What do you think?
Rate this book
The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey
"If 2001 has stirred your emotions, your subconscious, your mythological yearnings, then it has succeeded."--Stanley Kubrick
Stanley Kubrick's extraordinary movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1969. The critics initially disliked it, but the public loved it. And eventually, the film took its rightful place as one of the most innovative, brilliant, and pivotal works of modern cinema. The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey consists of testimony from Kubrick's collaborators and commentary from critics and historians. This is the most complete book on the film to date--from Stanley Kubrick's first meeting with screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke to Kubrick's exhaustive research to the actual shooting and release of the movie.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
Stanley Kubrick's extraordinary movie 2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1969. The critics initially disliked it, but the public loved it. And eventually, the film took its rightful place as one of the most innovative, brilliant, and pivotal works of modern cinema. The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey consists of testimony from Kubrick's collaborators and commentary from critics and historians. This is the most complete book on the film to date--from Stanley Kubrick's first meeting with screenwriter Arthur C. Clarke to Kubrick's exhaustive research to the actual shooting and release of the movie.
From the Trade Paperback edition.
352 pages, Paperback
First published March 7, 2000
13 people are currently reading
98 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
November 12, 2013
I had never seen this film until the guy I was dating at the time took me to a showing at the Egyptian Theater. I knew nearly nothing about the film, so I asked him how it started. He said it started with monkeys. I thought he was pulling my leg. I watched the film (there was an intermission, and it was awesome because for once the men's bathroom had a long line, and the women's bathroom had none - also, a woman ran full tilt into the glass doors from the lobby to the theater, ouch) and loved it. He owned this book, though I don't think he'd read it, and I took it and loved learning about the film.
August 21, 2019
Good additional material to add to my collection of information about 2001. The level of detail is more than is warranted for the typical movie - this is definitely for nerdy 2001 fans. For example quite a few original reviews are printed in full, so the reader can examine the original rather than having to be satisfied with the "conventional wisdom" about what a review said.
A few bits seemed familiar, as though I'd read them before somewhere. And sometimes several different people describe the same event (each from their own point of view of course). But overall the content seemed interesting and appropriate to the nerds around a movie that appeared fifty years ago.
Reading this book reminded me (or informed me) of a few things: 1] Stanley Kubrick was a bit of a futurist, much more conversant with possible future trends (and not just in space travel) than most folks. 2] A tremendous amount of effort and inventiveness (and money) , went into the special effects, which still look pretty good even all these years later. 3] Kubrick greatly emphasized the film's communication of "a feeling", even to the point of disregarding a _lot_ of feedback about it being needlessly hard to follow (removing titles, voice-overs, explanatory labels, the entire prologue, etc.), so the film was comprehensible only to viewers with "a hippie sensibility" and appeared to be nothing more than a muddle to pretty much everyone over thirty. 4] The film itself is so ambiguous about events that the puzzle of its plot probably would not have been solved at all without the publication of the book a few months later. and 5] The movie was only a year or two before the actual moon shot (i.e. it was less prophetic than the current common wisdom makes it out to be).
Perhaps of most value was realizing how many different ideas Clarke and Kubrick tried out. While Clarke's story "The Sentinel" was always central, the other parts varied wildly.
It was also interesting to have it reinforced yet again that the subtitle "A Space Odyssey" was an attempt to make it very clear that 2001 was NOT yet another SciFi film about babes and monsters and phasers and flying saucers.
And it was interesting to find out that there were more than a few jokes about 2001 being "a religious film" even before it came out.
A few bits seemed familiar, as though I'd read them before somewhere. And sometimes several different people describe the same event (each from their own point of view of course). But overall the content seemed interesting and appropriate to the nerds around a movie that appeared fifty years ago.
Reading this book reminded me (or informed me) of a few things: 1] Stanley Kubrick was a bit of a futurist, much more conversant with possible future trends (and not just in space travel) than most folks. 2] A tremendous amount of effort and inventiveness (and money) , went into the special effects, which still look pretty good even all these years later. 3] Kubrick greatly emphasized the film's communication of "a feeling", even to the point of disregarding a _lot_ of feedback about it being needlessly hard to follow (removing titles, voice-overs, explanatory labels, the entire prologue, etc.), so the film was comprehensible only to viewers with "a hippie sensibility" and appeared to be nothing more than a muddle to pretty much everyone over thirty. 4] The film itself is so ambiguous about events that the puzzle of its plot probably would not have been solved at all without the publication of the book a few months later. and 5] The movie was only a year or two before the actual moon shot (i.e. it was less prophetic than the current common wisdom makes it out to be).
