Latest / MUBI Podcast / 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY — Stanley Kubrick finds heavenly music on vinyl (rewind)

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2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY — Stanley Kubrick finds heavenly music on vinyl (rewind) · MUBI Podcast

• 0:03
  Hi everybody, last week we gave you a taste of our all new season about great needle drops in movies and while we give more new episodes a final spin clean, please enjoy this classic episode from our season a couple years back where we dove into the same topic.
• 0:18
  Heads up, it does contain spoilers but honestly from a movie you probably should have seen by now, people.
• 0:27
  Picture a little bushy haired third grader.
• 0:30
  Big, thick plastic glasses, wearing a baseball shirt.
• 0:33
  He's cowering in a movie theater seat, eyes glued to the screen, mouth half open.
• 0:39
  That's me, at a matinee screening, July 1977.
• 0:44
  Getting my mind blown.
• 0:48
  A few months before, I'd seen this new movie called Star Wars.
• 0:51
  And it made me and a few million other kids space movie obsessed.
• 0:55
  So now, July '77, the folks at MGM Studios are wisely capitalizing on this new audience by rereleasing another space movie.
• 1:05
  The one that's scrambling my young brains.
• 1:07
  Stanley Kubrick's2001: A Space Odyssey. Honestly, I came in not expecting much.
• 1:15
  The film's old and rated G.
• 1:17
  I figured it would be likeStar Wars with worse special effects and no shootouts.
• 1:23
  Instead, the first quarter hour doesn't even happen in space.
• 1:27
  It's about creepy, primitive ape men, scrounging for food, howling at each other, being attacked by wildcats, huddling at night in fear, in a cave.
• 1:46
  And then one morning, out of nowhere appears the monolith.
• 1:52
  A tall, slim rectangle impossibly deep black.
• 1:59
  The ape men swarm around it.
• 2:00
  They're freaked out, cries slowly drowned out by a choir of moaning, almost satanic voices.
• 2:09
  Getting louder.
• 2:11
  And louder.
• 2:15
  And I'm thinking, "My God, how much louder is this going to get?
• 2:18
  "And how much more can I take?" It's an emotional reaction, like the dread you feel from the hum of buzzing bees.
• 2:25
  Now the ape men are touching the monolith. In awe.
• 2:29
  Can they hear these voices?
• 2:31
  Are they becoming possessed?
• 2:36
  I've never seen a horror movie before.
• 2:39
  I figure this is what one must feel like.
• 2:42
  No words, no explanation.
• 2:44
  Just these intense visuals and that overwhelming music.
• 2:58
  This, I realize, is not Star Wars.
• 3:01
  <i: 2001>A Space Odyssey is around two and a half hours long with just 40 minutes of dialogue.
• 3:08
  <i: 2001>In between? long stretches like these.
• 3:11
  <i: 2001>Some harrowing, some hypnotic, of just otherworldly images, atmospheric sound and lots and lots of classical music.
• 3:22
  <i: 2001>That buzzing choral piece calledRequiem by Giorgi Ligeti, A 19th century Waltz, a Soviet adagio.
• 3:29
  <i: 2001>And when the film came out in 1968, the whole world was a lot like me in '77.
• 3:35
  <i: 2001>A kid pinned to his seat.
• 3:37
  <i: 2001>Not quite sure what the hell was going on, but sensing everything he thought he knew about movies and movie music was wrong.
• 3:57
  <i: 2001>I am Rico Gagliano and welcome back to the MUBI Podcast.
• 4:01
  <i: 2001>MUBI's the streaming service that elevates great cinema.
• 4:03
  <i: 2001>On this show, we tell you the stories behind great cinema.
• 4:06
  <i: 2001>Today we launch season three.
• 4:08
  <i: 2001>We're calling it Needle on the Record'cause we're diving into some of movie history's most iconic needle drops.
• 4:14
  <i: 2001>Those moments when filmmakers take preexisting tunes, drop them in their films and end up with something legendary.
• 4:20
  <i: 2001>And you can't get more legendary than the soundtrack to 2001. Today, 55 years since it came out, it's still the ultimate classical music mixtape.
• 4:29
  <i: 2001>The pieces Kubrick picked for it are still synonymous with space travel, but back then, even the concept seemed insane.
• 4:36
  <i: 2001>Some people thought the waltz, it's not space music.
• 4:38
  <i: 2001>It's totally ridiculous.
• 4:41
  <i: 2001>How can you make such a technical movie with this high tech and futuristic stuff and use a Viennese waltz?
• 4:48
  <i: 2001>I mean, give me a break.
• 4:50
  <i: 2001>That is Kubrick's longtime executive producer, Jan Harlan, and he's one of many folks who told me how Kubrick came to pair waltzes with spaceships, about the musicians he pissed off along the way.
• 5:00
  <i: 2001>Ligeti went to see it and it was furious about it.
• 5:03
  <i: 2001>And in fact, he initially called the film"A piece of Hollywood shit." And about at least one musician who suffered for this film.
• 5:10
  <i: 2001>Physically.
• 5:11
  <i: 2001>He was taken to the recording on a stretcher in an ambulance.
• 5:15
  <i: 2001>It's an epic tale about epic music, so turn up the volume as we drop the needle on A Space Odyssey. To understand just how radical this movie's music was for the time, let's start by meeting a composer whose work did not end up in 2001, though he tried valiantly to get it in there.
• 5:39
  <i: 2001>His name was Alex North.
• 5:41
  <i: 2001>He was a very gentle man.
• 5:43
  <i: 2001>He was totally in love with his music and committed to music.
• 5:48
  <i: 2001>That's Steven North, the late Alex's son, he's also a movie and TV producer.
• 5:52
  <i: 2001>His friends were musicians.
• 5:53
  <i: 2001>Very often I remember trying to sleep and he would be doing four hands with Andre Previn, and John Williams, and Jerry Goldsmith on the two grand pianos.
• 6:03
  <i: 2001>How'd Alex end up jamming on his living room pianos with the greatest movie composers alive?
• 6:08
  <i: 2001>'Cause he was one too.
• 6:10
  <i: 2001>Ever since 1950, when...
• 6:12
  <i: 2001>He was brought to Los Angeles by Elia Kazan to score A Streetcar Named Desire. Which was the first film to use jazz as part of the core of the score, as opposed to just as incidental music.
• 6:35
  <i: 2001>He then did the cinema version of Death of a Salesman. He did Viva Zapata, which was Kazan's picture as well.
• 6:43
  <i: 2001>That was his introduction to Hollywood.
• 6:45
  <i: 2001>Pretty good introduction.
• 6:46
  <i: 2001>All three of those scores got Oscar nominations.
• 6:49
  <i: 2001>Then he got another forThe Rose Tattoo in 1955.
• 6:52
  <i: 2001>A year he was also nominated for Best Original Song, with a melody he wrote for a prison flick called Unchained.
• 7:00
  <i: 2001>Oh, my LordMy darlingI've hungered for your touch Perhaps you've heard it?
• 7:11
  <i: 2001>A long, lonely time North, in other words, was on a roll.
• 7:18
  <i: 2001>And he ended the 1950s with one of his greatest and definitely most fateful gigs, writing the score for the Gladiator movie classic Spartacus.
• 7:26
  <i: 2001>His first time working with the then 30-year-old director named Stanley Kubrick.
• 7:32
  <i: 2001>A guy whose four previous films had already shown he had a meticulous eye and a wide ranging ear.
• 7:38
  <i: 2001>Kubrick was very familiar with classical music, and Kubrick played jazz drums.
• 7:44
  <i: 2001>He played drums in high school.
• 7:48
  <i: 2001>That's Michael Benson.
• 7:49
  <i: 2001>He wroteSpace Odyssey, the Making of 2001.
• 7:53
  <i: 2001>For it he interviewed basically everyone Kubrick ever met, including the director's wife, Christiane.
• 7:58
  <i: 2001>Christiane told me that he had a drum set, set up, in their home.
• 8:02
  <i: 2001>A jazz drum set up in one of the rooms, and he would blow off steam playing drums.
• 8:05
  <i: 2001>So I've even compared Kubrick to a kind of jazz band leader in the sense that he was definitely in control.
• 8:15
  <i: 2001>He was the director.
• 8:17
  <i: 2001>He had iron control of his project but he knew how to let his players solo.
• 8:22
  <i: 2001>Players like Alex North, who hit it off with his new director.
• 8:25
  <i: 2001>Well, during the making of Spartacus, they got on very well.
• 8:28
  <i: 2001>Alex was privy to most of the cuts of the film and was brought in constantly to discuss concept with Kubrick, because Kubrick was very, very concerned about music and how it was used.
• 8:40
  <i: 2001>So Alex had a very close relationship with him during the making and during the filming.
• 8:47
  <i: 2001>The movie was a huge hit, winning four Oscars.
• 8:50
  <i: 2001>The winner is... Spartacus... Spartacus... Spartacus.
• 8:54
  <i: 2001>Peter Ustinov and Spartacus.
• 8:57
  <i: 2001>And netting North yet another nomination.
• 8:59
  <i: 2001>It was the biggest, most expensive flick he or Kubrick had ever undertaken, and they'd nailed it.
• 9:05
  <i: 2001>It might have even been the beginning of a beautiful creative partnership.
• 9:08
  <i: 2001>But after the film was cut...
• 9:15
  <i: 2001>Kubrick was no longer to be found.
• 9:17
  <i: 2001>Yeah, Steven says he just winked out of Alex's life. Incommunicado, which he says was not uncommon.
• 9:23
  <i: 2001>Kubrick is a strange bird.
• 9:26
  <i: 2001>He apparently was best friends with Malcolm McDowell on Clockwork Orange, and they worked very, very closely together and spent a lot of private time together.
• 9:35
  <i: 2001>But when the film ended, Kubrick never spoke to McDowell again.
• 9:40
  <i: 2001>Which made this next part extra surprising.
• 9:42
  <i: 2001>Cut to Alex North, seven years later, December 1967.
• 9:47
  <i: 2001>He was called out of the blue.
• 9:48
  <i: 2001>Alex was staying at the Chelsea Hotel in New York, Kubrick called him and said, would he be available to come to England that day or the next day to spot 2001?
• 10:03
  <i: 2001>What does that mean to spot?
• 10:04
  <i: 2001>Spot is when you sit with the director and you pick the moments that the director wants music on the screen.
• 10:11
  <i: 2001>I think that there was the first half, I think 70 minutes of film was done at that time.
• 10:16
  <i: 2001>And Michael Benton says after North saw that footage, Kubrick's long silence was quickly forgiven.
• 10:22
  <i: 2001>Not just because the film was spectacular, but because there was so much room for music.
• 10:27
  <i: 2001>He was delighted at first when he heard about how little dialogue there was in 2001, and he naively thought that he would have, you know, that would give him more freedom, and so on.
• 10:36
  <i: 2001>But actually, for North, this was not going to be some carefree gig.
• 10:40
  <i: 2001>In fact, he'd be just the latest player in a drama over the movie's music that had been unfolding for years.
• 10:52
  <i: 2001>Flashback to the beginning of that saga, Sri Lanka in 1964.
• 10:58
  <i: 2001>That's where the late, great sci-fi author Arthur C Clarke lived.
• 11:01
  <i: 2001>And that spring, he got a letter from Kubrick who introduced himself and asked if maybe they could collaborate on the story for a new kind of sci-fi flick.
• 11:10
  <i: 2001>He wanted to make the proverbial good science fiction movie, implying there hadn't been any good ones before then.
• 11:17
  <i: 2001>That's Clarke interviewed in Paul Joyce's documentary2001: The Making of a Myth. I didn't agree with him.
• 11:22
  <i: 2001>There had been some good ones,Fantastic Voyage is one, and I was rather fond ofThings to Come, a version of H.G. Wells' book, I got Stanley to see it, and he thought it was absolutely terrible.
• 11:37
  <i: 2001>And of course it was very naive.
• 11:39
  <i: 2001>Kubrick told Clarke he wanted to make a sci-fi that was intellectually deeper than those flicks, more inventive with a vaster scope and a way bigger budget.
• 11:48
  <i: 2001>And since he just scored a huge hit with the black comedyDr Strangelove, he could get whatever he wanted.
• 11:54
  <i: 2001>What Kubrick managed to do with all that credibility he had after doing Strangelove and with the full support of MGM, was make an avant garde experimental art movie on an epic, big budget Hollywood pile of money.
• 12:08
  <i: 2001>And not just cash.
• 12:09
  <i: 2001>MGM also granted Kubrick endless production time to innovate just about every aspect of the movie.
• 12:15
  <i: 2001>You know, 2001 was a research and development.
• 12:18
  <i: 2001>It was a think-tank from beginning to end.
• 12:20
  <i: 2001>It invented dozens and dozens and dozens of new ways of producing film, in visual effects, in makeup, the sound design was incredibly experimental as well.
• 12:31
  <i: 2001>There was just one thing the studio had expectations around.
• 12:35
  <i: 2001>One thing they wanted that went without saying.
• 12:38
  <i: 2001>Oh, I mean, it was just assumed there would be a score of course.
• 12:41
  <i: 2001>The film would have an original score.
• 12:44
  <i: 2001>That was just-- That was a requirement by MGM.
• 12:46
  <i: 2001>It didn't even have to be stated, that was just the way things were.
• 12:48
  <i: 2001>In big budget Hollywood productions part of the whole PR strategy was to hire a big name composer and have an original score.
• 12:58
  <i: 2001>So after wrapping the live action photography for 2001 Kubrick dutifully hunted for someone to write a score as groundbreaking as the rest of his film.
• 13:08
  <i: 2001>It turned out to be an odyssey unto itself.
• 13:13
  <i: 2001>It's really a very convoluted tale.
• 13:15
  <i: 2001>First Kubrick approached Frank Cordell, who had done Khartoum which was a United Artists, Cinerama film.
• 13:23
  <i: 2001>But Kubrick obviously didn't know what he wanted, apart from having a fascination with Mahler's Third Symphony. And David de Wilde, who was the first assistant film editor on 2001, told me that Cordell couldn't get a meeting with Kubrick.
• 13:39
  <i: 2001>And got increasingly tense.
• 13:41
  <i: 2001>And then finally had a nervous breakdown.
• 13:43
  <i: 2001>So one down.
• 13:44
  <i: 2001>Next up, the great German classical composer Carl Orff.
• 13:48
  <i: 2001>Who was then 71 and simply declined.
• 13:50
  <i: 2001>He said "I'm too old to handle the pressures"of such a major production." He might have also heard about Kubrick's reputation.
• 13:57
  <i: 2001>So then Kubrick approached Bernard Herrmann, who did scores for Psycho and Vertigo, and also Citizen Kane.
• 14:06
  <i: 2001>And Herrmann detested Kubrick ever since Kubrick wanted him to do the score for Dr Strangelove.
• 14:12
  <i: 2001>Yeah, back then, Kubrick bruised Herrmann's ego when he dared to tell him his score would be sharing the Strangelove soundtrack with a couple of lowly pop tunes.
• 14:20
  <i: 2001>And so Herrmann's response was, he said, "Well, I'm really busy,"but I'll do 2001 for double my normal fee." Which was a complete provocation, and he knew that Kubrick would never agree to that.
• 14:31
  <i: 2001>Okay, so that's already three composers, one of whom actually tried to do something.
• 14:36
  <i: 2001>By now, it was two years into production, some of 2001's long, wordless special effects sequences were starting to come together without any music.
• 14:46
  <i: 2001>And right around then is when necessity led Kubrick to invention.
• 14:54
  <i: 2001>The MGM brass showed up to see a show reel in late January 1966.
• 15:01
  <i: 2001>So the initial impetus was, Oh my God, the people funding this movie are showing up.
• 15:05
  <i: 2001>We got to show them something and we can't do it in silence, you know, he wanted to have some music to play.
• 15:11
  <i: 2001>And, you know, he sent Tony Frewin, one of his assistants, off to buy something like $5,000 in today's dollars, of records, in a downtown record store in London called Discurio.
• 15:24
  <i: 2001>And there were so many LPs in that car on the way back to the studio that Frewin was worried the police would pull them over because, you know, the car was sagging.
• 15:33
  <i: 2001>Frewin's haul included recordings of Mendelssohn, of course Mahler, all the great composers.
• 15:37
  <i: 2001>They picked, the stuff they thought would work best for the MGM screening and it went well.
• 15:41
  <i: 2001>So well, the crew started spinning all that vinyl during their own screenings.
• 15:46
  <i: 2001>They had a hell of a lot of viewing of rushes in their screening rooms for two and a half years of continuous production.
• 15:53
  <i: 2001>And so it was far more interesting to watch that material with music playing.
• 16:00
  <i: 2001>Until one morning.
• 16:02
  <i: 2001>All of that resulted in a fortuitous moment when the space station footage, they had probably ten shots of the camera moving towards the space station, turning.
