I can be a space stewardess! I'm going to be a space pilot.

May 13, 2013 5:24 AM

Follow Debbie and Robin and their parents as they attend the premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey. As a tie in to their product placement on the rotating space station in 2001, Howard Johnson published a comic book explaining the movie to kids.
posted by octothorpe (70 comments total)

"Those are scientists in a state of artificial sleep. Their heartbeat and breathing is reduced to nearly zero. They'll be awakened when they are needed."

"Robin, what's happening? What's 'LIFE FUNCTIONS TERMINATED'?"

"I lied, Debbie. I always lie."
posted by theodolite at 5:34 AM on May 13, 2013 [11 favorites]

Curiously, no opportunity for "I want to be a murderous flea-bitten hominid!"
posted by aught at 5:35 AM on May 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

Ah yes. The number-one nightmare inducing film of my childhood. Although I'm pretty sure I can also thank it for my interest in SF.

Strangely I can never remember wanting to be a space stewardess. Or really anyone in this film. Although I thought Roy Schieder in 2010 was cool.
posted by selfnoise at 5:41 AM on May 13, 2013

Those final two panels were hilarious on multiple levels; in most of the ways that matter, 1968 was still pretty much the 1950s. And whether they liked it or not, I'm fairly certain that nobody of any age walked out of 2001 gushing about the surprise twist ending. There needs to be a re-captioning contest where little Robin and Debbie give their actual reactions to the WTF-ery of the last 20 minutes.

DEBBIE: I don't understand what I just saw, and it scared me! Twelve years from now, I'm going to become a punk rock groupie and die of a heroin overdose!

ROBIN: *rubs eyes* I fell asleep during the first ten minutes! Did I miss anything, sis?
posted by Strange Interlude at 5:44 AM on May 13, 2013 [16 favorites]

"Text and drawings approved by MGM and Stanley Kubrick Productions"

Oh, I can imagine Kubrick was right on board with this. The best part is that at first the reels seemed to be out of order, but then a close reading reveals what is going on here:

... WITH A FANFARE OF THRILLING MUSIC THE GIANT WIDE SCREEN COMES TO LIFE... THE MOVIE "2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY BEGINS"!

That telltale word BEGINS appearing inside the quotation marks reveals that what they are seeing is the early Asylum Films mockbuster, where the stewardess is aboard the "atom-powered" ship Discovery, there is no HAL, no monolith, no man-apes, and Poole is merely clumsy, not a murder victim. All is thereby explained.

You may wonder why you have not heard of this movie -- known merely as "Begins" to its cult followers -- but how many people in 2060 will still talk about Transmorphers or Snakes on a Train?
posted by ricochet biscuit at 6:01 AM on May 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

"OOH! HERE'S THE PART WHERE..."

Endorsing or encouraging cinema audience people to speak continually through a film, and give away plot spoilers? Ban them. Ban them all, for life, from every cinema.
posted by Wordshore at 6:02 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Those kids would've driven me nuts chattering through the whole premiere like that.

A cute comic, but for sheer WTF value it can't compare to the Marvel Comics adaptation by Jack Kirby. The weirdness of Kubrick combined with the (very, very different) weirdness of Kirby! The adaptation itself was strange enough, but then when Kirby ran out of movie he just kept going, following the psychedelic adventures of the black monolith around the universe. Eventually he even started bringing superheroes into it!
posted by Ursula Hitler at 6:05 AM on May 13, 2013 [13 favorites]

I was pretty taken aback by how clear the ending seemed to them. I'm easily three to four times their age, have seen the film numerous times and would love them to explain it to me. But look at the unnatural dialogue: clearly this is an alternate reality in which HAL has taken over and produced an army of self-aware androids who think they're human.
posted by Mooseli at 6:44 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Although I thought Roy Schieder in 2010 was cool.

I remember being 'ok' with that movie on it's release. I've rewatched it since and it is mostly wince inducing. So much dialogue. So much over-acting. So much overwrought drama. Such an ordinary visual style. So literal.

