Kubrick had Clarke explain 2001 in a voiceover, then threw the explanation away
Clarke mailed the narration from a lecture tour, and Kubrick also shelved filmed interviews with top scientists about life beyond Earth.
Every Single Sci-Fi Film Ever* · 2001: A Space Odyssey (Part 2)Arthur C. Clarke was on a lecture tour across the United States, writing between talks. The science fiction writer was in heavy demand at the time, and in the gaps between lectures he was drafting explanatory narration for a new space film. With not even fax machines to rely on, he sent the pages to director Stanley Kubrick by telegram and mail, through Western Union.
The episode is recounted by author and filmmaker Michael Benson as a measure of how different 2001: A Space Odyssey was meant to be. The film Kubrick made just before it, Dr. Strangelove, and the film he made just after it, A Clockwork Orange, both used voiceover. Both also used back projection effects that openly showed their artifice, unlike the realistic spaceflight in 2001.
At first Kubrick wanted the same kind of help for 2001. He asked Clarke to write sections of voiceover that would tell viewers what they were seeing on the Moon voyage and the strange journey at the end. Then he changed his mind and left the film as a profoundly nonverbal experience, one in which the audience rides along inside the spacecraft and inside the final light show and makes its own meaning.
He never even recorded Clarke's lines. He simply set them aside. In notes on Clarke's writing, including Clarke's description of Moonwatcher, the early human ancestor at the start of the story, Kubrick wrote that this "takes all the magic out of it." Benson says Kubrick decided to commit to that choice and leave the movie unexplained, with the audience itself becoming the character.
The narration was not the only explanation he discarded. Early in production, Kubrick sent a crew to film interviews with space researchers and Nobel laureates about whether intelligent life might exist beyond Earth. Like the voiceover, the interviews were never used. Benson compares it to an artist warming up and testing colors, then realizing they are not needed at all. The footage may still exist somewhere. What remained in theaters was mystery by design.
Questions people ask
Did any of Clarke's unused writing for 2001 survive?
Yes. Clarke published much of his early writing for the project, including long descriptive passages about the astronaut's journey that fit neither the final script nor the novel, in a book called The Lost Worlds of 2001. The published drafts let readers see how much explanation was considered before Kubrick chose silence.
What were the interviews with scientists supposed to do in the film?
They were test material made very early in production, when Kubrick was still exploring how to present the idea of alien intelligence. A separate crew recorded scientists discussing whether intelligent life was likely to exist elsewhere. Kubrick later decided the film should offer no such briefing.
Was it unusual for Kubrick to drop narration?
He often used it. Both Dr. Strangelove and A Clockwork Orange, the features immediately before and after 2001, use voiceover narration to guide the viewer. For 2001 he first followed that habit, then concluded that explanation would spoil the sense of going somewhere truly unknown.