Michael Benson > Quotes

“Murderers with severe personality disorders, police had learned, sometimes could fool a lie detector because they lacked shame and guilt, and didn’t feel the normal stress when lying.”
― Michael Benson, Watch Mommy Die

“2001’s production notes contain a number of startlingly prescient glimpses of the world we live in today. As of mid-1965, approximately the same time that the US Department of Defense was conceiving of the internet’s direct predecessor, ARPANET (Advanced Research Projects Agency Network), Kubrick’s intrepid band of futurists had seemingly already visualized important aspects of the new technology’s implications. One document sent from Tony Masters to Roger Caras on June 29 listed matter-of-factly—under a letterhead replete with the roaring MGM lion—nine props that he asked Caras to help him with. Number one was “2001 newspaper to be read on some kind of television screen. Should be designed television screen shape; i.e., wider than it is high.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Vanderbilt University scientists had discovered chemically testable differences between psychopaths and others. One was the variance in levels of dopamine, a naturally produced chemical that contributed to a person’s motivation and pleasure. Those scientists concluded that the elevated level of dopamine was not an additional symptom to the personality abnormalities already known, but rather responsible for the personality changes.”
― Michael Benson, Watch Mommy Die

“In a 1972 story titled “The Big Space Fuck,” Kurt Vonnegut names his spaceship with “eight hundred pounds of freeze-dried jizzum in its nose” the Arthur C. Clarke, “in honor of a famous space pioneer.” Its mission is to impregnate the Andromeda Galaxy.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Throughout, Kubrick and Clarke remained locked in dialogue. One strategy they’d agreed on in advance was that their story’s metaphysical and even mystical elements had to be earned through absolute scientific-technical realism. 2001’s space shuttles, orbiting stations, lunar bases, and Jupiter missions were thoroughly grounded in actual research and rigorously informed extrapolation, much of it provided by leading American companies then also busy providing technologies and expertise to the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, or NASA.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Make no mistake. The gangsters in this book are the good guys.”
― Michael Benson, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America

“Seventeen aliens—featureless black pyramids—riding in an open car down Fifth Avenue, surrounded by Irish cops.” Although the form of what would eventually become 2001’s monolith hadn’t yet been established—and wouldn’t for more than a year after much shape-shifting—its color (black) and quality (featureless) had already emerged.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“The Nazis couldn’t figure out how they knew when and where. The answer was: the cops. The Nazis always called the Newark cops to ask for additional security when they were getting together, and the Newark cops told Longie Zwillman, who told Nat Arno.”
― Michael Benson, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America

“Kubrick told his visitors that, in his view, there were three factors to consider in every film: Was it interesting? Was it believable? And, was it beautiful or aesthetically superior? At least two of the three had to be in every shot of the film. He”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“The Jewish mob has done the world a hell of a lot of good. It was instrumental in the creation of Israel. If there’d been a Jewish mob in Germany in 1923 during the Beer Hall Putsch, “They’d’ve shot Hitler, and history would have been a hell of a lot different.”
― Michael Benson, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America

“In this, he was fueled by a diet of liver paté on crackers, an artery-clogging repast sometimes served by a questionable new interest of his: an Irish merchant seaman with a room down the hall named Peter Arthurs.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Is he on drugs?” he demanded about the actor in question. “Yes,” Caras said. “Are you certain?” asked Kubrick. “Yes, he is.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Yes, I’d like to hear it, HAL. Sing it for me.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Trumbull, get the fuck out of my office and pay attention to your own goddamn business,” he said in the icy tone he sometimes used when irritated.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“History hates nuance and thus keeps many dirty secrets.”
― Michael Benson, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America

“At its best, science fiction takes our post-Enlightenment way of understanding the world and extrapolates, using the findings of science and projections concerning the future of technology and putting them at the service of truths expressible through fiction.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Kubrick had caught wind of Pahnke’s so-called Marsh Chapel Experiment, conducted in 1962 under the supervision of his thesis advisors, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert. The study was designed to see if hallucinogenic drugs, when taken in a religious setting such as a Boston University chapel, could induce religious experiences comparable to those recorded by the great mystics of history. Nine of the ten theology students participating reported that they had indeed experienced sensations indistinguishable from religious revelation.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Standing in front of a mirror, it dawned on him that what had been an enjoyable discussion had become an audition in front of one of the world’s great film directors.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“He was twenty-one years old and had effectively been appointed producer-director of aeronautical second-unit film production by one of the hottest directors in the world.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“In February 1966 Esam became the first person ever arrested in the UK for dealing LSD. He beat the charge, though, and was acquitted the following year.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“The director also insisted that Weston wear his Bowman wig in the sweaty, overheated environment of the suit—a directive the stuntman soon evaded by discreetly flipping the thing into a corner of his high launch platform.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“you were having an extraterrestrial in your bottle in your chemistry lab, and you wanted to make it comfortable so you can observe it,”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“It’s how they reached the border between the known and unknown—that place science is always probing like a tongue exploring a broken tooth.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“His credulity now definitively curdled, Clarke wrote a friend,”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“It all has a Möbius-strip, M. C. Escher, WTF quality, a disorienting tour de force in which Lockwood runs circles around the audience and prior cinematic verities.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Like Charlie Chaplin's bolt-tightening factory laborer in "Modern Times" (1936), spinning along with the very cogwheel he's working on--only with less humor and more pathos--they were ghosts in the machinery, component parts of their chilly, refrigerator-white mother ship.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Actually, I do not agree with you that Stanley is insensitive to the needs of others—he is very sensitive, but his artistic integrity won’t allow him to compromise.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Accordingly, Dan had established a brutal physical training regimen—boot camp for man-apes. Every day, they met in the fields behind the studio, ran laps, and performed calisthenics.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Coughlin”
― Michael Benson, Gangsters vs. Nazis: How Jewish Mobsters Battled Nazis in WW2 Era America

“Kubrick was nearly incapable of actually picturing visual concepts when they were described verbally. He also didn’t necessarily know what he liked until he saw it, and so he needed to be given several choices.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece