HOMO SAPIENS

• Hal 9000
• 2001: A Space Odyssey Soundtrack

Compiled by: Leslie S. Chin, M.Sc., P.Eng. – November 2015

Evolution

Homo sapiens is undoubtedly the most intelligent creature that ever existed, together with a favourable anatomy he has come to dominate the world. However Homo sapiens is a flawed species with many shortcoming which may eventually lead to his demise. Homo sapiens is essentially a cave man who lives by the tenet “survival of the fittest” which is a legacy of our time as hunter gathers.

In an increasingly crowded and complex world we have to suppress our warlike tendency if we want to live in peace. With nuclear and chemical weapons we have the potential to annihilate ourselves many times over. Until we evolve into a more benign, more empathic species (by Darwinian evolution?) we will continue to behave as we do – competitive, selfish, greedy, vindictive and homicidal, hell bent on destroying each other. Continue reading

The scenes bookend 2001: A Space Odyssey - they are the dawn of man sequence at the beginning and the final sequence, showing the next evolutionary leap in human consciousness. One of the most powerful and biggest scene from world cinematography ever!EPIC! Stanley Kubrick's sci-fi masterpiece reverberates in both the original and prequel trilogies. At the time of its release in 1968, 2001: A Space Odyssey was polarizing amongst critics and audiences, but it has since earned high status as one of the greatest science-fiction films of all time. Idyllopus Press, website of author, artist, Juli Kearns - Part 1 of analysis of Kubrick's '2001, A Space Odyssey', The Dawn of Man section.

Hal 9000

Since I first saw 2001 and 'The Dawn Of Man' I've always been fascinated by that sequence, and amazed by the appearance of that magnificent leopard (I'm a big feline lover).

2001: A Space Odyssey Soundtrack

I always wondered how they could have shot that scenes - until 2002, when Moonwatcher's himself, Dan Richter, published Moonwatcher's Memoir: A Diary or 2001: A Space Odyssey.



The script, at that time still being reworked on an almost daily basis by Kubrick and Clarke, called also for sequences where our ancestors were to be shown on the verge of extinction, and facing constant threat of wild animals like lions and tigers. How to portray this menace was still to be determined, as many attempts had already been made before Richter came on board. Here's an example from Kubrick's interview to Jeremy Bernstein, 1966:

At this point, a man carrying a stuffed lion's head approached and asked Kubrick whether it would be all right to use. 'The tongue looks phony, and the eyes are only marginal,' Kubrick said, heading for the set. 'Can somebody fix the tongue'?

Terry Duggan was a acrobat and stuntman born in Coventry in 1935 (no relation with Terry Duggan the comedian). Duggan had already worked with the Chipperfield's, a famous british circus, and later joined a member of the family, Jimmy, who had started a film animal business and at that time of the shooting of 2001 was operating Southampton Zoo. In fact, Jimmy was the main supplier of animals for films during the ‘50s, ‘60s and ‘70s.
Kubrick eventually opted out for the leopard. When asked if he remembered why, Richter said to me that

We had both a leopard and a lion at the Southhampton Zoo for at least a year before the shoot and Terry Duggan worked with them all that time do that they would be familiar with the play fighting they did. They were both well trained.
Why Stanley picked one over another I don’t know. The lion was a lioness and perhaps in the end not as menacing looking or as visually interesting.

From now on we'll focus on a single date, Monday, August 28th, 1967. The 'Dawn of Men' shooting had already begun on August 2; that meant that after eight months of research and rehersals, and a month of physically demanding shots, the man-apes 'tribe' (mimes, dancers and performers chosen and trained by Richter) had yet to face another ordeal. From 'Moonwatcher's Memoir':

Duggan and the leopard were entirely alone on stage during the shoot. [Bizony adds]: Background performers were added later, in a hand-drawn matte.

I imagine that Kubrick had to downplay the potential danger faced by his ape-men cast in order to a avoid any unconfortable questions from some actor's guild; it turned out, instead, that everything was shot on camera, and Richter and other man-apes were on the same set with the leopard and Duggan, as Richter remembers in the book:

Terry Duggan is outfitted in a man-ape costume. [...] Stanley wants other man-apes in the background, and that is even more of a problem. The solution is to put me in another mask behind Terry, in the middle ground with the other guys, so that I will be between the leopard and them.

The second take, more or less, works: it's the one we see in the movie. Richter recalls:
At this stage, Kubrick was more than ready to move on, even if it meant accepting an unexpected 'special effect', as we learn from Bozung's interview:

On the set there were also a few wooden boulders which were meant to give a sense of depth. For example, in the leopard scene, the large boulder beneath the animal was a wooden prop built on purpose, in order to conceal the leash used to restrain the leopard. The leash was cancelled later optically.

How is this related to the attack scene? Well, in the 1970 book The Making of Kubrick's 2001, which was edited by Jerome Agel with more than a little help from Kubrick himself, a caption for this picture says: