Stanley was in some danger of believing in flying saucers. I felt I had arrived just in time to save him from this gruesome fate.Imagine the surprise of the writer when, at 9 p.m., an object brighter than the surroundings stars appeared high in the sky. Kubrick and Clarke rushed to the director's Questar 3.5 telescope and moved it to the roof, to have a better view of the object. Again, Clarke's recollection, from Visionary:
"I can still remember, rather sheepishly, my feelings of awe and excitement, and also the thought that flashed through my mind: This is altogether too much of a coincidence. They are out to stop us from making this movie."
Kubrick and Clarke both continued to stare at the bright object. It appeared to come to rest at the zenith, remain in that position above Manhatthan for about a minute, and then sink down to the north.It looked like a brilliant satellite to Clarke, possibly Echo (the first passive communications satellite experiment, a concept Clarke himself had proposed back in 1945) yet the listing of satellite passes in the New York Times included no such transit at nine in the evening, but one at 23.03.
The mystery was solved, but as Kubrick observed, if he and Arthur had not pushed hard to find the solution, they would have spent the rest of their lives talking about UFOs or even an extra-terrestrial spaceship, fostering popular beliefs in it.Clarke came back on the topic years later in his book Greetings, Carbon-based bipeds:
I'm embarrassed to say that the brilliant light we watched moving across the sky turned out to be the ECHO balloon satellite, seen under rather unusual circumstances. Also, Stanley and I were in a rather exalted mood, and perhaps not as critical as we should have been.Kubrick did not abandon his suspicion that there was something out there; never too prudent, shortly before the Mariner IV Mars fly-by in June 1965 he contacted Lloyds of London to price an insurance policy against Martians being discovered before the release of his film in 1968 (such a discovery would have rendered the plot of the film outdated in an instant). Always the pragmatist, he dropped the idea when he found out how much the premium would be. "Stanley decided," wrote Clarke, "to take his chance with the Universe".
PLAYBOY: Although flying saucers are frequently an object of public derision, there has been a good deal of serious discussion in the scientific community about the possibility that UFOs could be alien spacecraft. What's your opinion?
STANLEY KUBRICK: The most significant analysis of UFOs I've seen recently was written by L.M. Chassin, a French air force general who had been a high-ranking NATO officer. He argues that by any legal rules of evidence, there is now sufficient sighting data amassed from reputable sources—astronomers, pilots, radar operators and the like—to initiate a serious and thorough worldwide investigation of UFO phenomena. Actually, if you examine even a fraction of the extant testimony you will find that people have been sent to the gas chamber on far less substantial evidence. Of course, it's possible that all the governments in the world really do take UFOs seriously and perhaps are already engaging in secret study projects to determine their origin, nature and intentions. If so, they may not be disclosing their findings for fear that the public would be alarmed—the danger of cultural shock deriving from confrontation with the unknown which we discussed earlier, and which is an element of 2001, when news of the monolith's discovery on the moon is suppressed. But I think even the 2 percent of sightings that the Air Force's Project Blue Book admits is unexplainable by conventional means should dictate a serious, searching probe. From all indications, the current government-authorized investigation at the University of Colorado is neither serious nor searching.
One hopeful sign that this subject may at last be accorded the serious discussion it deserves, however, is the belated but exemplary conversion of Dr. J. Allen Hynek since 1948 the Air Force's consultant on UFOs and currently chairman of the astronomy department at Northwestern University. Hynek, who in his official capacity pooh-poohed UFO sightings, now believes that UFOs deserve top-priority attention—as he wrote in Playboy [December 1967]—and even concedes that the existing evidence may indicate a possible connection with extraterrestrial life. He predicts: "I will be surprised if an intensive study yields nothing. To the contrary, I think that mankind may be in for the greatest adventure since dawning human intelligence turned outward to contemplate the universe." I agree with him.
Stanley era pericolosamente vicino a credere all'esistenza dei dischi volanti, e io sentii di essere arrivato al momento giusto per salvarlo da questa misera fine.Immaginatevi quindi la sorpresa quando proprio quella notte, mentre i tre conversavano sulla terrazza, nel cielo newyorkese apparve un oggetto più luminoso delle stelle circostanti che si spostò, si fermò per un paio di minuti, poi riprese a muoversi, scomparendo dietro ad un edificio nel giro di pochi secondi. Kubrick e Clarke presero il telescopio Questar 3.5 del regista e si precipitarono sul tetto, per avere una vista maggiore dell'oggetto: ma anche visto attraverso il telescopio l'oggetto era solo un punto di luce, che scomparve di nuovo in direzione nordest.
Ho ancora in mente, e lo dico con una certa timidezza, il senso di sgomento ed eccitazione che sentii quella sera. E anche un pensiero che mi attraversò il cervello: "Non può essere una coincidenza, Loro vogliono impedirci di fare questo film!"Cosa poteva essere? Il fatto che l'oggetto si fosse fermato per qualche secondo sembrava escludere che si potesse trattare di un satellite in orbita. Kubrick, alla ricerca di una spiegazione definitiva, e non convinto delle spiegazioni più logiche proposte da Clarke, richiese e compilò il questionario "U.S. Air Force Technical Information" per i fenomeni aerei non identificati e lo riconsegnò il 16 giugno del 1964:
Il mistero era risolto, ma come osservò Kubrick, se lui e Arthur non avessero cercato maggiori informazioni avrebbero passato il resto della loro vita parlando di un UFO se non addirittura di un'astronave extraterrestre, alimentando in tal modo le credenze popolari.Arthur C. Clarke tornò sull'argomento, anni dopo, nel libro Greetings, Carbon-based bipeds:
Forse quella sera Stanley ed io eravamo in preda ad un tale stato di euforia [dovuto al lavoro sul film] da non essere abbastanza critici come avremmo dovuto...Per Kubrick, però, la prudenza non era mai troppa: l'anno seguente, durante la pre-produzione di 2001, pensò che per non rovinare di assicurarsi dai Lloyds di Londra contro la scoperta di intelligenza extraterrestre prima dell'uscita del film, ... (I Lloyds rifiutarono).
Penso che il 2% di avvistamenti rimasti inspiegati, per stessa ammissione dell'Aviazione, dal progetto Blue Book dovrebbero portare a una ricerca più seria sull'argomento. [...] Un segno di speranza sul fatto che ci possa essere una discussione più approfondita sul tema è la tardiva ma esemplare conversione del dottor J. Allen Hynek, dal 1948 consulente dell'Aviazione Militare sugli UFO.
[...] Hynek, che una volta ridicolizzava gli avvistamenti di oggetti non identificati, oggi crede che meritino la massima attenzione, e addirittura ammette che le prove disponibili indicano una possibile connessione con la vita extraterrestre. La sua posizione è la seguente: "Sarei sorpreso se uno studio intensivo non portasse a nessun risultato. Al contrario, penso che l'umanità potrebbe essere all'inizio della più grande avventura da quando l'Intelligenza è nata e ha cominciato a rivolgere la sua attenzione verso l'Universo". Sono d'accordo con lui.Aggiornamento (21/5/2014 h.11.20) ho corretto le frasi riguardo all'Hayden Planetarium, che rendevano poco chiaro il passaggio.
Dear Simone,
I can confirm that the story is true: I worked on 2001 for nearly three years and although uncredited, apart from Ray Lovejoy (deceased Editor of the movie) I was one of the longest crew employees on the movie. I started off working as a publicity assistant, assigned to working within the Art Department - helping obtain tie-ins with all kinds of companies and then ended up working directly for SK as a kind of junior special effects production co-ordinator. My job was basically to know exactly what was happening on all the various SP-FX camera setups that were sometimes shooting 24/7.
One day, I was asked to stand in for the actor that played Kaminsky inside the Hibernaculum. They needed someone that could keep their eyes closed without their eyelids 'flickering'. Not easy under 'close scrutiny' - but I ended up in the movie as far as I know.
I could not believe my good fortune when I learned that i had got the job to work on 2001. I was a huge fan of Kubrick's after seeing Paths of Glory, Dr. Strangelove, Lolita and Spartacus and as I was also Science fiction mad - it was like a dream come true.
Kubrick was a scary, super intellectual person to come across initially. 2001 was my first big movie experience (albeit at a very junior level) and I was in awe of him.
As a junior publicity assistant, I was paid pretty generously for my limited experience and I learned subsequently that Kubrick was questioning my immediate boss Roger Caras about my salary. There are copies of this correspondence in the Kubrick archives. There's a telex that SK wrote to Roger that said something like - "This isn't Cleopatra, so why are we paying this guy Ivor so much money"?
To cut a long story short - one day, unaware that my fate was in the balance and of all these telexes that were flying back and forth between M.G.M. Studios, Boreham Wood and New York, where Caras was based - I was walking across the lot and happened to bump into Kubrick and for the first time plucked up the courage to talk to him.
Fortunately for me, he was impressed by whatever i said and he instructed Victor Lyndon, his associate producer to renegotiate my salary down by 50% and reassign me to work next to his (Kubrick's) office, where I began to chart the progress of all the effect shots of the movie. Remember that this was way before CGI and Digital effects. Special effects were much more complicated in those days and had to go through multiple stages before all the elements were finally composited together in the film lab. I shared this office with Con Pederson and Bryan Loftus.
Although I can't be sure of this today, it might have been a prior experience of mine which prompted me to suggest we use this 'reflected light' technique in the first place. Because when I was working on 2001, we were using a lot of what's called front projection. How that works is, you hang a highly reflective screen behind your sets and actors and front-project a background onto that screen. You can't notice this in the film because you've also lit the set in such a way to disguise that front light.
Well, one day when we were doing this on 2001, we brought a live leopard onto the set for the 'Dawn of Man' sequences. And a totally unanticipated thing happened. As a result of throwing all this light forward, the leopard's retinas reflected that light straight back into the camera. And it's eyes looked like they were glowing - it was the motion picture equivalent of what you see when someone takes a bad snapshot of you and the light from the flash bounces back from your eyes onto the emulsion. So the glowing eyes of 2001's leopard hadn't been planned at all. But Stanley (Kubrick) liked the effect so much he kept it in the final cut. This is so similar to what we did on Blade Runner, it is feasible I suggested this idea to Ridley or Jordan early on. Unfortunately, I just can't remember.2) Blade Runner producer Michael Deeley credited Ivor Powell for the famous borrowed shots from The Shining that ended up being used for the original Blade Runner ending:
Then Ivor Powell had a canny idea and he suggested to us that we call Stanley Kubrick to ask if Ridley could borrow a short piece of film from The Shining (1980). This rare courtesy from one director to another provided us with the footage that depicted Deckard and Rachael driving through an extraordinary landscape toward their happy future together.
One day of shooting in northern California with Harrison Ford and Sean Young (Rachael) provided sufficient close shots to splice into Kubrick's footage. Terry Rawlings, back in the cutting rooms, came up with an ingenious way of reformatting the yellow Volkswagen which appeared in The Shining so that it looked like some completely futuristic vehicle.
The Shining had been paid for by Warner Brothers, who gave Stanley Kubrick an unprecedented amount of financial and creative freedom. No money passed between Brighton Films and Warner Brothers for this material, which was achieved by a mere wave of Kubrick's hand.