Perhaps of most value was realizing how many different ideas Clarke and Kubrick tried out. While Clarke's story "The Sentinel" was always central, the other parts varied wildly.
It was also interesting to have it reinforced yet again that the subtitle "A Space Odyssey" was an attempt to make it very clear that 2001 was NOT yet another SciFi film about babes and monsters and phasers and flying saucers.
And it was interesting to find out that there were more than a few jokes about 2001 being "a religious film" even before it came out.
April 3, 2019
Current Kubrick/Clarke interests led me to buying this book to try to gain some insight into their minds. You could argue that Asimov was a greater author (and after reading his entire short story catalog I believe this (see - the Last Question)) but I don't think you can argue there was ever, or ever will be, a greater director than Kubrick. Including Lynch, old Spielberg, Coppola...
The book is split into a few parts. The majority of it is devoted to pre-production, filming, and post-production. Learned a fair bit about how the movie was made and book was written (as they were done in tandem). Honestly not overly enthralling although it did talk about a lot of concepts that were pioneering in their day. I see now how, 50 years later, the movie still holds up amazingly.
Which is nice because I always wondered why. many of their techniques were invented FOR 2001 and used industry-wide since. In its day it was truly incomparable.
My favorite part was definitely the end interivews with Clarke/Kubrick. In a 30 pager that Kubrick did with playboy around 1970 he touches on automation, the future of jobs, cryogenics, time travel, colonizing the cosmos, psychedelics, sentient machines, immortality/God, and what to do when, one day, there is a psychopathic commander-in-chief with the full nuclear arsenal at his disposal. And the quotes he pulls out in everyday conversation are remarkable.
Who was thinking about all that in 1970? Kubrick is now up there with Musk on the beer spectrum (that is, who would you most like to be able to sit down for beers with). Did I mention he was a masterful chess player? Because of course he was.
The book is split into a few parts. The majority of it is devoted to pre-production, filming, and post-production. Learned a fair bit about how the movie was made and book was written (as they were done in tandem). Honestly not overly enthralling although it did talk about a lot of concepts that were pioneering in their day. I see now how, 50 years later, the movie still holds up amazingly.
Which is nice because I always wondered why. many of their techniques were invented FOR 2001 and used industry-wide since. In its day it was truly incomparable.
My favorite part was definitely the end interivews with Clarke/Kubrick. In a 30 pager that Kubrick did with playboy around 1970 he touches on automation, the future of jobs, cryogenics, time travel, colonizing the cosmos, psychedelics, sentient machines, immortality/God, and what to do when, one day, there is a psychopathic commander-in-chief with the full nuclear arsenal at his disposal. And the quotes he pulls out in everyday conversation are remarkable.
Who was thinking about all that in 1970? Kubrick is now up there with Musk on the beer spectrum (that is, who would you most like to be able to sit down for beers with). Did I mention he was a masterful chess player? Because of course he was.
October 12, 2019
This is the second best book on the subject.
June 15, 2010
This book was a bit of a letdown for me, it started out well enough but just seemed to fall apart. It's actually a collection of essays and recollections from people involved in the making of the movie and reprints of reviews and interviews from other publications. Notably absent were any writings by Kubrick himself, and this is made even more irritating by the fact that everyone else talks about him and their encounters with him! I did enjoy the bits from Arthur C Clarke regarding the writing of the book/script and the beginnings of the production of the movie, but with many different writers and viewpoints the flow was uneven and some of the accounts were even repeated by multiple contributors. Overall this technique made the book feel like it was cobbled together to cash in on interest for the movie, which was a big disappointment for me. 3 stars because what parts that I did like were very interesting to me. I'm thinking (hoping) there's probably a better title out there, tho.
January 16, 2016
Una collezione di documenti relativi alla produzione di 2001: Odissea nello Spazio. Un libro prezioso perché gli articoli ristampati sono tutti estremamente difficili da reperire nelle loro fonti originarie. Nell'introduzione, Jay Cocks racconta la sua esperienza di giovane giornalista invitato sul set e il suo incontro con Kubrick.
April 21, 2013
If you're a die hard 2001 fan you will be very happy to read this book because it informs you everything you need to know about the film. I admire the dedication from everyone that worked on the book. It literally feels like I'm sitting down with Kubrick discussing his film.
May 1, 2016
Throughly entertaining and highly enlightening. One of my favorite film books. This is the third time I've read it
February 17, 2016
Based mostly on interviews with Kubrick and Clarke but to be fair its hard to get a better insight into the making of this film than from the mouths of these two brilliant horses.
July 11, 2016
I give five stars to books which are what they purport to be and are interesting to me. This one is both. It's like bonus features in print. I love bonus features.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews