“Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017) • Hacker News Board

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#71

Post by dharmon » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 2:08 AM UTC

dudul wrote: post #49

jccooper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

Most authors complained about it yes. Burgess accused Kubrick of not having understood a single word of "Clockwork Orange". Nabokov was the most gracious when he said that while Lolita was a very good movie, he didn't recognize his original work at all :) I think it's a very difficult exercise to adapt a novel. Should you literally put on the screen what is written in the book ? What's the point ? You're not creating…

Billy Wilder told the story of adapting Stalag 17. Co-writer Blum showed up the first day with a copy of the original play and said “I thought we could use this.” To which Wilder showed him how they could use it: by dropping it on the floor and using it as a door stop.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#72

Post by drharby » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 2:10 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #45

jccooper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

> Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. It's not like King is some king of nuance in characters himself...

Scary door type subtlty

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#73

Post by l33tbro » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 2:19 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #4

I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative approaches explains a lot.

I think the maddening ambiguity you mention, along with the general aesthetic and ambition of the film all stem from a pretty fascinating synthesis.

On one hand, you have a filmmaker who is really hitting his stride as an artist. Kubrick in the late 1960's not only had developed a solid command of his medium, but he was also a serious commercial proposition for Warner and was granted every resource at his hand.

On the other hand, culture still had quite a modernist sensibility around space. We hadn't entered into the cynicism of the 70s that continues to color our perceptions today. 'Space' was this gigantic cultural construct that really captured people's imaginations. Perhaps a fair parallel may have been the romanticized expansion to the Old West.

So I've always thought that this very fertile material, paired with peak-Kubrick, was always going to result in something ambitious and confounding for audiences.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#74

Post by cromwellian » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 2:53 AM UTC

indescions_2018 wrote: post #54

Have revisited 2001 recently. Particularly the scene just before Intermission. Where HAL is reading the lips of the astronauts in the pod. It just really holds up. Apart from the genius editing and sound design. It feels even more a cautionary moment for modern minds on AI. As it must have been to American audiences during the height of the Vietnam War era. Ridley Scott's original Alien and Blade Runner remain immens…

Try thto Person of Interest TV series, from season 2 and especially 3, onwards it is all about super intelligence combined with super surveillance.

https://youtu.be/SmUO0v7VYTo

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#75

Post by lucas_membrane » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 2:55 AM UTC

There was one other contributor who was equally or even more disappointed by the first viewing on opening night, the composer who had been hired to write the score, who found out then that Strauss had been substituted.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#76

Post by [deleted] » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 3:00 AM UTC

hypertexthero wrote: post #50

jccooper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

The Shining is a rare case of a film being far better than a the book it is based on precisely because of Kubrick’s reinterpretation of the story. I find [this argument][1] that one of its central themes is a suppressed history of violence and bloodshed convincing. A film masterpiece. [1]: http://www.collativelearning.com/the%20shining%20-%20chap%20...

[deleted]

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#77

Post by EGreg » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 3:01 AM UTC

hristov wrote: post #66

jccooper wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stephen King is publicly critical of Kubrick's treatment of "The Shining", mostly about its unchanging and one-dimensional characters. While I expect "2001" would not have been improved by a lot of explanatory voiceovers, I think "The Shining" would be seriously improved by Jack not being obviously crazy right from the first.

Steven King got to write the screenplay for his own version of the shining in the form of a TV miniseries. It was so bad it was actually funny instead of being scary. I think it is safe to say here that history has proven Kubrick right on this particular point.

I liked the miniseries way more.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#78

Post by newnewpdro » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 3:08 AM UTC

terminado wrote: post #27

interfixus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My God, I think you may be right. By the way, as touched upon in Moorcock's article, Clarke would not have appreciated you calling his novel a novelization.

And 2010, the sequel, is pretty unwatchable. It is a bad movie. The worst part about the movie is Roy Scheider's fatherly internal monologue narration, which tediously explains-like-i'm-five for half the movie. So maybe that gives us a hint, about what Clark's narration would have done to 2001. That little sound bite also chimes in over and over again, sounding forced, poorly performed and with a corny distortion eff…

It's cheesy, has more of a B-movie feel to it - but I get the impression that the budget was a fraction of Kubrick's.

I still enjoyed it though, and rewatch it occasionally.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#79

Post by InclinedPlane » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 3:09 AM UTC

andrewflnr wrote: post #4

I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative approaches explains a lot.

Maddening? No, it's glorious.

A simple film, a dumb film, a useless film is one that wraps everything up in a tidy little bow with a neat little moral at the end. A smart film, an impactful film is one that raises questions without simple answers. A film that makes you dwell on those questions, a film that makes you think about and come up with answers to those questions yourself. That's a life altering film. That's a film that sticks with you for life. That's a film that colors your whole perception of life and the Universe.

And that's what 2001 is. It's not a morsel to consume, be done with, and move on from. It's a piece of sand, an irritant, that will stick with you forever and will grow (as a pearl does) as you think about it and delve the depths of the questions it raises. That, in my opinion, is the highest form of art.

Re: “Close to tears, he left at the intermission”: how Kubrick upset Clarke (2017)

#80

Post by gnulinux » Sun, Apr 08, 2018, 3:24 AM UTC

mortenjorck wrote: post #41

andrewflnr wrote: post #4

I can't blame Kubrick for cutting all the voice-overs, which probably would have made the movie unbearable to watch. At the same time, it's maddening in its ambiguity. Seeing it as a product of this enormous gulf between creative approaches explains a lot.

It would be fascinating to watch the Clarke cut. The spartan ambiguity of Kubrick's cut almost certainly makes it the better film, but to see A Space Odyssey from such a different creative perspective would nonetheless be a revelation. I wonder if prints of it still exist in a vault somewhere.

Kubrick is known to destroy all existing prints of his films other than the one his original, so that people don't create other versions of his films.