‘2001: A Space Odyssey’ With Bill Simmons, Steven Spielberg, and Sean Fennessey

Welcome to the Rewatchables. I'm Bill Simmons. This is a special one. It's going to actually be a special summer for us. We are going to do a from hell gimmick. We're going to rip through a bunch of my favorite dot, dot, dot from hells. We're talking about the roommate from hell. We're talking about the tenant from hell. We're talking about the little kid from hell, the nanny from hell. These are some of my favorite movies. They're ridiculous. They're just perfect for the Rewatchables. We can make fun of them. We can admire them. We can talk about how campy they are. We can talk about what they did right and wrong. And we're going to do a lot of them. And guess what? Almost all of them are going to be on Netflix. So keep an eye out for it. Next week, we're going to be doing Single Way Female, which is on Netflix. But a bunch of them will be on Netflix. We're going to be from hell at least through June and in part of July as well. So stay tuned. For that coming up, me and Sean Fantasy got to do an entire Rewatchables episode with the greatest living director we have, Steven Spielberg. Yeah, it's the three of us. It's me, Sean, and Steven Spielberg. And we're going to talk about 2001, A Space Odyssey. I can cram it into the from hell gimmick just by saying this is how the computer from hell. It's a little bit of a reach, but to kick off from hell, we'll do it that way. Anyway, this is really one of the great podcasts I've ever. Been a part of. Steven Spielberg was incredible. Can't wait for you to listen to it. Here it is. The Rewatchables, 2001, A Space Odyssey. The Rewatchables brought to you by the Ringer Podcast Network, where you can find the big picture with Sean Fantasy. That's right. Steven Spielberg, not on Ringer Podcast Network. This is like your second podcast ever, right? My second podcast where there's a couple of cameras around, ever. What do you think of this whole new world? Well, it's, guess what? Radio's back. We're going to talk about one of your favorite movies ever, 2001, A Space Odyssey, which is the oldest movie I think we've ever done in the Rewatchables. By one year. Yeah. And it's next. This episode is brought to you by Angry Orchard Hard Cider. Halloween's just better with a scary movie and something good to drink. Angry Orchard's limited edition glow-in-the-dark thriller variety pack is the perfect companion. It even includes a mystery flavor can featuring the iconic ghost face from Scream. Don't get angry. Hit Orchard this Halloween. Find Angry Orchard in a store near you or visit angryorchard.com. Angry Orchard Cider Company LLC. angryorchard.com. Please drink responsibly. Angry Orchard is a hard cider with other natural flavors. This episode is brought to you by Ethos. As a parent, life insurance feels like a no-brainer. It just gives me peace of mind knowing my family will be taken care of. And Ethos makes getting it fast and easy. Apply in line in minutes. Get up to $3 million in coverage with no medical exam. Just a few simple health questions. Take 10 minutes to get covered today with life insurance through Ethos. Get your free quote at ethos.com slash rewatch. That is E-T-H-O-S dot com slash rewatch. Application times may vary. Rates may vary. All right, so this movie's released April 2nd, 1968. What are you doing? I'm in school. I believe I'm at Long Beach State in April of that year. Semester's coming to an end. Everybody's talking about this movie that is a drug trip. It's a drug trip. It's a drug trip. So the word around campus really surrounded my circles. And I'm a teetotaler. I've never done any of that at all. But I smoked cigarettes for a year. That was the worst thing I did in college. For one year? Yeah, I quit. One year, and I quit. But everybody was talking about this kind of like Roger Corman's The Trip. And so the scuttlebutt on campus was, this is trippy. This is going to be like The Trip. This is going to be like a really trippy film. So everybody was getting ready to get into a car and go down to, I believe it was the Pantages Theater to see the film. So I think I saw the film probably the first week it opened. And I went with three or four of my college friends. We all piled into a car, drove into Hollywood. And correct me if I'm wrong, it might have been the Pantages. It might have been another one of those big movie palaces in 1968. But we parked. We parked, walked like nine blocks to get to the theater. Got into a line because in those days there was no such thing as buying your tickets ahead of time. And so we waited in line for a long time. And everybody was being, I looked around. Nobody was smoking grass because there were cops up and down Hollywood Boulevard. But when I walked into that theater and people started filling it up, it was filled with smoke. It was just filled with smoke. Was that common? I had never been to a movie where I smelled marijuana as thick as a London fog inside that movie palace. But everybody was in the theater. A lot of guys, not as many women, more men. Everybody with long hair. Everybody making a lot of noise. I thought I wouldn't be able to hear the dialogue. First of all, I didn't realize because the movie hadn't started yet. There was going to be very little dialogue. But it didn't matter. I was worried that there wasn't going to be room to hear the dialogue because everybody was making so much noise in the theater. And then when the movie started and Thus Spoke Tharstustra started and it hits that tremendous chord, it shut everybody the F up. Everyone just got completely quiet. So as the music was decaying after that big explosive chord. I was aware that everyone was still. It was kind of in itself before the film started, mind-blowing. And then what began, I think, for a lot of people in that theater was a religious experience. Fueled by whatever they were on. For me, it was not so much a religious experience, but one of the most audacious films I had ever watched in my life. It was one of the most audacious films I had ever watched in my life. The audacity, and of course, we all knew Kubrick, and we all knew he was audacious. But the audacity and the risks he took telling that story, if you could even call it a story, set me back. And I think, you know, just rocked my world, for sure. Rocked my cinema world. Your career started next year. Yeah, I got my contract to be a TV director at Universal the next year. Correct. Correct. That's a pretty good start. And it really is like a before and after with movies, this 68, right? It feels like, I remember you said it in some interviews, Stephen, that you thought this was like the Big Bang Theory for a whole generation of filmmakers. But what was the before and after? Well, it's like that year is Planet of the Apes, Rosemary's Baby, Bullet, a handful of other all-time classics. I've seen them all. A couple? Yeah. I've seen them all. Yeah. Did you feel it in the moment? Did you feel like. Did you feel like something is changing about this thing that I love? Yeah, I did. I didn't feel that way until after Stargate, which we'll get to. But after Stargate, I felt that nothing would ever be the same. Especially as you're watching people run out of the theater. But I'm watching the movie completely in a state of, you know, intoxication because Stanley intoxicated me. Or perhaps I was getting a contact. I was like, hi, with all the smoke in the room. But I was completely intoxicated by what I experienced. And it wasn't a film. It was an experience. It was the most experiential thing I had ever seen since I was a little kid and got scared to death by The Greatest Show on Earth. And then later by Bambi and then again by Snow White in Reissues. Well, what's crazy is it's 58 years old now. It's still kind of banging. Like when you think of some of the other movies from back then. The movies from back then feel like they happened in the 60s. Yeah. This is like, you know, it's obviously it's slow by today's standards and things like that. But for the most part, the special effects, the feeling of like being in space, just like, is this what it's actually like to be in space? Like that couldn't have existed in a movie before. Also, you have to remember how big the screen was. The screen was so big. During Stargate, I just have to say that a person in the theater, several people in the theater got up and started walking into the screen. And that was, by the way. And you can probably look it up in the L.A. Times. It was reported that people were walking into the screen in those days, at least in that theater. The screens were like louvers. They were vertical strips of reflected, you know, reflective material. And a couple of the people in the film during Stargate were reported to have walked actually into the screen and disappeared backstage. Did you find anybody was not? not feeling it or walking out because there was reports of it being divisive when it was released no because no everybody everybody i saw the movie with that day were all probably under 35 years old so i don't know anyone that i i wasn't i was unaware of it look half the audience could have walked out and i would not have noticed right i i i looked i looked dead center dead left to center dead right of center because that was my field of vision and i was completely um you know i guess completely magnetized by what was happening yeah because there was a story when they when it had its big premiere they were counting how many people walked out and it was like 241 people and the writer arthur clark was there who worked on it with them and he was like this is a disaster this is devastating but young people were what saved this movie yeah listen a lot of people walked out of the sneak preview of goodfellas one of the greatest films i've ever seen and one of the greatest films marty's ever made and uh yet i didn't go to the preview but brian obama was there and he just said there were a lot of walkouts and that because of the violence but the movie went on to to become a piece of our collective history so you said nobody could shoot a picture better in history than kubrick well in what context did i say that i don't know okay i don't want to i don't want to reference you said it i want i i if i said it i'm sure there was a context for saying it i'm not sure it was a declarative statement well explain the shooting part like what made him so special like as you as you saw his different catalog well i think because stanley in all the films uh for one thing he started out as a as a still photographer for look magazine so he had he had an audacious rambunctious ambitious eye and his compositions and his choices of what to show what pictures to take already set him apart i mean if he wanted to become a more correspondent like bob cab robert kappa he could have become that too um uh but he turned that still eye into 24 frames of stills the second and became one of the greatest i think professors we've ever had uh all my generation that always looked up to him as one of our greatest teachers and what made him that way was he knew um how to tell a story he knew how to tell a story unconventionally he knew how to shock the audience and he knew how to make them laugh he made he dr strangelove is one of the greatest uh black comedies ever ever created for the screen and um and with 2001 a space odyssey he was also he was also a wizard technologically he was almost an engineer his mind had a kind of ocd quality where when he focused in on something um he was doing it for himself and we were the beneficiaries of whatever reason he was creating these incredibly advanced uh spacecraft that no one had ever seen before in anybody else's films those spacecraft alone were uh kind of works of art i always felt and those spacecraft uh um especially the the jupiter mission craft is is what inspired ralph mccorry and myself uh to create the mothership and close encounters inspired george lucas with the imperial star you know starship destroyer yeah and included and and certainly certainly um inspired ridley scott in creating the space freighter nostromo these these wouldn't have existed unless stanley came had come first it seems like the lesson is if you're gonna do this we're going all out like even in the research where they told him it would take him like 13 years to to basically create this universe and have people do the painting he's like well i'll get 13 people and i'll take one year each and i'll be done in a year and it was just i don't know who else was even like that in the 60s it seemed like he had incredible patience and spent four years developing writing and then making the movie long period of editing which there's not a lot of information about the period of time when he was editing the film together and what it ultimately became if you read about him first reaching out to arthur c clark and the idea that he has for the movie it changes a lot yeah in the progression it does and and uh i've i knew arthur i i i had the honor of meeting and having lunch with arthur c clark um when i was shooting um indiana jones of the temple of doom we we we stopped we were shooting in candy sri lanka and and we stopped in colombo before changing airplanes and we were shooting in the temple of doom and we were shooting in the temple of doom to fly back to the uk to continue shooting the film and he lived there for decades and he lived in the botanical gardens where david lena shot bridge in the river quay um and he invited us all to uh lunch at his house and i