The Lost Worlds of 2001

5. 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, e.g. Gary Lockwood and Keir Dullea with makeup tests (we want them to look thirty-five-ish). I have a sore throat and incipient cold, so Stan kept me at arm's length.

February 4. Saw a screening of a demonstration film in which Stan has spliced together a few scenes to give the studio heads some idea of what's going on. He'd used Mendelssohn's Midsummer Night's Dream for the weightless scenes, and Vaughan Williams' Antarctica Symphony for the lunar sequence and the Star Gate special effects, with stunning results. I reeled out convinced that we have a masterpiece on our hands-if Stan can keep it up.

A few days after this, I escaped to Ceylon. But not for long:

March 15. Cable from Stan asking for "three minutes of poetic Clarkian narration" about HAL's breakdown. Got it off to him by express in the afternoon. [It was never used....] Also started on the (last) revision, and made good progress.

March 20. Worked hard on the novel all day, and by 9 p.m. had completed the messy final draft (what, again!).

April 2. Inserted a couple of hundred final (?) words into the MS, and tucked it away. As far as I'm concerned, it's finished.

Alas, it wasn't. A couple of days later I flew from Ceylon to Lawrence, Kansas, for the centennial celebrations of the University of Kansas. I cabled Stanley to say that I was heading back to London to make final arrangements for the publication of the novel. He replied "Don't bother-it's not ready yet." I retorted that I was coming anyway, and did:

April 19. First full day back at studio-saw shooting in the centrifuge. A portentous spectacle, accompanied by terrifying noises and popping lamp bulbs. Stanley came in during a shooting break and himself raised the subject of publication date. On being challenged, he swore that he didn't want to hold up the novel until release of the movie. He explained that general release would not be until late in 1967 or even 1968. Even if the first showing is in April 1967 [It was actually April 1968] it will be running only in a few Cinerama houses, which will give us some more breathing space.

April 23. Drove with Roger Caras and Mike Wilson to an excellent private zoo near Nuneaton, which had all the big apes. Mike had a very hard time filming the chimps, who kept dashing around and throwing themselves at the camera I was a bit nervous of the baby gorilla, as it was inclined to nibble with most impressive teeth.... An enjoyable day, and I hope ifs given me some ideas about Moon-Watcher and Co.

May 29. Soviet Air Attache visited set. He looked at all the little instruction plaques on the spaceship panels and said, with a straight face, "You realize, of course, that these should all be in Russian."

At the end of May I flew back to the United States to assist with general promotion on the movie, and did my best to placate the anxious executives of MGM when they asked, "What is Stanley up to?" I also paid my first visit to Cape Kennedy, in a very small VIP guided tour conducted by James Webb, the NASA Administrator, to watch the launch of Gemini IX. Like every visitor, I was overwhelmed by the Vehicle Assembly Building and that landgoing ship, the 3,000-ton crawler-transporter, with its maximum speed (unloaded) of two miles an hour. I recall watching Representative George Miller, Chairman of the House Committee on Astronautics, as he tried out the controls of the crawler-and warning him not to exceed the speed limit, because Chief Justice Warren was standing right behind him.

Unfortunately, the Atlas-Agena target vehicle, with which Gemini IX was supposed to rendezvous, failed to go into orbit, and so the manned launch was canceled. I admired Administrator Webb's resilience as he took this in his stride and promptly turned to Congressman Miller with the remark, "I'm afraid I'll have to go back to your committee for more money."

The next month, I was once again in London, still trying to convince Stanley that the novel was finished and the MS could go out to market. During one of my more frantic arguments, he remarked, "Things are never as bad as they seem," but I was in no mood to agree.

Stanley's attitude was that he wanted to do some more work on the manuscript, and simply didn't have time because of the overwhelming pressure at the studio. (It was overwhelming, and I was continually awed by Stanley's ability to cope with a dozen simultaneous and interlocking crises, any one of which could cost half a million dollars. No wonder he is fascinated by Napoleon....) But I maintained that l was the writer and he should rely on my judgment; what would he say if I wanted to edit the film?

In the end we decided on a compromise--Stanley's. He would attempt, during odd moments in the bathroom, or while being ferried home in his Rolls-Royce at the maximum permitted speed of 30 m.p.h., to note down the improvements he wanted me to make. On this basis, Scott Meredith was finally able to draw up an excellent contract with Delacorte Press.

Stanley was as good as his word. I still have a nine-page memorandum of thirty-seven paragraphs, dated June 18, 1966, containing some very acute, and occasionally acerbic, observations:

1. Can you use the word "veldt" in a drought-stricken area?

6. Where do you find bees in a drought-stricken area? What do the bees live on?

9. Do leopards growl?

11. Can a leopard carry a man?

14. Since the book will be coming out before the picture [sic!] I don't see why we shouldn't put something in the book that would be preferable if it were achievable in the film. I wish the block had been crystal-clear but it was impossible to make. I would like to have the block black in the novel.

15. I don't think the verb "twittering" seems right. We must decide how these fellows talk.

19. This reference sounds a little bit like a scene from Bambi.

22. The literal description of these tests seems completely wrong to me. It takes away all the magic.

24. This scene has always seemed unreal to me and somewhat inconceivable. They will be saved from starvation but they will never become gorged, sleek glossy-pelted, and content. This has barely happened in 1966. I think that one day the cube should disappear and that Moon- Watcher and his boys passing a large elephant's skeleton which they have seen many times before on the way to forage are suddenly drawn to these bones and begin moving them and swinging them, and that this whole scene is given some magical enchantment both in the writing and then ultimately in the filming, and that from this scene they approach the grazing animals which they usually share fodder with and kill one, etc.

27. I don't understand the meaning of this.

33. I prefer the previous version.... The expression "moons waxed and waned" seems terribly cliche. The expression "toothless thirty-year-olds died" also is a bit awful.

37. I think this is a very bad chapter and should not be in the book. It is pedantic, undramatic and destroys the beautiful transition from man-ape to 2001.

Lest these extracts give a false impression, I should also add that the memorandum contained several highly flattering comments which modesty has forced me to omit. In fact, Stanley sometimes overdid this. He would build up my morale (which often needed it) by unstinted praise of some piece of writing I'd just produced, then, in the course of the next few days, he would find more and more flaws until the whole thing was slowly whittled away. This was all part of his ceaseless search for perfection, which often provoked me to remind him of the aphorism, "No work of art is ever finished, it is only abandoned."

I am afraid I was prepared to abandon ship before he was; but I admired him for his tenacity, even when I wished it was not focused upon me.

Matters came to a climax in the summer of 1966, and I find this pathetic entry in my log:

July 19. Almost all memory of the weeks of work at the Hotel Chelsea seems to have been obliterated, and there are versions of the book that I can hardly remember. I've lost count (fortunately) of the revisions and blind alleys. It's all rather depressing-I only hope the ultimate result ii worth it.

The reason for this gloom was understandable. Stanley had refused to sign the contract-after Delacorte had set the book in type and taken an impressive two-page advertisement in Publisher's Weekly. He still argued that he wasn't satisfied with the manuscript and wanted to do some more work on it. I considered writing to Dr. Leakey to get the name of a good witchdoctor, and Scott Meredith bought some pins and wax. Delacorte and Co., fighting back corporate tears, broke up the type. I have always felt extremely grateful to them for their forbearance in this difficult matter, and am happy to have given them a modest best seller in Time Probe.

It was just as well that no one dreamed that another two years would pass before the book was finally published, by New American Library in the summer of 1968 -months after the release of the movie. In the long run, everything came out all right-exactly as Stanley had predicted.

But I can think of easier ways of earning a living.