2001: A Space Odyssey - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[amber]

Originally, HAL was to be called Athena and have a female voice. According to Keir Dullea (Dave Bowman), Nigel Davenport and Martin Balsam were hired and later replaced before Douglas Rain finally landed the role of HAL. Davenport was actually on-set in England during filming, reading HAL's lines off-camera so that Dullea and Gary Lockwood could react to them. Apparently, Stanley Kubrick thought that Davenport's English accent was too distracting, so after a few weeks he dismissed him and for the remainder of the shoot HAL's lines were read by an assistant director who, according to Dullea, had a Cockney accent so thick that lines like "Better take a stress pill, Dave" came out like "Better tyke a stress pill, Dyve". Later Balsam was hired and recorded HAL's voice in New York, but again when Kubrick heard his lines he wasn't satisfied, so he finally got Rain to re-record everything during post-production. Rain recorded in Canada, speaking his lines barefoot with his feet resting on a pillow to get the relaxed tone. For the sequel, Peter Hyams' 2010: The Year We Make Contact (1984), the opposite process was used: Rain recorded all of HAL's dialogue during pre-production prior to principal photography. That's why, to this day, Dullea and Rain have never actually spoken directly to each other or met in person.

[marc]

The end music credits do not list a conductor and orchestra for "Also Sprach Zarathustra." Stanley Kubrick wanted the Herbert von Karajan / Wiener Philharmoniker (Vienna Philharmonic) version on British Decca for the film's soundtrack, but Decca executives did not want the company's recording supposedly cheapened by association with the movie, and so it gave permission on the condition that the conductor and orchestra were not named. After the movie's successful release, Decca tried to rectify its blunder by re-releasing the recording with an "As-Heard-in-'2001'" flag printed on the album cover. John Culshaw recounts the incident in the book "Putting the Record Straight" (1981). In Decca's haste to rush the re-release the recording, the album was issued with a disfiguring pitch waver at the end of each side. In the meantime, MGM released the official soundtrack album with Karl Böhm's Berliner Philharmoniker (Berlin Philharmonic) "Also Sprach Zarathustra" discreetly substituting for von Karajan's version. The always publicity-minded von Karajan, by then permanent conductor of the Berlin Philharmonic, was furious with Decca. Rhino/Atlantic Records' current CD release of the soundtrack purports to restore the von Karajan recording to its proper place.

[russell]

There is a mark difference in tone in which Dave and Frank interact with HAL. Whereas Dave is friendly, Frank is somewhat cold. For one, Dave always ends his instructions with "please." He also openly listened when HAL related to him that there were some peculiarities about the mission. Frank however treats HAL exactly as he is, an on board computer programmed to run the ship. When the AE35 Unit failed, Frank was first one to doubt HAL's abilities

[kenneth]

Although it is not explicitly stated, the crew of the Pan Am shuttle wear Velcro slippers in order to walk around the cabin in zero-gravity. Hence the close-up on the stewardesses feet at the beginning of the flight. There is also a brief mention of Velcro slippers in the instructions to the zero-gravity toilet on the shuttle.

[bryan]

The movie has many instances of product placement for IBM. The most apparent are the computer panels in the space plane that docks with the space station, the forearm control panel on Dave's spacesuit, and the portable viewing screens on which Dave and Frank watch "The World Tonight."

[wesley]

The scene following the ape-man hurling the bone shifts to outer space. what's shown is not a space ship or space station, but an armed weapon satellite; it's a weapon-to weapon cut (according to DVD commentary).

[tamara]

Early drafts included a prologue containing interviews with scientists about off-Earth life, voice-over narration (a feature in all of Stanley Kubrick's previous films), a stronger emphasis on the prevailing Cold War balance of terror, and a different and more explicitly explained break-down for H.A.L. Other changes include a different monolith for the "Dawn of Man" sequence, discarded when early prototypes did not photograph well; the use of Saturn as the final destination of the Discovery mission rather than Jupiter, discarded when the special effects team could not develop a convincing rendition of Saturn's rings; and the finale of the Star Child detonating nuclear weapons carried by Earth-orbiting satellites, which Kubrick discarded for its similarity to his previous film, Dr. Strangelove. The finale and many of the other discarded screenplay ideas survived into Clarke's novel.

[chad]

HAL 9000 never once says, "Good Morning, Dave," despite this line being one of his most recognized quotations.