• 16:12
  <i: 2001>And the Blue Danube Waltz happened to be cued up.
• 16:21
  <i: 2001>You know the shot.
• 16:22
  <i: 2001>Everybody does.
• 16:24
  <i: 2001>A space station like two giant wheels connected with an axle rotating above the Earth, as a sleek Pan Am space shuttle slowly moves towards it, also rotating as it lines up to dock.
• 16:37
  <i: 2001>Two pieces of technology spinning together in circles like waltzing dancers.
• 16:54
  <i: 2001>And Kubrick kind of, you know, lit up and said, "Would I--"Would I be crazy or would I be a genius"if I dared to use this piece?" Most of the crew thought he'd be crazy.
• 17:07
  <i: 2001>Nobody else liked it.
• 17:09
  <i: 2001>Jan Harlan, executive produced Kubrick's last five films.
• 17:13
  <i: 2001>But in 1966, he was a computer data processor who also happened to be Kubrick's brother-in-law.
• 17:18
  <i: 2001>I visited him on the set of 2001 quite often.
• 17:22
  <i: 2001>And then one day he brought into the cutting room Johann Strauss, The Blue Danube Waltz.
• 17:31
  <i: 2001>And again, and again...
• 17:33
  <i: 2001>And he heard it and Ray Lovejoy told me the story, he was the editor, Ray Lovejoy became worried.
• 17:39
  <i: 2001>What's with this?
• 17:39
  <i: 2001>The waltz is not space music.
• 17:42
  <i: 2001>Thought it ridiculous.
• 17:44
  <i: 2001>How can you make such a technical movie with this high tech and futuristic stuff and use a Viennese waltz?
• 17:51
  <i: 2001>I mean, give me a break! Kubrick's response?
• 17:56
  <i: 2001>Anyway, let's try it.
• 17:58
  <i: 2001>Two weeks went by and he added it, this music, to the film.
• 18:03
  <i: 2001>And was happy with it.
• 18:05
  <i: 2001>It seems like his first inkling that maybe he didn't need to find a composer to write him a perfect score.
• 18:11
  <i: 2001>Maybe the most heavenly, groundbreaking music for his movie was already out there, on vinyl.
• 18:28
  <i: 2001>It was a suspicion that was confirmed almost immediately.
• 18:32
  <i: 2001>So, you know, essentially his inner circle was all instructed, please listen, keep your ears peeled or whatever, for works of music, you know, works of classical music that might work with some of these, you know, weightlessness scenes or the so-called Stargate sequence and so forth.
• 18:50
  <i: 2001>This is the BBC Third Programme.
• 18:53
  <i: 2001>And so one day in '67, Christiane Kubrick and the wife of one of the visual effects leads, Charlene Pedersen, were working together.
• 19:04
  <i: 2001>They were listening to the BBC.
• 19:06
  <i: 2001>And actually, Christiane was not in the room'cause she was arranging for a lunch to be delivered.
• 19:12
  <i: 2001>And Ligeti's Requiem came on the radio.
• 19:20
  <i: 2001>And Charlene immediately recognized it as a very powerful and unusual piece.
• 19:26
  <i: 2001>And she ran to get Christiane, and they listened to it together.
• 19:30
  <i: 2001>And she heard Ligeti.
• 19:33
  <i: 2001>She didn't know anything about him.
• 19:35
  <i: 2001>But she heard this music, and she ran over to the cutting room and said,"Stanley, listen to the radio!"I think this is what you want." She was right.
• 19:45
  <i: 2001>Because what he wanted and what he'd been missing was something that conveyed exactly what I felt, watching the movie, cowering in my theater seat in 1977.
• 19:55
  <i: 2001>This music that simultaneously conveyed horror and beauty and awe.
• 20:01
  <i: 2001>I think that Ligeti's work changed the course of 2001, and Kubrick's thinking about the soundtrack.
• 20:08
  <i: 2001>It just clicked into place such that Kubrick really couldn't justify using anything else, I think.
• 20:16
  <i: 2001>With Strauss's Blue Danube and Ligeti's Requiem both clicking,
• 20:21
  it was decided: The 2001 soundtrack would be nothing but classical needle drops.
• 20:25
  it was decided: There's just one little problem.
• 20:27
  it was decided: When the MGM brass came to visit that was always assumed to be so-called "temp tracks".
• 20:34
  it was decided: And then Kubrick tried to get MGM to agree to simply use the temp tracks.
• 20:39
  it was decided: They said, "No, we're not gonna--"You've got to have an original score." So then Kubrick was persuaded in November '67 to approach Alex North.
• 20:48
  it was decided: And Alex North was the second composer to have a breakdown.
• 20:55
  it was decided: Yeah, remember Alex North?
• 20:57
  it was decided: His crash meant 2001's liftoff.
• 21:01
  it was decided: Coming up in just a minute, stay with us.
• 21:11
  it was decided: Alright everybody, MUBI is the global film company that champions great cinema.
• 21:16
  it was decided: Bringing it to you wherever you are, in as many ways as we possibly can.
• 21:19
  it was decided: We stream movies, we produce them, we distribute them in cinemas.
• 21:22
  it was decided: Movies from any country, made by legendary auteurs or brilliant first-timers, there's always something new for you to discover.
• 21:29
  it was decided: And hey, since we dipped into our back catalog for this episode, let me tell you about something new you'll discover if you follow MUBI Podcast wherever you get your podcasts.
• 21:39
  it was decided: It's our eleventh season, dropping in just a few weeks which we're calling, Needle On The Record - Side 2, all-new episodes about classic needle drops.
• 21:48
  it was decided: Among the movies we're covering,Bend It Like Beckham the sleeper hit from 2001 by director Gurinder Chadha about an irrepressible Indian-British girl who wants to be a footballer.