It really makes clear what things Kubrick uniquely brought to 2001, so I guess I am thankful for that.
posted by mazola at 6:48 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

So maybe Debbie and Robin can explain The Master to me next.
posted by mazola at 6:53 AM on May 13, 2013

Ooh now do this with Mulholland Drive.
posted by sweetkid at 6:57 AM on May 13, 2013 [8 favorites]

Or Upstream Color.
posted by octothorpe at 6:58 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I remember being 'ok' with [2010] on it's release. I've rewatched it since and it is mostly wince inducing. So much dialogue. So much over-acting.

There actually is one little throwaway scene I have a soft spot for - when Roy Schieder and John Lithgow are sitting around talking about what they miss from Earth.

Heywood Floyd: I'd love a hot dog.

Walter Curnow: Astrodome. Good hot dogs there.

Heywood Floyd: Astrodome? You can't grow a good hot dog indoors. Yankee Stadium. September. The hot dogs have been boiling since opening day in April. Now that's a hot dog.

Walter Curnow: The yellow mustard or the darker kind?

Heywood Floyd: The darker kind.

Walter Curnow: (nods appreciatively) ....That's important.

End scene.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 7:01 AM on May 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Although I thought Roy Schieder in 2010 was cool.

I remember being 'ok' with that movie on it's release. I've rewatched it since and it is mostly wince inducing. So much dialogue. So much over-acting. So much overwrought drama. Such an ordinary visual style. So literal.

"Haf you deescussed ziss vith HAL?"
 
posted by Herodios at 7:01 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

I was amazed at how the mystery was solved, too. I mean, who could've expected the giant space baby?
posted by Cool Papa Bell at 7:04 AM on May 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Free webcomic idea for whoever wants to run with it:

Strip out all of the captions and 2001-specific art, and do a regular series with Debbie and Robin holding forth on their favorite moments from the last 50+ years worth of crazy cult movies, with screenshots of said films expertly 'shopped in, sort of like Dinosaur Comics crossed with MST3K. Their review of Salò would be EPIC.
posted by Strange Interlude at 7:06 AM on May 13, 2013 [7 favorites]

That comic is hilarious. I would have been 5 in 1968, so I wonder if i ever got a copy during one of our occasional visits to Howard Johnson.

It certainly was a different era. I can barely remember how big movie theaters were back then.

And I know it's not a headline, but Betteridge's law certainly applies here.

Wow! What a finish! I'd never have guessed the way this mystery is solved!
Yes, they certainly did solve the mystery in that film, didn't they?

I wonder if Howard Johnson did a comic for another film where they had a placement. Or perhaps a certain short story?
posted by TedW at 7:10 AM on May 13, 2013

Kind of related: Overlook Restaurant Children's Menu.
posted by mazola at 7:14 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

This is the greatest comic book ever. The good people at Howard Johnson's in 1968 clearly made it for us, now.

You ever hear about how when so-and-so premiered their new symphony it was so outrageous and avant-garde that people in the audience freaked out and trashed the place, then burst into the streets, kicked the crap out of some passers by and then burned down a few buildings? 2001 is the one movie, and the last work of art, I can see that happening with. It is so inhuman and weird, and yet is made so intentionally and well, there's just no reconciling it. In a world of Howard Johnson's, where Debbie and Robin's dad wears a hat and mom wears pearls, and the theater manager asks you how you liked the show, what the holy fuck did people make of it?

I've seen it several times, and seen many things that it has begotten, both in terms of visuals and, uh, vision, and it still makes me want to go flip over a police car.
posted by dirtdirt at 7:15 AM on May 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

My dad recalls taking a girl to 2001 for a date. It did not go well.
posted by leotrotsky at 7:19 AM on May 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

There actually is one little throwaway scene I have a soft spot for - when Roy Schieder and John Lithgow are sitting around talking about what they miss from Earth.

The part in the beginning, where Floyd and the Russian Ambassador discuss matters is also great.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:19 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Ooh now do this with Mulholland Drive.

Debbie: Wow, Winkies! What a great restaurant. I can't wait to be a Hollywood Starlet when I grow up!

Robin: I've been here before.

Debbie: Do you mean the theater, Robbin? We sure have, Lowes is a great theater chain to watch your favorite flicks in!

[industrial noise]

Robin: I've been here before, but I wasn't me. I... I was dreaming.

Debbie: Robin?

Robin: I had a dream... that I was driving. Going out at a hundred miles an hour across the desert, and I wasn't me. I was someone else. I came here, to this theater, and I saw myself on screen - my real self.