had a great conversation with him about 2001 a space odyssey wow did so he had the kind of filmmaking where he might take five years before he made his next movie yes yeah you're more prolific than that is that there's two type of directors i wouldn't call prolific i'm more impatient stanley was prolific i was impatient i i just i just love telling stories and i'd love i just if i get a story and it gets into my into my bananas i just have to make i just have to tell the story i gotta get it out i gotta i gotta exercise it so you never could have had the type of career where you would have spent four years between projects you would have gone nuts no i've got i've spent three years between two projects and i went a little nuts but the great thing about that i went a little bit nuts not directing but i was raising a family and that was keeping me completely preoccupied so it was okay yeah so you you didn't actually talk to him until 1980 i met him on the set of uh on on the set of the shining in 1980 when they had just finished dressing the big overlook hotel uh grand grand the grand room with the double staircase and the fireplace and the table with the typewriter on it that's where i first met him did he invite you to the set what led you to going yeah who reached out to who yeah no what happened was i was about to make um raiders lost ark and i was going to build the well of the souls on the same set that he had had already built the overlook hotel yeah and i was scheduled to move uh when he struck his set when he was done shooting with it we were going to build our set and um and so i was going to scout the set anyway but stanley happened to be there doing doing his uh still photographs and um he had he had a camera with a periscope lens and he had a tabletop model of the set that he was actually standing in when i first met him and doug twig douglas twitty our production manager brought me over at stanley's at stanley's uh i asked to meet stanley and stanley said yeah he'd meet me and when i met stanley uh i was surprised he knew anything i had done and he just wanted to talk about duel the movie i made the tv movie i made with dennis weaver that was awesome truck chasing the car thank you and that's what he wanted to talk about and he said i'm going to meet stanley and i'm going to meet stanley and i'm going to meet stanley and i'm going to talk about and then we didn't talk for long because he was busy but he said why didn't we talk more come over to the house for dinner tonight and so i got a chance to meet christian and jan harlan and vivian and his daughters and that was it and that was the beginning beginning of our relationship sean you never claim him as a new yorker i think most people mistakenly think he's from england all you need to do is hear his speaking voice i mean he has he sounds like a wfan caller i mean he really is uh it's an unusual thing because he's obviously is over film history as this great intellectual and and dynamic powerhouse but he really just is a fast-talking new yorker yeah yeah what was the biggest thing you learned during all your conversations with him just about him as a as a talent um well what i learned was he was a human being and i also learned he was not a recluse as he's so often been accused of and and i think it's the most unfair thing about stanley's reputation is that people think he's like howard hughes he never you know he never left his house didn't speak to people didn't go out anywhere anywhere uh stanley used the telephone and stanley used all kinds of means of communication and stanley had been born now he would have reinvented the ipad and the iphone to his to his needs he would have bent it toward his visionary needs i mean you can argue he invented it in the movie he sort of did you know but stanley stanley really really was in the sense that if he liked somebody's movie he would surprise a director and call him and just say hi it's it's denny kubrick here i just saw your picture i loved it uh where'd you get the idea and start a conversation was he the number one holy shit this guy likes my movie director because like you're that now he was the number one holy shit that guy loves my movie director and i'll tell you the story just quick quickly as albert brooks was a friend of mine uh called me up and he said did you give stanley my phone number and i said yep yeah because he asked for it why is it because he called me at three o'clock in the morning to tell me how much he loved uh lost in america and then and then stanley and albert began to relate began a friendship at from that moment do you imagine getting a call from him at three in the morning was it three in the morning though because he was in england and he was calling la yeah i was never aware of times he called me at the strangest hours he was he just didn't have that kind of i mean i'll never understand stanley i don't have to i was not in his family circle but i feel that stanley allowed me to be a copy of him and he was a copy of him and he was a copy of him and he was a copy of me and he was a copy of him and he was a copy of him and he was a copy of him and he was a copy of He treated me like a colleague. And he was very generous with his compliments when he saw a movie I made and liked it. And we had a real rapport and talked often on the phone. I mean, he basically handed AI over to you. Well, he asked me to direct it for him to produce. And then after that didn't work out, only because Stanley really wound up directing it. With a lot of memos, he was sending me many faxes about, you know, hey, it'd be great if you put the camera here. Here's a couple storyboards. And I finally, after six months, said to Stanley, let's reverse roles. I'll co-produce it with you. And you direct it because this is your baby. This is your vision. And he agreed. And then he got distracted by Eyes Wide Shut. And then, sadly, tragically, in 1999, he passed. Well, when you were talking to him about that movie, did he see a very clear link between 2001 and AI? He never made the link there. We did a couple of times. The only link he made was the clear and present danger. He thought it was a cautionary tale about unrestricted machine sentience. He was really, really concerned about machine learning and machines teaching machines to teach machines. Justified, perhaps. That was, I think, the main link between 2001 and his version of AI. I mean, you could argue 2026 is the most relevant year we've had for this movie since 1968. But these are all the conversations everyone's having right now. What happens if the machines learn too much? And these are things that have been in movies now for six decades. Sean, can you think of anybody who could have gone Strange Love, 2001, Clockwork Orange, and Barry? Lyndon