2001: A Space Odyssey with Jordan Hoffman

[00:00:01] Blank Check with Griffin and David Blank Check with Griffin and David Don't know what to say or to expect All you need to know is that the name of the show is Blank Check Hello Hal. Do you read me, Hal? Affirmative, Dave. I read you.

[00:00:27] Open the podcast doors, Hal. Yeah, alright. Good, good, good. Open the podcast doors, Hal. What else could you do? Well, I'll tell you what I wanted to do.

[00:00:35] And I felt like people would have been ripping their hair out if I didn't do that just because we rarely have a line that infamous that has pod in it. Very famous line. I'll tell you what I wanted to do. What? Pod. Yeah, right. Pod. Podcast. Pod. Podcast.

[00:00:52] Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Pod. I think you made the right choice. Pod. Pod. Podcast. What if someone did that now? Pod. Pod. Pod. Pod. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. Podcast. The pipe organ stays. I know, I know. You're better at holding. What if like...

[00:01:28] We also couldn't sync up there on when it's a pod and when it's a cast. It's a hard choice. What if the planets don't always align? Of course. You need a fella like Stanley Kubrick to make sure those planets... You need a Kubrick to line up those planets.

[00:01:40] Yeah, not every schmo can do that. Not every schmo can do it. What were you going to say, David? What if like Jurassic Park... Open the podcast doors, David. Yes, done. Are they open? Yeah, very soon. Like Jurassic Park Dominion, like some big movie from this year.

[00:01:53] Great movie, yeah. Sure. Functional movie. Like a shot of the planet Earth in the sun rising with also spoke, you know, Sparks, Zyra, Suthra, however, you know, over it. Your German is terrible. No joke. Just did that. Yeah.

[00:02:10] And then someone asks the director, you know, Trevor or whoever, why'd you do that? He's like, oh, it's an homage to 2000... Like what if someone actually just plainly was like, oh, I love that opening. Yeah. The most famous movie opening of all time. Yeah.

[00:02:21] You can only do that once. You can only do what he did one time. Well, a lot of parody movies have done it. That's fine. That's fine, but you're saying... Because then it's for like a bong or a hamburger. Oh, we get it. Right.

[00:02:33] It's not the majesty of the heavens. But it's also funny that like, it does feel like if you do something that even vaguely resembles this on any level, people go like, was that an homage to 2000? Like you can't open a movie with a planet. No. Essentially.

[00:02:46] And classical music, like thunderous classical. Or the other. I feel like people will be like, is that a 2001 thing? You know what, I'm really excited that we began the show. By the way, I've been on this show and I've never been introduced. So I'm going to introduce myself.

[00:02:59] Do it. Have you really never been introduced? It's a running bit. It's funny. Okay. I've maintained it. And people have in fact called out my comedic consistency, my commitment to this bit. Do you guys know what Cowper's fluid is? Yeah. I mean, okay. What is Cowper's fluid?

[00:03:17] Well, it's, you know, Cowper's gland is... What is the street name? See, I don't know. I wasn't like David claiming I knew. We're starting early and this is the 2001 episode, but he's talking about Precum. Precum. Cowper's fluid, which I could be pronouncing it correctly.

[00:03:34] I think you're pronouncing it correctly. Known on the street as Precum. Sure. The first... Going for the big dollar these days on the street. The first shot, if I may use the word shot, of 2001 A Space Odyssey is a shot of Precum.

[00:03:52] And I swear to God, I'm not making this up. I really do believe, I have no way of confirming this, Stanley Kubrick had a sick sense of humor. You know, that's true. He was part of that 1950s sick humor.

[00:04:09] We're going to get into the New York Jewish intellectual shtick. That whole kind of Mort Sahl, Mad Magazine world that he lived in, which is most evidenced in Dr. Strangelove. The first shot of this movie is of... It's a crescent.

[00:04:23] It's a head of a penis and then the sun comes out and it's a little dot. He's referring to this, to be clear. And then as it moves on, now it comes out a little bit more.

[00:04:34] It's a little bit of... And it's hilarious when you think... There's a lot of humor. Well, look, let's say the main ship of this movie looks like a sperm. Sure. A lot of ships are penile. The movie ends with a... With a baby. With a fetus.

[00:04:49] With a fetus. There's a lot of vulva action. There's a lot of vulvas going in and out of... Sure. When the... Pod bay doors. Pod bay doors. This is why we brought Jordan in here. I mean, I will admit. This is the thing, okay?

[00:05:01] So when March Madness, right? Booking this show has become year over year an increasingly complicated puzzle, right? And there's like... Heavy is the head, though. Where's the crown? I mean, I can't say it, but you can. Okay?

[00:05:16] Because it's like, who are our favorite guests we haven't had on in too long? Right? Then it's like, who are people we've been meaning to have on? Right. People who've reached out to us. And then sometimes you look at the movies coming up and you're like,

[00:05:27] who isn't on that list but would be a good guest for that? Who we should reach out to or see if they'd be interested or whatever. Usually we do this in secret because we keep private what's upcoming on the schedule. It's your business. You give it to yourself.

[00:05:40] Absolutely. And it gives us a sense of control. But when we do March Madness, our business is public. Everyone knows what's coming up in the fall. And so everyone in our orbit starts to reach out and go,

[00:05:49] look, I'm just saying, I just want to throw my hat in the ring, this and that. So this was a particularly tough miniseries to figure out where to land on everything because we had a lot of people throwing out their bids for a lot of different movies.

[00:05:59] Hubert's a big get. Big get. It's a big fish, as you say. And we just kept on going back to... We had our spreadsheet and like four alts for each movie, right? And trying to balance them out and then move some people to different miniseries or whatever.

[00:06:10] We just kept on going back to having Jordan on 2001 feels funny. Like other people were making their arguments for it, but we just kept on going, that feels like that's a funny thing to do. It'll be a funny episode. Well, the movie begins with Cro-Magnon early man.

[00:06:25] And if you've seen my shoulders and back, I am a Semitic man of Russian Ural stock and I am her suite, as they say. Sure. Is that how you pronounce that? It's Cowper's Gland. Well, I hope to bring the heat today. You're already bringing the heat.

[00:06:48] My name is Jordan Hoffman, by the way. Thank you so much for having me on the show. He said he was going to do it and then I... Did you notice I spent like five minutes trying to deflect? I've been a guest on this show a few times.

[00:06:59] Four times. This is your fourth appearance. I didn't get a jacket, but I got a panno with cheese bread. A pannabono. Yeah, one of those. It was delicious. Colombian cheese bread. Colombian cheese Danish. And I'm thrilled to be... You asked for munchkins.

[00:07:16] And I got you one big cheese munchkin, essentially. Well, because there's a restaurant. No, no, no. I go to a Colombian place on the other side. Four episodes. Blue Steel. Love that movie. That's right. Melvin and Howard. That's right. I really love that movie. Beowulf. Beowulf, I guess.

[00:07:33] I am Beowulf! What a four pack. Yeah, and you know, a lot of times our recurring guests, our friends, our listeners will be like, oh, they always cover movies like this. Here's the theme you can find through the movies they cover. That's a pretty varied four.

[00:07:47] Yeah, there's not a four. There's not a through line with those four. There's not. I can safely say with Melvin and Howard it was probably because nobody else wanted to do that one. I'm sure there were. Maybe weren't clamoring. You put your bid down early.

[00:07:58] Because I love that movie. I think it's great. I think it's under discussed. Beowulf as well, you very early on said like, I'm very fascinated by that movie. I have opinions. And you had mead. You had mead in the fridge. I brought mead! Oh shit, yeah.

[00:08:11] Mead to the Zoom. Did you drink any of the meads on Zoom? It was the deep pandemic. Oh shit, I had mead over the Zoom. You drank mead on my Zoom. We watched you drink mead. Yeah, yeah. Mead is not that great. 2001. What a picture. Space Odyssey.

[00:08:27] It's a huge, huge movie. Do you think it is Stanley Kubrick's defining film? In many ways. I feel like it's this and The Shining. These are the two movies that cast the largest cultural shadows to this day. It's this. It's this.

[00:08:45] But the only question is, is this movie almost outside of careers? Is it cinema's defining movie? I don't even mean that in a highfalutin way. It's almost like a Grand Canyon thing where it's like, what are you going to say?

[00:08:58] A lot of these current movies, it's very daunting to do an episode on these things. Because you're just like, what do I have to add to the conversation? What's fascinating is you say, is it cinema's defining?

[00:09:07] I think it's safe to say with the possible exception of something like Tree of Life, this is the most experimental movie to ever have played in a wide release. Far beyond some of the old Tree of Life. But also to have been a financial success.

[00:09:26] My parents saw this when it came out and they are not psychedelic people. And I think part of a good way to think about this movie is it's a very bifurcated experience. I'll be a little bit serious now.

[00:09:38] Part of what makes the movie so great to some audiences is that it is very hard sci-fi. Diamond hard sci-fi, as they call it, which is an actual term. Yes, you're right. Extremely hard sci-fi.

[00:09:49] Like him floating around fixing the EPS thingamajig when he's screwing the bolts and everything, getting the wires out. And we should spend some time defining the differences. Sure. I'm just putting a pin in there for later. Go on.

[00:10:03] So on that level, and of course Arthur C. Clarke, a science fiction writer who had a science writing career and is pretty much the man who invented the concept of the communications satellite. I mean, that's a well-known fact. So Arthur C. Clarke is hard sci-fi.

[00:10:21] I would call him very hard sci-fi, yes. Then the other flip side of this coin is that this is a very experimental psychedelic, what does it all mean, man? It's about feelings. At the end of the day, we're all just like a baby floating in space, man.

[00:10:37] Yeah, I mean, there are huge chunks of the movie. I'm looking at myself and I'm old and then I'm Emily Starr's man. We're all just monkeys, man. Non-narrative, just images floating around. Bone was the first tool, man. Bone was the first tool. That also has a penis thing.

[00:10:53] There's a whole thing about penises in this movie. And then also, who is to say that Hal isn't alive? Right, right. Aren't we all just computers responding to stimuli, man? Yeah, I think therefore I am, man.

[00:11:06] So there's that and then you fuse it with this very technical sci-fi at a time, perfect time, 1968. Apollo is right around the corner. It's just like the perfect alignment to achieve escape velocity and become a sensation. Then, like, holy shit, the chairs look really cool. The computer readouts.

[00:11:29] Fucking spaceships. Yeah, the spacesuits look amazing. The spacesuits, the IBM ThinkPad existing 25 years in advance. All this cool stuff. It's just a perfect thing that's never been recreated, never been touched again. Obviously, the sequel exists.

[00:11:45] Clark wrote three sequels, which I have read and would love to talk about. We know we're going to get into all of this. We have to talk about it. Oh, yeah. He got up to 3001, Ben. Did you know that? No, I did not know that.

[00:11:55] That's the last book, 3001. The Final Odyssey. It's a hell of a book. And there's also elements of Clark's earlier work in this movie. And there's also a funny thing. Maybe now is the time to bring it up. Arthur Courageous Clark. That was his actual middle name. No.

[00:12:12] It was. Check the dossier. It's Charles. I'm reading something different than the dossier. Arthur Charles Courageous Clark. Uh-huh. He had written a lot of short stories, had written a lot of science writing, but his first novel was a book called The Sands of Time. Now, dig this.

[00:12:28] This is really cool. And I only discovered this for the first time a few months ago when I read The Sands of Time. The Sands of Time was published in 1950, 51, something like this. But he'd written it a few years earlier.

[00:12:36] Let's say he wrote it in 48, 47, something like this. Just to correct you, it's called The Sands of Mars. Oh, I'm sorry. The Sands of Mars. It was published in 51, I think. Published in 51, but it had been lingering for a few years.

[00:12:46] Since the time of the Jim Henson thing? I don't know. I think it is. Look it up. Sands of Mars is a decent enough book, and it's about- No, Tale of Sand is what you're thinking of. Weird. Okay. Anyway, it's a Mars book. Mars book.

[00:12:59] It's set on the first colony on Mars. It's sort of a government-run colony. And the shtick is that the agency that runs the colony wants to send a well-known science fiction writer to the colony to experience life on the colony and write about it.

[00:13:13] So Arthur C. Clarke is writing ostensibly about himself. The book, they don't give the exact year of when it's set, but if you do the math, it's set around 2009, 2010. Now here's what's really funny. In the book, the guy that Arthur, the narrator,

[00:13:27] is a Clarke proxy, is famous because he was a struggling science fiction writer who, in the late 1960s, early 1970s, wrote a phenomenal runaway bestseller, much like 2001 A Space Odyssey, which came out in 68, which put him on the map and everybody loved.

[00:13:48] But the hardcore astronauts think the guy's a fool because Sands of Mars takes place after the year in which this was supposed to take place. So it takes place in 2009, and the book was supposed to take place around 2001, and it's like, ah, you got it all wrong.

[00:14:09] It wasn't like it actually is. And somehow Clarke predicted this in 1950 when he wrote this, that he would write a book that would be a phenomenon that by the time time caught up to it, it would be like, we don't have space stations, actually, blah, blah, blah.

[00:14:23] Remember when he beamed into the Oscars late in life? Arthur C. Clarke? Yeah. I can't remember this. Because he lived in Sri Lanka late in life, and he was into diving. He was even living in Sri Lanka at the time

[00:14:35] that Kubrick reached out to him for this movie. He was gay. Ceylon at the time. He was gay and living in England when it was still illegal to be gay, and he and his lover, who was, I believe, Sri Lankan, moved to Sri Lanka.

[00:14:48] But he claimed that it was because the telescopes could see stars better because they're at the equator. Sure, sure, sure. Less light pollution over there. He just beamed into the Oscars late and very near his death. What year was this? He died in 2008. Huh? What year was this?

[00:15:03] I think it was 2000 or 2001, and he truly looked light. I mean, I hope it was 2001. That must have been what it was. It must have been. It was the 2000 Oscars. That's why. And he truly straight up looked like Dr. Evil. Because he was wearing like a Nehru jacket.

[00:15:19] He was bald. And you were just like, oh my god, it's Dr. Evil. He's like, hello, it's me, Arthur C. Clarke, in 2001. Oh, ho, ho, ho. And you were just like, you know, raising your pinky finger. I think I see 2001 right after that.

[00:15:34] I see it in the year 2001, I'm pretty sure. Wow. It must have. I mean, it's a classic movie that you can basically see 2001 in the theater any year you want. It'll always be in a rep theater somewhere. I'll say this, though.

[00:15:47] I have been not able to find a screening these last three months. I was just sort of like, here we go. Summer 2022. I feel like it'll do it once a year at least. It plays fucking somewhere. Moving Image. Moving Image almost always does the 70 millimeter.

[00:16:01] And I was just like, haven't seen it on a big screen in like 21 years. Would love to see it again. Perfect excuse for this podcast. Summer 2022, here we go. Let me keep my eyes and ears open for a 2001 screening. I have not been able to find one.

[00:16:13] Well, there was that Nolan release that happened recently. That's the last really major one. Which was? Was that 2019, maybe? It was the Damien Hirst release. We took the print and he put in a jar full of piss. Right. It was all, it was what?

[00:16:26] It was whatever the 50th. It was D-Master. I would imagine it was 2018 because it was the 50th anniversary. That makes sense. I have a fun little story about that screening. I know you do.

[00:16:34] For the listener at home, they remastered the movie for what is now the base of the 4K print release digital copy that exists. But then Nolan supervised this IMAX re-release, large format re-release. It was 2018.

[00:16:50] Where he off of the base 4K restoration scanning, D-Mastered it to look the way he remembered seeing it at his local cinema as a child when the movie had been playing for like two or three years. He didn't want it to be like perfectly smooth.

[00:17:07] It was like yellowed. Yeah, it was an interesting. And you could see it like in IMAX. Yeah, and people were just like, why does this look bad on purpose? And they were like, it's how Nolan remembers it. Like, Warner Brothers just, he had such a blank check.

[00:17:19] I don't know. I saw it. I thought it looked pretty cool. What was it called? His memory? It was called like 2001. It was called like the D-Mastered screening. It was called D-Mastered. It was something where, I think it was a great op.

[00:17:29] I mean, you know, I've seen it in 70 multiple times. It was kind of like listening to, not that vinyl isn't good, but it was kind of like that thing of like, I want to hear all the little imperfections and the pops.

[00:17:40] And it was like, rather than a movie that is already regarded as like the coldest, you know, most sort of hermetic film ever made. Like just being presented in beautiful, clean, you know, 4K.

[00:17:53] But it was this funny thing where Leon Vitale, who just passed away and we'll talk about a lot in the Barry Lyndon episode. They knew that there was like a 4K release coming out on home video and digital after this Nolan branded IMAX re-release.

[00:18:10] And they kept on going like, Vitale, is the 4K Blu-ray going to look like this? And he like couldn't say good heavens no. Because they didn't want to stop on the toes of the Nolan thing.

[00:18:23] He had to keep going like, I have overseen what will be on the disc. And I think people will be happy with that. They both look good. And now in circulation, if they're screening it, it's like the proper version.

[00:18:36] You know what's funny is that there's another 70mm floating around that moving image showed and there was a focus issue with it on night one. Which I went. And this is actually kind of cool.

