2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Lost Scenes Discovered

[SFABCPhil]

I spotted a link to this article about 17 minutes of cut scenes from
2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY having been found.


17 minutes of 2001: A Space Odyssey Found - by Kay Moeller
Posted December 17, 2010 03:40 PM EST at entertainment.gather.com:

http://entertainment.gather.com/viewArticle.action?articleId=281474978806540

[Ken and Susan Quintilian]

Are these the minutes from the sneak preview that Kubrick used to decide on his final cuts?  I recall his original final cut was around 20 minutes longer than the theatrical release.  I always wondered what happened to that longer cut.  Ken

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[Mark Hershberger]

Yeah, he cut them after the premier, which is something he often did with his movies.

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From: Ken and Susan Quintilian <kenandsue....@gmail.com>
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 6:54:19 PM
Subject: Re: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Lost Scenes Discovered

[Ken and Susan Quintilian]

Really, after the premiere, I thought it was after a sneak.

[Mark Hershberger]

My memory is that it was after the first time it was shown publicly, whether it was a premier or a sneak preview, I'm not clear on.

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From: Ken and Susan Quintilian <kenandsue....@gmail.com>
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Wed, January 12, 2011 7:19:19 PM

[David vun Kannon]

From the Wikipedia page for Arthur C Clarke
 
"James Randi later recounted that upon seeing the premiere of 2001 for the first time, Clarke left the theatre in tears, at the intermission, after having watched an eleven-minute scene (which did not make it into general release) where an astronaut is doing nothing more than jogging inside the spaceship, which was Kubrick's idea of showing the audience how boring space travels could be.^[79]"
 

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Date: Wed, 12 Jan 2011 19:19:19 -0500

Subject: Re: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Lost Scenes Discovered

From: kenandsue....@gmail.com
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com

[sor...@aol.com]

So interesting to discus this great movie.  I thought this movie more than any made many of my peers Sci Fi fans for life.

Not sure we ever discussed the score for the movie.. maybe one of the best of all time.  ( Though heavily loaded with classical music! )

Am curious if we ever discussed the differences between the book and movie also.

Larry

[Bard Bloom]

Am curious if we ever discussed the differences between the book and movie also.

The last time I read them -- I was perhaps ten or twelve years old -- I thought the film was amazingly confusing, and the book made totally good sense.

[Mark Hershberger]

The book came out first, I believe because the movie took a long time to make, but the book was based on the screenplay Clarke and Kubrick developed, based on a short story Clarke had written whose name escapes me. I remember enjoying the book but being disappointed because it explained away the mysteries of the movie.

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From: "sor...@aol.com" <sor...@aol.com>
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, January 13, 2011 9:09:02 AM

[sor...@aol.com]

Thanks Mark,

That was one of my first exposures to the meshing of Sci Fi with religion...

Maybe I can dig up a copy of that book and read it... I believe the movie shows up every now and then, but I haven't seen it since it came out.  We all saw it as a field trip in school.

I had the sound track recently .. really good...


Might add Maynard Ferguson's  ( trumpet player, now deceased ) version of the theme song I though was out of this world!!!

And is possilble 2001 helped launch the Planet of the Apes series of movies?

[sor...@aol.com]

@bard...

We ended up spending a bit on time in English class.. either 7th or 8th grade.. dissecting the movie...

We reviewed how the movie portrayed images of God and a bit on Darwin's theories regarding the apes...


Funny, could have used a lesson in classical music back then also... for many  youngsters back then it was their first big exposure to quality classical music!!!

[Pauline Alama]

…other than “The Rabbit of Seville” and “What’s Opera, Doc?”

[sor...@aol.com]

I thought I detected a bit of Beethoven... can research more on Google....

Let's see if Phil has some input on this one!!!

[David vun Kannon]

What most people remember of the music of 2001 is
 
Also Sprach Zarathustra, by Richard Strauss (the monolith theme)
Blue Danube Waltz, by Johann Strauss (the spacecraft docking theme)
 
Not only were they appropriate, but they were also free! I've heard Kubrick used classical music a lot because it was cheap.
 
Kubrick also used silence for some scenes depeicting space.
 

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To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and classical music
Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:30:56 -0500
From: sor...@aol.com

[sor...@aol.com]

No matter.. I though for us pre internet school kids.. a good does of classical music wasn't such a bad thing.


I always thought the orchestra was pretty professional and I also thought the quality of the sound was quite good.  Possibly the movie houses were starting to get better sound equipment at the time... and just possibly classical music from an orchestra often has quite a full sound.

I also agree not sure many movies today have such long spans with out words or lyrics... I thought it was quite effective though...

[Mark Hershberger]

In 2001's case Kubrick actually commissioned a score by Alex North, who did the score for Kubrick's Spartacus and then threw it out, which North didn't know until he saw the movie. Kubrick had a habit of falling in love with the temp track, or the music in place of the finished score while the movie is being worked on, and throwing out the score written specifically for the movie. He did it with The Shining, only using a little of Wendy Carlos' original music. They issued North's score on CD n the mid-90's.

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From: David vun Kannon <dvunk...@hotmail.com>
To: SFABC Movies <sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com>

Sent: Thu, January 13, 2011 11:29:43 AM

[sor...@aol.com]

Thanks for the clarification Mark....either way no doubt it is a pretty famous score.

