About Stanley Kubrick, Part 5
Excerpts from Piers Bizony's 2001 filming the future, (Aurum Press, 1994)

George Lucas' budget stretched a far shorter distance than had Kubrick's, thanks largely to the oil crises of the early 1970s and the subsequent recession. Star Wars was regarded as a remarkably cheap and profitable project, whereas 2001 had been heralded as a remarkably expensive one. What a difference a decade makes! But movie theatre tickets were much cheaper in 1968 than they were ten years later. The $40 million of 2001 represented a lot of theatre rentals, and a lot of backsides on seats.
Today, Kubrick's epic space drama stands as the epitome of science fiction filmmaking and as an extraordinary exercise in totally visual cinema. Though history has dented the film's slightly naive technological optimism, it still represents a dazzling manifesto for our future in space. One day, humankind may be in a position to revive its long-held dream of reaching out to the stars. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey will be a useful source of inspiration for many years to come. It's not just about spaceships, about how we might travel into space—it's also about why.

(Exhibit coordinator's note)
Stanley Kubrick died March 7, 1999, before he was to begun his new science fiction movie, A.I.

Other Stanley Kubrick film projects after 2001: A Space Odyssey include:
A Clockwork Orange, 1971
Barry Lyndon, 1975
The Shinning, 1980
Full Metal Jacket, 1987
Eyes Wide Shut, 1999

Piers Bizony gave us permission to print the above excerpt. Next page