[00:18:46] The focus issue made itself known at the shot when the monolith first appears and the apes are going ape, if you will. But what was amazing and if Eric Hines of the moving image is listening right now, he probably remembers. There was a little bit of a focus.

[00:19:04] What do you want to call that? A judder. A judder. Sure. A shudder right on the monolith. So it felt like the monolith was like. It was so cool to a guy who has seen the movie a million times. It was like the monolith was freaking out man.

[00:19:17] And it was jumping out at me and I was getting all weird. And the monkeys, the cromags, whatever are like touching it and freaking out. And the monolith isn't what it's supposed to look like.

[00:19:27] And I felt for me personally that it was the best time I'd seen it in a theater. But the Nolan one, dig this. In New York they showed it at Village East which is a great theater. But in like not the most neighborhood that's a little bit.

[00:19:42] You know East Village. It's not like where. You know it's a real neighborhood where people live. It's a second avenue and 12th street and there's this one screen there that is like the one remaining great old sort of movie palace. I mean it's that and the Paris.

[00:19:56] But this I guess they now call it the Jaffe Art Theater. Do they give it a name now? They give it some special name now. Yeah, well it used to be a Yiddish theater and there's Jewish stars everywhere. It looks like an old opera house.

[00:20:06] It's a beautiful, beautiful thing. And they have a 70 millimeter projector there. So they'll do whatever the new big release is that's playing there. And they'll also do a lot of like 70 millimeter screenings, classic movie screenings there. So dig this. I go a couple days into the run.

[00:20:20] I go to the 4 p.m. screening and as I'm walking in the guy who's taking the tickets is like check it out, check it out. I'm like what? He's like right there and I turn around behind me and I see like the door. The monolith.

[00:20:32] The door of a monolith. I see the door of a town car close. And again this is not like 5th Avenue. This is like a neighborhood. Second avenue and 12th street. It was Steven Spielberg was at the Newton screening. That ain't bad. Cool. And like by himself.

[00:20:47] And that's cool because he owns a print of 2001 and he's got a screening room but he was like you know what? I want to see the 70. I want to see the Nolan thing. On second avenue by myself. He was there alone, the guy said.

[00:20:58] He went and bought a ticket, sat for two hours and 40 minutes with the intermission. Yeah and then got fucking perogies of Veselka. No and he probably dropped his bean right when he was supposed to so the lights could really get him. I can feel it.

[00:21:10] I can feel it. This is a podcast called Blank Check with Griffin and David. I'm Griffin. I'm David. It's a podcast about filmographies, directors who have massive success early on in their careers and are given a series of blank checks to make whatever crazy passion products they want.

[00:21:23] Sometimes those checks clear. Sometimes they bounce. Baby this is a mini series on the films of Stanley Kubrick. It's called Pods Widecast. Sure is. Today we're talking 2001 A Space Odyssey. Famous movie. More like 2001 A Good Movie. Wow. Text that to the Doughboys at 3am.

[00:21:39] You got a ha ha. I got a ha ha. You got a Weiger ha ha. I got a Weiger ha ha. Ha ha.

[00:21:44] I won't introduce our guest because he's already done it himself against my wishes but I want to ask the bean question because this speaks to why it felt like you were kind of the best guest for this.

[00:21:57] Aside from being like comedic potential we felt for what could be a stodgy episode. You're a great film director. You've already represented this but half of this. But you talk about the movie being bifurcated between these weird like opposing forces. Hard sci-fi and psychedelia. Right.

[00:22:13] You're a person who kind of contains those two. I mean I think of you as a scholar of sci-fi. I love sci-fi. But also you're a giant fish head. I am into fish yeah. Yeah. And the fish cover scene. Yeah but I don't do drugs.

[00:22:29] I know you don't do drugs. Wait what? I don't. I'm an expert opinion. For someone who exists in these worlds. Huh? Is there a moment like is there a sync up moment where you're supposed to drop the bean as it were? Yes. 100%. At the beginning of the movie?

[00:22:45] I don't know. No. Where are you supposed to drop it so that it. I believe the idea is off. So that when you get to the end like the light show really hits. That's my curiosity point is like there must be a moment that has been identified.

[00:22:55] I'm assuming you're like thinking acid. Yes. I was thinking jelly beans. I believe that the classic thing was like people were going in being like okay so you want to do acid at this moment in the movie. So it's gonna really kick in when the light show starts.

[00:23:14] That's what I'm curious. What is the moment where you. I mean look. Maybe the intermission? It might be the like right after the intermission. It's like because like the light show is what probably like half an hour into the second act or whatever.

[00:23:26] Second act is 58 minutes with credits. It takes usually about 30 minutes to about an hour. So my guess is it would be like all right. When you come back from the intermission. Go walk around. Let's go down again. That's when you want to be. Oh for sure.

[00:23:38] You've got to burn one down in the intermission. And the line is I can feel my brain is good. My mind is. What's the exact line? My mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. And then the. Oh you mean what Hal says.

[00:23:49] What Hal says. What Hal says. Yeah. So fish sober? Yeah I know. It's part of what makes me interesting I suppose. Do you drink mead? I. You know the truth matters. I don't even drink alcohol. Wow. At all. And that's not because of any. I just.

[00:24:07] You're saying for fish or in general? In general. Like I have like two beers a year now. So the meat on Beowulf was like. That was a big deal. A rare. Wow. I'll have a Heineken. Sure. Jordan you are high on life. Wow. You truly are.

[00:24:21] You always have been as long as I've known you. And you just never felt like. You know. You know honestly. You're high on life and ethnic food. Say again? You're high on life and ethnic food. You and I both love. Listen I have my vices. Oh.

[00:24:32] No one's doubting that. But I remember you would walk in. The truth if you want to be. You know it's just the three of us here. Nobody's listening. It's. Percival please there are four of us. One two. I meant the three. Oh the three.

[00:24:42] There's the four of us in the room. You're looking at three men. I mean I used to drink like not like too. Like I never had a problem. But I used to be like a guy. Let's get some beer. Let's get some beer. And I would just.

[00:24:50] I would just. I would just. I can see that. I just don't do that anymore. I can't say why. Maybe it's my. Because it hurts my tummy the next day. And I take a terrible dump. I don't know. But.

[00:25:01] Everyone read Jordan's story about James Cameron making poop sometime. You know people. You know what's funny. People get hangovers. Yeah. I don't get hangovers. I shit for a day and a half. Well we are similar in this way. Yeah you two are. Not just in the shitting.

[00:25:11] Pretty much if I do anything. If there's a shit I do. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it. I do it.

[00:25:24] If I do anything if there's a strong gust of wind I'll shit for a day and a half. So I don't. I remember though. Before I even really knew you. But you would come in to videology trivia singing. Singing?

[00:25:32] I remember several times you walking into the back room of videology trivia where we'd all show up early to get a good table. Yeah yeah yeah. I remember at least once or twice you walking in like singing. Talk about getting high on life.

[00:25:42] You'd just be like singing to yourself but not like quietly. I was probably a really good song that I was listening to in my head. I don't really take drugs. I mean, in college I did. And so I wrote this article. Did you read the article?

[00:25:56] Do you know that I'm talking about? The Phiz Ergo, the James Cameron article. There was an article I wrote about my relationship with drugs, panic attacks, and 2001 A Space Odyssey. Oh, really? Yeah. So I did, freshman year in college, take some drugs

[00:26:09] and I realized then it wasn't for me. And I don't wanna get into it too much. You can read the article. You can read it's on Thrillist, I believe. So part of my relationship with panic attacks had to do with seeing the movie 2001 very, very, very young

[00:26:26] because I was into sci-fi and the video box looked awesome. And my mother had seen 2001 when it came out. And my father got confused, by the way, with the Raquel Welsh, one million years BC. Sure, look, they're both years. Come on.

[00:26:42] It's like, oh yeah, Raquel Welsh, she's a doll. And my mother's like, no, no, no, you're confusing him. So we rented 2001 A Space Odyssey and I wasn't that into it because I was like eight and I'm expecting Star Wars and it's not.

[00:26:56] But I was watching it because it was still really cool even on VHS for an eight year old. And then it got to the ending and I had my baby's first panic attack. And I didn't know why. And my mother was like, why are you, my son,

[00:27:09] why are you freaking out? It's like the guy's in a hotel. Isn't that a nice hotel? Look, he's sitting in bed. He's an old man now. And I just, the ending of this movie, which I think many people find disconcerting

[00:27:22] in a way that you can't put your finger on. That's why it's such a fascinating ending. It was a touch point of nightmares for me for years. It makes sense. And then- This movie is frightening. It's so deeply frightening. Well, the music also, that Georgie- Yeah.

[00:27:38] So the ending of that movie was like, some kids are afraid of Jason or Freddy Krueger. I was terrified of the ending of 2001 for reasons that I didn't know. And the movie was something that wasn't really something you could escape. For example, I'm a little kid

[00:27:54] and I would watch The Electric Company, I think it was. And they did a parody of 2001 A Space Odyssey. When I was a little older and getting into Monty Python, they did 2001 A Space Odyssey parodies. History of the World Part One. History of the World.

[00:28:10] Sleeper, Woody Allen's Sleeper. Hal, the voice of Hal is in Sleeper. And a lot of the look is 2001. So the movie never left me alone as I got older and I kind of, it sounds ridiculous to say, but conquered my fear of Stanley Kubrick's 2001.

[00:28:24] No, it doesn't sound ridiculous. Those childhood things are bigger to surmount than like whatever. I also, I mean, I saw the movie a little older than you. I think I was 12. But like deeply, deeply upset by the ending. And then I think when it got to the baby,

[00:28:42] I was just like, what? Then I was just confused. But I remember the ending really, really unnerving me. And you saying- Like him being an old man? Like that sort of, the lights. The entire nature of just like at the end of the universe,

[00:28:55] there is a room and you just age. And the whole vibe of it, I was just like truly, like this is my nightmare. This is the scariest thing to imagine. Yeah, it's scarier than Jason and Freddy for some reason. So what does it have to do with me

[00:29:09] being a freshman in college? Yeah, so I did have like a freak out. I'm a freshman in college. Smoke a little grass, man. Listen to the Allman Brothers. Hey, that's cool. That's what we did. Fuck yeah, man. You know? Boop, ba-doop, ba-doop, ba-doop, ba-doop.

[00:29:22] I'm sorry, did you go to college in 1968? What's going on here? Hey, man, smoke a little tea. Jordan in the year 2000 is like, hey man, everyone else is like, I gotta get to the Lower East Side. You know, whatever. Hey man, I went to NYU.

[00:29:40] Yeah, you went to NYU. And we hung out in Paulette Goddard Hall. Sure. But dude, you like the Allman students? Jordan's wearing a bandana around his neck like he's one of Ned Flanders' parents also. As he's miming smoking a tie stick. He's a real flat tire, man.

[00:29:54] I mean, he's taking us on the way to Cubesville. He's like one beret short. Ben loves Ned's parents so much. It's one of your favorite Simpsons bits. It's kind of one of the greatest bits in all of comedy. And the fact that they take like eight seasons

[00:30:06] before they get to that or whatever it is. Do they ever show up again? They show up a couple times, but there's a long runway before their first reveal. They're so deep in on the Flanders thing. So you're smoking some grass at NYU.

[00:30:21] You know, and you do say, there's this new thing there called lysergic diathopic acid 25. Take your bicycle ride, take your magic carpet ride, I had some good experiences, and I had a particularly bad experience. Yeah, bad trips are rough. The bad experience reminded me of,

[00:30:41] and then I had my 2000, for some weird reason I was like, oh, I'm trapped in the movie 2001. You're right back there. Yeah. Ben, have you had bad trips on acid and then been like, well, what are you gonna do? And just kept rolling with it?

[00:30:51] Because I feel like if I had a bad trip on acid, I'd be like, all right, acid's going in the drawer. The whole reason I don't do drugs either is just the pank attack thing of just like, it's kind of.

[00:31:01] You were just kind of like, eh, what are you gonna do? I mean. You ride it out. You ride it out. I'm a mind warrior, man. You know. What can I say? And there's a new nickname put on your list. Update the Reddit. In the psychedelic community,

[00:31:16] to which I am adjacent to being a fish fanatic, even though I don't do drugs, about called set and setting, man. And the problem I now realize with hindsight is that I was with some uncool people. Yeah. And the vibes were not right.

[00:31:28] And there was a guy in the room who was a bit of. Set and setting, I like that. Was a bit of a prick. And I should not have been in a position of emotional. Vulnerability. Vulnerability around this one guy. He was this British guy.

[00:31:40] Whatever, who cares who he was? He was not a nice person. And it made, it was whatever. So the point is, Stanley Kubrick was a Jew from New York. From the Bronx. Arthur C. Clarke was a gay British man. And this movie is actually very, very funny

[00:31:58] if you know where to look. Yeah. Yes. Look, we've been. I don't know why he's clapping. Well, because he nailed it. Episode over. He did nail it. Thank you all for listening. We've been recording this many series wildly out of order.

[00:32:11] I feel like more out of order than we usually do. Not compared to our long ago past where we really didn't give a shit. No, but more than we have in the last couple years. But recently we try to be more chronological. Right.

[00:32:21] We've been a little out of order. If the evolution of my Kubrick opinions feels out of whack, out of order in listening to this, it's because it's in the order I'm re-watching these movies. Sure. Where I feel like there are certain episodes where I'm saying like,

[00:32:36] well, obviously Kubrick doesn't have a sense of humor. And that was before I've re-watched some other films and felt this. But now that I fully come around to like, oh, Kubrick was funny. Like he's putting comedy into all of his films.

[00:32:49] I did, this is the movie that I always thought of maybe as being the least funny, not to a fault. But- It's the latest on dialogue. So yeah. But I do agree with you that watching it this time, I was more creative. Hal's really funny. Hal's funny.

[00:33:07] He's dry though. He's like a Joe Pera. He's like a great deadpan. Right, right. Okay, look, I wanna, yeah. When did you, so you're saying you first saw it. I saw it 12, 2001. My mother took me to a re-release. You saw it in the theater?

[00:33:22] I saw it in theaters. I was pretty perplexed. I mean, it was a thing of, you know. My mother is a woman of the arts, you know, and was always trying to expose me to more sophisticated things. And so it was just this thing,

[00:33:37] you love movies, you love sci-fi, you love Star Wars, you need to see 2001. This is important. It was, you know, I was never kicking and screaming really about going to see a movie, but it was very much a thing that was like, I'm telling you this is important.

[00:33:51] This is like educational. And I was largely perplexed by it. It was one of those things where I was just kind of like, I don't. What did I just see? Yeah. Not like this doesn't make sense to me,

[00:34:01] but I'm just like, what is the value of this thing? Explain this to me. And it's odd. I don't think I had seen it in full since then. What? But it was wildly a movie where I just remembered every line, every shot, every image, every beat,

[00:34:18] even though I've only seen it once in theaters, 20 plus years ago. And in my mind's eye, I'm just like, well, Masterpiece, obviously. Like it's one of those movies I never revisited. It sticks to the ribs. I mean, it really is.

[00:34:29] It sticks to the ribs and I was able to totally reevaluate it in my head without re-watching it. And then watching it this time, I was like, yeah, correct. Great. 10 out of 10, Masterpiece. But as a kid, I think I was so perplexed.

[00:34:41] I was a very literal minded kid. And so I think the last 20, 30 minutes in particular, just like totally, I went like, you need to explain this to me. And up until then, just the movie is so methodical, so slow where it's just like,

[00:34:55] if you've seen Star Wars before you've seen 2001 and I was at maybe the wrong developmental stage in terms of not quite having the intellect to totally grapple with it yet, I was just like, why is this movie taking 15 minutes to open a door?

[00:35:12] That's the problem with me as a kid. Like I undiagnosed ADD. I was just like, ah, ah, ah, ah, something's gotta happen. My dad, I remember him- Cause your dad's a big sci-fi guy. He loves sci-fi. And he's kind of a hard sci-fi guy. Yes, yes, exactly.

[00:35:27] So this was like a really big moment for us. I don't remember exactly how old were you? Eight or seven. You're probably a little young. Yeah, and sits me down and I couldn't do more than 15, like, or maybe I made it through the monkey section

[00:35:40] because the monkey section's kind of fun. But once we get to space, I just remember, I was like, I just could not pay attention anymore. Did you watch it in chunks maybe? Like he would sit, no, he was just like, I gotta go, I'm out.

[00:35:53] And then came back to it later as a younger man. My wife had never seen it and I had the DVD or maybe even the Blu-ray and I was like, she's like, you gotta watch it. And she had trouble watching at home

[00:36:03] and she did fall asleep and then I dragged her to see it at a screening. She's like, oh my God, it's so good. In a theater obviously. Have you ever seen it in theater, Ben? Yeah, I saw it at Village East a few years back.

[00:36:15] I'll say this too, because my memory was as a kid, this is taking forever. Everything in this movie, tap and the watch, right? Even when things were happening, why is it all happening so slowly? Rewatching this, I found it a surprisingly brisk watch.

[00:36:34] I find this movie weirdly kind of, it moves faster than I remembered it moving. As much as it is very patient and slow and methodical and process driven in every single thing it does, it didn't feel laborious to me. Because it's always beautiful.

