2001 a space odyssey song movie#

They weren’t getting “this metaphysical drama that showed the beauty of space, the terror of science, the mystery of mankind was being completely misunderstood,” says Kaplan. On the back of the bad publicity 2001 was getting, it was Kaplan’s job to work with the befuddled reviewers and try to explain what they were missing. Kaplan was, in those days, the resident longhair in MGM’s publicity department. His music was used, without his permission! (He did ultimately receive royalties, and his name in the credits, which made him a world-famous composer.) Ligeti, too, was shocked when he first saw the movie. What they ended up using, was Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra,” extracts from Gyorgy Ligeti’s requiem: “Lux Aeterna” and “Atmospheres” and Johann Strauss’s “The Blue Danube Waltz.”īut the story doesn’t end with North. Not one piece of his music had been used. North only found out when he attended the premiere in New York. During the recording sessions he had to be wheeled into the studio laying in a hospital bed with muscle spasms in his back.Ī lot of people thought his score was good. And had a nervous breakdown doing it due to all the pressure. He could not compete with the greatest composers in history. North said he could replace those tracks with material that would be similar in mood or spirit. He’d fallen in love with the classical music. He thought “that means I have a blank canvas to write anything I want.” But Kubrick wanted to keep the temporary tracks. In the early stages of production, Kubrick did commission a score from Hollywood composer Alex North, who had composed the score for Spartacus. North was thrilled because he knew there were 40 minutes of dialogue in a two-and-a-half-hour film. The soundtrack is totally iconic, filled with classical music that was initially meant to be ‘temporary.’ It attempts to tell the entire story of the evolution of humankind, from primitive ape to artificial intelligence and the future of mankind’s place in the universe. Not bad for a film that Rock Hudson walked out of exclaiming, “What is this bullshit?”Ģ001: A Space Odyssey is long (2h 44m,) has very little dialogue and no traditional musical score.

2001 a space odyssey song movie#

The movie has won 16 awards, including the Oscar for Best Visual Effects. Everyone has heard of the villainous computer HAL, and recognizes Richard Strauss’s “Also Sprach Zarathustra” playing over its most memorable scenes. It’s a film that has been ingrained in popular culture. In other words, in 1968 the critics weren’t getting it.įifty-two years later 2001 A Space Odyssey is considered one of the major artistic works of the 20th century. Pauline Kael wrote, “it’s monumentally unimaginative.” The New Republic called it “a film that is so dull it even dulls our interest in the technical ingenuity.” Renata Adler, in The New York Times, wrote: “somewhere between hypnotic and immensely boring…and the uncompromising slowness of the movie makes it hard to sit through.” John Simon called it “a regrettable failure.” Arthur Schlesinger deemed it “morally pretentious, intellectually obscure and out of control.” Steven Hunter, in The Washington Post, wrote: “maybe it’s just that I wasn’t high this time when I watched it.” It was also the year that 2001:A Space Odyssey opened…. It was the year that Apollo 8 orbited the moon. It was the year of the Prague Spring, of student protests over the Vietnam War it was the year that ushered in sexual promiscuity and recreational drugs and witnessed the assassinations of both Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy. On October 30th, 2020, Wave Theory Records digitally released, for the first time ever, 2001: A Garden of Personal Mirrors, composed by Mike Kaplan for the groundbreaking, 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey.ġ968 was a tumultuous year.

In addition, he is a collector of historic movie posters that have been exhibited in Museums from Los Angeles to Jacob’s Pillow. He is known for producing The Whales of August, (Lilian Gish’s last film.) A Clockwork Orange, I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead, Robert Altman’s Short Cuts and more. Mike Kaplan is a producer, documentary director, actor, award-winning poster designer and marketing strategist.