"2001" is talked of chiefly as Kubrick's film, but the importance of Arthur C. Clarke's role as co-screenwriter (and novel adaptor) shouldn't be minimized. For all of Kubrick's embrace of then ground-breaking special effects and a classical music score, Clarke made certain that Kubrick didn't go as overboard as he did when working entirely on his own.
I had some interesting speculations about Kubrick and Clarke as I researched the story. I bring them up as the series progresses. Some of it was based on the introduction to the book-I can't remember at present whether it was the audible or kindle version-but I found the two to be slightly at odds, although, as far as I could, they still seemed to be friendly toward one another.
Clarke was English and Kubrick, though American by birth, used England as his base of operations for many years. They understood the stereotypical English convention of using politeness as a mask for more complicated feelings.
The conflict likely may have stemmed from the fact that Clarke was a man of science as much as he was a man of art; his central SF achievements are definitely "hard" science fiction. Whereas Kubrick was purely a man of art who believed that cinema's effectiveness was best when a single filmmaker (like him) was micromanaging things. Clarke didn't like being micromanaged because his book editors were always doing that to him...
"2001" is talked of chiefly as Kubrick's film, but the importance of Arthur C. Clarke's role as co-screenwriter (and novel adaptor) shouldn't be minimized. For all of Kubrick's embrace of then ground-breaking special effects and a classical music score, Clarke made certain that Kubrick didn't go as overboard as he did when working entirely on his own.
I had some interesting speculations about Kubrick and Clarke as I researched the story. I bring them up as the series progresses. Some of it was based on the introduction to the book-I can't remember at present whether it was the audible or kindle version-but I found the two to be slightly at odds, although, as far as I could, they still seemed to be friendly toward one another.
Clarke was English and Kubrick, though American by birth, used England as his base of operations for many years. They understood the stereotypical English convention of using politeness as a mask for more complicated feelings.
The conflict likely may have stemmed from the fact that Clarke was a man of science as much as he was a man of art; his central SF achievements are definitely "hard" science fiction. Whereas Kubrick was purely a man of art who believed that cinema's effectiveness was best when a single filmmaker (like him) was micromanaging things. Clarke didn't like being micromanaged because his book editors were always doing that to him...
That makes sense. This movie certainly proved to be more of a deep dive than I initially intended.