[00:36:49] And I found it so relaxing. Even if it's just like the pod slowly getting Frank Poole's body, it just is gorgeous to look at. Did you watch it on HBO Max just the other night? I got a 4K Steelbook. You got the Steelbook, yeah.

[00:37:03] I got a 4K Steelbook, Titans of Coal, UK import. I watched it last night on Homebox Office Maximum and it looked great. It does, I actually peaked on that because I wanted to rewatch a clip. Hey man, it's good on HBO Max. It's truly an immaculate restoration

[00:37:20] without looking artificially cleaned up. 100%. I am similar to Ben in that my dad loved this movie more than almost any movie. So when he showed it to me too young. Not that I had a problem with it, like you, but he clearly was just kind of like,

[00:37:34] you're probably old enough to handle this. He was just desperate to show it to me and I think I made it at seven all the way through. I liked Hal. The Hal story was compelling to me because that's something a kid can get. The robots turned bad.

[00:37:49] They have to get the, and then I think after that my dad was sort of like, okay, the rest is not gonna work for you. Which is weird because there's nothing scary in it. It's just light. Not about scary, I think he just thought

[00:38:00] I would complete his own act. Or just not get it. Seeing in theaters, there was intermission and we walked out and I had to check in with my mom afterwards. I was like, so now the plot starts? The structure of this movie is so strange

[00:38:15] and the placement of the intermission. It's only this two and a half hours, which is long, but usually intermission is like, this is now the third movie we've covered with an intermission this year, right? And the other two are like three hours plus.

[00:38:28] Yeah, it's a short movie for an intermission. Wait, what's the other, Spartacus and what? Sweet Charity has an intermission. Sure does. And so does Barry Lyndon, we're getting to that. Well, that's a long ass movie. Right, but the intermission comes at the moment

[00:38:41] where the plot kicks into gear. Like the whole movie is set up and then at the end of two hours, an hour and a half, the movie says like, and now here's the conflict. Here's the real thing. It's like finally something is.

[00:38:53] It's the best intermission break of all time. Oh, the actual cut is the break. It's Hal's watching them talk. The lip sync. Oh, okay. They have their whole conversation and then they cut to Hal's POV of their lips moving and then it goes to intermission.

[00:39:07] Oh shit, yeah, it's Bowman says. Incredible. In the tune of, I don't think a 9,000 series has ever been dismantled before and I don't know how he'll take it. Cut to Hal's POV and you realize Hal's watching them. Oh shit, and it's like, oh, a story plot.

[00:39:23] There's a concrete. The only little bit of story before that is with the Russians, the Clavius base. He's lying about the, you know. Yeah, and the monolith itself, but it's so abstract. We were just like, I've watched it drive a couple different creatures crazy

[00:39:41] and or destroy them, but like. Right, but you're so overwhelmed by the look. Even today, I mean now you look at it from a retro future point of view, but to see it in 1968, to see the, when he's on the moon base, he's making the video call

[00:39:54] and all that stuff, it's like so overwhelming to look at. You can understand wanting to keep it plot light because it's just all in the imagery and in just the world building, to use that annoying expression. I mean, I remember my mom saying to me

[00:40:09] like when I was like, why is this so fucking slow as a dumb, dumb 12 year old, right? And she was like, you have to understand, people hadn't seen these things on screen or they hadn't seen them done this well or feel this real and tangible.

[00:40:23] So like there was a lot of mileage out of just putting this stuff up that was thrilling to people, right? And also Star Wars hadn't come out. No sci-fi movie moved fast. Right, right. All space was slow basically. You know?

[00:40:37] And even when you watch films that are not hard sci-fi. Like Forbidden Planet or something. Right, they are slower moving movies. Like that was the big, in a way arguably the single most pioneering element of Star Wars was Lucas being like, we can move fucking fast.

[00:40:52] We don't have to, everything in space doesn't have to be sort of floaty, free form silence, whatever. But watching it now, I was sort of like expecting to through the prism go like, I now appreciate, understand why this film is so slow

[00:41:06] because of value it had at the time. I was saying this was to an audience. And now I'm like, no, this is still captivating. Yeah, captivating is a really good way. Viewing it from the mind's eye of what if I was watching this in the 60s?

[00:41:17] These days for me, it's like if a movie looks good and 2001 is like the best looking movie. I'm like, yeah, I'll look at this. Yeah, I'll fucking. Yeah, it's great. I'm not bored. Every shot is gorgeous. And the influence it's had on design over the years

[00:41:30] is still being felt. I mean. Wouldn't it be funny if there was one really bad shot in this movie? That's hilarious. Or there's just like someone with toilet paper on their boots. Yeah, exactly. Or Bowman kind of going like, ooh.

[00:41:40] What one shot in 2001 was done on an iPhone. Can you guess which one? There is one. That's a really good point. There's no clam. There's no wrong note visually. There's absolutely nothing. And famously. He also makes someone walking out of a, like walking through the door.

[00:41:58] You're like, well, this is a stereo. Like, yeah, she's going upside down to deliver the Seabrook Farms pureed spinach. You know, I love that. This movie has like 15 minutes of Skype and it's pretty compelling. I mean, I love that of all the product placement,

[00:42:13] it's like brands that are, you know, IBM and Pan Am, big, big brands. And then Seabrook Farms spinach. Oh my God, yes. I know, I wrote down Howard Johnson. Yeah, Howard Johnson. Howard Johnson, man. It's hot stuff back then. But it is funny, like after this,

[00:42:31] there's a wave of imitators, right? And they like slow it down and they're like really in love with their own effects. And then even post-Star Wars, the post-Star Wars boom of sci-fi movies from the studios bear more resemblance to this than to Star Wars.

[00:42:47] Black Hole, Alien, Star Trek One, you know? But the things even like- 2069, a Sex Odyssey. It actually is very influenced by this film. The things leading up to this, like Silent Running, Capricorn One and all these sorts of films, like they're all slower and like,

[00:43:05] we talked about Black Hole in a recent episode where I'm like, the look of that movie's incredible, the vibes are amazing. I've never been able to watch it without falling asleep. It's very boring. I've never made it to the end. Every time I watch it, I'm like-

[00:43:15] At the end they fall into the black hole, they're kind of like. Feels so incredible, how is this not viewed as a masterpiece? And then 20 minutes later you're like, this is why, because I'm asleep. I'm asleep, I'm dreaming about-

[00:43:23] Black Hole is also one of those things where you're like, the vibes as you say are immaculate and the design is good and then there are the two Disney robots with faces and that's a thing where it's like, that's what I'm saying about,

[00:43:33] like imagine if those guys were in 2001. Yeah, no it's- Just like a floating robot with a face. But then like all these other things, like you know, you love Star Trek The Motion Picture. I do too. You do as well.

[00:43:43] I watched it for the first time for this podcast. I enjoyed it a lot. I recognize it's not for everyone. The slowness of that film feels more self-indulgent than this does and that is 10 years after this, right? Like every other movie that tries to do this afterwards,

[00:43:59] you're like- Can't do it. Can't do it and you're like, this, the image is actually holding you. I love the slowness of Motion Picture. Yeah, but we're not normal. Maybe we're not normal, but I also think it's not that that movie is profoundly slower,

[00:44:13] it's that Kirk and Spock are there and you're kind of like, why aren't Kirk and Spock doing anything? Why are they just sitting and watching this? Stop looking at Beejer. And once again, I like the film as well. All right, all right.

[00:44:24] It's a movie where it's like Robert Wise is just kind of blown away by the effects, right? That's the most expensive movie ever made up until that point in time and he's just like, we fucking paid for this shit.

[00:44:34] We should show as much of it as we can. Whereas 2001, there's this bizarre, the Kubrick control thing where you're like, what is it about every single image in this movie that just kind of has you gripped in an uneasy sort of fascination? What's also interesting, of course,

[00:44:50] is that there is another cut that none of us will see. The debut of the premiere of the film, which was in DC, had 11 and a half minutes more or something that Kubrick cut after the first showing. And there's also a prologue that I believe was shot

[00:45:08] but then thrown away of all the interview stuff. Yeah, they tacked it onto Lord of the Rings actually. It was just that. It's one of the endings. There's a prologue of where Kubrick interviewed, celebrated people in the sciences, including Carl Sagan who actually hated, who disliked the experience.

[00:45:27] He and Kubrick clashed. But what will life be like in 2001? And then these eggheads said, well, in 2001- To try to contextualize the movie is like, this is legit, we talked to real people. Pretty much, yeah. It's like, well, in 2001, we shall all use computer terminals

[00:45:42] and it will be marvelous for education. Geez, light my fire. I think it was even shot in black and white or something. There's of course the great book for anybody who's interested in 2001, it's one of the great making of books is Michael Benson? George Benson?

[00:46:00] No, George Benson's a singer. Michael Benson's book on 2001 is- It's called Space Odyssey. Yeah, it's a phenomenal book. It's also like, it's everything. It's all in there. It's a very definitive, chunky book. It's soup to nuts from the first meeting of Clark and Kubrick to the premiere,

[00:46:19] which Clark didn't really dig the premiere. And there was, Clark and Kubrick have clashed over the years but then both realized that they were good for one another. And of course, Clark wrote three sequels and was involved in 2010 and wrote a really fun book called

[00:46:35] a 2010 Odyssey File about the making of 2010. And what I love about that, because that book came out like 83 or whenever 2010, the year we made contact came out. It includes, Peter Hyams was director of 2010 and it includes his correspondence with Hyams and it was done through electronic mail.

[00:46:56] Oh wow. And it has, and the first one, so the chapter that introduces it is like, first I will explain to you, email. You've heard of mail? This is email. And there's like five pages that are just a chain letter. Forward, forward, forward, forward, forward.

[00:47:12] So it's cool stuff. It's cool stuff. That's wild. Yeah, so what's your, do you think Griffin, will artificial intelligence eventually become sentient? Will it have rights? Do you think a robot or a computer system like HAL can become so intelligent that to deny it rights would be immoral?

[00:47:40] Well Griffin? You're asking a couple different questions here. Yeah. I think we will reach a point where that level of intelligence and independent thought as it were, maybe even a semblance of feelings are achieved and it would be immoral to deny them rights.

[00:48:01] My question is, do we ever grant them rights? Ah. In a time where our government, a large segment of the population still feels obsessed with denying the rights and existence of many types of human beings. I understand what you're saying. I wonder, I wonder.

[00:48:18] But it's like, I mean even just look, the last fucking six months, you watch the arc of these AI art generation bots. It is wild. You watch how quickly they've been iterating and how much it's gone from being this weird thing of like how weird?

[00:48:34] These robots don't understand the prompts we're giving them and they're like pulling weird Google images and making these bizarre nightmare images to now just being like, that looks pretty good. Exactly, yeah. That looks pretty good. It's the ultimate joke of this movie too

[00:48:47] which is just Kubrick recognizing the folly of like you're really gonna create a thing with the sort of intent of it taking care of us and being able to sort of like oversee us at a level of intelligence and expect that it won't eventually realize

[00:49:07] that you are in fact the problem, that you are the bottleneck, that you are the thing that is preventing perfection, that you have assigned it to identify. One of the great questions of 2001 is what does, first of all, does Hal malfunction or is he faking it?

[00:49:22] And if he's faking it, why is he faking it? Because he was maybe programmed to fake it, right? Why would he have been programmed to fake it? We can get into it. I wanna get into it. I wanna open that door. I wanna rotate the pod.

[00:49:34] Let me just leave that door ajar. Okay. Give you a little. Door's open. Let's just roll back slightly on why this movie was even made. Crack open the dossier. Post Doctor Strange love, sci-fi is pretty hot, getting hotter I would say as a genre in general.

[00:49:50] But it's a lot of like Fantastic Voyage-y sort of sci-fi. Yeah, good movie. It is a good movie. Fun movie. And Artie Shaw who's a jazz musician, you love jazz. I love it as much as fish. And a pal of Stan's says, Name of my dead therapist.

[00:50:06] Why don't you read Arthur C. Clarke's books? He's the best one. He's the best sci-fi writer there is. He gives in the book Childhood's End. Kubrick does this kind of classic thing he's done many times and will continue to do many times after here where he's like,

[00:50:18] no one's ever made a good version of this movie. Right, I wanna make the sci-fi one. The one good one. And he reads Childhood's End, he likes it, he's like maybe I'll do this but someone has the rights to do this so he's kind of like eh.

[00:50:31] At some point he sits down with Roger Carus who's at Columbia at that point and he's like, I'm kind of looking for a novelist I could collaborate with on a sci-fi movie and that guy also says, why waste your time? Just work with the best, Arthur C. Clarke.

[00:50:44] Yeah, stop thinking about it. But Kubrick is like, doesn't that guy live in Sri Lanka? Isn't he a wacko? That is the fear with Arthur. Because already then, he's already, like you said, he's already gone. And they start writing letters and as you say Griff,

[00:50:59] his letter is, I have wanted to discuss with you the possibility of doing the proverbial really good science fiction movie. That's the famous line you always hear about his genesis of this movie. Where it's like. What if it was a good one? Right, yeah, it's just. Really good.

[00:51:12] Really good. The proverbial really good science fiction movie. But I think it's the combination of him being like, no one has done the diamond heart sci-fi film. The intelligent sci-fi film done at a level and also executed the effects and the aesthetics at a level.

[00:51:28] He screened every sci-fi movie he could find and there were some that he liked, that he admired. He admired the Czech film Icari XB1, which people have gotta see. It's out, Icari XB1. For a while it was a hard movie to find. Now the DVD's out there.

[00:51:45] I think, I forget which company put it out. But yeah, he never saw a science fiction movie that he thought really clicked. It's the combination of getting right the technology, the resources, the ideas, the versamilitude. He just felt like, yeah, there's a film

[00:52:05] that no one has made or been able to make. Yeah. He likes the short story The Sentinel that Clark wrote. So that's what they're obviously going off of. The book 2001 is written for the movie basically. I did read it. They wrote it simultaneously.

[00:52:22] But it's going off, drafting off of The Sentinel. Well, The Sentinel sort of had the germ of the idea. It's got a monolithic thing. It's got a monolithic thing. I think it was a pyramid in that. So while they're doing pre-production in London,

[00:52:38] building the moon landing and all that, Clark is at the Chelsea Hotel banging away at his keyboard and he was having a whole, his life was an interesting life. And if you read the Benson book, his boyfriend at the time was in Sri Lanka

[00:52:55] making films of like undersea films or whatever, scuba films, and taking all of Arthur C. Clark's cash. So Arthur C. Clark was like a vagabond living at the Chelsea Hotel, writing 2001 at the same time the sets are being built. And they kind of were on the same page,

[00:53:15] but there are some differences. They did disagree on some things. The details are complicated, but it was sort of like, Kubrick saw this was a guy who didn't, had no experience writing in the script format. Kubrick also was kind of agnostic about screenplays,

[00:53:30] where he was just like, the ideas are more important. This format is unimportant. I want to iterate ideas sort of organically until they get to the place I want them to. So he sort of encouraged Clark to write it in novel form, write it as prose.

[00:53:45] And then he was sort of like, I can adapt this into a screenplay as you're writing it. There's sort of questions as to whether Kubrick was responsible for any of the prose in the novel and or if Clark was responsible for any of the actual screenplay,

[00:54:01] but the two of them were being done in tandem. And this was sort of the root of their rift was that the movie was kind of held hostage by the book and vice versa, where like- It's a weird way to do it. Kubrick is sort of taking pieces-

[00:54:15] There's very little, few parallels to the way they wrote. He's taking prose and then going to Trumbull and art directors and people and going like, what can we build around this? And then Clark is saying like, you need to tell me what you're doing on the movie

[00:54:28] because I can't release a book that is so different from the film. So he's waiting to hear back what Kubrick has done so he can rewrite the book. And there was this fight about when the book could be published in relation to the movie,

[00:54:41] because also Clark needed the fucking money. He's also sold this book. Yeah, well it actually worked out. Clark wanted the book to come out first and I think he should be glad that it didn't because the movie of course is very ambiguous

[00:54:58] and everybody's like, what the fuck did I just see? And then the book comes out. And people were like this- And people went and bought the book in droves. It was the screen ran ending explained of its time. Well, that's a little rough,

[00:55:09] but there is some truth to that. I'm being facetious. There are some elements of the movie that can leave you scratching your head that are explained in the book. Yes, the book is a little more straightforward. For example, like the room that they're in.

[00:55:22] It's like a human zoo. Yeah, it's a human zoo. The aliens created it for him thinking that it was supposed to be a hotel room. It actually is supposed to be a hotel room. It's why the ending of AI being considered

[00:55:34] a Spielberg thing has always amused me so much because I'm like, the ending of AI is so similar to the ending of 2001. At the end, it's the far future and aliens or in AI, it's robots are like, it will make you a, come on, this isn't your life.

[00:55:48] Look, nice room for you to be in. It's also the thing I love about both these endings and why I find them so unnerving and upsetting is you have a basically normal looking set that through the context of what you built up in that film feels terrifying.

