The Stanley Kubrick masterpiece 241 people walked out of – and how it brutally dented his confidence
It’s hard to imagine anyone watching 2001: A Space Odyssey and not considering it a masterpiece. Whether you’re a big fan of Stanley Kubrick’s oeuvre or not, his space epic is undeniably breathtaking – a cinematic feat both thematically and technically.
Creating deceptively realistic sets and using a retro-futuristic aesthetic that makes the movie look perpetually ahead of its time (it really was), Kubrick’s 1968 film changed the sci-fi genre for good, offering up a meditative look at human evolution and the development of technology.
While the ‘50s and ‘60s were full of sci-fi B-movies – I mean, Barbarella isn’t exactly a serious look at life on another planet – 2001: A Space Odyssey came crashing down at the tail end of the flower power decade and signalled a new era for space-themed media. Inspired by the psychedelia that took the ‘60s by storm, the film was a hallucinatory journey through space and time, although it was hardly optimistic.
Many people didn’t know what to make of the film when it was released, simply because there had never been anything like it before, and while Kubrick’s previous film had been the dark comedy Dr Strangelove, this was much bigger; the scope of 2001: A Space Odyssey seemed to suggest that Kubrick was one of the most capable directors around, but still, that didn’t stop those who watched preview screenings of the film from questioning if he was actually as good as people said he was.
During one screening, which included MGM executives and Arthur C Clarke, who penned the screenplay based on several of his short stories, walk-outs were unfortunately a-plenty. Kubrick was starting to get nervous.
According to a book on the movie and its production by Michael Benson, 241 people walked out of a preview screening, including Clarke, and while the writer had collaborated closely with Kubrick on the film, much had been edited out in post-production, with ideas changed and new additions put in place, leaving Clarke clueless and reportedly humiliated.
Clarke’s dissatisfaction with the film didn’t last, but the initial shock of watching Space Odyssey certainly left him uncertain. “Well, that’s the end of Stanley Kubrick,” he claimed to have overheard in the audience.
According to theoretical physicist Jeremy Bernstein, the reaction from this screening was one of disappointment. “We had expected something else,” he claimed.
While some people had faith in the film, Kubrick’s wife, Christiane, was worried about how the negativity coming from these executives was affecting him. “Stanley was so unhappy,” she recalled, remembering how she told Terry Southern, “I’m so sad, this is so horrible for Stanley.”
“Stanley was tearing himself to shreds,” she claimed, “Saying, ‘Oh my God, they really hated it.’ He was heartbroken.”
Yet, she knew he’d made something special, even if many people couldn’t seem to see that, and that he’d taken a risk by making something so unconventional, with its slow pace and at times incomprehensible sequences, but it all worked out in the end, of course, and 2001: A Space Odyssey is now considered one of the greatest, most influential movies of all time.