[industrial noise gets louder]

Debbie: Ummmm, you can always get a nice cup of coffee at your local Winkies...

[industrial noise is deafening - shots intercut with Robin's face and a strobe light flashing on the theater's screen with red curtains on either side]

Robin: I was in a parking lot on the screen, not-me watching me. But it was like a Hollywood sound stage where me and you used to shoot those Winkies commercials. And it wasn't Winkies, it was a different place... Howard Johnsons?

Debbie: I bet they serve a nice slice of pie at Howard Jo-

[cuts to Robin on screen, he's covered in blood]

Robin: And you were there, but you were dead, and not-me, he starts screaming.

[screen cuts to Robin (played by Ryan Gosling) screaming - it is silent. The industrial noise is deafening]

Robin: You were dead, and I had killed you. Real me.

[Debbie looks horrified]

Debbie: I'm- I'm dying for some Winkie waffles.
posted by codacorolla at 7:20 AM on May 13, 2013 [15 favorites]

Debbie tries to feed Robin/Ryan Gosling some cereal, but he is not having it.
posted by sweetkid at 7:22 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I absolutely recall getting one of these at a Howard Johnson's somewhere between Ohio and New York during one of our summer excursions from Chicago to visit my grandparents in upper New York state. I've actually been wondering recently if there were traces of these available on the web somewhere.

Also, associated with this memory is a recollection of baseball type had made out of punched cardboard in which the crown of the hat was created by spiral perforations in the cardboard, so as you put it on over your head it sort of sprung from flat to three dimensional. I don't know if this was actually contemporaneous with the 2001 promo or just another memory from a similar trip at a different time.
posted by hwestiii at 7:27 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

It always struck me as technically correct yet wrong that 2001 was rated G by the MPAA.
posted by bendybendy at 7:28 AM on May 13, 2013

Holy shit. It's a good thing I'm not looking for something to tattoo on my chest and back. Because if not, this would be a candidate. It makes me want to encourage everyone in the world to be a hoarder just in case someone else might enjoy something we would have normally thrown away in 50 years.


Everything about this is so perfect it feels like somebody made it up for Internet snark. From the title including the "With Their Parents" as both an afterthought but also as a reminder that they aren't some latchkey kids headed to movie premieres unchaperoned (despite the fact that the comic makes this abundantly clear) to Debbie's dream of being a space stewardess, it's start-to-finish perfection.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 7:30 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Oh, this is an awesome find. Thanks so much for posting it.

April 3rd, 2013 marked the 45th anniversary of the world NYC premiere of 2001 in NYC. My grandfather, a graphic artist, worked on the film's advertising campaign. (I still have a couple of his original art mockups of the roadshow brochure as well as a final copy somewhere.) I'm nearly positive he did not work on this comic, tho.

He took my mother with him to the world premiere, which was held at the Loew's Capitol Theater back in '68 -- and the very last the Theater ever hosted. They tore it down a few months later. But the theater itself was a huge movie palace. It seated 5230 people, and over the years it hosted the world premieres of a large number of movies we'd now consider classics such as War and Peace, Doctor Zhivago, Far From The Madding Crowd and The Dirty Dozen.

So, the movie clocked in at 161 minutes at the premiere and about 19 minutes was shaved off of that for its final, theatrical release. A few years back, someone at Warner Bros., unearthed most of the missing footage.

My mother said she had fun, but felt the movie was overly long and a bit boring in spots. The ending blew her away, as did some of the more imaginative visuals.

According to mom, the original scenes of Poole's space walk were interminably long, and many of the 5000+ people in the audience were loudly falling in sync with Poole's breathing. Apparently she had to stop herself from hyperventilating along with poor Poole. She also said that the movie's two extensive non-verbal scenes (beginning and end alone totaled over 45 minutes where no one spoke on screen,) seemed to be lost on many of the attendees, who seemed confused about the film's meaning when she spoke with them about it afterwards.
posted by zarq at 7:45 AM on May 13, 2013 [6 favorites]

I was 8 in 1968 and I distinctly remember getting this at the Howard Johnson's in Augusta, Maine. Just a few weeks ago I was thinking about this and wondering if there was a copy out there someplace. Thank you, Internets!
posted by Man-Thing at 7:51 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

My parents saw 2001 on a date, but my dad couldn't sit through the monkey scene so they left.