[00:56:04] Like that room on its own is not really scary in the same way that the AI bedrooms- But there's just something so incongruous about the furniture and the floor and it's so spooky. But also just editing, you're like, we've moved past me feeling comfortable

[00:56:16] seeing a room like this, but now cutting to this set feels terrifying. You know, AI, you're going back to the same sets you've seen the whole movie in the first act, but now it's just like, why is this happening this far in the future?

[00:56:29] You know, it's funny you mention the editing because, and we were talking for a while now about how 2001 is kind of slow, there are editing choices in this film that are just so jarring. And there's a couple of them specifically,

[00:56:42] for example, when they go down on the moon, on Tycho, when they walk down into where the monolith is, it goes handheld. And the movie has been classic Kubrick up to this point. Everything is locked off, square, very symmetrical, you know, hyper stylized.

[00:57:02] And then it's documentary style for like 90 seconds. And then that weird sound happens. It's so freaky. It freaks you the hell out because you're not used to it. There's even lens flare while they're walking down the staircase. It's this wild back pocket thing of Kubrick's past

[00:57:17] as a documentary filmmaker, photojournalist that he'll like whip out as a secret weapon in these very controlled movies. 100%. And it becomes that much more unnerving where you're like, why is the camera doing this? You've established rules and now you're breaking them. Exactly, yeah. And now we're in.

[00:57:33] And then also there's like some dissolves right before the Beyond the Infinite when Floyd is talking and then it dissolves. And there's also another dissolve when he comes back in the ship, he's about to kill Hal and it's a shining shot because you can almost see the ax.

[00:57:50] He's kind of, his face is right in the camera and the shot from below and it's handheld again. And then of course the craziest use of editing is when Hal kills Poole, the cut, cut, cut, cut on the eye or whatever it is that Hal can see.

[00:58:06] Those unusual edits are just like, it just grabs you by the throat. Not to mention, I mean, the bone match cut. Oh yeah, of course. Yeah, the famous old bone match cut. So much less precise than you remember it being. But it's so evocative.

[00:58:21] Well and just the switch in sound and the switch in movement from something uncontrolled, you know, the bone, to this very controlled, and also it's a bone, so Ben's excited. So here's something else that I didn't know until reading the book or reading about it.

[00:58:34] It's been a year to year. I'm wearing a bones hat. You are wearing a bones hat. Maybe you guys put it together, but the cut, for years I thought it was like, the bone is a tool, you throw it up in the air,

[00:58:44] you cut forward in time and it shows spaceships, look at what man has achieved. But specifically those first images you see in space, those are nuclear weapons. I never knew this until, I read about this kind of recently. And apparently if you look really close,

[00:59:00] there are flags on there, there's a Chinese flag, Chinese army flag and stuff. So it's supposed to be like weapons of the past, weapons of the future, and there's supposed to be a ring of nuclear bases pointing their weapons down at Earth. That's what those first shots are

[00:59:15] before you see the Pan Am jet going to the space station. And then at the end when the Star Child comes at the end, you don't see those weapons anymore. And in the book, in the screen rant conclusion, the Star Child disarms Earth.

[00:59:30] They thought of doing that in the movie and they thought it would be too goofy. It is a little goofy. But did you guys catch that those were weapons in orbit? No, I didn't, I never knew that. I watched the movie 25 years later

[00:59:40] is when I found this out. Because it's not mentioned, I don't know. It's hard to know. Because also how would we know the difference between that and spaceships? They all kind of look the same. Exactly, so Kubrick fucked up.

[00:59:49] All right, I want to talk about bones a little bit, but first, okay, he gets whatever, they make this script in this very strange way. They go to MGM, MGM gives them money, $6 million. Hey, that's a decent amount of money to make a movie.

[01:00:01] Absolutely, half the chunk of change. But everyone- It's gonna be called Journey Beyond the Stars. Not a great title. For this film. It's kind of a boring title. It's all right. They landed on a good title, I would say. Wasn't there also how the galaxy was won?

[01:00:14] How the solar system was won. I think that was even earlier. Sort of half joking, yeah. Yeah, when they were trying to figure out what it would be about. Yeah. It was gonna be kind of about this colonization of space or something.

[01:00:24] I was surprised though reading the quotes for how deliberate this movie is that everyone was like, he was just kind of making it up as he went along. As much as part of it is that the book, the source material is being generated in real time

[01:00:37] as they're prepping the movie. Because there's 22 months in total from when he reaches out to Arthur C. Clarke and is like, what if we tried to write something together to the movie coming out? Yeah. And most of that time is production. Yeah. So he's really building it-

[01:00:53] Well, the script's probably what, 10 pages long? On its feet, yeah. Scene one, the sun rises. Scene two, some monkeys bash around. We're moving on. And what's- There's a monolith. I never worked like this before where he'd come in and be like, I don't know, something like this?

[01:01:07] And they're like, what's the scene? What's the deadline? When are we shooting this? And he's like, I don't know. Which is what's so amazing because, and part of what the fascination this film has for me, I mean, now that I'm a little older

[01:01:18] and I've been around the movie biz for a while, I know how the sausage is made. I still believe in my heart of hearts that if I watch 2001 Enough Times, I will come away with some deep, resonant understanding about the universe. Like, I believe the secrets of life

[01:01:36] are locked in this film. I know it sounds real corny and I sound like some of the wackos from Room 237, but if there's ever a movie where I feel like there is the answers to life, the universe, and everything, it's somehow in this film.

[01:01:49] I think this movie is also the reason why Kubrick has that weird mythology, god-like sort of, I don't think people would invest as much into The Shining if this movie didn't exist. 100%. Because it does feel like this is a movie

[01:02:01] made by someone who knows everything and isn't telling us. Exactly. And then the more you read about the production, it was like a little bit of just chaos. It's like one of the fucking modern Mission Impossible movies where McQuarrie's like, I don't know,

[01:02:15] give me four locations and we'll write scenes on the day. 100%, because when they're shooting, Kubrick's like, what if they went to Saturn instead of Jupiter? And they're like, Saturn? What the fuck are you talking about? We're gonna have to paint the rings? What are we gonna do?

[01:02:27] And Kubrick's like, I don't know, give it a shot. And it's a total disaster and they have to switch back to Jupiter and all that. For a guy whose movies are so precise, he was a bit of a mess.

[01:02:37] I mean, originally when they were working on the script, they would work in his apartment in Manhattan and in the Michael Benson book, they talk about how Clark couldn't handle it because his kids were running around. He was a big, loud, gregarious New York Jew.

[01:02:51] People think of Kubrick as being British because he lived in England his whole life, but he talked like this. He was like, I don't know, make it a, give me some Saturn. It's so funny when you watch interviews with him

[01:02:58] and he's like, I don't know what you're talking about. He's a wonderful puzzle and enigma. There's a quote from one of his daughters in the dossier about how he'd always throw these dinner parties for his cast and crew that was like his way

[01:03:13] of understanding how to reach out to people and connect to them, because he was by all accounts not a very conventionally social guy and that he liked being a host and everything, but they weren't these sort of lavish like Wes Anderson eating at the finest restaurant dinner parties.

[01:03:27] His daughter was like, I think my father always had this secret dream of being a short order cook. And you hear about these dinner parties and they sound like the fucking rats working in the kitchen in Muppets Take Manhattan. He liked the chaos of flipping six things over

[01:03:43] and the kids running around and yelling and all that sort of shit and then hosting everyone that way. They also said he would go to sleep at three o'clock in the morning, wake up at three o'clock in the afternoon. Wow. All this sort of meticulous, refined warlock

[01:03:58] sort of shit is just like, yeah it does seem like he was. I thought what you said was wrong. Production kicks off 21 months after, production starts 21 months after he starts working on the script. And it was budgeted for five but it cost 12. So it went way over budget.

[01:04:17] The production was massive. Cameras would be shooting on what's described as a 24 hour shift. So I guess people are coming in and out to operate the cameras. Like I said, there's 200 special effects which is completely unheard of for a movie in 1968.

[01:04:37] So they have to figure out every single step of that in advance but then Kubrick is throwing things at them to change it. It's just what you guys were saying. It's just crazy that this movie which feels so tightly controlled was not. But they're kind of inventing everything

[01:04:53] when they make this movie, right? They're inventing special effects. Certainly in terms of process and everything. I think it's important to remember, like there are shots in this movie that you don't even think about that are just like of screens,

[01:05:04] of just like digital boop boop boop boop boop. Those are not computer generated images. Those are all hand painted or hand created because it didn't exist back then. The technology now, even in Star Trek II, those images are all hand done. What's the movie?

[01:05:21] Is it Coma is the one that has the CGI hand on a screen and that's the first CGI in a movie ever? That sounds right. Coma as the first CGI movie sounds like some trivia fact. Really? The Michael Douglas movie. Ed Catmull scanned his hand

[01:05:32] and made it into a wireframe image and someone bought it for $25,000 and that's the first CGI image. Then Star Wars has the one screen where like General Dedana's showing the wireframe. Right, yeah, yeah. But that's 10 years away being able to even do that.

[01:05:50] As you said, every time there's what looks like a computer generated wireframe image in this movie, it is a painted thing. Yeah, and there are a lot of them. A lot of them. Yeah, it's incredible. It's like traditional animation. Yeah, I mean just think about the first shot

[01:06:04] on the Discovery. It's a pool going sideways, going around the perimeter, the equator of the screen, if you will, taking a jog with the camera locked down. I don't think there'd ever been a shot like that and the reason why it's held for so long

[01:06:21] is because audience members would just be like gasping, like what am I seeing? How are they doing this? I mean it's trite to say it, millions, but like it looks good now. Trite! Trite card. Like there's nothing improvable about it. No, even watching it today,

[01:06:36] I'm like I don't know if there's a movie, a sci-fi movie that looks more real to me than this and I can read about and watch and study all the process things and hear the explanation of how it was done, but when I'm watching it,

[01:06:49] I'm like no, this just feels like it was really shot in space. I understand what the tricks are more so than any other. Right, but it still looks like they were in space. It just looks, well the answer is they went to space. Man, the design aesthetic,

[01:07:01] like the VFX or I guess I'm calling them VFX, they're painted, but whatever, even the font, it still looks so, not even contemporary, ahead of its time. What is the font? If the font was Comic Sans, would this movie not even have a legacy?

[01:07:18] It would take me out of the movie. The font really is, I mean on the zero gravity toilet shot. I think Hal's malfunctioning. Why do you say that? He's speaking in wingdings. That would be good. It's funny that we're talking about this movie. Black square, triangle, bird,

[01:07:32] I don't know, what are some wingding? Airplane. When we talk about hard sci-fi, America was not ready for the zero gravity toilet, but Kubrick gave it to them anyhow. Now here's a question about. That also feels like, that's a little, there's a little sly humor in that.

[01:07:50] Yeah, well wait, for sure. It's really provocative to put a toilet in a movie. If an astronaut goes and talks to a high school, what's the first question? Oh my God, how do you be in space? How do you go to the bathroom in space?

[01:07:59] How do you make? Say, you know, yeah. Yeah, because I want to know, how does it work? It's like a suction device, because you got gravity. Okay, so here, this is part of my thing. Gravity's your issue. In the instructions, right?

[01:08:10] It's like number five, hold on to your nuts. Do you know what I mean? Because like. You're going to be like, yeah, exactly. I mean, you've seen For All Mankind, right? I'm obsessed with For All Mankind. Wonderful show. Good show. I think you'd like it.

[01:08:24] Oh, the show, no, I've not seen the show. The movie's obviously, the movie's good too. Classic documentary is a masterpiece, but and that has a thing, not to spoil, but it's early in For All Mankind. Part of the, you know, the idea is

[01:08:34] what if the Russians won the space race and we stayed in it, right? Or the Russians beat us to the moon and so the space race continued. And one of the early things that happens is they're like, okay, well let's get a woman on the moon.

[01:08:45] Like, you know, we got to, we'll just try and beat them anywhere we can. And they're getting a woman in there into one of the Apollos and then they're like, shit, she's going to have to pee. We didn't think of this. Like, because we haven't invented that yet.

[01:08:58] Like, it's a whole storyline. Cool. Stuff like that happens. Great show. Anyway, zero gravity toilets. Look, a big thing that's interesting about 2001, and I think you'll all agree, is for a movie to have this kind of a budget, you know, Kubrick is a big director.

[01:09:15] It has no stars. No stars. Barely identifiable actors. We could say it has a galaxy of stars. Well, that's true. It's full of stars. But, you know, like, he's not hitching an actor onto this. David and Lisa. Correct. It's sort of an early American indie breakout.

[01:09:33] But it's maybe equivalent to, like, if Christopher Nolan cast the other guy from Primer as Batman. Exactly. Right, right. And obviously this is not an actor's picture. It's not like there are roles for actors that are absolutely outrageously juicy. But you would think, like,

[01:09:54] okay, I'll help this studio out. We'll get a name in as Bowman. Haywood, the sort of early fake-out lead. Haywood Floyd, yeah, the guy who plays Floyd, I don't even know who that is. His name is William Sylvester. Obviously he's best known for his role

[01:10:07] as Dr. Haywood Floyd in 2001. We have to think all three of these guys are like... We have to think Gary Lockwood, though, who plays Bowman. He's very good. No, he plays Poole. He's Poole. He's Poole. Bowman is Keir Dulles. All right. Is Bowman. I apologize.

[01:10:19] Yeah, Gary, well, you like Gary Lockwood because he's in Star Trek. But he has had a great kind of journeyman actor career. They both were good. But actually, you're right. Keir Dulles is really damn good in this. He's phenomenal. His scene work, if you will, with Hal...

[01:10:36] They're both, I think everyone's really good. You can't read what he's thinking. You know, he's like... No. And that scene, really the only real scene in the movie as a traditional acting moment is when Hal is slyly doing the psychological test on him

[01:10:54] and they're playing games a little bit. You can't read his face. And then Hal has his moment of does he have a malfunction? It was just a moment, just a moment. Yeah. Which is so scary. And that's a key thing. Like what really is going on there?

[01:11:11] Keir Dulles, like yeah, breaks down Dave and Lisa which is this small sort of searing relationship trauma. Set in a funny farm, if I may use that expression. Yeah, it was almost like... Is that a politically insensitive term now? Funny farm? I don't know.

[01:11:25] Almost like a mumblecore movie of its time but sort of a post-Cassavetes kind of like, oh this is raw, this is real people communicating with each other kind of thing, tonally. To put him in this is odd. He's mostly a theater actor.

[01:11:37] He does a run of movies after this but then pretty much by the 70s he's like, I don't like movies, I'm going back to theater. And he does 2010. He is in 2010. He'll occasionally pop up in something. But he's basically like, I went back to theater,

[01:11:50] that's what I like. I don't really like film acting. This is such a film acting performance. Yeah, it's true. Like this performance. Well maybe he really got his rocks off here and that was that. It's sort of surprising because it's like,

[01:12:01] not only does he have so little dialogue but it's mostly like close-ups being held for two minutes that are just watching this guy think in stillness. Right. You know? It is like such a sort of technical performance. And as you said, he's mostly acting off of nothing.

[01:12:18] It's bizarre but he's phenomenal in it. I just think, yeah, it's what you said David. You're surprised that they almost didn't make him go like, have George C. Scott play Haywood. Right, can we just get a name there? Even if you want the unknown guy. Right.

[01:12:32] For the fake out lead, the elder statesman at the beginning, get someone who's fucking been nominated for an Oscar. This is a fun little tidbit here. Kubrick would throw a lot of dinners. Obviously this movie's shot in England. Classic Kubrick convincing the studio to let him essentially.

[01:12:47] I've been location scouting and I think the English countryside is the only thing that looks like space. Yeah, right. It's the only thing that looks like the dawn of man. He would have these big dinner parties where he's like, here, Gary Locke would come over

[01:13:00] and there'd be art historians and intellectuals and authors and all that. And right, he did American food that Europeans found astonishing, like hamburgers. I think in the 60s you could still blow someone, blow a French guy's mind with a hamburger. What is this?

[01:13:15] Have you heard of a hamburger? I eat it with my hand. Stanley's over from America. He makes a hamburger. And listen to this. I believe they put a pickle on it. A hamburger sandwich. A nickname for me, I think, later on,

[01:13:26] Christian Kubrick says he was the king of sandwiches. You wanna call yourself the king of sandwiches? I do. Have you heard one of Stanley's sandwiches? He puts a pickle on it. Do you call it a hamburger sandwich? That feels like a Hoffmanism.

[01:13:40] You know, maybe you've overheard me say it because I always call them hamburger sandwiches. I just think that's always funny. Yeah, I always call them. To call it a hamburger sandwich. My wife does too. We call them hamburger sandwiches. Impossible hamburger sandwiches.

[01:13:54] Can I get an impossible hamburger sandwich? Douglas Rain, of course the voice of Hal, probably the most crucial piece of casting in this movie, had apparently done a voice, or had been in a short film called Universe. And I've never seen that, but that was what Kubrick wanted.

[01:14:10] A moving image showed it during some of their- What's it like? It's awesome. I mean, it sounds pretty good. It's shots of like- It's got the universe in it? Awesome, sounds good. It's great footage of like, and the Milky Way spiral. That's my Douglas Rain.

