Space Odyssey Quotes

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Ordway was simply proposing a design enabling a reverse-angle shot of a person's face, illuminated from below by a screen. At this very moment, of course, a sizeable percentage of the planet's population is lit in exactly this way. But inevitably this technology, and its resulting lighting geometry, was described for the first time and in a first place. Probably here, decades before the sight became so omnipresent as to be unworthy of comment ....”
― 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

“But you pay a terrific price for a good plot, because the minute everybody's sitting there wondering what's going to happen next, there isn't much room for them to care about how it's going to happen or why it happened.”
― 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

“I had seven magnets hidden in the teeth. Who other than Stuart Freeborn could have produced such a phrase?”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Stan has decided to kill off all the crew of Discovery and leave Bowman only. Drastic, but it seems right. After all, Odysseus was the sole survivor.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“As for HAL singing “Daisy Bell (Bicycle Built for Two),” this, too, was Clarke’s contribution, including the song’s gradual devolution to near incomprehensibility at the end. The idea originated in a visit he’d made in 1962 to Bell Laboratories, where he’d heard John Kelly’s voice-synthesizer experiments with an IBM 7094 mainframe, which had coaxed the machine to sing Harry Dacre’s 1892 marriage proposal—the first song ever sung by a computer.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“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

“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

“What great control! I reach for something, the movement begins in the very center of my body. I stand up, turn, and run—all the movement starts from my center. Moving this way does many things. 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

“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

“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

“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

“Ask not for whom the monolith tolls.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Despite some well-publicized attempts to render the genre respectable over the previous decade or so, in the early 1960s, science fiction was only a step or two above pornography on the social acceptability scale.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Forbes asked what kind of project he was thinking of doing next. Kubrick responded that he was looking into the possibility of doing a science fiction film.
“Oh, Stanley, for God’s sake!” Forbes exclaimed, turning. “Science fiction?”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“What we want is a smashing theme of mythic grandeur.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“If you can describe it, I can film it.” Though I managed to disprove this dictum, I must also admit that Stanley later filmed things I couldn’t possibly describe.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Stan, I want you to know that I’m a very well-adjusted homosexual.”
“Yeah, I know,” responded Kubrick without missing a beat.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“Only three science fiction feature films were released in 1950, but by the middle of the decade, the genre was averaging around twenty-five per year, and by its end over 150 had been released—an unprecedentedly fast expansion for a new genre, even if most of the productions were schlocky B-grade material.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“When you do a science fiction film, it’s very difficult to discipline yourself to stay within reason. There are no limits, and you can go berserk.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece

“It being a good three decades before computer-generated imagery, detailed models would have to be constructed for all their exteriors.”
― Michael Benson, Space Odyssey: Stanley Kubrick, Arthur C. Clarke, and the Making of a Masterpiece