• 21:58
  it was decided: Our guests include Chadha herself and superstar DJ producer Bally Sagoo, talking about the movie's soundtrack full of bhangra bangers.
• 22:07
  it was decided: And let me tell you, these are some of the most delightful and effervescent people we've ever had on the show.
• 22:12
  it was decided: I think I talked to Bally Sagoo for about an hour and a half and I may have spoken twice.
• 22:18
  it was decided: Guy has a lot to say.
• 22:20
  it was decided: So follow MUBI Podcast so you don't miss that.
• 22:23
  it was decided: Also I wanna shout out something we've got streaming on MUBI in the US and some other places, Paul Verhoeven's characteristically mad-tastic movie,Showgirls. Derided when it came out in the '90s.
• 22:35
  it was decided: Now beloved by lovers of camp everywhere.
• 22:38
  it was decided: By the way, that movie pairs very well with the first-ever episode of this podcast, in which we talked to Verhoeven about his breakthrough psycho sex drama,Turkish Delight, from the '70s.
• 22:48
  it was decided: So follow us, listen to that, then subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com to watch Showgirls and have a blast.
• 22:57
  it was decided: We've got links and information on all of this in the show notes of this episode.
• 23:01
  it was decided: Speaking of which...
• 23:02
  it was decided: Let's get back to the episode.
• 23:09
  it was decided: Alright, so it's December 1967.
• 23:11
  it was decided: Alex North has just agreed to try his hand at scoring the first half of 2001.
• 23:16
  it was decided: But according to Stephen North, it was clear from the start this collaboration with Stanley Kubrick...
• 23:24
  it was decided: Was going to be way different than the first.
• 23:26
  it was decided: He was given a year to do the scoring for Spartacus, and he was given literally two weeks to write the score for 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• 23:35
  it was decided: Why so quick?
• 23:36
  it was decided: After more than three years of development and production, Kubrick had finally run out of time.
• 23:41
  it was decided: They had a release date already for the picture, and the film had been booked into theaters across America and Kubrick wanted to hit the release date.
• 23:50
  it was decided: And I think MGM was insisting he hit the release date.
• 23:53
  it was decided: In April, just over three months away.
• 23:55
  it was decided: So that's a lot of pressure on North.
• 23:57
  it was decided: But wait, there's more.
• 23:59
  it was decided: So from the very beginning of Kubrick's correspondence with North, North knew that Kubrick wanted to use classical and concert works.
• 24:10
  it was decided: That is Kate McQuiston.
• 24:12
  it was decided: She is a professor of musicology at University of Hawaii at Manoa, specializing in film music, Kubrick's in particular.
• 24:17
  it was decided: And from what she says, it sounds like Kubrick was still hoping to get his needle drops past the honchos at MGM.
• 24:26
  it was decided: But he would commission a score from Alex North that he would use in the event that he couldn't use the music that he really wanted to use.
• 24:36
  it was decided: So while North is writing the score, he knows Kubrick has his eye on using something else.
• 24:40
  it was decided: That's right.
• 24:40
  it was decided: And I think he was hoping, as any composer in his shoes would have hoped, that he could come up with something good enough to replace these other pieces.
• 24:53
  it was decided: He just has to come up with something that beats Strauss.
• 24:56
  it was decided: It's a terrible assignment for a composer, to tell you the truth.
• 25:00
  it was decided: Now, accounts differ on the details here, but yeah, bottom line: North's job was to outshine some of the classical greats, and he tried...
• 25:09
  it was decided: Really hard.
• 25:11
  it was decided: Kubrick rented an apartment for him and for his orchestrator, Henry Brant.
• 25:15
  it was decided: And they went to work with a recording date of January 1st.
• 25:20
  it was decided: Were you experiencing it?
• 25:20
  it was decided: Were you with him in England at this time?
• 25:24
  it was decided: No, I was in England, but I wasn't with him.
• 25:26
  it was decided: And I was precisely not with him because he said, "Steve, I can't see you.
• 25:31
  it was decided: "I'm working 24/7" So we actually didn't see each other at all during the composing period.
• 25:39
  it was decided: And as is famously known, he was taken to the recording in an ambulance.
• 25:43
  it was decided: Kubrick was astonished to see the composer arriving in a stretcher, wheeled from the ambulance into the recording studio.
• 25:51
  it was decided: So he was physically there, but he was he had had a physical collapse.
• 25:55
  it was decided: Because the stress that he had been under writing this music completely put him out and he had back spasms, which made it impossible for him to stand.
• 26:05
  it was decided: And his orchestrator, Henry Brant, conducted the score.
• 26:08
  it was decided: But Alex managed to get propped up in the control room, approving takes during the recording, while Kubrick on the floor with the orchestra, looked on.
• 26:16
  it was decided: And the good news...
• 26:17
  it was decided: Kubrick had been very complimentary and not only complimentary, but had given very good suggestions about what Alex could do in the next recording session to improve on what they had done that day.
• 26:29
  it was decided: Except there never was another recording session.
• 26:32
  it was decided: Steven says Alex got his full paycheck and figured Kubrick planned to use his work alongside the needle drops.
• 26:38
  it was decided: But according to crew members, Michael Benson talked to...
• 26:41
  it was decided: You know, he was far less diplomatic when he spoke to his inner circle.
• 26:45
  it was decided: You know, he basically said, this is shit.
• 26:49
  it was decided: Which was not fair.
• 26:51
  it was decided: Not at all fair to North because he was just too in love with his temp tracks.
• 26:56
  it was decided: Now, I should say some insist Kubrick actually gave North's score a fighting chance.
• 27:02
  it was decided: Once it grew on him.
• 27:04
  it was decided: He added it even.
• 27:04
  it was decided: He added it to this scene of the Pan Am space model, you know, flying.
