yes, the greatest moment in English football history happened during the shooting of one of the greatest movies ever.

"Kubrick now remembered that many of his staffers hadn't been willing to work that day unless they could wheel a TV set into the shooting studio and look at it from time to time. [...] in the same instant, they'd all leaped up to applaud England's winning goal. Meanwhile, on its reinforced shooting stage, the space station had been turning gently for three hours, while the camera snapped doggedly away at six seconds per frame, for 1500 frames, enough to generate about a minute's worth of footage. And of for three frames somewhere about halfway through that 1500, the studio floor had shaken". (Taschen's "The Making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001", pp.178-9)

Geoff Hurst's winning goal in the 1966 World Cup Final. Final result: England 4, West Germany 2.

 The iconic picture of Bobby Moore, England's captain, in triumph with the FIFA World Cup original prize, awarded until 1970: the Jules Rimet trophy.

Despite the fact that the World Cup interfered slightly with the shooting of his masterpiece, Kubrick wasn't one of those american "soccer haters" at all. Yes, he was "a nice boy from the Bronx" as he was described by Craig McGregor, and as such he enjoyed watching the videos of american football games that his sister used to send him. But, as he had lived in England since the mid 60's, he also liked "our" football, and loved to talk about it with friends like his former actor and then assistant Leon Vitali.

Here's Katharina Kubrick, his eldest daughter, from an old alt.movies.kubrick message:

I do remember him liking the team that George Best played for - er, Manchester United was it? He was a big G. Best fan. But I don't think that he "supported" any team in particular. I think he watched a game on it's own merits, some are good entertainment and exciting and full of tension and some games are boring, and some teams have interesting players.

Source: georgebest.com

And that beautiful space station model? It survived the World Cup Quake, but a few years later it ended up in the entrance way of the local corporation dump in Stevenage - it was later smashed up by kids. The whole (sad) story is available here.

Many happy returns!

Under construction

While I'm hard at work preparing new posts for 2001italia, why don't you check out my other site, http://2001italia.tumblr.com/, where I blog & reblog interesting 2001-related content from the web?

Mentre preparo nuovi articoli inediti per 2001italia, perché non dare un'occhiata al mio altro sito, http://2001italia.tumblr.com/, dove posto roba interessante, sempre relativa a 2001, pescata in giro su internet?

A full cast list for '2001', Part 5: "The Discovery Channel"

Welcome to Part 5 of our extended look at all the actors that starred in '2001'. As the title suggest, today we'll focus on the actors appeared in the scenes in which Bowman and Poole watch T.V. footage on portable or fixed screens aboard Discovery.

Kenneth Kendall (Mr.Holland, 'The World Tonight' announcer)

The host of The World Tonight, the BBC-12 TV show Bowman and Poole watch while eating (the character name is reported in the continuity reports as Mr.Holland) was played by Kenneth Kendall, a real BBC newsreader.

Kendall began as a radio announcer in 1948 before moving to TV in 1954, and made history on September 4, 1955, by becoming the first BBC newsreader to appear on TV. He left BBC in 1981 and became well known again for hosting Channel 4's Treasure Hunt. 

His role in 2001 (obviously a 'cameo' role for the british audience, who surely must have found odd that a presenter who debuted on national TV in 1955 would look almost unchanged in 2001!) was not his only sci-fi appearance in those years: he played a TV presenter also in a couple of Doctor Who episodes in 1966 and in the movie They Came From Beyond Space (1967).

A nice interview with the late Kendall, who passed away in 2012, can be read here (no 2001-related content, though it is stated that he was "enormously proud" of having appeared in it).

Mike Lovell (Martin Amer, BBC reporter)

 

Ah, Martin Amer, one of my favourite obsessions. He is the reporter of BBC-12's The World Tonight  and the name of the actor who portraits him never appeared in the 'official cast lists'. Nothing is known about him, no interviews, no details - nothing! Considering that he utters a not insignificant number of words, in a movie famous to be very short of it, it always seemed odd.

The 'official cast lists' reported that the name of the actor was the same Martin Amer, though the obvious cameo nature of the role made this look suspicious - according to IMDB and Bfi.co.uk, 'Martin Amer' he only played that role in his entire carrier. He sounded and looked like a professional actor, to me.

At last, in my January visit to the Kubrick Archive I was able to read the continuity sheets regarding those scenes. Along with the names of Kendall, Poole and Bowman, right besides the transcription of the lines spoken by Amer (by the way, this is the correct spelling, not Amor!), it appears the name of the actor: Mike Lovell.

Now, this seems legit, as a Mike Lovell DID appear in the 'official cast lists', but he was referred to as an 'astronaut'. This is a double confirmation and I'm locking this name, as far as I'm concerned. Unfortunately, Mike Lovell's appearance in 2001 seems to be his only foray in the world of movie-making, so we're somehow back where to square one; well, at least we know his real name.

Franklin W. Miller (Mission Control)

Agel's book The Making of Kubrick's 2001 is the only source of information about the actor who played Mission Controller, Franklin W. Miller:

Kubrick tested dozens of military ground-control landing officers, hiring — over strenuous British Actors Equity objection — Chief Warrant Officer Franklin W. Miller, U.S. Air Force traffic controller stationed in England. Actors did not sound like the familiar mission control voice.

Miller remembers working with Kubrick: "He saw that every little detail of personal comfort was at my disposal. I had aspirins if I had a headache, and even lotion when lights offered too much glare. Nothing seemed to be too much trouble. He always put me at my ease. Without realizing it, I once was tapping my foot — a nervous habit — which no one could see beneath the console where I was sitting, but it produced quite a thump on the tape. Instead of asking me to stop tapping, Kubrick got me a blanket, put it under my feet, and I tapped all I wanted to." 

