The little girl on the picture phone was Kubrick's daughter.
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When Dave Bowman blows the explosive bolts on the pod to get into the Discovery, he flies into the long airlock, then back out towards the exit. Watch the pod through both of these shots; it doesn't move a single centimeter when the bolts explode and is in the exact same position when Bowman's body heads back towards the exit. Even with the best possible maneuvering thrusters automatically set to hold the pod in place, it would have moved significantly when the explosive bolts were set off. One corrector proposed that the pod would be held in place because the mechanical arms used to open the airlock would have held it there. Incorrect; Bowman released the pod's grip on the discovery in order to turn it around. The same corrector proposed that the expolsion would not overcome the forward inertia of the Discovery. Wrong again, the pod and Discovery are traveling at the same speed; an explosive decompression would push the pod forward at great velocity. See more...
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2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) - 20 trivia entries
Directed by Stanley Kubrick, starring Gary Lockwood (add more)
The little girl on the picture phone was Kubrick's daughter.
The Pink Floyd song 'Echoes', which clocks in at 23:27 on the album Meddle was inspired by and is perfectly timed to the 'Stargate' sequence in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
The leopard lying on a dead zebra was actually lying on a dead horse painted to look like a zebra. The cat wasn't too happy with that scene.
The breathing in the movie, according to Kubrick's daughter, was actually done by Kubrick himself.
The Computer Science department at the Engineering School at the University of Illinois in Urbana, Illinois, have a "birthday party" for HAL every January 12th - the date & place HAL became operational in the movie.
Stanley Kubrick, a chess fan and one of the strongest chess players in Hollywood, named the surname of chief Soviet scientist who visits the space station, after former Russian chess world-champion Vassily Smyslov.
Originally, the astronauts were suppose to head for Saturn but Kubrick found creating the effects for the rings would be too costly; thus, he selected Jupiter instead.
As HAL loses his mind, he begins to sing "Daisy." In 1961, "Daisy" was the first song ever to be reproduced with a nonhuman voice - a computer.
Many of the scenes of the expanding galaxies, as Dave was passing by them, was nothing more than paint being funneled down a tube and pouring out into a glass container full of water with a camera beneath to capture the effect.
In the 'Stargate' sequence at the end of the film, the shots that look like colored landscape is actually unused footage from Dr. Strangelove that was colorised.
Almost every company whose product was advertised in this film is no longer in business.
If you take the letters in the computer's name (HAL), and then the next letter in the alphabet after each one, you get IBM. Stanley Kubrick denied it was on purpose but it is still kind of neat.
Originally the film was going to end with the Starchild activating the nuclear launch platforms orbiting Earth, using the planet's destruction as a means to accelerate the evolution of mankind into it's new universally intelligent form. Stanley Kubrick eventually decided against this as it was too similar to the ending of his previous film "Dr. Strangelove".
Much has been written about the scene where Bowman enters the air lock without his helmet. Studies done by NASA have shown that humans can survive in vacuum for brief periods if they do not hold their breath. Some have commented that Dave appears to hold his breath before blowing the hatch, but careful study of the scene does not show this, as it seems he is simply grimacing, bracing himself for the coming effort. When the film was first shown in theaters, many of them handed out souvenir booklets which included references to this study.
The scene where Bowman is shown floating thru HAL's 'brain' prior to disconnect used a stunt double in a space suit suspended by wires behind him. During one take the wires failed, dropping him to the floor and causing serious injury.
To film Dave Bowman's explosive transition from the pod into the Discovery, a vertical airlock set was constructed. Keir Dullea was suspended on wires and pulled to the top of the set as the camera shot upwards from below. This, combined with the establishing shot of the pod lined up with the airlock door, gave the illusion that he was floating horizontally into the ship - the wires suspending him from the ceiling were hidden behind his body.
In the ape or Dawn of Man portion of the film, the scenes of the landscapes were created by still projectors near the film camera with a stage in the foreground. This was obvious, in one scene, where the eyes of the leopard were glowing.
The moon pit where we see the monolith was created by dyeing 90 tons of sand. (Interview with Kier Dullea).
Not only "Echoes," but also the album "Dark Side of the Moon," less the songs "Money," "Us and Them," and "Any Colour You Like," can be perfectly synchronized to the Stargate sequence.
Alex North originally scored 2001. Kubrick eventually decided to go with classical music instead for he used classical music on his sets to set the mood for his actors.
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