the same relationship to a movie as the musical score does to a symphonic performance. There are people who can read a musical score and 'hear' the symphony-but no two directors will see the same images when they read a movie script. The two-dimensional patterns of colored light involved are far more complex than the one-dimensional thread of sound-which can, in principle, be completely described on paper. A movie can never be pinned down in such a way, though the scriptwriter has to attempt this impossible feat. Unless the writer is the director, everything has to be specified in boring detail; no wonder that screenplays are almost as tedious to read as to write. John Fowles has put it very well: 'Any novelist who has written scripts knows the appalling restrictions– obligatory detailing of the unnecessary-the cinema imposes. Writing a novel is like swimming in the sea; writing a film script is thrashing through treacle.' ('Is the Novel Dead?'-Books, Autumn 1970).
Though I was only dimly aware of this in 1964, Stanley knew it very well. It was his suggestion that, before embarking on the drudgery of the script, we let our imaginations soar freely by developing the story in the form of a complete novel. Of course, to do this we would have to generate far more background than could ever be used in the final film. That wouldn't matter. Every good novelist 'knows' much more than he writes down: every film maker should be aware of a larger universe than his script.
In theory, therefore, the novel would be written (with an eye on the screen) and the script would be derived from this. In practice, the result was far more complex; toward the end, both novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously, with feedback in both directions. Some parts of the novel had their final revisions after we had seen the rushes based on the screenplay based on earlier versions of the novel . . . and so on.
After a couple of years of this, I felt that when the novel finally appeared it should be 'by Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick; based on the screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur Clarke'-whereas the movie should have the credits reversed. This still seems the nearest approximation to the complicated truth.
After various false starts and twelve-hour talkathons, by early May 1964 Stanley agreed that 'The Sentinel' would provide good story material. But our first concept-and it is hard now for me to focus on such an idea, though it would have been perfectly viable-involved working up to the discovery of an extraterrestrial artifact as the climax, not the beginning, of the story. Before that, we would have a series of incidents or adventures devoted to the exploration of the Moon and Planets. For this Mark I version, our private title (never of course intended for public use) was 'How the Solar System Was Won.'
So once more I went back to my stockpile of short stories, to find material which would fit into this pattern. I returned with five: 'Breaking Strain' (from Expedition to Earth ); 'Out of the Cradle, Endlessly Orbiting . . .', 'Who's There?', 'Into the Comet', and 'Before Eden' (all from Tales of Ten Worlds). On May 28, 1964, I sold the lot to Stanley and signed an agreement to work on the projected movie. Our initial schedule was hilariously optimistic: writing script, 12 weeks; discussing it, 2 weeks; revising, 4 weeks; fixing deal, 4 weeks; visuals, art, 20 weeks; shooting, 20 weeks; cutting, editing, 20 weeks-a total of 82 weeks. Allowing another 12 weeks before release, this added up to 92, or the better part of two years. I was very depressed by this staggering period of time, since I was (as always) in a hurry to get back to Ceylon, it was just as well that neither of us could have guessed the project's ultimate duration-four years….
The rest of 1964 was spent brainstorming. As we developed new ideas, so the original conception slowly changed. 'The Sentinel' became the opening, not the finale; and one by one, the other five short stories were discarded. A year later, deciding (not necessarily in this order) that (a) it wasn't fair to Stanley to make him pay for something he didn't need and (b) these stories might make a pretty good movie someday, I bought them back from him….
The announced title of the project, when Stanley gave his intentions to the press, was Journey Beyond the Stars. I never liked this, because there had been far too many science-fictional journeys and voyages. (Indeed, the innerspace epic Fantastic Voyage, featuring Raquel Welch and a supporting cast of ten thousand blood corpuscles, was also going into production about this time.) Other titles which we ran up and failed to salute were Universe, Tunnel to the Stars, and Planetfall. It was not until eleven months after we started-April 1965-that Stanley selected 2001: A Space Odyssey. As far as I can recall, it was entirely his idea.
Despite the unrelenting pressure of work (a mere twelve hours was practically a day off) I kept a detailed log of the whole operation. Though I do not wish to get bogged down in minutiae of interest only to fanatical Kubrickologists, perhaps these extracts may convey the flavor of those early days:-
May 28, 1964. Suggested to Stanley that 'they' might be machines who regard organic life as a hideous disease. Stanley thinks this is cute and feels we've got something.
May 31. One hilarious idea we won't use. Seventeen aliens-featureless black pyramids-riding in open cars down Fifth Avenue , surrounded by Irish cops.
June 20. Finished the opening chapter, 'View from the Year 2000,' and started on the robot sequence.
July 1. Last day working at Time/Life completing Man and Space. Checked into new suite, 1008, at the Hotel Chelsea.
July 2-8. Averaging one or two thousand words a day. Stanley reads first five chapters and says 'We've got a best seller here.'
July 9. Spent much of afternoon teaching Stanley how to use the slide rule-he's fascinated.
July 11. Joined Stanley to discuss plot development, but spent almost all the time arguing about Cantor's Theory of Transfinite Groups. Stanley tries to refute the 'part equals the whole' paradox by arguing that a perfect square is not necessarily identical with the integer of the same value. I decide that he is a latent mathematical genius.
July 12. Now have everything-except the plot.
July 13. Got to work again on the novel and made good progress despite the distraction of the Republican Convention.
July 26. Stanley 's birthday. Went to the Village and found a card showing the Earth coming apart at the seams and bearing the inscription: 'How can you have a Happy Birthday when the whole world may blow up any minute?'
July 28. Stanley : 'What we want is a smashing theme of mythic grandeur.'
August 1. Ranger VII impacts on moon. Stay up late to watch the first TV closeups. Stanley starts to worry about the forthcoming Mars probes. Suppose they show something that shoots down our story line? [Later he approached Lloyd's of London to see if he could insure himself against this eventuality.]
August 6. Stanley suggests that we make the computer female and call her Athena.
August 17. We've also got the name of our hero at last– Alex Bowman. Hurrah!
August 19. Writing all day. Two thousand words exploring Jupiter's satellites. Dull work.
September 7. Stanley quite happy: 'We're in fantastic shape.' He has made up a 100-item questionnaire about our astronauts, e.g. do they sleep in their pajamas, what do they eat for breakfast, etc.
September 8. Upset stomach last night. Dreamed I was a robot, being rebuilt. In a great burst of energy managed to redo two chapters. Took them to Stanley, who was very pleased and cooked me a fine steak, remarking: 'Joe Levine doesn't do this for his writers.'
September 26. Stanley gave me Joseph Campbell's analysis of the myth The Hero with a Thousand Faces to study. Very stimulating.
September 29. Dreamed that shooting had started. Lots of actors standing around, but I still didn't know the story line.
October 2. Finished reading Robert Ardrey's African Genesis. Came across a striking paragraph which might even provide a title for the movie: 'Why did not the human line become extinct in the depths of the Pliocene? . . . we know that but for a gift from the stars, but for the accidental collision of ray and gene, intelligence would have perished on some forgotten African field.' True, Ardrey is talking about cosmic-ray mutations, but the phrase 'A gift from the stars' is strikingly applicable to our present plot line.
October 6. Have got an idea which I think is crucial. The people we meet on the other star system are humans who were collected from Earth a hundred thousand years ago, and hence are virtually identical with us.
October 8. Thinking of plot all morning, but after a long walk in the sun we ended up on the East River watching the boats. We dumped all our far-fetched ideas-now we're settling for a Galactic Peace Corps and no blood and thunder.
October 17. Stanley has invented the wild idea of slightly fag robots who create a Victorian environment to put our heroes at their ease.
