Of pod bay doors and monkey suits and cigarette breaks and embryos.

September 10, 2015 6:56 AM

Yo, Kubrick freaks (and that's pretty much everybody here, right?), check this fantastic collection of behind-the-scenes pics from the set of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
posted by flapjax at midnite (27 comments total)

I just bought the book that I believe these pictures were scanned from, but it's wrapped as my husband's birthday present. Can't wait to see them all.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 6:57 AM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

Love these so much.
posted by octothorpe at 7:12 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The tension in that scene where Heywood talks to the Russian scientists. Phew.
posted by PenDevil at 7:18 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

2001 burned so deeply into my impressionable young brain that I can't believe these aren't behind-the-scenes photos of an actual space station. Also, the Discovery centrifuge was an awesome practical effect. Thanks for this!
posted by drdanger at 7:19 AM on September 10, 2015

Great time capsule.
posted by Oyéah at 7:21 AM on September 10, 2015

This picture was a background image for my laptop for a long time. There's something really alluring about it to me, and it made me want to pick up smoking whenever I saw it.
posted by lownote at 7:26 AM on September 10, 2015 [4 favorites]

Still can't get enough 2001, so thanks very much for those. Seeing those ones with Kubrick and Clarke takes me back to being an obsessive child just discovering the SF section in the local library and having my mind comprehensively - and irreversibly. it's just got worse with tme - blown.

Quite jarring to see things like the hostesses posing next to an astronaut in the lunar surface spacesuit in the space station, which corresponds to no scene in the actual movie. And what on earth is that car in image 44?
posted by Devonian at 7:27 AM on September 10, 2015

This one is interesting. It's obviously not in the film, and none of the people look familiar at all. Maybe the art/design staff posing with something that influenced them? Or, are those the women who played the flight crew on the PanAm clipper?
posted by Thorzdad at 7:30 AM on September 10, 2015

It's the car from the TV show that Floyd is watching on the shuttle.
posted by octothorpe at 7:31 AM on September 10, 2015 [10 favorites]

Ah. You know, I never paid much attention to that. Nice eye for detail.
posted by Thorzdad at 7:33 AM on September 10, 2015

If you have a device with Siri, it's fun to ask her to "open the pod bay doors."

Nice photo set. I love seeing film production pre-CGI--the solutions to some FX shots were ingenious.
posted by kinnakeet at 7:37 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

One of my favorite engineering fixes that Kubrick and his SFX team did was arrange all weightless shots so that the support wires were 180 degrees opposite from the camera so that they were hidden by the body of the astronaut.
posted by octothorpe at 7:43 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The tension in that scene where Heywood talks to the Russian scientists. Phew.

Yes, Kubrick was such an uncannily adept master at portraying that kind of psychological tension. Similar examples abound in his work, but one that springs first to my mind is the tension in the restroom scene of The Shining, with the ghost butler and Nicholson's character. Coulda cut the air in that room with a knife, it was so thick with tension.
posted by flapjax at midnite at 7:43 AM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I'm sure even HAL9000 took cigarette breaks back then.
posted by rongorongo at 7:50 AM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I love that Kubrick had a car designed and a fake TV show filmed just for about five frames of the movie.
posted by octothorpe at 7:55 AM on September 10, 2015 [9 favorites]

You just know that the person from Panavision, who insisted that their film cameras and canisters have giant advertisements on the side of them, JUST IN CASE there was an on-set photographer, is in their retirement home right now, seeing a couple of these photos and saying:

"YES! IT FINALLY PAID OFF!"
posted by LoRichTimes at 8:39 AM on September 10, 2015

I'm still mourning the loss of the damn book these photos came from (lost in a move?)

Anyway, these set illustrations from Brian Sanders (previously) are also amazing.
posted by maudlin at 8:50 AM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

I didn't realize how much I'm starting to look like Arthur Clarke these days. Same glasses, hair and facial shape, scary.
posted by octothorpe at 9:30 AM on September 10, 2015 [2 favorites]

I remember seeing these a long long time ago -- where? A copy of this book, I guess. I had richer friends who might've had such a thing.

Here's the same set of pics, with captions providing a bit more context.

Fun to see how they did the wheel aboad the Discovery and all the other curvy floors. And say, that's Arthur Clarke, there! More a written SF than a media SF fan, I'd've recognize Clarke before Kubrick in a photo in those days. Still remember the rush when I recognized Isaac Asimov doing a Bicentennial Minute.

That car makes me think of Gerry Anderson, but it's neither the Straykermobile from Yoofoe nor the one from Doppelganger / Journey To The Far Side of the Sun. I guess I don't have the eye for design I thought I had.

On the other hand, that furniture, those red chairs. . . .

At the time 2001 was first out, the father of one of my best friends was a tool & die maker, possibly the most respected & highest paid blue collar work available then. But he aspired to be a furniture designer. His style was entirely modern and ultramodern. He made all these swoopy organic pieces out of fiberglas, plexiglas, idunnowutglas -- and also upholstery. Their house was filled with the stuff. For years, whenever I visited I was reduced to sitting in/on these formless, fearless wonders that I assumed were supposed to be regarded as sofas and chairs. They were red. They were not at all unlike the chairs on the spacestation where Floyd encounters and lies to the Russians.

You always were ahead of your time, Mr. T.
 
posted by Herodios at 10:13 AM on September 10, 2015 [3 favorites]

I maintain that 2001 is my ultimate favorite movie of all time. And I'm sure it has nothing to do with the copious quantities of drugs I was doing the first time I saw it.

After last night's thread on Lebowski, I realized that Lebowski is prolly my 2nd favorite.

What a great week for movie threads! HOORAY!
posted by symbioid at 10:49 AM on September 10, 2015

Massive fan too for years (I had a pan and scan copy on VHS!) but now I like the stills more, and the feeling of ambition in film-making as a parallel of ambition in space exploration, more than the movie. The ending is a bit heavy metal album cover, and the apes bit is full-on Monty Python (all the spaceship bits are untouchably mind-blowing still).
posted by colie at 11:38 AM on September 10, 2015

Kubrik DJ'ing? I get having a PA mic but what's with the vinyl?
posted by Ogre Lawless at 1:09 PM on September 10, 2015

Kubrik DJ'ing? I get having a PA mic but what's with the vinyl?

Getting the timing right. Syncing action to music.
 
posted by Herodios at 1:43 PM on September 10, 2015 [1 favorite]

The book is gorgeous. It's an odd form factor, about twice as tall as a hardcover novel so long and skinny. But a lot of pages fold out into almost poster sized images.
posted by smackfu at 2:18 PM on September 10, 2015

An excellent collection of photos which I like very much! Thank you.
posted by rmmcclay at 6:04 PM on September 10, 2015

This was one of my highlights of last weekend. Out of the dozen or so people in line for shots with these two, I think I was the only one without a full head of gray hair.
posted by radwolf76 at 6:23 AM on September 11, 2015

The stargate scenes from 2001, un-slitscanned.
posted by Artw at 11:32 AM on October 4, 2015 [1 favorite]