When I was 8, my family took a month long trip to Australia, New Zealand, and Fiji. We flew Qantas, the Australian national airline, and I remember they had kids "don't annoy the other passengers on this 15 hour flight" packets which were in much this same style. That was 1988 or so.

I love 2010. I think it is an honest to goodness good movie. I think if Americans ever build a spaceship to Jupiter/Saturn it will look just like Discovery inside, and if the Russians ever do it will look just like the Leonov. It will probably be named the Leonov too. I love that the Leonov has a rotating section for gravity, which of course made the movie easier to film, but also shows exactly the kind of technical one-upmanship the Cold War is famous for.

The scenes of crossing between Leonov and Discovery, and crawling down rotating Discovery to reach the entrance hatch are also just brilliant.
posted by BeeDo at 7:53 AM on May 13, 2013

I think if Americans ever build a spaceship to Jupiter/Saturn it will look just like Discovery inside, and if the Russians ever do it will look just like the Leonov. It will probably be named the Leonov too. I love that the Leonov has a rotating section for gravity, which of course made the movie easier to film, but also shows exactly the kind of technical one-upmanship the Cold War is famous for.

The Discovery from 2001 had a rotating section to provide gravity; it was just wasn't visible externally. Apparently, like you said, the rotating section was added to Leonov to make filming easier. The Soviets in the book thought that artificial gravity was an unnecessary luxury.

I fell down the wiki-hole reading about 2001 the other day.
posted by cosmic.osmo at 8:08 AM on May 13, 2013

Oh, man, bad flashbacks. When I was a wee lass, I was obsessed with being a pilot. But whenever we got to fly, the stewardesses would hand my brother little pilot's wings, and me little stewardess wings, which pissed me off to no end. Luckily I had a stand-up dad who would gently ask the flight attendants if I couldn't please also have pilot's wings like my brother. Which they were happy enough to do.
posted by ariel_caliban at 8:10 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I did an article on a history museum exhibition about 1968, and thinking about the year it came out made me appreciate the film all the more. I shall quote myself:

There is a space helmet from our missions to the moon, which is a bit of a melancholic thing to see just now. In a year of enormous unrest, we nonetheless managed to strap some very brave men into eggshells of tin, put massive quantities of explosive fuel on their back, and somehow both blast them off into space and get them home safely. Nowadays, the shuttle program has just ended, and there's nothing really set to replace it yet. We did these things, as Jack Kennedy said, because they were hard. They expanded our sense of what was possible, what could be achieved by mere humans. We were no longer bound by the confines of this small planet. We could leave Earth.

It's no wonder that "2001" had as much impact as it did. Let's face it — this is not an easy film, having a strangely protracted structure, glacial pacing, deliberately monotone performances, and a long, ambiguous ending. But those final frames of the film, the extraordinary image of the Star Child in orbit around the earth, presented the same sense of possibility that the Apollo mission did. Perhaps, it said, we small humans are just partway along our evolutionary path, mired in an experience that is just one step removed from the cavemen, but capable of becoming something greater than we are now.

A few days after the shooting of Martin Luther King Jr., I think I would have needed that message.
posted by Bunny Ultramod at 8:48 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Just to be clear, Peter Hyam's "2010" is an abomination, and should never even be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick's "2001"
posted by hwestiii at 9:21 AM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

I'd just like to see Debbie and Robin's parents take them to see some other Kubrick movies.

ROBIN: I can't wait to be a hotel caretaker when I grow up!

DEBBIE: You've always been the caretaker.
posted by prize bull octorok at 9:28 AM on May 13, 2013 [9 favorites]

"Just as the repairman is about to reenter the spaceship he slips and floats away!"

"HAL, what's happened to Frank?"

"I'm afraid he slipped, Dave."

Maybe it was on that banana peel the victorious early hominid flung into the sky at the end of Act One, when the monolith inspires the tribe to rise to the next level of intelligence by figuring out how to peel a banana.
posted by George_Spiggott at 9:28 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

My dad recalls taking a girl to 2001 for a date. It did not go well.