• 27:11
  it was decided: He added it all.
• 27:12
  it was decided: The whole thing, two weeks work to Alex North's music and he likes it.
• 27:17
  it was decided: But he didn't love it.
• 27:19
  it was decided: He had to love it.
• 27:21
  it was decided: I can't stress it enough, how important that is, and that's why it took him so long.
• 27:26
  it was decided: Everything, he took a long time to finish a film.
• 27:30
  it was decided: He had to be in love with it.
• 27:32
  it was decided: And at this point, yeah, even North's best work probably couldn't have made Stanley Kubrick fall out of love with his needle drops, not just 'cause he liked how they sounded, but also what they represented.
• 27:47
  it was decided: Like, check out this North track.
• 27:48
  it was decided: It's the one Kubrick dropped into the sequence Jan Harlan just mentioned, the Pan Am space shuttle docking with the space station.
• 27:55
  it was decided: The scene Kubrick had originally paired with Strauss's Blue Danube Waltz.
• 28:08
  it was decided: Kind of works, right?
• 28:09
  it was decided: It feels like an elegant dance.
• 28:11
  it was decided: Go on YouTube and you'll find fan edits of the scene swapping in this music for Strauss's.
• 28:15
  it was decided: And it's pretty cool.
• 28:17
  it was decided: But you can just tell something doesn't quite fit the same way.
• 28:21
  it was decided: And Kate McQuiston thinks she knows what it is.
• 28:24
  it was decided: North's style is distinctively American.
• 28:28
  it was decided: The voicings of the chords, the use of instruments, particularly the use of high woodwinds like piccolos and flutes in the high register.
• 28:41
  it was decided: That was part of the American classical sound and as well the American film scoring traditions up to that time.
• 28:50
  it was decided: While on the other hand.
• 28:51
  it was decided: The Blue Danube Waltzes were in their time a symbol of internationalism, a sort of international cosmopolitanism.
• 29:02
  it was decided: And so I think Kubrick simply made the choices he made to try to achieve something that transcended, and transcended works in many ways here, transcended any particular national magnetism in the score for something more international.
• 29:22
  it was decided: Yeah, Kubrick's movie was about humanity trying to transcend borders, to break free of even the Earth itself.
• 29:29
  it was decided: And he picked music to match.
• 29:30
  it was decided: Whereas North's work, as much as it danced, felt grounded to a specific place on terra firma.
• 29:42
  it was decided: That's one theory anyway.
• 29:43
  it was decided: But whatever the problem was, now Kubrick knew he'd have to battle with MGM to go back to his so-called temp tracks, and it sounds like he wasn't sure it's a battle he'd win. In fact...
• 29:53
  it was decided: There's a little, very interesting little flash in the pan moment when Kubrick was exhausted and despondent about the fact that he didn't like what North had produced.
• 30:03
  it was decided: And at one point, Kubrick said,"Maybe I should contact The Beatles?" Hey, they'd just droppedSgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, right?
• 30:10
  it was decided: Which was pretty far out. But...
• 30:12
  it was decided: Finally, you know, conspiracy theorists might say, and I think North's wife did say, she thought Kubrick had this all in the plan anyway, to delay and delay.
• 30:24
  it was decided: And then finally, there was no choice but for MGM to agree to the temp tracks.
• 30:28
  it was decided: But that story about The Beatles indicates to me that Kubrick really didn't know what to do, and then finally had maneuvered himself into a position where the only thing to do was use these extraordinary pieces of music that we all associate with the film and are so perfect for the film that it's hard to imagine the film without them.
• 30:47
  it was decided: At first, though, things didn't seem quite so perfect.
• 30:53
  it was decided: On April 4th, 1968, Stanley Kubrick attended the New York premiere of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Christiane Kubrick persuaded him to put on a tuxedo.
• 31:02
  it was decided: It was one of the very rare sightings of the director in anything other than a rumpled blazer.
• 31:06
  it was decided: And he spoke to the press.
• 31:09
  it was decided: Well, I became interested in the idea that the universewas full of intelligent civilizations,which is the current scientific belief. And, you know, the screening was for predominantly older, entitled people who could get a ticket to the premiere screening of 2001.
• 31:27
  it was decided: And it did not go well.
• 31:31
  it was decided: To put it mildly.
• 31:33
  it was decided: What was the knock on it?
• 31:34
  it was decided: Oh, that it was incoherent, opaque.
• 31:37
  it was decided: The leading film critics lined up to knock Kubrick down.
• 31:42
  it was decided: In The Times Renata Adler called it "Somewhere between hypnotic"and immensely boring." In The Village Voice Andrew Sarris, dubbed 2001"A thoroughly uninteresting failure and the most damning"demonstration yet of Stanley Kubrick's inability"to tell a story coherently"and with a consistent point of view." And Kubrick's choice of music wasn't spared either.
• 32:06
  it was decided: The critics didn't like it generally.
• 32:09
  it was decided: Yeah, because Johann Strauss, I mean, goodness me, is old fashioned music.
• 32:13
  it was decided: I remember Pauline Kael's response about the Blue Danube in this outer space context was that this was somehow a cynical commentary.
• 32:25
  it was decided: She referred to Kubrick as having "A sour heart." The soundtrack even drew the ire of some of the musicians who were on it.
• 32:33
  it was decided: Like, for instance, one György Ligeti, who went to see 2001 after someone told him his music was in it, and was dumbfounded when he saw just how much.
• 32:42
  it was decided: The multiple tracks, multiple compositions of Ligeti's work that are in the film, were licensed under this strange mechanical rights license, which allowed MGM to use those compositions as background music.
• 32:57
  it was decided: Except those tunes aren't background music.
• 32:59
  it was decided: In some scenes, they're the only sound you hear for minutes at a time.
• 33:03
  it was decided: Plus, one of them called Aventures had been electronically altered.
• 33:07
  it was decided: Plus, apparently accidentally...
• 33:09
  it was decided: Aventures wasn't even in the credits.
• 33:12
  it was decided: So he was very upset about that.
• 33:14
  it was decided: And in fact, he initially called the film a piece of Hollywood shit.
• 33:18
  it was decided: And finally, there was Alex North.
• 33:20
  it was decided: Who saw 2001 and got the opposite sort of surprise.
• 33:24
  it was decided: He went to a screening in New York City to an industry screening and found out in that industry screening that not one note of his music had been used.
• 33:33
  it was decided: I mean, what was your dad's, you know, opinion at that point?
• 33:36
  it was decided: What was his feeling?
• 33:39
  it was decided: Well, he was devastated.
• 33:40
  it was decided: He was shattered.
• 33:41
  it was decided: And he was hurt even more by the fact that Kubrick never contacted him, never called him and said,"Alex, we're not using your score." But Alex never actually, to the end of his life, never heard from Kubrick again.
• 33:58
  it was decided: All in all, not an auspicious start to 2001's life.
• 34:02
  it was decided: But while Steven says Kubrick never repaired his relationship with Alex North, he did make some repairs to his movie.
• 34:08
  it was decided: So the screenings for the press, the screenings for the first audience, were all a cut that had 20 minute-- About 20 minutes more material than the film we know today.
• 34:18
  it was decided: There were redundant scenes, and so there was an all night session in the basement of the MGM headquarters in New York, and they cut about 19 minutes.
• 34:28
  it was decided: So they make these cuts and then what happens?
• 34:30
  it was decided: Well, then a lot of critics either wrote about the film for the first time because they weren't in that New York circle.
• 34:37
  it was decided: Or some reevaluated and wrote second reviews.
• 34:40
  it was decided: And meanwhile, the word of mouth was incredible.
• 34:43
  it was decided: It was hard to get tickets.
• 34:44
  it was decided: And they added additional screenings from the first weekend.
• 34:47
  it was decided: Really? So regard-- Despite the fact that the critics panned it?
• 34:50
  it was decided: Yes.
• 34:50
  it was decided: And it was predominantly under 30s.
• 34:53
  it was decided: Now, you probably remember that in the sixties there was this line, you know,"Never trust anybody over 30." Which would have excluded Arthur Clarke and Kubrick.
• 35:03
  it was decided: But the audience that got it most were under 30.
• 35:07
  it was decided: People who were like,"I don't care what Andrew Sarris says!"I don't trust them to begin with." Or they might even say, "Who is Andrew Sarris? I don't know.""And pass... You know, pass me that joint and let's go see that film." Yeah, Thanks to young moviegoers, some of them chemically altered.
• 35:21
  <i: 2001>A Space Odyssey became the biggest box office hit of 1968.
• 35:27
  <i: 2001>And the music hit a nerve, too.
• 35:29
  <i: 2001>Especially the tone poem Kubrick had placed under the opening titles.
• 35:33
  <i: 2001>Composed by Richard Strauss.
• 35:35
  <i: 2001>I think Also Sprach Zarathustra was probably not very widely known.
• 35:46
  <i: 2001>Certain conductors liked Strauss's tone poems in concert for top flight ensembles.
• 35:54
  <i: 2001>But Also Sprach Zarathustra, probably less well-known than the others.
• 36:04
  <i: 2001>After this movie, that changed.
• 36:07
  <i: 2001>A year later, the BBC played Zarathustra during TV coverage of actual Apollo space missions.
• 36:13
  <i: 2001>In the early seventies, Elvis Presley's stage band played it as his intro music at concerts.
• 36:22
  <i: 2001>Later Deodato's disco jazz version hit number two on the Billboard charts.
• 36:34
  <i: 2001>And you can probably name a couple dozen more examples.
• 36:38
  <i: 2001>Twenty years ago for my film on Stanley Kubrick, I needed to have obviously Richard Strauss, and I went to the publisher I said, "Look, I make a documentary"and I need to buy the rights from you." And he said, "Look, man,"we are honored to give it to you for free!"Yeah, we made so much money"because Stanley Kubrick used this.
• 37:02
  <i: 2001>"We sold it for commercials, endless times, and we made a fortune.
• 37:07
  <i: 2001>"We are honored to give it to you for free!" I can tell you that all of those pieces became incredibly popular.
• 37:16
  <i: 2001>The film was so popular.
• 37:16
  <i: 2001>Kubrick had never had a highest grossing film of any year before or since.
• 37:23
  <i: 2001>And people wanted that stuff so they could play it at home.
• 37:25
  <i: 2001>And so, yeah, the soundtrack was very successful and has been rereleased ever since.
• 37:31
  <i: 2001>And that's how the atonal, mind piercing music that freaked me out in that theater in 1977 ended up on a certified gold record.
• 37:43
  <i: 2001>All of which marked a turning point in the relationship between movies and classical music.
• 37:47
  <i: 2001>Till then, there was the lofty classical world and there was Hollywood pop culture.
• 37:51
  <i: 2001>And only rarely did they meet.
• 37:53
  <i: 2001>And we can even look at Alex North's own career as an example.
• 37:57
  <i: 2001>He really wanted to be a composer of serious concert music, and he came to film scoring very reluctantly as he tells it.
• 38:07
  <i: 2001>So I do think for those who had classical aspirations, it took a very long time for working in film to cease to be a stigma.
• 38:17
  <i: 2001>2001 went a long way toward erasing that stigma for good.
• 38:21
  <i: 2001>Meanwhile, for filmmakers, the movie opened up whole new ways of marrying music, especially classical music, to images.
