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)

How I stopped worrying and love Leicester

The conference in Leicester DMU University was GREAT! Here's Kubrick brother-in-law, Jan Harlan, taking a picture of the last slide of my paper, a quote from a 1964 interview with the director from the italian newsmagazine "L'Europeo":

"In so far as we believe that good movies can educate the masses, we must believe that bad movies can make them worse."

Off to Leicester for the Kubrick Retrospective

From May 11 to 13 the De Montfort University in Leicester (UK) will host "Stanley Kubrick: A Retrospective" (‪#‎KubrickDMU‬ on Twitter and Facebook), a conference about the director and his works that will feature keynotes from Jan Harlan (Kubrick’s brother-in-law), Professor Robert P.Kolker, Professor Nathan Abrams, and Peter Krämer.

The University has received more than 30 proposals to its call for papers, and on May 13th at 14:30h yours truly will give a twenty-minutes presentation titled "God, it'll be hard topping the H-bomb" : fragments of Kubrickiana in the path from Strangelove to 2001". Wish me good luck!

The first day of production of '2001', fifty years ago

It was Friday, December 17th, 1965: Fifty years ago today, at nine o' clock in the morning, a young woman entered stage 1 of the MGM Borehamwood studios, near London.

Judy Keirn was a young american actress that had moved to London a few years earlier; in Brodway she had taken part in a few musicals, the most famous being Bye Bye, Birdie (1960). While in London she went through a few auditions, and one was for the small role of a 'passport girl' in an ambitious sci-fi flick that was already causing a sensation in the local actors' community: produced and directed by the young and ambitious Stanley Kubrick, it was set in outer space, and a shroud of mystery had engulfed its production ever since.

On that fateful Friday Judy, who possessed the right american accent that allowed her to beat the competion of Maggie London (later chosen for the 'elevator hostess' role), showed up at half past seven for make-up and costume fitting. Kubrick appeared a bit later, never an early riser, busy with other things to attend; Judy delivered the few lines she was given with no particular issues, but she could never imagine that she had just appeared in the first day of production of '2001: A Space Odyssey'.

A recent picture of Judy Keirn with a photo of herself as Linda in Bye Bye, Birdie

It was usually thought that the first actual shooting of '2001' happened on December 29 for the TMA-1 excavation site, as Arthur C. Clarke famousy recalled in his book "The Lost Worlds of 2001". But if you look close at the call sheet he enclosed in the book, you'll see No.4 (a) up on the right:

Additionally, the Stanley Kubrick Archive catalogue states very clearly that the production started on December 17 with call sheet n.1, that also appeared in the DVD extras of the book "2001: The Lost Science". Also, some of the sequences that appeared in the "stargate" section of the movie had been shot as early as 1964, in an abandoned corset factory in Manhattan on the corner of Broadway and 72nd street in New York, while Kubrick and his team were experimenting with some early special effects tecniques.

Judy Keirn completed her shooting session on Saturday, December 18th; a bit of her lines were cut from the final scene that appeared in the movie but surfaced on the book by Arthur C. Clarke.

The '2001' spacecraft art of Simon Atkinson

Now that Taschen's "The Making Of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey" is out in a more affordable version, many more fans have had the chance to access the superb work of Piers Bizony. They will surely remember that there was another book from Piers that had set the bar for the  most authoritative and complete source of information on 2001, and it was 2001: Filming The Future, that first came out in 1994.

The book featured some accurate artworks of the main spacecraft featured in 2001, made by Simon Atkinson, a professional illustrator who rendered the landmark ships seen in the movie with previously unseen accuracy and clarity. Here's how Piers Bizony remembers Simon's work:

“When Simon and I first began researching the hardware of 2001: A Space Odyssey in the early 1990’s, computer graphics tools were not yet widely available outside major film and media industries. Many brilliant artists have taken on the challenge of recreating 2001’s spacecraft using the very best digital techniques, and as often as not, the results are stunning. Yet almost without exception these modern practitioners cite the importance of Simon Atkinson’s painstaking traditional analogue work as an inspiration. 2001 was put together very much by hand. So were Simon’s wonderful renderings of the spacecraft. In fact I would challenge any CGI system to recapture the tone and feel that Simon accomplished.

Simon presented one of the original pod illustrations he produced for Filming The Future to Arthur C. Clarke during a 2001-related event in 1992 (Piers Bizony is on the right of the photo).

Simon and Piers during a recent event at the Museum Of Science in London. Behind them, a LEM mockup.

Simon recalls the thrilling experience of producing those artworks and his meetings with Harry Lange (NASA designer and technical consultant to 2001) and Arthur C. Clarke in this page of his website - an exciting account on its own that I suggest all the 2001 fans to read. What's more exciting is that Simon has recently rediscovered the original large format transparencies of his illustrations that were used for printing purposes, and has painstakingly restored his artworks to a level where they can now be reproduced as large scale prints very close in size to his original paintings with much greater detail and clarity than previously seen. Simon's artworks are now about to be released as a signed limited edition fine art print collection.

The prints will be produced using the Giclée process and printed on 260 gsm satin art paper; a Giclée print is high-quality art paper printed with super-fine ink spray dots and it's almost indistinguishable from an actual painting - it is indeed the same high-quality method used to produce Oliver Rennert's fabulous Discovery cut-out illustration I proudly own and that I previously reviewed here.

Here's Simon Atkinson holding a print of his Aries 1B side elevation illustration from 2001: Filming The Future (airbrush/coloured pencils on CS10 artboard, 1990). The original artwork of the Aries  is now in the collection of Tom Hanks, a keen 2001 fan and collector; the limited edition prints will be very close in size to the originals.

Simon's prints will be available to purchase from 30th October 2015; as the print run will be limited (only 250 for each artwork), Simon is currently inviting expressions of interest. You may contact him from the the contact page of his website, www.satkinsoncreativearts.com.

Actual print sizes

(remember: the images of the various prints seen here 
are not in proportion with their actual sizes)

ARIES 1B : Overall print size 20” x 22” (510mm x 555 mm); image size 13 ¼” x 14” (336mm x 360 mm)

DISCOVERY 1 : Overall print size 38 ¼” x 6 ½”  (975mm x 257mm); image size 32” x 4” (828mm x 104mm)

ORION III : Overall print size 32” x 24” (830mm x 610mm); image size 25 ¾” x 15 ½” (658mm x 396mm)

POD SIDE: Overall print size 17 ¾” x 19 ¼” (452mm x 490mm); image size 11 ¾” x 10 “ (300mm x 250mm)

POD FRONT: Overall print size 17 ¾” x 19 ¼” (452mm x 490mm); image size 10 ¾” x 10” (277mm x 250mm)