done and solved (again!) our main plot problems.
October 26. Had a discussion with Stanley over his latest idea-that Discovery should be nuclear– pulse- driven. Read a recently declassified report on this and was quite impressed-but the design staff rather upset.
November 10. Accompanied Stan and the design staff into the Earth-orbit ship and happened to remark that the cockpit looked like a Chinese restaurant. Stan said that killed it instantly for him and called for revisions. Must keep away from the Art Department for a few days.
November 16. Long session with Stanley discussing script. Several good ideas, but I rather wish we didn't have any more.
November 18. Feeling rather stale-went into London and saw Carol Reed's film about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. One line particularly struck me-the use of the phrase 'God made Man in His own image.' This, after all, is the theme of our movie.
November 30. To the Oxford and Cambridge Club with Roger Caras and Fred Ordway (Technical Adviser) to meet Dr. Louis Leakey and his son Richard. Dr. Leakey is just as I imagined him-full of enthusiasm and ideas. He thinks that Man now goes back at least four to five million years. He also confided to me that he'd written a play-a fantasy about primitive man which he thought would make a fine movie. It's about a group of anthropologists who are sent back into the past by a witch doctor. I said (breaking all my rules) that I'd be glad to see the MS-which is true.
December 16. My 48th birthday-and Somerset Maugham dies. Trying to make something of this (last of the competition?).
December 25. Christmas Day, ha-ha! Hacked my way to Jupiter-slow but steady going.
December 26. Working all day. Stan phoned to thank me for the presents and sent a driver to collect what I'd written. He called later to say that he didn't think much of the dialogue. I agreed.
That Christmas of 1965 we were really under the gun, and no one had a holiday. Stanley was up against an unbreakable deadline. The enormous set of the TMA 1 excavation, containing the monolith found on the Moon, had been constructed at the Shepperton Studios, in South West London-and it had to be torn down by the first week of the New Year, so that another production could move in. Stanley had only a week to do all his shooting, for the second crucial encounter between Man and Monolith.
It was not until several years later that I remembered another association between Shepperton and space. If you turn to H. G. Wells' masterpiece The War of the Worlds you will discover Chapter 12:-'What I saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton.' This first of all descriptions of armored warfare is still quite terrifying to read:
The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence-the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on, and collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of my sight.
A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend….
Of course, now we have the heat ray, and we can do a lot better than Wells' feeble Martians with a small tactical atomic bomb. Still, it's not at all bad-for 1898….
MONOLITHS AND MANUSCRIPTS
I still have the call sheet for that first day's work at Shepperton on a freezing December 29, 1965. For sentimental reasons-and because it is surely of interest even to the benighted inhabitants of that limbo once called (by one of Hollywood's lady dragons) the 'non-celluloid world'-I would like to reproduce it here. There are few better ways of conveying the behind-the– scenes work that went into every frame of the movie.
My diary records that first day in some detail:
December 29, 1965. The TMA 1 set is huge-the stage is the second largest in Europe , and very impressive. A 150 x 50 x 20-foot hole, with equipment scattered around it. (E.g. neat little electric-powered excavators, bulldozers, etc. which could really work on the Moon!) About a hundred technicians were milling around. I spent some time with Stanley , reworking the script-in fact we continued through lunch together. I also met the actors, and felt quite the proper expert when they started asking me astronomical questions. I stayed until 4 p.m.-no actual shooting by then, but they were getting near it. The spacesuits, back-packs, etc. are beautifully done, and TMA 1 is quite impressive-though someone had smeared the black finish and Stanley went on a rampage when I pointed it out to him.
The jet-black slab of the monolith was, of course, an extraordinarily difficult object to light and photograph– and the scene would certainly have been wrecked if naked fingerprints had appeared on the ebon surface, even before it had been touched by the gloved hands of the astronauts. (Five years later, in the Smithsonian, I was able to flex my own fingers inside the very glove which had first made contact with the surface of the Moon.)
The famous monolith, which has caused so much controversy and bafllement, was itself the end product of a considerable evolution. In the beginning, the alien artifact had been a black tetrahedron-the simplest and most fundamental of all regular solids, formed of four equal triangles. It was a shape which inspired all sorts of philosophical and scientific speculations (Kepler's cosmography, the carbon atom, Buckminster Fuller's geodesic structures . . .), and the art department constructed models of various sizes which were set in African and lunar landscapes. But somehow, they never looked right, and there was also the danger that they would arouse wholly irrelevant associations with the pyramids.
For a while, Stanley considered using a transparent cube, but it proved impossible to make one of the required size. So he settled on the rectangular shape, and obtained a three-ton block of lucite-the largest ever cast. Unfortunately, that also looked unconvincing, so it was banished to a corner of the studio and a completely black slab of the same dimensions wag substituted. I frantically followed-and occasionally anticipated-all these changes on my typewriter, but must admit that I had a considerably easier job than the Props Department.
Despite such problems as birds (or were they bats?) invading the gigantic stage and flying across the lunar landscape, Stanley completed shooting before the one week deadline. The monolith was carefully wrapped in cotton wool, and stored in a safe place until it would be needed again-a year or so later, for the confrontation in the final hotel-room sequence. The unit went back to the Borehamwood studios, and I continued to beat out my brains….
January 7, 1966. Realized last night that the Star Gate had to be Iapetus with its six-to-one brightness ratio. Got off a memo to Stan about that.
January 8. Record day-three thousand words, including some of the most exciting in the book. I got quite scared when the computer started going nuts, being alone in the house with my electric typewriter….
January 14. Completed the Inferno chapter and have got Bowman into the hotel room. Now to get him out of it.
January 16. Long talk with Stan and managed to resolve most of the outstanding plot points. Got straight to work and by the time I staggered to bed stupefied had at last almost completed the first draft of the final sequence. Now I really feel the end's in sight-but I've felt that twice before.
January 17. About midday got a first draft of the last chapters completed. Have had a headache ever since and my brain's still spinning around. Too exhausted to feel much pleasure-only relief. Trying to unwind all day; luckily I'm off to the studio tomorrow, which will be a break.
January 18. Lord Snowdon on the set, shooting Stanley from all angles for Life.
January 19. Stanley phoned to say that he was very happy with the last chapters and feels that the story is now 'rock-hard.' Delighted, I tried to pin him down at once to agree that the existing version could be typed and sent off to our agent.
February 2. Spent all day with Stan-developed a few new ideas but of course there are endless interruptions,