Miller was transferred to Bangkok after his "perfectly marvelous experience."

... I really don't think IMDB got it right with their claim that a forty-something officer could suddenly turn into an award winning musical actor! (Well, as long as someone comes up with pictures of the musical, that's my official position on the issue).

Alan Gifford and Ann Gillis (Poole's parents)

Alan Gifford, who played the unnamed father of Frank Poole, was an american character actor born in 1911 in Taunton, Massachusetts. Despite having been a long-time resident in Britain, he never lost is american accent, featuring in many roles where since his movie debut in 1950 he mostly played military men and other various officials. He passed away in Scotland in 1989.

Ann Gillis, who played Poole's mother, was born in 1927, in Little Rock, Arkansas. A child and teen star in the Thirties & Forties, she was Bambi's wife and mother's voice in the Disney classic. Gillis  retired very early from cinema, in 1947, and then moved to London, where she did some TV appearances.

Mrs. Gillis gave a significant interview to Rusty White in the very year 2001. In this rather amusing snippet we learn how she got the role in 2001 and how she got along with Kubrick (hint: not very well).

RW: You came out of retirement after 20 years and did a bit part in "2001: A Space Odyssey." How did that come about and what was it like to work for Kubrick?" 

AG: There was a casting call for American actress in London. I was living there with my husband at the time, so I said why not. 

RW: You played one of the astronauts parents during the interstellar phone call scene, correct? 

AG: Yes. Well, Kubrick was a real jerk. It shows you what can happen when a director is given a blank check. He hired two sets of "parents." I was the back up actress. The part wasn't scripted, so he told the two actors to go write their part over lunch and come back. They did. The actress playing the part read the lines she wrote. Kubrick fired her and said "I like the 'other one' better. 

RW: The 'other one' being you? 

AG: The 'other one' being me. That's how I was referred to. Well, we took the lines and started rehearsing and then filming. It was difficult because we were sitting side by side and saying lines to which no one was responding. Also, my conversation and the other actor's conversation were not related. We were saying all these disjointed lines and Kubrick keeps changing them. Then the other actor joins in by saying he had an idea for some dialogue. Kubrick lets him run with it. I was thinking, "Keep your ideas to yourself." We did 21 takes. Kubrick prints them all. In the old days a director never printed every take. Kubrick prints all 21 takes for this one little scene which lasts just a few seconds. He was set to keep going and I said, "You've got enough, I quit." I left. 21 takes, ridiculous.

Bonus: William Sylvester

Let's go back to William Sylvester and focus to the pre-recorded message played right after Hal’s death (where the name of Floyd is spelled “Haywood” instead of Heywood). This, and William Sylvester’s slightly different hair style, is a sign of re-shoot that took place later in the summer (July 4): all the Sylvester scenes aboard the shuttles, the space station and the Moon had been already completed by January.

Now that Hal was dismissed, the audience (and Bowman) needed to know, at last, was the true purpose of the mission was, in order to set up the final part of the movie. In early script versions this was meant to be revealed by other characters from Mission Control in a more elaborate message played to Bowman in the centrifuge after Hal's demise. The scene remains, in a similar form, in Arthur C. Clarke's novel; here Floyd is joined by a Dr. Simonson (a character that had to feature in the movie as well but was later cancelled) that explains to Bowman the reasons behind Hal's murderous behavior: Hal was 'created innocent', and had a reaction very similar to a human 'nervous breakdown' because of the lie he lived in, having to conceal the true purpose of Discovery's mission to Jupiter.

Kubrick decided otherwise, possibly to speed up the pace of the movie, and maybe also in order to not waste the emotional pathos of the confrontation between Hal and Bowman. This shorter version, in fact, surely contributed to the relative obscurity of the plot in the final edit.

"We talked for eight solid hours": Arthur C. Clarke recalls meeting Stanley Kubrick for the first time fifty years ago today, April 22, 1964

Arthur C. Clarke, from The Lost World of 2001:

When I met Stanley Kubrick for the first time, in Trader Vic's on April 22, 1964, he had already absorbed an immense amount of science fact and science fiction, and was in some danger of believing in flying saucers; I felt I had arrived just in time to save him from this gruesome fate. Even from the beginning, he had a very clear idea of his ultimate goal, and was searching for the best way to approach it. He wanted to make a movie about Man's relation to the universe, something which had never been attempted, still less achieved, in the history of motion pictures.  

Of course, there had been innumerable "space" movies, most of them trash. Even the few that had been made with some skill and accuracy had been rather simpleminded, concerned more with the schoolboy excitement of space flight than its profound implications to society, philosophy, and religion. 

 

From Son Of Dr.Strangelove, an essay wrote by Clarke for Report on Planet Three (1972, read it on Google books) and reprinted with small corrections in Greetings, carbon-based bipeds (1998, p.261):

My first meeting with Stanley Kubrick took place at Trader Vic's in the Plaza Hotel. The date - April 22, 1964 - coincided with the opening of the ill-starred New York World'sFair, which, might or might not be regarded as an unfavorable omen. Stanley arrived on time, and turned out to be a rather quite, average-height New Yorker (to be specific, Bronxite) with none of the idiosyncrasies one associates with major Hollywood movie directors. 

He had a night-person pallor, and one of our minor problems was that he functions best in the small hours of the morning, whereas I believe that no sane person is awake after 10 p.m. and no law-abiding one after midnight. He never tried with me his usual tactic of phoning at 4 a.m. to discuss an important idea. But his curtesy did non stop him from being absolutely inflexible once he had decided on some course of action. Tears, hysterics, flattery, sulks, threats of lawsuits, will not defect him one millimeter.

"We talked for eight solid hours about science fiction, Dr. Strangelove, flying saucers, politics, the space program, Senator Goldwater - and, of course, the projected next movie."