[01:14:22] The Milky Way spiral. I can't do Douglas Rain. But it's about the Milky Way spirals. The Milky Way spiral. Yeah, it's great. I mean, who could- It was Canadian television. You know, my name is David. I have heard this, yeah.

[01:14:33] And so I would get a lot of that. I can't do that for you, Dave. Well, so Howard Stern, if I may bring him up, had once told a story about how he went and saw 2001. Fucking hell, this guy's fucked up.

[01:14:48] And he saw it with his friend Dave. You a fucking freak, Al? And Dave- You got a big cock? Took drugs. Sure. Took hallucinogens. And when the movie starts talking to Dave, my mind is going, Dave, his buddy Dave flipped out and had to leave the theater.

[01:15:08] There's also a story which I, it might be apocryphal, I don't know, but it's sourced on the internet. There was a screening of 2001, a space odyssey. And at the end, somebody took drugs, man. And at the end when it got really heavy, somebody in the audience started screaming

[01:15:24] and he's saying, it's God, it's God, it's God. And ran into the screen. That rules. Broken screen. Wow. That's funny. You can Google that story. It's somewhere out there. The rare reverse sweetums. It's just funny because of course, you think of the like, you know,

[01:15:39] the way they'd market horror movies. So people are fainting. We have a doctor, you know? And then 2001, it's like people are just, it's getting too heady for them. Running into the screen. This G-rated movie is central. Well, you know what's, I mean, this is,

[01:15:51] maybe you were gonna get it, but Kubrick was not into psychedelics. I'll read the quote. I believe that drugs are basically of more use to the audience than to the artist, he says. Re LSD. Because of course, you make a movie like this,

[01:16:04] you are gonna get a lot of like, man, were you so baked when you did this, man? What were you taking when you wrote this, man? I wrote that down. You wrote that down? You said Stanley took acid, question mark? Nope. He claims, well, at least he's,

[01:16:18] he certainly claims not his thing. I don't know if he's saying I never inhaled. I don't know, he couldn't stand to fucking chill out every once in a while. The health thing. Before we, I just think this is interesting.

[01:16:29] I think that the illusion of oneness with the universe and absorption with the significance of every object in your environment and the pervasive aura of peace and contentment is not the ideal state for an artist. So he's almost saying like, I don't wanna chill out, man.

[01:16:45] That's an amazing quote, I've never heard that. The guy gives good quotes. He's sitting down. Yeah, it's a shame he stopped doing interviews. He was not really into the, you know, get, but the marketing department. The way he puts his head is like,

[01:16:56] the way I can see it, my friends who use LSD, they're not transfixed by great art, they're transfixed by like a table leg. You know what I mean? Like it's like, I don't need that in my life. Yeah, I got other things to think about.

[01:17:07] And my shoelace, man. No, but this is a good one. The movie was not a smash hit from day one and then the hippies found it. Right, it ran a long time. And then- It was just like immediately claimed. Yeah, and so the marketing department realized

[01:17:24] that the long hairs were seeing it and there actually was like, there was a special screening at like, you know, the early computer geeks at MIT and at what's called the SAIL on the West Coast. They were getting into it and they were getting high and watching it.

[01:17:40] So one of the- Hell yeah. One of the, I believe it might've been as square a publication as Christian Science Monitor, in their review of the movie, referred to it as the ultimate trip, but didn't mean it in a psychedelic way,

[01:17:53] meant it in like, you know, strap on your space boots, comrades, we're going to take the ultimate trip. And so the marketing department- A fun family thrill ride. Yeah, plucked that line and called it the ultimate trip and then the solarized image of the eyeball and the poster.

[01:18:07] Like made that movie's box office. Yeah. That's so, you know, do you know what he's talking about? They all find it for you. It was obviously the classic poster. You've got the, you know, the space station or whatever, but then there's- There's the eyeball. Oh yeah. Hell yeah.

[01:18:24] So you see that in 1968 at the, you're walking around and you're listening to the, remember the Allman Brothers we talked about earlier? And there's a baby inside the eye. Shoop-ba-doop-ba-doop-boo-ba-doop-ba-doop-boo. The hell thing, which I feel like Nolan is like one of the first people to be like,

[01:18:39] yeah, we should follow this with TARS. But just the fact that he just sounds like a guy, that they don't do anything to make him sound like a rubbit. He's not bleepy or- And also they don't put any effects on him

[01:18:52] to make him sound like it's coming out of a speaker. It's that thing that is so bracing in Interstellar. And it's bracing in this where you're just like, that, no, the voice, there should be a little more distance from this. Obviously Interstellar, which is a supreme masterpiece

[01:19:05] and also contains a sequence where someone goes into a crazy thing and then a bunch of crazy stuff happens. But yeah, TARS is almost like offhand. It's a guy in the room. At least Hal has this sort of whispered, hushed kind of monotone-

[01:19:19] The voice of a documentary narrator. Yeah, for Canada, flat voice. And that's sort of the authority of the Interstellar. TARS sounds like he's straight, he's like, yeah, I don't know, man. Like he sort of sounds like that sometimes. Get out of here, I'm TARS.

[01:19:31] Yeah, TARS is almost too wacky. No, I know, he's not too wacky. He's a good boy. TARS hasn't worked in a while, it's weird. Well, because TARS came in and market corrected him. I know. Hal the computer is an icon

[01:19:44] that even if you've never seen the movie, you know it. It's like Buster Keaton's face, you know? It's like famous. And almost the Hal voice, like the idea of Hal being parodied. Yeah, you could put him in a Pizza Hut commercial tomorrow, everyone would get it.

[01:19:56] You'd get it even if you haven't seen the movie. There's definitely been a million of those fucking things. Macintosh computers? Anyway, the point I'm making is the first shot of Hal is out of context. It's just like, you know, Poole or Bowman is doing their exercises

[01:20:11] and then they cut to just a closeup of Hal. And if it's the first time you're watching the movie and you don't know about Hal. He hasn't been established. Hasn't been established. It's like a rainbow of colors. You're like, what the F is this?

[01:20:23] Like, what is this thing? And you don't know until a good 15 minutes later when the BBC interview is happening and they do the backstory. So I would love to have known what a person watching this for the first time would think.

[01:20:34] Why am I seeing a rainbow of colors right now? You know, it's so jarring. Yeah, yeah. Also, if you're seeing this in the 60s where this is not even like really established as a sci-fi trope, you know? Right, yeah. Like, I took my sister to see The Matrix

[01:20:49] when it was sort of playing in theaters again before Resurrections came out and she had not seen it. She's a youngin who was born in 1998. So she's pretty much only lived in a post-Matrix world. It's not like Matrix created the idea of us living in a simulation,

[01:21:04] but it certainly popularized it. Pushed it into the mainstream. And I was just sort of trying to explain to her like when that drops in this movie, people lost their fucking minds. Whereas she turned to me and she was like,

[01:21:15] oh, so it's one of these whole worlds of simulation movies. And I was like, it's not one of those. It's the one where you're just like sort of the idea of the evil AI is a thing that is so omnipresent now. But at this point in time probably

[01:21:30] when they cut to the screen, you're like, what are you, you're telling me that voice comes from that? This thing is thinking? What if Hal had a big boxing glove near his processing core and he could punch you away?

[01:21:41] Because eventually he's easy to get once they get in there. He should have all the Simpsons, Stephen Hawking, like little rockets, boxing gloves, propellers. Or if he had a little drone helper that could be like its physical presence. Yeah, or what the great gazoo could swoop in maybe.

[01:21:58] This movie is weirdly lacking gazoo. Yeah, this movie doesn't have any gazoo figures. Well, we haven't really talked about the opening sequence of the film, which is set during the dawn of man. This is another stunning thing about this movie.

[01:22:09] And I feel like whenever Alex Ross Perry is on this show, and will be on again soon, winky winky, I feel like he'll spot movies where he's just like, this movie has like five scenes, like five things happen.

[01:22:21] But this is truly a movie where like five things happen. Yeah, it's a very light on stuff. Yeah, there's like a lot of buildup and like deliberation for each sequence, but it's like basically five acts and each one is based around like one thing happening.

[01:22:35] So the opening act is the Moon Watchers, right? The landing of the monolith, this generation of apes, the discovery of the bone, the first tools, and sort of the first act of cruelty. The first act of, they take a tool and the first thing they do with it

[01:22:55] is show dominance over another group. Don't they whack something, you know, whack some bones first? They hit the beasts, they start killing beasts. Yeah, you don't see it, but he has the thought of it and then you see them eating raw warthog or whatever.

[01:23:09] So it's implied they use it for food. Technology immediately leads to violence. Well, it leads to sustenance. I mean, warthogs, you know, a Cro-Mag's gotta eat. Tree of Life, as you've called it, that was a movie that's very much in conversation with this film.

[01:23:22] And when that film does its 2001 sequence where you have the two raptors, Malick always described that as like the first act of kindness or the first act of mercy. Like he's almost doing the exact opposite where that sequence is like for no good reason

[01:23:36] a raptor chooses not to kill the other raptor when it could. So I always think of this movie as like this is like the first act. It's a little bit brutal. I mean, it's a little bit like this is, I mean, look, I mean, mankind,

[01:23:49] we still gotta get our act together, man. Here's this new tool, what damage can I do? Smile on your brother. It's revenge. It is revenge though because they, the other group is the first aggressor. They chase the apes out from the watering hole

[01:24:04] and then when they figure out to have this tool they get their revenge. I love how unreal these apes look. They look great but they don't look great. They're funny, they jump around. But I love that about them. I think if technology was better,

[01:24:18] if they looked more realistic, I don't know if the sequence would have as much power. I agree, they need to be kind of alien. They need to not be exactly one thing or the other. And when you see the jaguar with its rods and cones

[01:24:32] reflecting, I mean, that's a real jaguar. I know, and you're like, wait, that's a guy in a suit. They just threw a jaguar at him? Can I? Stanley's like, here's my jaguar, man. I want to, this is one of my favorite little observations about 2001 A Space Odyssey,

[01:24:47] motion picture that came out in 1968, Stanley Kubrick. Ben just alluded to the moment where the act of violence happens. It happens at a watering hole. Literally, it's a pond with pond scum and muddy water but it's a good old-fashioned watering hole

[01:25:03] and it's two tribes going head to head and one shows dominance over the other. Movie set in 2001, of course shot during the Cold War, 1968. And the next scene in the movie in which characters interact in a substantial manner

[01:25:18] is on the space station in between the Earth and the Moon. Dr. Haywood Floyd checks in, shows his passport, goes to make a phone call, talks to the little girl played by Christiane Kubrick, I think it was. And then he sits down with the Russians.

[01:25:35] And where are they? They're around a circle and they're taking, have drinks. They're at a watering hole. Oh, fuck man. Shoop, ba-doop-ba-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop, past that pond. Where are the Ullman brothers being here all of a sudden? 2001, they're trying to dock. Shoop, ba-doop-ba-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop-doop. On a groovy ship.

[01:25:55] So think about it. It's going like this. You know, we're apes, man, showing dominance, the Russians and Americans, Cold War. I kind of was thinking how the spacesuits make people look like monkeys. Just a little bit, sure. So I had a similar kind of like, oh man.

[01:26:14] And if you're on the moon surface, you're kind of walking funny. Just the cut from the bone to the space web. Oh, but that's too obvious. Well yeah, but this whole- I like my watering hole analogy much better. The Kubrick thing of we evolved to a point

[01:26:27] where we think we've evolved. Exactly. But it's the same shit over and over again, just dressed up in different ways, different technology surrounding us. Same shit, better food. Raw warthog or the spinach. We have the same instincts that are driving everything.

[01:26:39] You guys want to know the plot of the third 2001 book because it's so cool. 2061, correct? Odyssey 3? I think it's 2061. 2010, the book is similar to what you see in the movie. It's all about nukes. Yeah, more about nukes, Cold War. The movie's good.

[01:26:55] We're going to talk about the movie. I haven't seen it yet. We were watching it for Patreon. In the book, there's extra shit. David Bowman's ghost goes to visit his parents in like Idaho or something. It's amazing. Because Bowman and Poole are both in it, right?

[01:27:10] In the movie? No, just Bowman. Bowman is in it. I don't know about... I think Lockwood's in the movie as well. Maybe he is. I don't know. I have seen it. It's just Keir Dullea. So Bowman is in the movie, the spirit of him,

[01:27:21] and in the book, he's like hanging out with his parents. It's hilarious. So 2061, Floyd is back, and basically, the basic premise is there, and this is kind of a sci-fi trope, particularly with Clark, you know, the big dumb object. A Rendezvous with Rama,

[01:27:39] which is one of Arthur C. Clarke's best books, is a big thing in the sky, let's go up and look at it and find out what it is. That's the whole book. Fincher tried to make for like 20 years. Yeah. It was his dream project.

[01:27:50] And Morgan Freeman also had the rights for a long time. Right, Freeman had the rights, got Fincher involved. So you mentioned before this movie has like five scenes. Rendezvous with Rama has one scene. Let's go up, see the thing, find out what it is.

[01:28:02] The end, but it's wonderful. 2061 is another big dumb object, and they go up there, and then there's a discovery on Ganymede, which is one of the moons of Saturn or Jupiter? Jupiter. It's not Ben's favorite, but you know. You're a Europa guy. Yeah, I loved Europa.

[01:28:20] We don't like Io? Io's pretty good. Io's okay. Io's kind of the teen moon, because it's kind of zit-faced. It's full of volcanoes. Good on the bear. Well, for some reason, even though I've read this book a long time ago, I remember it being Ganymede.

[01:28:34] They go to Ganymede, because there's some shit going on, and to cut to the chase, even though it's the year 2061, South Africa is still apartheid South Africa. Why is that relevant? I'll tell you in a minute. The De Beers Company is still around,

[01:28:47] and they're like the most important company on Earth, and they discover that the monolith or something or whatever on Ganymede is, they discover a deposit of diamonds. Cool. So you think, who gives a shit? Well, 2001 is about heavy, important stuff. Why are we here in the universe?

[01:29:04] What is the nature of man? What is the nature of God? What is the nature of evolution? Is this a fucking Diamond Heist book? It's a diamond story, and you go to 2061. Ben is rubbing his fingers together, thinking of that sweet, sweet moolah. So here's what happens.

[01:29:17] They go to 2061. Take a hammer to the bottom. The universe, baby. Is they discover a cache of diamonds, and they have to keep it secret, but then it leaks, and the diamond market collapses. I'm telling you what actually happens in the book.

[01:29:30] And the world is thrown into chaos, and that's what the book is about. It's the most baffling thing. What's 3001 about? 3001, I'm fully convinced, was just a book that Clark wrote, and then realized he could sell for more if he slapped 3001 off of it.

[01:29:48] It's just set in the far future, and what it is is Poole, who we haven't seen in a while, who dies early on, his essence was somehow saved, and he's back to life, and it's just, the story is Poole is somehow resurrected,

[01:30:05] and he's learning how to live in the year 3001, and the whole gimmick is they screw in, in his brain, the surgery scene is kind of gross, they screw in what's basically, it's like Ready Player One. They screw in virtual reality. They're gunters. They are gunters, like me.

[01:30:21] So 3001, The Final Odyssey, is just a story about what would life be like with really good VR? That's it. Wow. But toward the end of his life, Clark was not above making a buck where he could. He did a lot of sequels,

[01:30:36] with other, written by Arthur C. Clark, big letters and Joe Schmo in small letters. He did a lot of that. Well, Joe Schmo is a very celebrated sci-fi writer. This is tangential, but I'll say it very quickly. I took the trip yesterday, as I think you know.

[01:30:50] You went to Paris? I went to Paris with Mrs. Harris. Mrs. Harris. Well, in the States here, we call it Mrs. Harris. But the romp of the year. Loved it, my favorite film of 2022. But I was texting with our good friend Bobby Finger

[01:31:07] about it, because there are four books in that series. And I'm hoping they adapt the other ones with Leslie Manville. Well, yeah, since Mrs. Harris made it to Paris, made $800 million worldwide. Is that true? No. Eight domestic, which is pretty solid. The third Mrs. Harris book,

[01:31:24] it just feels like what you're talking about with the 2001 sequels. The third one is Mrs. Harris Goes to Parliament. She sure does. The second one's New York. We're in it. The fourth one's Moscow. She tries to solve international relations there. But Mrs. Harris Goes to Parliament,

[01:31:41] if I can just read this quickly. Mrs. Harris finds that being nice, kind, and hopeful does not always lead to people being nice and kind in return. There is rather less comedy in this third book. Damn, Parliament really breaks her.

[01:31:52] I just like this idea that they did this swerve where it's like, Mrs. Harris warms everyone she meets. The third book, it's just like, there's a limit to your niceness, lady. But yeah, the opening section, super striking. But an example of this movie just like,

[01:32:05] kind of for how slow it is, going by faster than you expect. First live dialogue in this movie is 25 minutes in. It's when Floyd gets out of the- The elevator. Right. And it's such a weird line. She says, main level please, thank you sir. Yeah.

[01:32:21] Or something like, that's the first line? That's the first thing said in the movie. There's 15 straight minutes of the moon watchers, then like 10 minutes of the ships getting to understand space, the aesthetic of space before you get into characters and dialogue.

