Michael Benson (1) (1962–)

The whole point of this book is the pictures; the text is fairly minimal, as it should be. And the pictures are gorgeous. I can stare at some for minutes because of all their detail. Others, while they don't hold my gaze for long, are nonetheless appreciated for the artfulness of their composition.
Interestingly, though, I find the first picture in the book to be the most arresting. It is a picture of the Earth and the Moon, taken from a distance of about 13.5 million miles away. We are so small and fragile.… (mais)

An exhaustive, and sometimes exhausting, examination of what it took to make the film that set the bar for all future space adventures; besides creating a lot of the tricks and technology that went into making those films. What you read this for is to learn about how Kubrick and Clarke came to have a working relationship, Kubrick's creation of the armature on which to build his film, and the painstaking problem solving that went into making each scene work. It's all very impressive stuff. As for how it makes me feel about Kubrick, you can almost overlook the processes by which he edged contributors out of the lime light, so that the movie was his personal achievement; that no one worked harder on this film almost makes it seem just.… (mais)

... dah ... dah ... dah ... DAH DAH!! ...

There, now that I've got that out of my system, we can talk about the book. Once he hits his stride, Michael Benson does an excellent job of telling all you need to know (and some things you probably never realized that you needed to know) about the making of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Like the movie, the book has its flaws and (hmmmm) its longeurs. Benson's attention to detail can occasionally become self-parodic; sometimes his word choice and phrasing can seem ... odd. But Benson has done a fantastic job of gathering together the people, where they are still with us, and the information, and has rendered it into a genuinely fascinating, and at times genuinely moving chronicle of the creative process, the making of a movie that is never anything less than challenging and ground-breaking -- and the genius of Stanley Kubrick.

Benson teases out all sorts of fascinating factoids -- and creates the ghostly image of an alternate-reality version of a 2001 that might have been. The iconic use of classical music was a last minute decision by Kubrick, much to the distress of MGM, which had commissioned a composer for an original score. Right up the last minute, Arthur C. Clarke thought he was writing a voice-over explication of what was going on -- which Kubrick decided not to use. Actor Martin Balsam recorded HAL's lines, but Kubrick thought he made the rogue AI sound "too emotional."

And there are wonderful soundbites -- some of Benson's own I have already transcribed into the quotes here on Goodreads. This one, from Colin Cantwell, who joined the production late on as special photographic effects supervisor, really captures some of the insights into Kubrick's techniques -- and his inspiration.

He was dedicated to what he was creating, he was listening for it, finding where it was, continually trying to build it to this complete thing. That film is what Stanley is. And the great thing was, the "is-ing" of it -- the verb of doing it-- we all got sucked into that. How can this be done, and he excellence that had to be there. Everything had to have that excellence, or it couldn't happen at all.… (mais)