all in a row in 10 years? No, I mean, obviously, that's the thing I think that continues to attract film fans, especially young film fans, to him is that each movie feels so dramatically different. And so you start trying to comprehend how one person can bounce around between genre, style, time period. The other thing is that all the movies, once you've seen them, I think, multiple times, you realize they are all sort of the same in some ways, too. Even this movie, which is a little bit quiet. It's a little bit quieter than some of his films. They're all about, like, controlled chaos. There's always something very intense and dangerous and manic happening inside the middle of the story, even if this film is a little more leisurely or quiet or there's not as much dialogue, as you said. But, you know, his flexibility and versatility, I think, maybe accounts for those long stretches of time, too, between projects where he's trying to figure out, what can I do that would interest me, maybe, for a five-year period, if I'm really going to spend this much time developing something? But I don't know. My experience with him is the same as, like, I think, millions. Of movie freaks, which is that you're 13 years old and you find one of these films. Usually, it's either this one, Clockwork Orange, or The Shining, and then you just launch yourself into his entire filmography, which feels very conquerable to young people, too. Hopefully, it's not as much at 13 years old. No, well, you never know. You never know. That wasn't around when I was 13. I saw The Shining when I was 10. My dad took me probably a wee bit too early for me, but holy mackerel. And that became, everybody, I think, has their entry point with his career, and that was mine. Yeah, I think everybody does. And I think the thing that Stanley does to all of us is if we're just surfing the channels and we come across Stanley, one of Stanley's movies, 30 Minutes In, I dare anybody to switch it off. Even if you have a meeting at 7 o'clock the next morning and it's already midnight, I don't know how you get your finger on that off switch. I don't know how you do that. Yeah. I don't care what the movie is. You know, from, you know, you know, from Killer's Kiss to Eyes Wide Shut, whether you love these films more than others of his or not, you completely become, you know, you become a zombie. Right. You become a Stanley zombie. And you just stare at, you walk straight ahead and you sit there and you wait till it's over. Do you remember the first one of his that you saw? I think the first movie I saw was, I know the first movie I saw in a movie theater was Dr. Strangelove. That was the first one. The other films I saw were in art houses later in my life. For instance, you know, Killer's Kiss and those and Paths of Glory I saw on television actually for the first time. But I caught up, I caught up with Stanley in terms of going on a regular basis to his films right around, I would think, Clockwork Orange. What do you think the equivalent is in 2026 of this movie coming out? Like a movie? Where the people watching it could just walk into the movie. I don't even know, like, like some of the effects that he has in here were so far ahead of anything else. And I don't even know how to wrap my head around it. I don't know if it's a movie so much. It may be the sphere in Las Vegas. Maybe the equivalent of 2001 A Space Odyssey. Oh, that's a good call. I like that. Just went for the first time. It was fascinating. We were there together. But I mean, I mean, I mean, Stanley Kubrick with 2001 created, I think the first 3D experience. The first, not. Not 3D in terms of, you know, of interocular, but I'm talking about wraparound three-dimensional sight and sound. And even though the screen did have its boundaries and you could look off the screen, top, bottom, left, right, it didn't matter because it had enough of a fold around the audience that the audience was really enwrapped. And by the experience in 2001 was the perfect film for it. And also 2001 also does something with suspense. And the middle part of that film is as suspenseful as anything Alfred Hitchcock ever made. I feel that film is the most suspenseful movie Stanley ever made. The whole section with Bowman and Poole going out to replace the AE-35, you know, antenna unit. And what happens to Poole and then what Bowman has to do when Hal decides that the human beings are, you know, too flawed to really successfully carry this mission through to completion and has to take over command of that ship. When you first saw it, did you feel like you grasped all of these details and the construction that he was building? Or was it repeated viewings and trying to study it to understand what he was doing? Because it's a film that can be confusing on first viewing. It was absolutely repeated viewings. I mean, I've seen 2001 countless times. I can't tell you how many times I've sat there beginning to end. I finally saw it for the first time in 70 millimeter in New York City in 2001 when it was reissued on that special year. But I can watch it over and over again. And I don't claim to have understood it metaphysically or philosophically or even completely when I first saw it. But it kept bringing me back and the layers continued to expose themselves to me. And then when I got to meet Stanley, I got to talk to Stanley about the film. I knew enough about it at that point that I didn't sound like a clown talking to him about his own, you know, work. But the thing about the picture is it's an anti-emotional film that's truly a deeply empathic picture. But it's kind of anti-emotional. Poole and Bowman, you know, Gary Lockwood and Cara Dullea play it like, you know, they don't laugh. They don't smile. There's nothing, you know. You know, Poole is getting a little, he's on a sun deck, you know, in an adjustable kind of bed. And he's getting some rays, good vitamin C. And a recording comes from his mother and father wishing him happy birthday. And he takes it in his stride. He doesn't smile. He doesn't blink. He's not warm. He just listens. And says, and he asks Hal to adjust the chair. Right. You know, full recline after his parents sing happy birthday to him. Badly. And so the most emotional, and we've all heard this spoken, but it's true. The most emotional character is Hal 9000. And a great villain too. That was built in 1992 in, I believe, Urbane, Illinois. Yeah. And that was the most emotional character in the entire piece. The movie begins with a pretty good character played by William Sylvester. You know, Haywood Floyd, Haywood R. Floyd. And he's warm and he's commanding. And you listen to him. He's got that great scene in the kind of Hilton, the space station next to what the wall says, Hilton 5. He's meeting with a Russian delegation. Yeah. That he knows, I think the Russian's name is Shmirnov or Shmirnikov, possibly. I don't really know. Talking about, you know, one of their landers was denied landing rights at Clavius Moon Base. And he wants to know why. And there's a rumor the Russians hear that there's some kind of an epidemic. Yeah. But that, of course, is the cover story. Yeah. Which I immediately stole when I made Close Encounters. And used Fosgene. gas as the cover story to clear the civilians away from Devil's Tower so they can have this first communion between an off-world civilization and the human race. So how many movies did this directly influence, you think? Because you, obviously, Star Wars, your movie. Every film. Every film. It's funny, like, growing up with it because, you know, the theme of the movie, if you're a kid, is computers are going to take over. Computers someday. Watch out. Watch out the moment they get too much. That's true. You know, and it's like, alright. And then in the 80s, we start getting the home computers. Like, this is nice. This is great. And the internet comes in the 90s. This is fun. I can talk to my family. And now we're in this stage. It's like, uh-oh, did we go too far? No. And remember the great movie that Walter Parks made called War Games? Oh, yeah. 1980. And before that, there was Colossus, the Forbin Project. Where computers, you know, machines, were threatening to take over the world. Now, that's an old sci-fi trope, and it's fine because all science fiction eventually comes true. It just does. Yeah, one thing that struck me thinking very hard about this movie was there are dozens, maybe hundreds of sci-fi movies that come before this, but almost all of them, and especially the American films, are all about what will happen when either an alien species or robots come to Earth. And this is not that. This is a kind of post-Earth exploration of life. You know, it's about something completely different. And just to conceive that very small but critical thing makes the movie feel so different than everything that came before it. 2001 made me feel as big as a grain of sand. You know, I felt no more aware. When I was done seeing the film for the first time, I was no more important than any of the stars in that sky. That were, by the way, hand-painted by Doug Trumbull and his team. It made me feel really small in a good way, because you know, you can look up at the night sky and feel pretty small and diminished if you don't have the contamination of a big city spoiling your view. But if you get out into the desert, into the country where there's no city lights, and you really see that awesome vista, you see our entire Milky Way, you can get the same feeling every single time you watch 2001 The Space Odyssey. Stanley created that. And when you think about some of his concepts, they found a monolith buried on the moon and had been buried there for four million years. Right away, that makes us all feel like a greater intelligence before we ever had evolved into you know, a race of homo sapiens. Had already been here once. And possibly had seeded the planet with the life that we claim is generated from whatever your belief system is. And so 2001, even if you've seen it 50 times, the movie can still I think, shock you. Well, it does seem like. Do I sound like an ad to get people to see 2001? No. Sean and I are having the best time ever. This is, yeah. This is what I wanted. Well, it feels like there's two types of people, right? There's the people who are like, I really want to know what's out there. Like, tell me more. Like, let's talk. And then there's the other people who are like, I'm afraid to know what's out there. And I think I'm in that camp. The latter. Really? Yeah. The sci-fi stuff has always kind of freaked me out. Wow. And especially this movie. I think I've only seen it twice before I started preparing it for this one because it brings things into my brain that I don't even know if I'm 100% ready for. Like, you're talking about Dawn of Man, all the way through, going, what happens to this guy at the end? Does he get sent back as, like, this superhero? Or is he just dead and he saw the end of his life? You think of this stuff and you can, I don't know, go crazy. Yeah, I'm not a big fan of the next 2010 movie they made. Because I really wanted it to be left in my imagination when the star child turns and looks at the planet Earth. I wanted to leave it at that. I just wanted to be able to have that image exist without any possible film follow-up. It's so interesting, though, because, you know, obviously, Clark wrote a novel while they were making this film. Yes. And in the novel, there's all kinds of explanations about why the monolith exists, who put it there, the meaning of the star child. All this discussion about sort of exploding the nuclear weapons in orbit. And the intentions of the film. And I didn't learn about that until after I'd seen the movie many times. And it is a little bit of a letdown to learn details of intention. I think it's mundane. For me, that's mundane because it's a mundane thing to start to explain and start to throw out other plot lines. Because in the abstract, when the star child turns, and those eyes are moving in the model's, in the puppet's head, and almost looks at the audience, you know, it's just a moment that sort of Stanley is saying, we need to start looking within ourselves. You know, we can always be looking to the stars and ambition and exploration is great, but aren't we missing us? Shouldn't we start, all of us, looking more inward? And that's what that said to me. Not the first time I saw the film, and not the 25th time I saw it. But eventually, it started to make, it started to become very clear to me. Is that something you think about when you talk about intention for movies you've made? Because some directors, like Tarantino will never tell us what's in the briefcase, right? He's probably the only one that knows in Pulp Fiction. And then there's other directors and writers of stuff that'll be like, oh, here's what I meant, here's what I think. Like, I like the mystery, but where do you stand on this? I like the mystery, too. I don't think I've made enough movies with enough mystery that anybody said, but what did you really mean? Everybody sees my movies and says, I get it, okay. What are you doing next? That's not true. What is the most what's the most kind of confused people were after one of your movies, where they were like, ah, I wonder. I think they were really confused in a good way, and kind of a I think they were kind of confused at the end of Munich. Interesting. Because I showed the Twin Towers in the last shot, and I think they made a big link, and they should have been confused. I intended the link to what