[01:32:36] All of that feels like it's pretty propulsive, weirdly for how glacial and deliberately paced it is. It is propulsive, I think, especially to people, maybe if you've seen it already because the images are so striking and you're waiting to see, oh, I wanna see the pen flow.

[01:32:52] I know where this is going. I wanna see the Pan Am logo. I wanna see her feet, not because I'm a foot fetishist, I swear, but you wanna see her feet as it's clinging to the carpet and all that. I mean, there's a lot of cool stuff.

[01:33:03] I like the way that you can tell she has to get her feet just right for it to work because you can see she's kind of like, ooh, yeah. Because they have two different techniques for all of these sets where it's like,

[01:33:15] they'll build one version of the set where the set moves and the camera stays still and then one version where the set stays still and the camera moves. And the camera can go 360, yeah, yeah, yeah. There's a lot of weird perspectives. The moon bust, for example,

[01:33:27] in some shots, the moon bust is zooming and then in other shots, it's very, very still because of the angle and where it's supposed to be. And it's very disorienting. It's also, I mean, the modern principle, modern, I'd say, is in the last 50 years

[01:33:42] really post this movie of special effects is that you wanna sort of make the audience think they know how you did the thing and then you do something that breaks the rules where you're like, fuck, now it feels like a magic trick, right? So there's like, I mean,

[01:33:57] infamous like perfect subtle execution of it is like all the Lieutenant Dan leg stuff in Forrest Gump where you're like, well, they CGI'd this guy's legs out but then they'll do things like he'll swing around underneath a table and you're like, well, how are the real guy's legs

[01:34:11] not hitting the legs of the table or things like that? And the pen shot is just like, even for such an early point, they're doing that where you're like, okay, cool shot but you're not gonna be able to touch the pen. And then she grabs the pen.

[01:34:24] You know, it's like either this is on wires or it's optically printed in some way but there's no way she's gonna be able to interact with it in the shot or whatever. It's like every shot in this movie is just sort of,

[01:34:36] it still feels impossible they pulled it off. Here's, so Doug Trumbull, obviously the famous VFX artist behind this movie and behind many a great space movie recently died, died this year in fact. Yes, yes. He says, you know, one thing with the slowness

[01:34:49] is it's just it was necessitated by the visual effects, if they moved anything too fast, the stars would start to blur and all that. So that's why Stanley Kubrick starts falling in love with the blue Danube because he's like everything's moving at Walt's pace. Right?

[01:35:05] Like everything's so slow. That's really smart. And he starts playing them, the blue Danube waltz over and over again and starts recutting the sequence to it because he's like, this is gonna work perfect. A lot of people including film critics thought he had lost his marbles.

[01:35:20] Goes Jan Harlan, but as Kubrick puts it, I wanted something that would express the beauty and the grace that space travel would have, especially when it reached the routine level where there's no danger involved. And then he didn't want it to sound futury.

[01:35:37] He didn't want like music that's like, meow. Yeah, like Forbidden Planet had the theremins and he. Exactly. You know, there was of course, there was a score commissioned. Alex North, there's a whole score. And it's out there, you can hear it. It's good.

[01:35:51] And the movie would be a disaster with it. The score itself is good. Yeah, but obviously the movie is 50% the classical music. Weirdly, the classical music gives the film a sort of lightness of touch and an odd humor. Yes, yes, it's funny. The juxtaposition. I mean.

[01:36:09] Well, and there's sadness too. I mean, look, there aren't that many musical cues. I mean, there's also Zarathustra. Which Fish does a cover of. They do the cover of the version by Amir Deodato that was in Being There, with your cellos. Right, right, right. The one that goes,

[01:36:24] ba-ba-bam-bam. Yeah, the ba-ba-bam-bam. So that started as a goo. You know the ba-ba-bam-bam. All right, well, you know what? Let's talk about this. There's like the disco version. Let's talk about this very quickly. So. Dun-dun-dun. You've never heard that? Do you know who Amir Deodato is?

[01:36:39] I believe he's Brazilian. He's also, I wanna say, is it Justin Bieber's wife's grandfather? Really? I couldn't tell. Is it Justin Bieber's wife, Stephen Baldwin's daughter? Yeah, I think so. And it's still Amir Deodato. So Stephen Baldwin's wife. All right, all right, move on.

[01:36:57] I'm not looking all that up, I can't be bothered. So it's this funky disco version. I can't delve into the Bieber family right now. I just love how long this lasted though, where even in the 70s you have the fucking disco Star Wars.

[01:37:09] Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'll have that up. So this, so being there, Hal Ashby's final film. One of my favorite movies of all time. I mean, yeah, the audience knows this movie. Sellers, of course, has a tremendous Kubrick connection. And when he goes in the outside world

[01:37:26] and they need something big, and they were gonna play the also Sprach Zarathustra, but they did the funky version instead. So there's a band, it's so good. Ben's kinda into it. Yeah. Ben's really getting into it. And it's like a nine minute thing. Yeah, it's so good.

[01:37:42] Now prior to this though, prior to this, Elvis loved 2001. Now I'm just imagining Elvis singing it. It's so crazy. Well, Elvis. They go to space. There's monkeys and then they're in space. No, Elvis. No, no, no. Here's a little tune in a movie called 2001.

[01:38:01] First of all, Elvis had great taste. Yes he did. He had great taste in movies. Sandwiches. He loved Monty Python. Yeah. He loved Monty Python. Those guys are so funny, man. Yeah, he loved the Bishop. I'm a bit of a British comedian there. So Elvis.

[01:38:17] What is this, the Spanish Inquisition? Almost immediately after the movie took the music. That's unrelated. The opening overture to also Sprach Zarathustra and used it in his concerts. Yeah, cool. This is. That's when his concerts were at their most maximalist.

[01:38:33] In the late 60s, the Aloha concert from Hawaii, the 72 MSG concerts. All of his live shows from that era opened with the band doing the 2001 theme and then. The thing, if you see an orchestra do that, do also Sprach Zarathustra.

[01:38:49] It is crazy that these guys with these instruments just sitting here can make a noise that loud and like insane. Like if you're just sitting in a concert hall. It is one of those things where you're like, pre-movies and fucking, when it was like the 1880s,

[01:39:04] I know that's Strauss, it's from like the 19th century maybe. But still just imagine you're like, I'm gonna go sit in a room and this music is gonna be so crazy. No dude, I think about that all the time. Like a timpani.

[01:39:14] Just hearing someone smash a fucking timpani with a full orchestra is nothing better. I'm gonna say a real dumb Griffin thing. Here we go boy. Who was Zarathustra? No, no, no. Who is that guy? This is one of those pieces where when I hear it,

[01:39:28] it almost sounds like it is an instrument. You know what I'm saying? I'm not sure if it's a guitar. I don't know. I don't know if it is an instrument. You know what I'm saying? I think it speaks to like- You would think it's Elvis going, duh.

[01:39:37] That's what you think it is. No, but the loudness of the thing, even when like the drum is so pronounced, I'm just like that's, well these are just sounds. Is it just like a synthesizer? No, not even a synthesizer. I'm like, did you just-

[01:39:48] Because it's so iconic or? Yeah. It's like these noises are just being pulled from like the heavens. Wow. I think you could fuck with timpani man. The forcefulness of it. Well, you know, I really think you would like timpani. Yeah, of course. All right, let's get back to 2001.

[01:40:00] Now I feel like we are truly on track. Heywood, right? And this is the sequence that's really sort of showing off. Here's how space works, right? We're going to start to see the threat of this thing, right? Okay, they've discovered this thing. And the monolith on the moon.

[01:40:14] Yes, absolutely. He gives the speech in that very bright- Clavius base. Right, this guy's coming as like second wave follow up. Yeah, important guy. But a lot of this is like showing how space travel works, showing the weird commercialization of space, the sort of space airport.

[01:40:29] We still get snacks. Yeah, it's still nice. It's still like air travel in the 60s or whatever. It's also wild that all of these scenes were like he's going through like immigration, whatever, where the whole thing is you're just seeing white rooms.

[01:40:41] Well, there's a line about that, right? Where like the initial thought was colors. Stanley was like, I don't know, could we do like IBM blue? And then they were like, no, just white and black, white and black. That's the most striking thing you could possibly use.

[01:40:54] In most of these rooms, you're not seeing windows. There's no look to space in most of them. And yet every time he's doing some boring sort of bureaucratic step or like getting his Howard Johnson's or whatever, I'm like, it really feels like they're in space. It's so compelling.

[01:41:08] Something about all of it, I'm just like, I believe that this is what. And the only movie that I feel like comes close to this is cribbing from it so much where like the way Ad Astra depicts space travel is the one other film where I'm like,

[01:41:22] this feels realistic. This feels like how space travel commonly plays. It has the same jokes where there's like a subway on the moon. They're just riffing on the same things. The joke where he's like, can I get a travel pillow? And they're like, yeah, that's $800.

[01:41:36] How quickly it will just become so banal. Have you seen Ad Astra? Yeah. Kind of annoying. He's not like thrilled to be on the moon in this space. We never see the moon base really. We see the very, it's probably the slowest sequence

[01:41:52] in the whole movie of the descent into. I remember that being where my dad was like, don't worry. This is going to pick up again. It does get a little old. And it's on TV. It's not as exciting in the theater, but it slowly gets in.

[01:42:02] And then you cut to the conference room. And that's just a square. That's just a box with very bright walls, like insanely bright walls. And you have the photographer and then he gives the bureaucratic speech about the cover story. And that's it.

[01:42:15] And also the level of energy with which people are greeting this story, this discovery, the potential of what it implies, belies, is pretty similar to how everyone reacted to fucking three, four years ago, The New York Times being like, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[01:42:34] No, the military's been tracking UFOs forever. We have a bunch of footage. There are a bunch of encounters. And it was one of those things where I have a friend who had a friend inside The New York Times who was like,

[01:42:43] I can't tell you what it is, but there's a story coming that's going to change the world forever. And it came out and it got less coverage than some dumb think piece on the latest Marvel movie or whatever. It's still one of those things.

[01:42:57] The marketplace of ideas is important, and we have to respect it. I agree. Are you talking about the Naval videos? Navy is like, these are UFOs. I don't know. Do that what you will. There have been 15 follow-up stories on this where they're just like, yes, of course,

[01:43:10] we do have a program where we track all these incidents that we can't explain. And here's all the footage and photos. And here are interviews with like, we've now declassified all this stuff. Weather balloons. And it's like, it's what it is in this movie.

[01:43:21] But every other movie like this makes a goal like, this is going to change the ferment of the world forever. And so people were like, we'll see. I don't know. Maybe. Right. Because I think people are waiting for like, come on,

[01:43:32] I want a phone call from an alien, maybe. I want like a, we come in peace. Exactly. Bring the phone. People are saying this. Also, if an alien showed up, I feel like they would have to really get over, like people would be like, that's not real.

[01:43:47] That's the world we live in now. People are like, I don't believe that. That is, yeah, with the QAnon and all. I mean, today. This is what I'm saying. People are more, would rather spin out on the possibilities of Q than like government declassified photos and footage.

[01:44:04] People are just like, oh, well. 2001 A Space Odyssey. God damn it. 2001 A Space Odyssey. It is called 2001 now. One thing that is eliminated from the movie, but was originally going to be, and it was all this voiceover that Arthur C. Clarke did, that was like narrating the movie.

[01:44:21] Obviously, another thing is Alex North's score. Poor Alex North. He worked very hard and was like, I don't know how I'm going to do this. And at the end of the day, Stanley Kubrick didn't like it. Yeah. Can I say something about the music? Please.

[01:44:34] Because we're on the topic of the music. Obviously, we got into also Sprach Zarathustra. There's Blue Danube is funny in Counterpoint, this beautiful waltz with spaceships. At the time, I'm sure it was even more revolutionary. It's been parodied now a number of times.

[01:44:48] The other musical cues, there's the scary stuff. Leggeti is his name, right? Georgi Leggeti. And from what I remember from Michael Benson's book, Kubrick didn't know what he wanted to use. This is the music that shows up a couple of times after the intermission, the shark.

[01:45:06] You hear that spooky ass music. And from what I remember in Benson's book, Kubrick's wife had the BBC radio on. And it was their new music hour. And she heard this scary music. And she's like, Stanley, Stanley. I don't know what she sounded like. Come into the kitchen.

[01:45:23] She sounded like that. Put down your hamburger sandwich and run in. And he heard it and was like, wow, this is really cool. And then foolishly waited a week and then called BBC. And was like, what did you play last week? And they're like, what?

[01:45:36] And it was not an easy thing to go through the trials. It wasn't like now where you can go online and see what they played at noon. Couldn't Shazam it. No, he couldn't Shazam it. So it was like, but he eventually found it and sourced it.

[01:45:48] Then the other thing, and it's my favorite piece of music in the film, is Aram Kachutarian's sad when you first see Bowman and Pool and they're exercising. And when he's on the bed having the conversation with his parents, that kind of melancholy music. Yes.

[01:46:08] This is the saddest music in the world. I one time did a social experiment. I used to work in an office, if you can imagine this. 15 years ago. I haven't worked in an office in 15 years because society won't allow that. And when I-

[01:46:24] Like the time we brought you into the Audioboom offices and you said the C word really loudly on one. Oh shit, did I do that? And David had to say, this is a professional workplace. Oh yeah, I was doing a bit on Raging Bull.

[01:46:37] He was relaying a story. I was relaying a story from Raging Bull. So, and by the way, I don't cuss. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't cuss. A clean man. Aram Kachutarian, who by the way, also composed music that's very uplifting.

[01:46:53] He wrote the theme song to comedy. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba da da da da da da da da. That's him? The funniest music of all time. He invented music. He invented the funniest theme songs.

[01:47:03] You can see them running around. The Clown Bart Simpson, they're all running around. Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba da da da da da da da da da. Meow. That's Aram Kachutarian. Wow. And he also wrote the- Da da da da.

[01:47:15] So I did a social experiment. When I worked at a company, I had speakers on my DOS computer and I played on a loop this selection. Just like in the background. I did it all day and everybody was fucking bummed out that day.

[01:47:32] You were also farting like crazy. Yeah, well. I mean, that's the day in the year why. Yeah. Ripping them in the morning. No, but you're saying right. It sets the mood. It sets the mood. And that was like the one time I experimented.

[01:47:46] I did a Stanley Milgram style experiment on my coworkers. But I love that piece. I'm being sincere. I think it's such a gorgeous melody. It so quickly and efficiently establishes the loneliness of these guys. It's so sad. It is sad and creepy. And he's playing chess.

[01:48:05] And by the way, Hal cheats at chess. Yeah. Google the chess scene. When Hal says, I've mated you in three moves and Bowman's like, oh yeah. He doesn't describe his moves properly. Yeah, and that's not a mistake. There's a whole thread. There's no way that's a mistake

[01:48:21] because Stanley Kubrick is like a chess nerd. So some theorize this is- It's like the first indication that something is up. Some theorize that Hal is constantly making sure he has dominance over the humans. And we've been talking about dominance of the water cooler,

[01:48:36] dominance in space with the Russians. Hal is the next tribe. He's the tribe of artificial intelligence. He wants to maintain dominance over the humans. That's not what I think it is. Well, this is one theory. What do you think it is?

[01:48:48] I think it's like he can't hold two primary things in his head at once. So he's been told not to tell them about his primary programming. And he's been told to help them and he can't deal with it. And it's just slowly fucking him up. Interesting.

[01:49:06] Because he has this secret thing that he's not allowed to tell them. And it's like, you know, he's human. So they were like, psst, don't tell them. And he's just churning away there going nuts. This is the more mainstream interpretation. And I think you're probably right.

[01:49:23] The government knows how to lie to people. But Hal is an innocent computer. He's not built in he doesn't understand why the government would want to lie to people. I mean he's not malicious. He's clinical about all of this. Which is scary. To be clear.

[01:49:40] Ironically enough, this is the more humane interpretation of Hal. Rather than like he's a robot and robots want to take over the world or whatever. He's kind of full of himself though. Do you think Hal's a little highfalutin?

[01:49:54] The whole time watching I was like, I wanted to be like to Hal. I'm like what about Hal 1000 through 8000 my dude. You should watch Hal's TikToks where he's like, first of all, and this just has to be said, I'm a very talented robot.

[01:50:06] It's just a fact at this point. You have to accept it. I've been a talented robot my entire life. I like this. This is, I googled. By the way, Hal 1 to 8000. Have you ever used preparation A through G on your hemorrhoids? Oh boy.

[01:50:21] I just think this is so elegantly done. Where it's like the Heywood Floyd thing. It's like here's a guy in a mission. We're watching the process of space travel. We're watching him on a job. He's trying to figure this out right.

[01:50:33] Then it ends in this sort of like bombastic like fucking monolith is breaking all their brains. You know, white noise sort of thing. And then you cut to the ship and it's like the mundanity of their routines, their exercise, their meals. The trays being too hot.

[01:50:50] I love that you see like four different like he has to shake off his hands kind of thing. Cure delay a sketching his fucking sleeping mummies team, which is like so creepy. And then you wait like 10 plus minutes before they watch the BBC thing.