I recall taking a girl to Andy Warhol's Frankenstein for a date. It did not go well.
posted by charlie don't surf at 9:41 AM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Metafilter: Your dad couldn't sit through the monkey scene so they left.
posted by panboi at 10:09 AM on May 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

Well of course not. Take a second breath first, sheesh.
posted by BeeDo at 10:29 AM on May 13, 2013

Yeah. He "slipped."
posted by Apropos of Something at 10:51 AM on May 13, 2013

Later on...
posted by mazola at 12:20 PM on May 13, 2013 [3 favorites]

hwestiii: Also, associated with this memory is a recollection of baseball type had made out of punched cardboard in which the crown of the hat was created by spiral perforations in the cardboard, so as you put it on over your head it sort of sprung from flat to three dimensional.

Did it look like this?
posted by BigHeartedGuy at 12:28 PM on May 13, 2013

At age 13 - having read every bit of Arthur C Clarke I could get my hands on - I nagged my Mum into taking me and my little bruv to see the ’77 rerelease of 2001. That Hojo’s thing is exactly how it went down, for real.
posted by pascal at 1:11 PM on May 13, 2013

Just to be clear, Peter Hyam's "2010" is an abomination, and should never even be mentioned in the same breath as Kubrick's "2001"

Oh, come now. It's a perfectly nice filmic adaptation of a totally okay Clarke story. We don't kick average dogs just because we saw a really, really great Shiba Inu a while back.

2010 isn't a shit sandwich, it's just peanut butter and jelly.
posted by cortex at 2:55 PM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Wait a minute - "the mystery is solved"???
posted by IndigoJones at 2:59 PM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

ROBIN: He wrote "Born to Kill" on his helmet and he wore a peace button. Gosh, Debbie, what's that mean?

DEBBIE: I think he was trying to suggest something about the duality of man, Robin.

ROBIN: I want to be a Jungian when I grow up!
posted by cortex at 3:02 PM on May 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

I might consider 2010 to be a decent but pedestrian science fiction movie if it weren't a sequel to a movie as revolutionary as 2001.
posted by octothorpe at 3:26 PM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

Anyone else notice the giant, judgmental Fisher-Price person's head in the right panel of this page?

Looks like the Space Baby grew up into Billy from Family Circus.
posted by ShutterBun at 3:46 PM on May 13, 2013 [4 favorites]

Debbie: What a movie! When I grow up, I'm going to learn to play piano blindfolded!

Robin: How about the opening scene? Did you see that ass on Nicole Kidman?

Debbie: Yeah, his name's Tom Cruise.
posted by ShutterBun at 3:58 PM on May 13, 2013 [8 favorites]

Say what you wanna say about The Black Hole (but you better say it's awesome or we're gonna have a problem) but it had a similarly trippy, "what does it all mean?" ending and I remember how my Black Hole storybooks and stuff had a really hard time simplifying the film's conclusion into a generic, kid-friendly happy ending. As I recall, the coloring book ended with them just about to fly into the black hole, with a caption that said something like, "And then our heroes found themselves about to travel through the black hole, to a new universe of adventure!" Some poor copywriter at Disney probably spent a whole afternoon sweating over that one.

Outside of Inception, I can't recall the last time a major studio movie ended on a totally ambiguous note that actually left audiences arguing about what the hell happened. Outside of Kubrick, I'm having a hard time thinking of old movies that did it, either.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 4:54 PM on May 13, 2013 [2 favorites]

For EWS, I would have gone with "Robin: When I grow up, I want to tell everyone I meet that I'm a doctor!"
posted by cortex at 5:28 PM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Outside of Inception, I can't recall the last time a major studio movie ended on a totally ambiguous note that actually left audiences arguing about what the hell happened.

Life of Pi
Blade Runner
The Thing
The Wrestler
Castaway
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:41 PM on May 13, 2013 [1 favorite]

Also, Star Trek II, Wrath of Khan.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:45 PM on May 13, 2013

Ronin.
posted by zarq at 5:59 PM on May 13, 2013

Ronin? How so?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:02 PM on May 13, 2013

Also, Children of Men, who's ending I loathed.
Pan's Labyrinth.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:05 PM on May 13, 2013

Nah, Ronin just didn't tell you what the McGuffin was, and a lot of films are like that. (Think of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.)