the never-ending cycle of violence, the seemingly unsolvable cycle of violence is going. did eventually lead to. So there's a lot of people talking about the end of that movie, and a lot of people talk about the end of A.I., where David gets his mom back for like from dawn till nightfall, and that's it. And what happens to David? Is he just going to sit in that bed until his batteries run down with Teddy? And then what happens to him? Is he going to be. Is he going to become a deity for all the machines that found him? The super mecha that people often confusingly think are aliens. They are not. They are the result of many iterations and generations of machine-built entities, sentient but completely built by other machines. Is David going to become a kind of deity or oracle for them? Because humans actually had their hands on David and created David, so David is the first iteration of who they have now become. That's one of the major reasons I asked you about the link between 2001 and A.I. because it's such an echo of the apes touching the monolith and the astronauts approaching the monolith. I told you this film had an effect on me in 2001. It worked. Close Encounters definitely leaves you with some questions. It does. Especially like, is Richard Dreyfuss' character ever going to be able to have a normal day ever again? Richard Dreyfuss' character went up in the mothership but then he came back down to make Always With Me. He made Always With Me with Holly Hunter. So with sequels, for the most part, Sean and I are both, I think, pro-sequels when it's like, we like these characters. Raiders is a great example. It's like, I get to hang out with Indiana Jones again. Awesome. But then there's other ones like Jaws 2. You didn't necessarily want to be in Jaws 2. You wanted the story to end. You never saw it? I didn't see it for 20 years. We did rewatchables on it. It's a very silly movie. They tried to get me to make it and I kept saying, we blew the shark up, guys. We blew the shark up. It's unmakeable. The shark got blown up and they said, well, there's other sharks. There are no other sharks 26 feet long. Only Jaws. You know, we've had this podcast since 2017 and we were trying to figure out all these different structures, formats with it. And Jaws was ironically the one that we were kind of like, we'd been doing it for nine months. Me and Sean and Chris Ryan did Jaws and it was like the first one we were like, this is the pod. This is what it is. And one of the things that we loved talking about, like the Robert Shaw stories, and what he was like on the set and him daring Dreyfus to climb up to the top yeah and so that is that story true yeah he offered him money but Richard didn't do it for the money Richard did it because Robert dared him and Richard is a very courageous person and Richard uh is going to do I mean he's Richard stood up to Robert right I think there's a lot of exaggeration that's happened over the years over the 50 52 years Richard and Robert admired each other they respected each other as actors and they respected each other as people but they had a routine like like Steve Martin and Marty Short where they go on the road they're always acting like they're rivals and they're teasing each other and making jokes about each other and they had a comedy act in a way I think it kind of pushed Richard Robert pushed Richard a bit to the brink yeah and sometimes Richard put you know he's a little bit of a character but he's a little bit of a character but he's a little push Robert to the brink but you don't do that to other people unless underneath it is an enduring admiration right and respect and I think that's what gets overlooked after all these years it's sort of thinking they really didn't like each other that's not true but it really serves the movie but it serves the movie and I was happy about it yeah because when they got in front of the camera they knew their business they knew who they were to each other as Hooper and Quint it probably also almost served a heart attack for you when you found out Dreyfuss was going to climb up 50 feet up in the air oh we stopped him yeah no no Richard get down it's funny though when Stephen was talking about catching a Kubrick movie 30 minutes in and not being able to turn it off which is literally the premise of this show yeah that was the thing I think Jaws is definitely one of those movies for us and for Chris for millions of people where it doesn't if you're in the eighth minute or the 90th minute you're like I just I gotta I gotta get to the end I gotta get to the Indianapolis I gotta get to you know I gotta see that the shark popping out like I just have to get to the end I gotta get to the Indianapolis I gotta get to the that's very it's hard though to to make something where you can go back not two times or five times but 50 times like this movie that we're talking about it kind of demands several viewings like you were saying you'd only seen it a couple times beforehand but if you like watch it at different stages of your life it tells you something different you learn more about yourself when you watch it it's really you notice different things different themes it's true and you also get kind of seduced by the amazing musical choices you know he you know he's a great musician he's a great musician he's a great musician he's a great hired his composer, when Stanley directed Spartacus, Alex North, one of the greatest Hollywood film composers ever, composed a brilliant score for Spartacus. It's one of the greatest scores ever written for a film, especially the main title that Alex North did. And so Stanley employed Alex to write the score, a film score for 2001, The Space Odyssey, and very quickly threw it out because it turned his movie too much into a movie. And so he went and did what he did best, Stanley, which is needle drops. But look who he went to. He went to Aram Katchatorian. He went to Penderecki. He went to Gorgi Leggetti, or Leggetti. And he went to both Strauss composers. And so you've got the Blue Danube playing. When you suddenly go from a proto-human taking a bone and throwing it in the air, and the camera follows the bone into the air, and on its descent, the bone transitions into a space shuttle in the year 2001, it's unbelievably audacious. And then suddenly you hear the Blue Danube Waltz playing, and it completely relaxes you into accepting the possibility of a future like this one. Also, the most New York thing he did was just use the Blue Danube. He used the Blue Danube. He just used the music and didn't tell some of those people, right? That became, I think, an issue for a couple of them. They were like, wait a second, my music's in this? My music's in this? I'm Stanley Kubrick. I'm going to use your music. We'll