[01:51:06] And it's such a good way to do this sort of exposition dump that this movie's been avoiding for most of its running time. Because like a you're spending so much time in the mundanity, the loneliness, the boredom of their routine first.

[01:51:20] And secondly, it truly plays unlike a lot of these movies where you do the the news piece right. The package news piece to explain everything. Yeah.

[01:51:30] In this it actually works as sort of character thing because you buy the energy of we should see how this piece came out. Right. You know, watching it is sort of like I want to make sure we came off OK.

[01:51:42] Even though they're not saying that they're not overplaying it. It's like as they eat their peas. And it's just sort of like I guess we should watch this and see how it made us look right. Yeah. And so you're watching it through their eyes, which is funny.

[01:51:53] But you're also like, OK, now the movie is giving me the things I need. They don't comment. We don't even see their faces. It's kind of shot from behind. It's like you're seeing the tops of their heads as they eat.

[01:52:02] And of course, they're watching it on ostensibly iPads. Yeah. Part of the routine is also like what else they have to watch, like video messages. Yeah. The stuff from their parents and getting sent honeymooners probably, you know.

[01:52:16] Obviously, there's the more sort of simple reading is that Hal does make a mistake in that he's like, hey, go fix that thing. And they're like, there's something wrong with that thing. And and then at that point, Hal is in trouble because they're like, is how broken?

[01:52:30] Let's turn it off. And how's like, you can't turn me off, bitch. I'm alive. I'm how? Yeah. I'm too off. And here's how. Yeah. Like, it's just pure self-defense. Yes. Yes. But I just like that idea that he's slowly been degrading. Yeah.

[01:52:48] Quietly kind of behind the scenes and things like him cheating at chess or whatever. The moment where him being like, hey, go fix that antenna. And they're like, what? The thing where he says just a moment is so eerie because his dialogue is so smooth.

[01:53:01] And even when Bowman says, you're doing your psych evaluations. He goes, of course I am like it's so eerie. And then he goes just a moment, just a moment.

[01:53:12] And you could tell that he had that Kubrick recorded Douglas Raine saying just a moment once and they spliced it and picked it up. Right. Put it next to the same line to make it sound exactly the same.

[01:53:24] He's not saying just a moment in the like just a moment processing processing. It's once again. Air roar. Right.

[01:53:31] The weird familiarity of Hal is that like he sounds like your grandfather being like you have to let me finish reading this chapter of the book before you bother me with something. But it's the closest he sounds to a sci-fi robot. Just a moment.

[01:53:43] You know, it's like that kind of like. But because it's repeated, he does have that, you know, lost in space warning warning. Yes. You know, it's a little bit. It's just a hint of that. And that lets you see, oh shit, Hal is not a person.

[01:53:55] He and for him to need a second. Think about the zillions of computations he must have just had to do to figure out all the permutations of how this is going to go. And he's like, no, I'm going to kill them this way is.

[01:54:06] Oh my God, it's so freaky. It's good shit. The fact that you the pod bay doors thing happens multiple times before it's going to be an actual point of conflict. Right. So you understand what should happen. You understand the term.

[01:54:17] You understand like the keywords they're supposed to trigger actions, whatever. But also them having the conversation in the pod. Yeah. Where it's like, we got to get away from how. Yes. Which suggests that they know that how can't hear that. Absolutely.

[01:54:30] And they're like, how turn it around, turn it around. And then they're like, see, he's not working. Right. He's nobody versus how playing kind of dumb. Right. They're like, can he hear us? Maybe he can't hear us from in here.

[01:54:43] And it's like, no, how wants to read their lips. He knows he can't hear them. He won't let them turn it around together. You know what I love about the rotating pod is the moment when pool is about to get killed. It's another one of these comedy shots.

[01:54:58] It's almost like a Michael Myers shot. He's in the background, putting with the satellite dish or whatever it is. And the pot is this way. And then it turns to face the camera. So it's like it's a Michael Myers shot.

[01:55:11] It's so great when he's in the foreground, we can see it happening. But he's floating the background and then it turns around to kill him. I mean, also the cut to the intermission. It's like a great laugh moment in a way. It is, but it's also very chilling.

[01:55:28] Terrifying. Right. Because when is Asimov's Laws of Robotics or something? That's the 50s. Yeah. Because I feel like with TARS, for example, in Interstellar, they'll just sort of talk in front of him of like, should we just send TARS into the fucking black hole?

[01:55:44] TARS is just a guy. And TARS is like, hey man, that's cool. I'll do that. That's fine. But it's funny that they can't in front of Hal be like, should we turn Hal off? What's up with Hal? They know he's touchy. If that makes sense. He's omnipresent.

[01:55:59] He exists in different forms all over. Yeah, he's not that one circle. No. Then he's all over the place. Then in that turning moment when they cut and you see, oh, there's a Hal eyeball on the pod. There's like a Hal in every room.

[01:56:13] Here's the thing about it. It should feel, I guess this is the thing about 2001. It should feel hacky now. Especially when we've seen everyone rip it off, parody it or both. And like, you know, Hal, it's very basic in a way.

[01:56:27] It's like, oh, the omnipresent robot and he's so calm and he turns out to be a psycho. He's not, but whatever. However you want to describe it. Doesn't feel hacky. It feels so original to watch every part of 2001 today. Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. It's pretty cool.

[01:56:41] It's pretty fucking cool. I've seen it in a theater like four times in my life. I always have a good time. Yeah, this incredible intermission cut. Love it. I feel like a few movies cut intermission at like the moment of peak tension.

[01:56:57] I feel like a lot of movies will cut at like, right, there's a release or there's like the looming threat. I see what's about to hit us. We're about to jump in forward of time, you know, ahead of time.

[01:57:06] I feel like Lawrence of Arabia has a good cut to intermission. Yes. But it's sort of like there's a release moment. Yeah, he just did the thing and he's walking out of the building and then he cuts intermission. Something like RRR is like here's the next level.

[01:57:18] The stakes are heightened or whatever. But this is like you cut at the moment where the threat is really crystallized and identified. Like at the moment of peak sort of tension in a weird way.

[01:57:30] I think if you're seeing this movie in a theater and there's an actual intermission, you're walking out to the lobby. It's more unsettling because you're just like get on with it. Don't make me fucking walk out now and have to sit with this.

[01:57:42] What's also funny is if you watch it now on home video or on Homebox Office Maximum, there's this sound effect that stays during the blackness for a few minutes. The sound effect of the sound of space, the sound of the spaceship, ambient sound, which is creepy as hell.

[01:58:02] And then we come back from this and it's like this is the sort of plottiest section of the movie, which is like murder of. Yeah, it's but but fairly brief.

[01:58:12] But yeah, it's you know, it's really and it's plotty and yet it's only one character to if you count Hal. But Hal's not moving. Yeah, I like when David goes to get pool and cradle him. It's like a pieta. Right.

[01:58:27] So it's very, you know, there's there's as I mentioned earlier, a lot of Web 1.0 websites talking about the influence of and you can find images of Christ being held by by Mary juxtaposed with the shot of the pod and the spaceman.

[01:58:45] I mean, the death of Hal is very even. I remember even as a kid being very moved by it. It's very like melancholy. It's very sad. And when he starts singing the song, it's it's spooky. I'm afraid, Dave. Yeah, no, it's heavy shit. My mind is going. Yeah.

[01:59:03] I think it's also just incredible how like that is basically how you would like design a Mayframe or like a server. Like the way that that's laid out is like it's the same like principles of like of the technology that we have today. Yeah.

[01:59:25] I love just watching him unscrew. Yes. And just like again, how like technology is still at its roots, just screws and wires. Like I think we've really forgotten that, I think in general, just because things have become so designed and streamlined for us. Wireless interfacing on your phones.

[01:59:48] But like there's still every time you do something on your phone, there's still a computer somewhere with the data plugged into something. Yeah. You know, it's funny.

[01:59:57] There's a line when they're talking about disassembling how and they say something like we need to disassemble X, Y and Z, but we need to maintain its rudimentary functions.

[02:00:09] And I remember one time feeling like they need to bring him back to the to the to like the dawn of man. Like what those first apes scenes are like rudimentary functions. I want to eat.

[02:00:22] I want to show dominance and I want to then that's it, you know, and then maybe have a little ape child. And then you evolve through humanity. You go to the next stage, which is potentially artificial intelligence. And then it's like we got to stop.

[02:00:37] We got to bring him back. I mean, you know, this is like one of those heavy conversations you have when you've seen the movie 16 times. But, you know, that's that's something that I remember being really turned on by. After he kills Hal. Oh, and he does kill him.

[02:00:49] He does murder. Hal found dead in a ditch. You know, he gets that video of Floyd being like, OK, hi, here's the secret message. Like only Hal knows this, but you're here to investigate this like mysterious intelligence signal. Last lines in the movie. Yeah.

[02:01:03] Last line was like it remains a mystery. Yeah. First line is here you are, sir. Main level, please. And remains a mystery. Basically, the first 25 minutes are silent and the last 25 minutes are silent. Yeah. And then like two and a half hours. My God, it's full of stars.

[02:01:18] That's from the book. He doesn't say that in the movie. That's from the book. And then it's in the 2010s and 2010. Also, there is the what's the line he has? There is no reason to continue this conversation any further. Goodbye. Oh, yeah.

[02:01:35] When Hal gives his kiss off to Bowman. Yes. This conversation can serve no purpose anymore. Goodbye. Right. That's film spotting uses that at the end of every episode. And so it is one of those things where I've listened to so many episodes of that,

[02:01:49] that when he says it, I do the fucking DiCaprio point. That's awesome. And yeah, so. Oh, I had a question. What's up? About the reveal of the plan that they're investigating this signal that the monolith sent from the moon over to Jupiter. But the whole crew is frozen.

[02:02:11] So if they see an alien ship or whatever, it's just two guys. And how? What are they going to do about it? Do you know what I mean? Like, if they are sent to investigate what could potentially be a threat, why would they freeze the crew?

[02:02:27] The crew is there to colonize, I guess, Jupiter or whatever. I think the crew is there to like, do part of the investigation. Yeah, that's what I thought. If this hadn't all gone awry, that was my. Yeah, like there's xenobiologists.

[02:02:39] They never say what they are, but I always interpret it as like Bowman and Poole, they run the ship. They're Kirk and Scotty. Someone's got to stay awake in order to make sure nothing goes wrong. Yeah. Like Bowman isn't the one who is supposed to be doing this

[02:02:56] or certainly not doing it alone. Yeah. It just doesn't seem like there's weapons. You know, it seems like they're going in peace a little bit. Yeah, they're going to check it out. They're taking a gander. And they're sort of throwing. They're so far out in space, though.

[02:03:08] That's why to me I'm just like they're like, they just seem so helpless. But it's sort of they're just throwing people at the problem. They're trying to figure out what the fuck is going on while keeping the sort of buzz to a minimum.

[02:03:21] I mean, talk about why this ending is so unnerving when you're a child. I used to really freak out thinking about space being infinite as a child. Yeah. It was one of those things that would just break my brain. Sure.

[02:03:33] The idea where it's like, wait, there's just like vast, endless. What do you mean? And the only thing kind of scarier than that, than the idea of like you could just float in space forever and never reach any endpoint is the idea that there is an endpoint

[02:03:49] and that endpoint is small. Right, a little room. You know? But you know, you just touched on something really relevant. So there's a quote, a very famous quote that I'm going to read to you. And it goes like this. Two possibilities exist.

[02:04:04] Either we are alone in the universe or we are not. Both are equally terrifying. Yeah. And the person who gave that quote was Arthur C. Clarke. Pretty good. So I feel like you guys. JJ pulled that up for the dossier and Kubrick was like,

[02:04:18] that was the thing that really hit me. That was sort of the main like, I don't believe in God necessarily in a concrete way. But I'm making a movie about the concept of God because both possibilities are scary. The philosophical push and pull of that.

[02:04:32] If we assume that God could exist in some abstract form beyond our comprehension, both possibilities are equally terrifying. Which is like. A religious person would say both possibilities are wonderful and exuberant. I think another equally understandable reaction is like, holy shit, what the hell?

[02:04:52] Yes, no, it's equally terrifying to imagine. Every day you wake up and you're still around. A meaningless accident. And the only thing scarier than that is the notion that this was planned. Well, designed consciously by something.

[02:05:05] If God does exist, I think that I wouldn't say he was evil, but you could say he was an underachiever. That's another lie. And look, if God does exist, I can't wait to meet her. And I'm holding for applause.

[02:05:18] I just think it's interesting that he goes through the stargates and he sees all the colors and then it's the cigarette smoking aliens from Men in Black who are like, hey, we've created everything! They were kind of the original Wattos, I realized. They were!

[02:05:31] They were a few years earlier than Wattos. Two years, they had two years on Wattos. Does the stargate sequence go on too long? I mean, I just love it. The only thing about the stargate sequence is that there's that bit where there's some sort of globey things.

[02:05:42] The diamonds! Those are super highways. I think they're cool. They're the one thing that feels like a little kind of like dorky and 60s-y. It's a little screensaver. When they just do this sort of inverted color waves and whatever. Yeah, yeah, yeah, even that's cool. That's cool.

[02:05:58] Yeah, the diamonds are the one thing. It's a little Tron. It's a little Tron. I love Tron, but it does date the movie to the moment a little bit more. This is another thing where if you'd asked me from my memory

[02:06:09] seeing this movie as a kid, I'd be like, well, the stargate sequence lasts for 30 straight minutes. Like as a child, I was like, this is half an hour of lights and sounds and colors. Where it's like 10, 12 minutes. It's shorter than the creation sequence in Tree of Life.

[02:06:26] Is it? I believe so. I would have said it went on too long, and then watching it this time, I found it was actually pretty breezy. I feel like once you are aware that it's, I mean now everybody knows the ending of 2001 is a bunch of

[02:06:40] wacky shit on screen for a while. Once you settle in, it's pretty cool. When I was 12, I didn't know that. I didn't know it was ever going to end. I was like, am I going to fucking watch this for an hour?

[02:06:50] So do they pull him through a wormhole? That I believe is the case. They drop him through a wormhole, and then that moment, the shot of the diamonds, those are intersections. This is from my memory of the book, which I read a long time ago.

[02:07:04] But that's like, take an exit on the turnpike, and then you go through another wormhole, and then you appear in this place. And then at the end, the star child or the moon watcher, whatever the hell they want to call them, they send it back to Earth.

[02:07:18] And whether that's Bowman reincarnated or not, this becomes open to interpretation. When I was a kid, my mother, I was trying to calm me down. As I mentioned, I had a bit of a nervous breakdown. My mother was like, hey, it's just a baby being born.

[02:07:30] It was reincarnated. And this was a thing for me because at the time, I was eight years old. I was kind of obsessed with the concept of reincarnation. And when I was eight, I was very worried that I was going to become reincarnated in my next life.

[02:07:42] And I didn't want to be a blade of grass because I didn't want people stepping on me all the time. And this was a very, very big concern for me. I thought you were going to say you didn't want to be a giant space fetus.

[02:07:56] Who the fuck are you going to talk to? I mean, in retrospect, there were a lot of things I probably didn't want to be. But I was fixated on the blade of grass because I think that's part of the Hindu thing. And you always say, we're all connected.

[02:08:10] The blade of grass is always invoked. Right, the blade of grass is a thing. I think I may have heard the phrase blade of grass and it stuck in my head. And when the concept of reincarnation, I was like, fuck, blade of grass, that's my number.

[02:08:22] I'm like, oh man, stuck on the lawn. Everything's happening up there. Yeah, what a bummer. It's me and the ants. Occasionally Rick Moranis' children. I mean, just like nothing going on. So this really worried me. And you're eight years old, you don't want to really,

[02:08:39] you know, you trust your parents. I had very caring and loving parents. Like, what's wrong? Tell me what's wrong. And then finally you're crying in bed, you're eight years old. Why are you upset? I'm going to be a blade of grass and my parents are weirdo kids.

[02:08:54] What are they, a loser? What did we raise? My father wants to smack me around and act like a man, like the godfather. But no, caring and loving parents with an insane child. And I think my parents who were, you know, didn't want to negate

[02:09:10] beliefs of the Eastern origin were like, well, I don't think you're going to be a blade of grass. I mean, I don't know, but I don't think so. So you really shouldn't worry about that and instead worry about your asthma or whatever else is bothering you today.

[02:09:24] I think if we can take in a couple of things that I think make this ending so upsetting and unnerving. One, it's like this idea that as you said, they're like, look, see, we built a normal, comfortable room for you, a hotel room to your specifications.

[02:09:41] It's just what you want. It's like a wide angle, deep focus kind of thing. Bright and blue. Right, but there are no windows. Everything feels a little too fluorescent. Even the styles that are being referenced don't really match? No, no. It both looks like... I wouldn't stay there.

[02:10:02] Right, like a Parisian hotel standing from the 1600s and it looks like a holiday inn or whatever. Donald Trump's bedroom. Yeah, no, I'd give it three stars on Yelp. It's the device of Bowman seeing something, right? The sort of Kuleshov effect thing. Transference of point of view.