What a lot of films don't do is tack on a really stupid voice-over from Jean Reno as an afterthought to tell you that they're not telling you on purpose, probably because the test audiences whined about it, or maybe because studio execs are twits.
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:19 PM on May 13, 2013

(And speaking of voice-overs, Blade Runner's is another, much better-known example of their misuse in assuaging studio execs' terror of ambiguity.)
posted by George_Spiggott at 6:23 PM on May 13, 2013

BigHeartedGuy Yes!!! That is exactly the item I'm thinking of. You got any sense of where that fits timewise with respect to the 2001 comic book?
posted by hwestiii at 8:01 PM on May 13, 2013

The Thing, sure. I guess Blade Runner qualifies, if you're going by the director's cuts and so on. I haven't seen any version but the theatrical one I grew up with, and I'm OK with that. I think Cast Away is a bit of a stretch... His story isn't totally resolved, but I don't think many people argued about what happened or what it meant. Star Trek II arguably counted at the time, but there's no ambiguity to it anymore... Spock is still showing up in movies!

I haven't seen most of the others. I wasn't trying to insist that nobody else had done a really ambiguous movie ending ala Kubrick, but I just wasn't thinking of anybody who had.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 2:44 AM on May 14, 2013

Nah, Ronin just didn't tell you what the McGuffin was, and a lot of films are like that. (Think of the briefcase in Pulp Fiction.)

True.
posted by zarq at 4:18 AM on May 14, 2013

"connect the dots by their numbers and you'll draw a space couple"
posted by infinitewindow at 7:01 AM on May 14, 2013

DEBBIE: "The Korova Milk Bar sure doesn't look like any Howard Johnson's I've ever seen!"

ROBIN: "It sells milk-plus, milk plus vellocet or synthemesc or drencrom, Debbie!"

DEBBIE: "Wow! That would certainly sharpen you up and make you ready for a bit of the old ultra-violence! Maybe I can be a waitress there when I grow up!"
posted by Prince Lazy I at 12:48 AM on May 15, 2013 [2 favorites]

My dad recalls taking a girl to 2001 for a date. It did not go well.

I recall taking a girl to Andy Warhol's Frankenstein for a date. It did not go well.

Bringing it back to Kubrick, I took a girl to see A Clockwork Orange for a date. It did not go well.
posted by radwolf76 at 3:32 PM on May 15, 2013

I watched A Clockwork Orange with a girl on a first date. It went very well.
(Or would that be "viddy well"?)
posted by ShutterBun at 4:16 PM on May 15, 2013

Yes, I don't misunderstand me. It wasn't the wrong movie, just the wrong choice of companion. I've gotten much better at picking since then.

Still, when I worked at Blockbuster, Clockwork Orange was one of the few titles we would automatically refund the rental price on at my store upon complaint, without fail. Even if you were past due on it. In fact, I'd warn people about it ahead of time: "The movie opens with a gang of teenage thugs beating a homeless man to within an inch of his life. This is actually the most socially redeeming point in the entire film, it only goes downhill from there." Maybe not the most accurate or charitable description, but for the customer base of a small South Carolina suburban town's Blockbuster, it served its purpose.
posted by radwolf76 at 6:50 PM on May 15, 2013 [1 favorite]

Bringing it back to Kubrick, I took a girl to see A Clockwork Orange for a date. It did not go well.

In college, I was brought to a Clockwork Orange/Blade Runner DOUBLE-FEATURE for a date. It was an ill-concieved choice.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 11:38 PM on May 15, 2013

Coincidentally, I also watched Blade Runner right after A Clockwork Orange on my date.

The reason is a little obscure: both movies were sampled in Sigue Sigue Sputnik's song Love Missile F1-11 which was popular that week.

Weird.
posted by ShutterBun at 2:33 AM on May 16, 2013

You know, I don't remember what else my campus theater was showing that night (Clockwork was the midnight movie). Kind of sad, seeing as I both worked there and designed the schedule brochures. Then again, it was like 18 years ago.
posted by radwolf76 at 5:13 AM on May 16, 2013

Stanley Kubrick apparently ruined a ton of budding relationships.
posted by Weebot at 2:49 PM on May 27, 2013

That of Cruise and Kidman not least among them.
posted by ricochet biscuit at 4:36 AM on May 28, 2013 [1 favorite]