• 38:28
  <i: 2001>And I think we still see plenty of evidence of Kubrick's influence.
• 38:32
  <i: 2001>If we think of something like Paul Thomas Anderson's,There Will Be Blood.
• 38:37
  <i: 2001>It includes a Brahms violin concerto, and it has music by the Estonian composer Arvo Pärt.
• 38:46
  <i: 2001>Or there's Terrence Malick'sTree of Life.Life by life.I search for you... Which to my mind, is a very elaborate musical extravaganza.
• 39:01
  <i: 2001>My all. It's a visual accompaniment to music.
• 39:13
  <i: 2001>My child. By composers including, gosh, so many Mahler, Smetana, Respighi, Tavener, Holst, Górecki, Berlioz.
• 39:24
  <i: 2001>That's a film that couldn't exist without 2001. Yeah, it's almost like he gave the idea that you can just have these bliss outs of music and image and it will result in something transcendent, maybe.
• 39:39
  <i: 2001>Yeah, I love the word "bliss outs".
• 39:42
  <i: 2001>And it does highlight the fact that Kubrick wanted people to hear this music.
• 39:50
  <i: 2001>Kubrick was such a fan of classical music.
• 39:56
  <i: 2001>And though he could obviously be a difficult guy, classical musicians came to respect Kubrick too, including, by the way, Ligeti.
• 40:03
  <i: 2001>Despite his whole"Piece of Hollywood shit" thing.
• 40:05
  <i: 2001>He gradually modified that opinion, and I think the reason he modified that opinion is, first of all, MGM made an appropriate payment.
• 40:13
  <i: 2001>But I wouldn't be so crass as to say that Ligeti modified it because he was paid off.
• 40:16
  <i: 2001>I think he realized, like a lot of people, he needed to reevaluate 2001, see it a couple of times before he recognized what was going on.
• 40:25
  <i: 2001>And certainly it's undeniable that Ligeti's career catapulted from obscurity into this kind of front rank of avant garde composers of the last quarter of the 20th century.
• 40:36
  <i: 2001>His work ended up in two more Kubrick films,The Shining and Eyes Wide Shut, fully credited and paid for, I should say.
• 40:43
  <i: 2001>And as for Alex North, he actually came out of the2001 crucible okay, with his music in hand.
• 40:49
  <i: 2001>Kubrick was very generous in one way.
• 40:49
  <i: 2001>When he didn't use Alex's score, he gave Alex back the rights to his score.
• 40:57
  <i: 2001>And it turns out that one of his longer cues he used in a picture that he scored for me, a Marcel Marceau picture called Shanks.
• 41:04
  <i: 2001>Oh, right.
• 41:04
  <i: 2001>You produced Shanks.
• 41:06
  <i: 2001>And there's a whole cue in that picture, maybe it's a three and a half minute, four minute cue, which is directly out of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
• 41:14
  <i: 2001>And Mike, remembering correctly, Shanks it's a horror movie starring a mime.
• 41:20
  <i: 2001>Exactly. Exactly.
• 41:21
  <i: 2001>Not exactly anything like 2001.
• 41:23
  <i: 2001>And yet the music was, you know, usable.
• 41:26
  <i: 2001>And not only usable, he was nominated for an Academy Award for it.
• 41:32
  <i: 2001>That, to me, is an artist's career, right?
• 41:35
  <i: 2001>Sometimes full of horror and awe, like a wailing choir.
• 41:39
  <i: 2001>And sometimes all of a sudden spinning elegantly full circle, like a waltz.
• 41:56
  <i: 2001>And that is our flashback episode of the MUBI Podcast for this week.
• 42:00
  <i: 2001>Follow us to get a front row seat to more deep dives into music and movies.
• 42:05
  <i: 2001>Next week, another one from the vaults, we tell the tale of a box office flop that rose from the ashes of 9/11, and sent an unlikely cover tune to the Top of the Pops.
• 42:15
  <i: 2001>It was so big.
• 42:16
  <i: 2001>It's hard to fathom how big.
• 42:19
  <i: 2001>People were calling in the radio sting like,"I heard it and I pulled over on the highway"'cause I couldn't drive and listen to it at the same time."Donnie Darko helps pull the music of Tears for Fears into the 21st century.
• 42:30
  <i: 2001>Follow us so you don't miss it.
• 42:32
  <i: 2001>Also, if you love the show, leave us a five star review wherever you listen.
• 42:35
  <i: 2001>Let folks know we're not your standard movie chat show.
• 42:38
  <i: 2001>And you can find me on Threads and Instagram@ricogagliano That's Rico G-A-G-L-I-A-N-O.
• 42:47
  <i: 2001>Happy to respond to questions, comments or just geek out on sci-fi.
• 42:51
  <i: 2001>And now let's roll credits.
• 42:53
  <i: 2001>This episode was written, hosted and edited by me.
• 42:55
  <i: 2001>Ciara McEniff is our producer along with assistant producer, Kat Kowalczyk.
• 42:59
  <i: 2001>Jackson Musker was our booking producer for this one.
• 43:02
  <i: 2001>Mastering by Steven Colon.
• 43:03
  <i: 2001>Our original music is composed by Martin Austwick.
• 43:06
  <i: 2001>Except the track Hot Smoke by the band, People with Bodies.
• 43:10
  <i: 2001>Thanks this week to Rebekah Wineman, David Harper, JP Davidson and Mike Pachelli.
• 43:14
  <i: 2001>This show is executive produced by me, along with Efe Çakarel, Daniel Kasman and Michael Tacca.
• 43:20
  <i: 2001>And finally...
• 43:21
  <i: 2001>To stream the best in cinema, do subscribe to MUBI at mubi.com Thanks for listening.
• 43:28
  <i: 2001>Now, go watch the movies.