Space: 2001

Factual Questions
1

I was just poking around this behemoth: http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/movies/trivia-faq.html and noticed something interesting about Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. The above database claims that Kubrick had all models and sets destroyed to prevent their reuse.

However, the same database says that Frank Zappa’s 200 Hotels was filmed on the same set, and the Monolith is supposedly visible in it.

And, that disco-fabulistic television show Space: 1999 simply reeks of Kubrick and Pinewood Studios. Moon Base Alpha bears a strong similarity to the moon base in 2001. The space suits used in 1999 are practically identical to Dave Bowman’s outfit. Are they?

And when I was a little kid at Universal Studios, I personally saw what was claimed to be the actual Monolith and a five foot long, ridiculously expensive looking model of the Discovery that was also supposed to be the original. (This was pre-2010, I’m almost positive) Certainly Universal would not lie to a tender soul such as myself?

So what’s left for Kubrick to destroy? Any prop fans out there who know what really happened to all those cool toys?

2

That’s 200 Motels.

Billy the Mountain told me to tell you that. Or was it Studebaker Hoch?

Plunging like stones from a slingshot on Mars.

3

Hmmmm. See ya in Centerville. (It’s a reeeeealy nice place to raise the kids up.)

Uke

4

I’m moving to Montana, gonna be a dental floss tychoon.

5

I can’t say about the models you supposedly saw, but I have heard it claimed that the originals were destroyed, supposedly to keep them from being recycled in grade-z SF productions. That part I can believe; I remember seeing the flying saucer from Forbidden Planet used in a couple of Twilight Zone episodes. And the ships from Silent Running ended up doing duty on Battlestar Galactica. Finally, and worst of all, there was some really bad movie featured on MST3K that for all the exterior shots just recycled stock footage of attacking Cylon fighters from Battlestar Galactica. I can well imagine Kubrick not wanting his masterpiece reused in something like Dinosaurs from Outer Space.

6

Funny you should say that. I wonder what Kubrick thought of part of the Shining being reused in “Blade Runner” (the flying over the hills intro sequence which became a later sequence in “Blade Runner”).

7

I remember when 2010 came out they made a big deal about how they had to build a new spaceship and were using film footage and various stills to make an exact duplicate.