[David vun Kannon]

A similar situation happened with Asimov writing the book for the movie Fantastic Voyage.
 
The original Clarke short story is The Sentinel.
 
I only read the novel of 2001 long after seeing it, but I remember enjoying the explanations for the things in the movie that were only atmospheric.
 
I remember two ephemeral things about seeing the movie as a kid in 1968:
My dad took me to see it at a theater with a huge screen to really appreciate the effects.
They showed the short film "Skaterdater" before it.
 
The movie itself probably did make me an SF fan for life. I was so disappointed that Kubrick's next film (that I was allowed to see, not A Clockwork Orange) was the costume drama Barry Lyndon.
 

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Date: Thu, 13 Jan 2011 06:25:06 -0800
From: ma...@hershnet.com

Subject: Re: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Lost Scenes Discovered

To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com

[sor...@aol.com]

Fantastic Voyage was definitely my favorite Science Fiction books as a child...  good old Scholastic Book orders back then.. REAL BOOKS!!


I though about 10 years ago Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid did a modernized version of the story.

[Mark Hershberger]

That was from the late 80's I believe. Innerspace is a fun movie. 

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From: "sor...@aol.com" <sor...@aol.com>
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Thu, January 13, 2011 11:54:16 AM
Subject: Fantastic Voyage

[sor...@aol.com]

That's it!!!

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Hershberger <ma...@hershnet.com>

[Ken and Susan Quintilian]

The decision to discard the North score was epochal -- the score he chose (which I doubt was a randomly chosen series of temp tracks) is incredibly appropriate and contributes mightily to the experience of the movie.  It's just amazing to think how the movie could have been diminished by a different choice -- like when he decided to drop the voice over from the Dawn of Man section.  What a huge decision!  Makes the movie what it is (and incidentally, much less like a Clarke novel)...think Blade Runner...

[sor...@aol.com]

Scores of movies.


This could be an interesting topic.. the schores of Sci Fi movies.. not sure if there are  many with scores as well known as 2001,  maybe Star Wars, ET???


Rocky and the Godfather had great scores, but they're not sci fi.


I prefer not to go back to the 50's and 60's with Rogers and Hammerstein....


I always loved the music to Tommy... then again the tunes were written by one of my favorite bands!!!

I am afraid to mention Grease.. but it was popular back in the day!!!


Saturday Night Fever???  I might give that movie and sound track credit as it had more impact than almost any other movie I can remember, Especially on dancing!


Other sound tracks... Sound of Music ( which is R & H ) and I thought the sound track to Evita the movie was under rated!!!



Maybe Phil has a list somewhere of the best scores of all time.


Larry

[James E. LaBarre]

I can see them releasing a re-edited version as a BluRay-only version,
in an attempt to push the format (not much else is making BluRay
interesting).

[Pauline Alama]

If you broaden the category to include fantasy movies, Excalibur had a pretty awesome classical music score, with Carmina Burana and all that stuff.

[Richa...@comcast.net]

So I'll take it back to "The Shining" where Kubrick used Bartok's Music for Strings, Percussion, and Celesta, which is a wonderful piece, but extremely knotty to absorb.

I also liked the score for Stardust.

Richard

[Clare Deming]

Some of my favorite scores that haven't already been mentioned:

SF:
Children of Dune Miniseries
Some of the Babylon 5 cd's - a couple collections, some cd's with individual episode scores
Jurassic Park

Fantasy:
LotR (all 3 film scores)
Dragonheart - you hear this all the time in movie trailers, even though the movie was eh
Princess Mononoke
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

I listen to them mostly when I'm writing. I find that if I know the movie too well, I start to think about the scenes of the movie though and that distracts me from what I'm trying to write.

Clare :>

"Silver bullet in the wild blue,
Crackin' the wall as I'm comin' through.
Think you can stop me,
Take a look in these eyes.

You can't cage what you can't tame,
There ain't no rules, this ain't a game.
There's no way to stop the fire inside."

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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:39:19 +0000
From: Richa...@comcast.net

[David vun Kannon]

A very comprehensive page on the theremin and genre film scores.
http://www.scifidimensions.com/Sep00/theremin.htm

 

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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 15:39:19 +0000
From: Richa...@comcast.net

[sor...@aol.com]

Nice list Claire,

I listen to quite a few sound tracks in the car also...


There are many great Broadway ones also I find...

[sor...@aol.com]

Nice post David... very interesting!

[sor...@aol.com]

Lets not forget Green Hornet is now out!!!

[David vun Kannon]

Oy vey, the score of Bladerunner has got to be one of my least favorite scores for a movie I otherwise enjoy tremendously.
 
But to connect Bladerunner and 2001 in a different way, they both use a lot of computer screens within the frame to convey action. When I see the scene of landing the flying police car on the roof of the LAPD, I think of the scene of the Pan Am shuttle docking with the space station in 2001.
 

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Date: Fri, 14 Jan 2011 08:33:27 -0500
Subject: Re: 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and classical music
From: kenandsue....@gmail.com
To: sfabc-nj-m...@googlegroups.com

[Ken and Susan Quintilian]

Sorry, my message was unclear because I was doing SOC :-)  I meant "think Blade Runner" when talking about changing an entire movie by the last minute drop of a voice-over narration track.  Ken  P.S. I don't even remember the score.