[02:10:23] He sees the thing, you cut back, you cut back again, the first thing is gone. You've jumped 20 years. I think it's one of those powerful applications of the edit I have ever seen. The cut. Where it's like you're doing so much. You're changing point of view,

[02:10:39] you're changing consciousness, you're changing time, you're changing the way you lay his face. He's so good in these close-ups, right? Seeing him observe something, that anticipatory dread of like, do I want them to cut to what he's looking at so I can cut the tension

[02:10:56] or do I not want to see it? Do you not want to even see it? Is it scarier to not see it? Because there's no grounding. You as an audience member, you're like, I'm so lost and floating and it's frightening because it's like, well, he can't go back.

[02:11:11] It's so abstract at first. It takes a moment to identify, that's him. That's the same guy. And by the time you can confirm it, you are now that guy. Stuck. The previous guy is gone. He's in this dude now. The moment you recognize the pattern

[02:11:29] and go like, oh fuck, this is going to keep on going. Where does this go? It's wild. I think it's cool. But it spooked me when I was a kid. I didn't know what it was. It was like a plate or whatever. I just looked up the murals

[02:11:47] that are in the room. They are so chilling. And it's not a detail that I feel like you could really see at home on a TV. I've never noticed that a theater screening, but looking at this article here on Popular Mechanics, it is really disconcerting

[02:12:07] in a way where it's supposed to look like Renaissance paintings, and again, I think it's very similar to the furniture and the room's design. But something for people to look up at home. Have either of you guys read the Jack Kirby Marvel 2001 series?

[02:12:26] Oh, you know, I haven't read it, but I know what's around here. It's cool that it exists. Yeah, and I think Fourth World essentially comes out of it. Obviously he moves from Marvel to DC, but by all accounts, he's able to embellish.

[02:12:41] Yeah, didn't he do a whole series? He did a whole series. The first three issues are the movie and then he went bananas with it. Does Rom Space Knight come out of that? No, it's Machine Man. Machine Man, thank you. Not to be nerdy, but yes.

[02:12:57] Rom Space Knight was a Hasbro creation that he retired from. There's a Marvel character that says And my fantasy baseball team is called DeGrom the Space Knight. I'm not joking. And then he goes over to DC being like I think I can create a whole mythology here.

[02:13:13] I don't know how readable it is though. Is it one of those things that's stuck in I don't know. Legal gray? I would imagine so because there was one time when I went to go find it and it was difficult to find

[02:13:27] and I did find, I went on like Pirate Bay or something and I downloaded PDFs and I forgot about it until this conversation. Has ever existed in trades? I don't think it's on the Marvel apps or anything. I think you can buy them on eBay

[02:13:39] and go to Pirate Bay. I just think it's interesting that this feels like such an untouchable movie and yet Arthur C. Clarke made three sequels. There's a sequel movie? They made one of those sequels as a movie that people were like, well obviously

[02:13:54] it doesn't touch 2001 but it's not embarrassing. Three out of four. And then Jack Kirby did all these comics about it. It's not that untouchable. It's like Jaws too. People talk about one day they're going to remake Jaws like heaven for Finn. Jaws 3D for Christ's sake.

[02:14:09] Jaws 4, The Revenge, this time it's personal. I mean Jaws has been tinkered with. They used to franchise out these classics but it just, no one would, it wouldn't stick to the legacy of the original film in a way. Alice doesn't live here anymore, the movie. Alice the sitcom.

[02:14:28] Very different properties. It was a commercial success but initially not a critical hit. New York's critics were confounded and bored. It premiered at the Capitol Lewis Theater on Broadway and apparently 240 people walked out. Which is a lot. And Stanley Kubrick's reaction was misery.

[02:14:48] He was like, I fucked it up, this is no good. Then he cut 12 minutes or something. And then as it starts to commercially come out it's one of those movies where it's like people are lining up around the block. He wins the Oscar for special effects.

[02:15:04] The Oscar's weirdly given to Kubrick and not to Trumbull. It's the only Oscar Kubrick ever wins. It's incredibly rude to Trumbull. It's fine because obviously Kubrick had a major role overseeing the visual effects but it's bizarre. But they essentially give him the Oscar

[02:15:17] because they're like, well everyone was working for you. It was your vision. Yeah even in Benson's book which is very pro-Kubrick they paint this chapter as a little bit of a dick move on his part. It's simultaneously weird that this is his only Oscar

[02:15:29] and that Trumbull doesn't get a statue. Well even Trumbull was just like, he was part of a team. He was one of the main guys but he wasn't the solo guy. It's just Phil but he's the guy who comes off of this with being the guru.

[02:15:42] He was the guru and certainly they had three different set designers. One of the production designers left midway but a lot of his work is still in there. You also had the very young Andrew Birkin was very involved as a jack of all trades helper on production.

[02:15:56] There's a whole thing in Benson's book about how he went to Africa to shoot the footage for two things, for the Dawn of Man sequence and also you mentioned earlier those solarized images in the Dawn of Man. He attached a camera to the bottom of a helicopter

[02:16:09] and there was a plane crash or something like this. All kinds of weird stories, how they moved a tree, some kind of fancy tree. They moved it around South Africa. Slip screen photography I think is the name of that technique that he uses for the, yeah.

[02:16:23] For the Stargate scene. Trumbull kind of invented that and Kubrick found Trumbull I believe because he had done stuff with him at the World's Fair. That makes sense. Is that correct? Was that the connection? He had seen something for the Futurama exhibit

[02:16:40] or something and said, that's my guy and then he made Brainstorm which is a great movie. Brainstorm is a very cool movie. It's just interesting that this sort of high art super intellectual experimental movie was savaged by the New York literati.

[02:16:55] Renata Adler was the film critic for the Times of the John Simon, Judith Kreis, Andrew Sarris. And then when it starts to expand more regular America is like, we dig this. Yeah, bring it around. Maybe it was our first Kubrick episode.

[02:17:11] We talked about how 2001 is most people's first Kubrick. Most people are shown up by their parents at a young age like we talked about and then someone on the Reddit was like, Griffin and David showing their coastal elite to everyone watches 2001 when they're in the desert

[02:17:25] and then like 20 people responded and they're like, I grew up in a trailer park. My dad was like an auto mechanic. He didn't care about movies at all. He showed me 2001 when I was nine. There might be a generational thing where now that we're aging out of parents

[02:17:39] who grew up with this movie and perhaps future generations, people younger than us aren't being shown this film at a young age. But it was this thing that was like a very populist sort of like just an important totemic thing for the film.

[02:17:55] It was like a thing you need to witness at some point. It was like a ritual of growing up. My mother has no interest in sci-fi which is ironic because so much of my career has been about Star Trek. She made fun of Star Drek my whole life.

[02:18:08] But she... Well, that's rude. Star Trek. Yeah, I know. But when the video boxed it, she was like, oh, of course I've seen this. It was a movie you had to see. It was the number one at the box office that year, I believe. Space Odyssey? Let's see.

[02:18:27] But it's in that Wizard of Oz canon. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's a big milestone. The second most successful film of 1968 behind Funny Girl. Wow. Well, Barbara, I mean, for sure. Of the other big movies that year, The Odd Couple. Good movie. Bullet. He drives.

[02:18:48] Oliver. Gotta pick a pocket. Not a very good movie. It was a box office game. Weird that this movie wasn't nominated for Best Picture, Best Director. It's true. Very rude in my opinion. The box office game. This movie comes out in April 20... 20, Jesus. April 1968. Opens number four.

[02:19:09] Pretty good. But then just runs for a long, long time. Number one at the box office is a generationally important film. It's been number one for weeks and weeks and it's going to keep being number one. It's a huge movie. The Graduate? Holdover from 67. Which came out Christmas 67,

[02:19:31] so it's been about four months, but it's just been number one for months. Do you like The Graduate? You know, it's one of those movies I have always respected more than I've liked. I'm the exact same way with it. It's never been a movie for me.

[02:19:45] And I like it. I was obsessed with Rushmore and everyone was like, oh, it's okay. I get it. It's very good. And then every five, eight years, I'm like, I should give that another swing and see if it finally really connects with me.

[02:20:03] And I always just respect it, understand its importance. It doesn't grab me viscerally in the way 2001 does. I think the first two thirds of The Graduate are A plus, and then the final third does kind of, the air gets out of the balloon a little bit.

[02:20:19] I agree, but then the ending is also a little bit different. Number two at the box office is one of your favorites. It's one of my favorite films? Science fiction film of 1968. The original Planet of the Apes? Planet of the Apes. How long has that been out?

[02:20:37] Ten weeks. Big hit. Big hit. Kind of the first modern franchise has always been my argument. And very different from 2001, but it's a big sci-fi year. People's cultural memory or imprint of Planet of the Apes is very colored by the sequels. And people forget how talky and slow

[02:20:59] the first movie is in particular, where it takes like 45 minutes to see an ape, and then it's a series of conversations and a twist ending. Yeah, but what's her name? Kim Hunter? No, what's her name? I forget her name. The actress. Nova? What's her name again? I forgot.

[02:21:23] Number three at the box office is Western starring Bert Lancaster and Ossie Davis. Huh? Right? Yeah. Also, Teli Savalas and Shelley Winters. Good cast. Directed by Sidney Pollack. What is this movie? Anyone know it? I've never seen it, but I don't know if I've heard of it.

[02:21:49] It's called The Scalp Hunters. I've never seen that movie. Ben was sitting up. No, I have not. Number four is 2001 A Space Odyssey. Number five is a comedy that wouldn't fly today starring a Kubrick collaborator. It's a Peter Sellers movie called The Party. It's called The Party!

[02:22:13] Blake Edwards is the party. The party is intense, man. The party is intense. Hrundivi Bakshi. Do I want to know why it wouldn't fly? Peter Sellers in brown face doing an Indian accent. Is the party done with good intentions? I don't know.

[02:22:33] I remember seeing it as a kid and a parent showed it to me, not my mom, a different parent. It was like, this movie is racist. I don't know. Peter Sellers is funny. You watch it because it's set at a party

[02:22:47] and it's just him getting into various little... He's always causing trouble by mistake. ...comedic construction in it. It's all set in one house and it's him just making mistakes. People don't want to totally throw it out because it's not just like, oh, here's Mickey Rooney in the bathtub.

[02:23:04] There's things worth studying in this movie. It is funny. Mr. Bean is very obviously inspired by Peter Sellers in general, but that character that he's playing. And it's obviously also, well, Clouseau, he's doing French. Here he's doing Indian. It's the 60s, right? Is he actually in Brownface? Yes.

[02:23:25] Probably if that movie he played a French butler or a British butler and it was the exact same film, it would be considered one of the 10 canonical comedies. Right. It's Blake Edwards too. And it was a huge hit. Some other movies in the top 10. Gone with the Wind.

[02:23:45] Heard of it? Talk about canceled. Go enjoy it. Has it really been reissued? No, 1968. It was every five years until the early 90s. It would be complicated to reissue it now. It'll happen sometime probably for the 100th anniversary, which is like not actually that long.

[02:24:05] It's a real conversation. We're not going to get into a conversation. There's also The Fox with Sandy Dennis. Not after The Fox with Peter Sellers. Based on D.H. Lawrence. No, not that. There's Guest Who's Coming to Dinner, which is a, he's putting, trying to guess who?

[02:24:23] He's trying to come up with a guess. Here's what I'm trying to do. David's flipping up the... Because I'm doing the board game. It's Henry. Yeah, Henry. Guest Who's Coming to Dinner, this is a boring movie. I rewatched it sometime in the last five years.

[02:24:41] It's got its moments where like, you know, an actor, especially what's her, you know, Bea Richards, where you have to go like, imagine when it came out. You really have to put on the prism of the time. It's also the Spencer Tracy thing of like he's dying.

[02:25:01] And so you are watching this guy sort of like summon his last ounce of strength. Right. I think that's the movie. Clooney is like so obsessed with Spencer Tracy and talks about that's the movie where you literally see him mid-take check where his mark is.

[02:25:15] And he was just like, he was an actor of such conviction and naturalism that you even respect that as a move of honesty. Where he like takes a step, starts talking, looks down, adjusts to the mark, keeps talking. Wow. Camelot, the adaptation of the musical

[02:25:37] by Lerner and Loewe with Richard Harris and a movie called The Secret War of Henry Frigg starring Paul Newman, which is like a military drama. I've never seen it. Who directed that? Jack Smite. Oh, Jack Smite. Who made Rabbit Run and some stuff. Can I just say quickly,

[02:25:57] merchandise spotlight, Kubrick was always really protective of not letting people merchandise his movies and now in the last five years it's really opened up. Company Super 7 I like a lot has made a series of figures that are first American toys based on 2001. I ordered the Moonwatcher

[02:26:15] that comes with the monolith and I'm going to tax write off as a business. I was waiting to order it until we got to the episode. Good job, buddy. Wait, can I, how, I suppose I mean. I'll send you the links. They're really good.

[02:26:31] No, no, I'm wondering if I were to mention it on the air and I were to buy it, would it be a tax write off for me? Sure, I'm going to pay you for the episode. Well, I mean, you bought me a pastry.

[02:26:41] I did. I bought you a Panda Bar. So that was goods and services for my time. Absolutely. I didn't know this. It's happened in the time since the last time you were on. It started right about then. I would have pushed a bit on much sooner

[02:26:55] if I'd known this. Every week you'd be like knocking on the door. Can I do the, I don't fucking know. What do you got coming up next week? First of all, I insist that this part do not be edited. No, this is in. Are you fucking kidding me?

[02:27:11] This is staying in. We're going to triple it. You know how much they're complaining right now about the fact that we're recording? I'm going to have you go in the bathroom and take a shit and we'll record it. Don't you think for the Eyes Wide Shut episode

[02:27:25] it's going to be six hours long? Let's just let it run for another three hours. We were talking a lot on this program today. By the way, I do have to catch a four o'clock. Three thousand years of longing. We were talking on the program today.

[02:27:37] About 2001 and how it's about the bending of space and time and evolution and jumps in time. So we recognize that fourth dimensional travel is a possibility. Can I invoice you for my previous? Yeah, sure. Why not? Fine. Okay, but that money goes towards ordering the fucking action figures.

[02:27:57] I love Super 7. They're great. They're good. They did Close. I love them. They should sponsor the show. Everyone's got to stop. It's over. I've got to go see the George Miller movie. Talking about time travel, you'll have already heard me do the three thousand years of longing episode

[02:28:15] at this point. I'm going back. That happened this week. The Artemis Project. I've been reading all this stuff about it. What's kind of depressing and very on the money is that what I'm seeing is we're going to get a base on the moon

[02:28:33] and then we're going to figure out how we can start to harness minerals and then basically figure out how to continue to go further from there. I also think this is the opportunity to mention two things with specific dates on them. I'm doing it very quickly.

[02:28:49] I have to go see a movie. October 21st on Patreon, 2010, the year we made Contact. I just want to give the date for when it's happening because we've mucked around our schedule a little bit to make it fit. I do think this is the moment

[02:29:03] we should announce the 2022 Talking the Walk. Our main franchise of talking famous cinematic walks with JD Amato. On December 11th, we're talking the moonwalk. We're going to discuss with JD Amato and how it could or could not have been faked by Stanley Kubrick.

[02:29:23] But we're going to talk on a technological level the reasons why. Sure. We'll talk about something. So you're walking and podcasting at the same time? Yeah. Where are you going to walk? On the floor. You know what you can do, Ben? You can actually point a fucking camera

[02:29:40] at the moon. There's flags on it. They're just still there. I'm glad you're being here. I'm glad. Unfortunately, I'm probably not going to have a number two in Ben's toilet. It's sad. Because it's just, you know, you can't control your bowels. You can't. You can't to some extent.

[02:30:03] Dave Anglin can. I can't force it out when it's not ready. But I don't want to go out on that note. I want to say a few things. It's always a pleasure to be on your show. Pleasure is all ours. I'm hoping that you will not be requesting

[02:30:17] W9 information from me because I'm not filing this on my taxes. Great. And... Round of applause. No, I mean, 2001 A Space Odyssey. I hope people who haven't watched it in a long time watch it again. Have you avoided watching it because it feels like some,

[02:30:38] dare I say it, monolithic thing? Yeah. Some stodgy sort of piece of history. It's a little slow at home. You can watch it on your laptop. Do it up. Dim the lights. Put down your phone. If you're going to watch it, HBO Max's print is pretty good.

[02:30:58] Sit on the couch and really focus and you're going to dig it. If you can catch it in a theater, all the better. Oh, 100%. Listen, not all of our listeners are in New York City. No, most of them are not. Thank you all for listening.

[02:31:16] Thank you to Alex Barron for our editing. JJ Birch for our research slash the Kubricktionary. Leigh Montgomery, the Great American Idol for our theme song, Joe Bowen, Pat Rounds for our artwork. You can go to BlankCheckPod.com for some links to some real nerdy shit, including our Patreon,

[02:31:34] which will feature the upcoming teased Kubrick tie-in episodes. Tune in next week for A Clockwork Orange with Alex Ross Perry, a very short and concise episode. Yeah. Anyway, the next one's also too long? Yeah. Is this episode longer than 2001 The Moving? Probably.

[02:31:54] Yeah, I think we beat it by a couple minutes. And as always, precomp.