figure it out later. I couldn't think of another example of a movie before this that just transitioned so radically, not just to the future, but to a completely, seemingly unconnected phase of the movie. It just feels like we've changed the tone, the style, the color, the location. Everything is just different, and you're expected to not only accept it, but understand what he's trying to tell you. It's amazing. Well, I wrote down the timing of the movie. So it launches the modern sci-fi boom, right? They're science fiction movies, but they're all cheap, and they're making them for less than a million bucks. This is the first one where somebody's like, I'm spending real money. They're putting serious coin in science fiction. Planet of the Apes released five days before this movie, though, which is very interesting. Oh, my God. That they are so twin together, and they both prominently feature apes, obviously. But didn't Planet of the Apes outgrows 2001? It did, but maybe not over time, ultimately. Maybe not over time. But those two movies I see as very connected. Yes. It's a year before Apollo 13 and Neil Armstrong, everything. Yep. It's hitting the psychedelic late 60s perfectly. This is right as this whole generation, this counterculture thing's happening. Whole generation of young filmmakers, including yourself, all waiting to be influenced by movies like this. You have that. The 70 millimeter, and just like the big, awesome, this is like the perfect thing to go, which is now, by the way, I don't know if you've heard, but it's now made a comeback. People going to movie theaters and seeing IMAX and awesome different things. It's made for, I wrote down nerds, philosophers and movie junkies, but somehow it became massive. And then what we talked about earlier about life in the next century, what's going to happen. Like that 2001 is 33 years after they make this movie. But when you watch it, it feels like it's a hundred years after they make this movie. It feels like it's a hundred and 30 years after 1968. And the movie's already outlived some of the sponsors. Pan American Airlines, Airways no longer exists. The other thing, Bell Telephone no longer exists. Howard Johnson's is still around. I think that's still around in spotty, but it's still around. But you've got a lot of things that don't exist anymore where the film has outlived the, some of what I think Stanley assumed would be around for millennia. In these like bedrock corporations of our life. Yeah. I think he assumed, those are bedrock corporations. So when you're watching this and you're thinking someday I'm going to make movies and then you're seeing the special effects in this movie, like what is, what's going through your brain? Well, I didn't, when I first saw the movie, I didn't notice the special effects. I was in that story. I was part of that experience. So I wasn't picking it apart. I went back to see the movie two weeks later and I went back to see the movie a week after that. So I saw the movie about four times in a month and it was the second and third and fourth time that I started just marveling. And how did they get that on the screen? How did they do that? And who are these people? Who is Wally Beavers? Who is, who is Douglas Trumbull? Who is Colin Cantwell? I mean, who are these people? And because they all got kind of special effects, supervisor credits on single cards. And I just wanted to get to know them. So of course I went to Doug Trumbull when I went to, when I, when I made Close Encounters with the Third Kind. So then 14 years later, you have little kids riding their bike in the air and it's like the greatest moment of every kid's generation. It's basically the same thing. Like, oh my God, how did they do that? This has, this movie has a lot of, how did they do that? I mean, how did they, how did they create weightlessness when he had to back the rover backwards with the exploding bolt door against the pod bay? And then he had to get, you know, he, he had to basically, hold his breath, you know, blow up the, first of all, he mechanically manually opened the pod bay doors because Hal wouldn't do it. And then he had to turn the entire pod around and he had to back the pod up to the entryway and he had to wait for the detonation. And when it occurred, he blew it toward camera completely weightless. And what I didn't realize until much later was he was on a, a wire, but the wire was coming from the camera. Right. Cause they didn't have wire removal. They didn't have digital wire removal in those days before digital wire removal. We just put, uh, the special effects guys would put a little Vaseline blur where the wire was to make it harder for the audience to see the wires, uh, films like war of the worlds, the George Powell film, you see the wires on, on the, on the triangular, uh, you know, you know, you know, Martian ships. But in this case, because the wire, uh, it was, was, came right from the nodal point of the lens, almost this right to the side of the lens. It looked like he was completely weightless and bouncing around like on a bungee inside that place. And when Stanley built an entire set, the set turned three 60, but the actors just walked flight attendant. They actually rotated the entire set. I got the idea in poltergeist when I produced and had, had co-written poltergeist. Um, I wrote, the story I wrote, I wrote, I wrote the screenplay. Um, I wanted Joe Beth Williams, the character to kind of weightlessly fly around a room. So we built an entire bedroom, put it on the same kind of a vertical carousel. And we, we just started revolving it. And Joe Beth just had to go like Gene Kelly did in Royal wedding when he danced on the walls and the floor and the ceiling, Joe Beth just had to understand where she, what, what down was where up and down was where down was so she could struggle and traverse the entire room from the wall to the ceiling, to the wall, back to the floor again, which is exactly how Stanley also got the guy jogging in the ship right with the with the Caceterian music playing when they were jogging all around for exercise even some of the shots I feel like have drifted into other movies like the when the thing you just mentioned about him flying around bouncing around it's a little like Castaway with Hanks when the plane blows up and he gets sent back yes but I thought of that when I was watching it Keir Dullea did not enjoy shooting that sequence I can't imagine he only did it twice for the record he said that he did not enjoy it so here's what Kubrick said about the ending in a 1980 phone interview with a journalist I read this yeah but go ahead the idea was supposed to be that he is taken by godlike entities creatures of pure energy and intelligence with no shape or form they put him in what I