Customer Reviews

The Making of Kubrick's 2001

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I was expecting a puff piece that had only adjectives like "wonderful, spectacular" to describe its subject.

I was hoping to enjoy a handful of special-effects secrets-- important in this truly (TRULY) ground-breaking film.

I got SO much more. There are negative (and positive) reviews that run into several pages, and go deep into both technique and subject matter. There is double or triple the usual volume of pictures, a real blessing...and with thorough descriptions. (Although, to be fair, I admit I have a murder contract out on the editor who decided to remove all "the" and "a" from the CAPTIONING for those pictures. It makes the captions horribly unreadable.)

Errr...back on track, eh ? There's a discussion of alternate endings, and the text to the Arthur C. Clarke short story that was written at the same time as this script. There's the ending and other snippets from the novel, which adds new depth to understanding the film.

Oh, and hordes of notes on production, stuff that was edited out of the final version, and the apparently endless mountains of alternate special effects which were discarded in favor of what we see today.

It makes me weep to think that my DVD of this movie lacks outtakes and deleted scenes, now that this book has shown me how much I'm missing. (For example, the original film as presented at its premiere, was at least 19 minutes longer.)

.... Agel's book is of note as the most illustrated book in this field. Although they're all in black and white, the number is way beyond any other book's attempt. This book is a standard paperback size, 368 pages with a 96 page photo insert. Most pages contain several images, some are full page, but the screen resolution of the images is quite fine, they are printed on fine white paper and thus the images are nicely detailed. The images in the insert are mostly scenes from the film, but they also include many behind-the-scenes peeks at some of the technical magic on screen. Apart from the insert, there are a few frames reproduced from the MAD magazine version of the film, also the instruction sheet from the Aurora model of the Pan Am Orion III Space Clipper. I can recommend this book for its text content alone, but the photo insert made it literally my constant companion through the 1970s. A bookshelf neighbour for Agel should be Piers Bizony's 'Filming the Future', a larger book with a smaller number of larger, rarer, colour images.

It is such a shame that this book is out-of-print. It is filled with everything you ever wanted to know about 2001. It leads off with Arthur C. Clarke's short story "The Sentinel" and closes with a complete reprint of Stanley Kubrick's interview with Playboy magazine. In between are profiles, interviews with technical advisors, effects secrets revealed, letters to Stanley from the moviegoing public, as well as reviews of the film, both good and bad. A fascinating snapshot of a moment in history when the world was caught off guard by a motion picture. Search your local used book stores, like I did. If you're a Kubrick fan, it's worth the effort.

This is just an indispensable book for Kubrick fans. I lost my copy some years ago in a move and have bitterly regretted it ever since. Not just a puff piece but a virtual encyclopedia of everything related to the film, including the MAD magazine parody. Please put this back into print!

I share A Reader's below opinion. This is one of the best film books I've ever read. Besides going into extensive detail about 2001, the book also harks back to an era when people thought both science and movies could actually transform humankind for the better. Today most people probably rightly expect nothing from science but corporate-sponsored dangers (psychotropic drugs, laser weaponry, etc.); and nothing from movies but dumb, loud, soulless, merchandising vehicles filled with digital fireballs. I realize both science and the movies have always produced both good AND bad. And I have no use for unrealistic, slimy, we-CAN-win-in-Vietnam-style optimism. Still, much of the period's optimism, realistic or not, pertained to noble goals (civil rights, fighting poverty, etc.), and Agel's book (about a movie from the pessimistic director Stanley Kubrick, ironically enough), has that nobly optimistic feeling.

Don't expect detailed descriptions of how the movie was made because there aren't any. There's a small section in the middle of the book with some good pictures and very cryptic abbreviated explainations of said pictures and that's about it. Most of the book contains reactions to the movie from critics and regular viewers. There's some talk from Clarke and Kubrik regarding the process of writing the screenplay and such as well as the full short story "The Sentinel" that inspired 2001. There's also quite a few essays about the plausibility of various subjects covered in the movie. That said, there's very little information about the actual making of the movie but it's still a facinating read.

I love this book. It's one of the most interesting books I've read about the making of a movie. The style is a bit chaotic as far as how its put together but the actual info is great. Its got a HUGE 96 page photo spread which I supposed was amazing in 1970. The impact is less now that people can go onto the internet and look at as many photos as they want. If you're like me you'll feel inspired to pop the movie in and watch it after reading this book. I would imagine that anyone who would go to the trouble of getting a book about the making of 2001 probably owns a copy of the movie as well. It's also got an essay by a (Then) high school student which I found surprisingly interesting.

I wish that DVD's were as complete and eclectic as this book. A must for any true blue film buff. Its both informative, irreverent, and brilliant.