Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2024/07/08/a-scene-from-2001-a-space-odyssey-that-stands-out-from-the-rest-video.html
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Her request for a telephone works on multiple levels. It’s one thing that connects her to her presumably absentee father. It also highlights how in a few minutes he’ll sit down with some acquaintances and avoid honest communication, since he’s at the head of a massive coverup.
The monolith is another communication device—an alien telephone—and all the problems result from trying to keep it silent.
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If I remember correctly, since they didn’t really have flat video screen surfaces (CRT surfaces were notably curved), they literally mounted a film projector behind the screen to film that shot. They did the same for the window beside him.
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I see her small, inoccuous-seeming request as a microcosm of the movie in general: The forward-looking need to communicate and the bush-baby as a tie-in to the movie’s/humanity’s simian beginning. … and both requested by the next geneneration of humanity.
There’s precious little of humanity and culture as we know it in 2001 and even that is separated by a tiny view screen of low pixel count in this moment.
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It’s Dr. Heywood Floyd, not Dr. Floyd Heywood.
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There was a scene after this (but the studio told Kubrik to cut it) where he puts in another call to Macy’s and buys a birthday present for the girl…the first online purchase.
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I have often joked in a movie with alien monoliths that uplift entire species, and star gates, the ability of a child to sit down for a video call with a relative is probably the most fantastic scene.
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Im sure tom cruise -the lead in eyes wide shut- had nothing to do with this… /s
fuck.
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November 27, 2013:
Vivian Kubrick Surfaces in the Oddest Possible Way: At an Alex Jones Rally
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From one cult to another.
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Well, that’s a sad ending to that little tale.
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All the computer displays in the film were done that way, with graphics animated by hand.
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Needs more @Carla_Sinclair
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Keep an eye out for the IBM branded tablets used by the crew of Discovery which were done the same way with their workings hidden by the camera angle and actors hands.
Fascinating how those computers, which are only in a scene or two, bear such a strong resemblance to Alan Kay’s KiddiComp concept which he published in 1968 and refined as the DynaBook in 1972.
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Thank you @anothernewbbaccount – just corrected it.
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Thank you @stevev.
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That seemingly more rare case where parent and adult offspring drifted apart in the parent’s old age, because the adult offpsring fell into delusion…
I showed the film to my son when he was about sixteen. He said that it explained a lot of the tropes he was seeing on the internet, and in his computer games. Actually the scene that struck me, or, strikes me in retrospect, is the one where the Russian astronauts try to pump Dr Floyd for information, while he stonewalls them. The Russian was played by Leonard Rossiter, which probably made many British viewers blink and smile. He was a major character in a few situation comedies on tv, notably Rising Damp and Reginald Perrin.
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I had read the original short story and the novelization long before I saw the movie (now multiple times since) and to this day I don’t see how anybody follows what’s happening and makes heads nor tails out of the movie without reading the book first. There’s sooooo much context missing in the film.
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