suppose you could describe as a human zoo to study him and his whole life passes from that point on in that room and he has no sense of time and then maybe he's transformed into some kind of super being and sent back to earth we'll only have to guess what happens when he comes back so he makes it seem like he doesn't die that's completely logical but it's not very fun to think about like I it's this is an interesting thing where I'm also very interested in directorial intent like what did the person who made this think about it why did they do it I've spent the last 10 years asking filmmakers like why did you do this however with certain movies this being one of them I do not want an explanation of that room you wish you had never said anything I wish that I did not read that I'm actually quite surprised that he shared that and it seemed like he shared that maybe shortly after the film had come out and he was not as concerned maybe about being so mysterious at this particular period of time maybe it's maybe it's what it's 12 years after he made the movie do you get like you make a movie you send out in the world after 10 years like ah fuck it I'll tell you what happened I'd like to think that Stanley said that because that's exactly what the movie doesn't mean what Stanley never intended and he's throwing the world off see I love that so he can keep he can keep the truth a little more contained I think he's playing a little chess with us maybe oh he was a great chess player matter of fact you know the best gift I ever gave Stanley for his birthday was the first computer chess game because Stanley I played chess and Stanley played chess I would never play with Stanley because I could only make four moves and he'd mate me checkmate me but but but when I found out that in the 80s they had made a little you know tabletop electric computer chess game I said to Stanley and Stanley called me back a week later and he said couldn't you have sent me a smarter one that's a real careful what you wish for scenario though given what happens in the movie couldn't you have sent me a smarter chess electronic chess game because you kept beating it the playoffs are here and you can predict all the action all the way to the finals with FanDuel predicts all you have to do is sign up get your $25 bonus predict the spread the total points even the game winning moments that make the playoffs from opening tip to the final buzzer stay locked in with every pass every play every moment that moves us closer to crowning a champion sign up now for your $25 bonus on FanDuel predicts offered by FanDuel prediction markets LLC a registered futures commission merchant 18 plus bonuses now withdrawal will expire seven days after receipt trading derivatives involve significant risk and may not be suitable for all investors manage your activity with our consumer protection tools restrictions apply see terms at FanDuel.com slash predict slash bonus dash offer dash terms this message is brought to you by Apple Card with Apple Card you earn unlimited daily cash back on everyday purchases like groceries merch or tickets to the game plus it can be used anywhere MasterCard is accepted no matter your team no matter where you shop Apple Card is here to help you tackle game day apply in the wallet app on your iPhone today subject to credit approval Apple Card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch terms and more at AppleCard.com let me ask you about the casting quick because this movie does not have anyone who was a star at the time or became a major star which is a little I think if they're making this movie now they're probably like you gotta figure out if Gosling can do it or whatever Kubrick didn't want big name stars he wanted like anonymous faces and anonymous expressions that's right and yet like if Steve McQueen is in this movie does it feel different or does he take you out of it it would take me out of it if Steve McQueen were in 2001 A Space Odyssey because I would have too much baggage to unpack from all the movies I've seen you know from basically from you know The Blob to Bullet which came out that year so he's bringing the Steve McQueen IMDB baggage with him yeah I thought it was really smart to hire Gary Lockwood and Keira Julia Keira of course was brilliant and Frank Frank and Eleanor Perry's David and Lisa and he had a wonderful career and Gary Lockwood did some great stuff too I really admired both of them but they were they were more like they were like astronauts who were a little more there was more anonymity in casting them and nobody William Sylvester was an American living in England working on stage and nobody had seen him in American movies and because you went you went both ways with this because like in Raiders everyone knew who Harrison Ford was you could have gone somebody more anonymous but in E.T. it's basically people I didn't have a history with so like I'd never seen Henry Thomas I'd never seen Dee Wallace I'd seen because she'd been a couple things but you know what I mean like you could have put big stars in that and you didn't no not really I couldn't have put big stars in E.T. because there are there are no I mean Drew Barrymore became a big star about two months after E.T. opened and Henry did had a great career Henry Thomas Dee's great she's a wonderful actor I love her but I wanted the same kind of anonymity you know I wanted the movie to be known and I wanted them to be the characters that would become known if the look I never thought E.T. would work I thought E.T. was going to be I couldn't believe that they gave me ten million dollars to make the movie because I didn't think it would make any money back really? I thought it was it was going to be the parents were going to have to you know drop their kids off and say you should go see E.T. it's healthy it's good for you I didn't know that I didn't know it was going to take off the way it did I had no idea I've also done E.T. on this show have you really? oh we've done you're the leader in directors really? we've done nine Spielberg movies yeah you're the you're the leader in the clubhouse I love the Close Encounters one oh thank you that was a great one yeah yeah you guys got it well we still have you got it that's nice to hear yeah that is nice to hear yeah we still have some left in your catalog which is extensive well E.T. and this film too like the star of the films E.T. and Hell 9000 and Jaws is the star of Jaws and Roy Scheider was the star he had done French Connection and stuff and Richard had done American Graffiti and Richard had done The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz which was a huge critical hit and Robert Shaw had done Man for All Seasons and he was well known he had done The Sting before big hit movie won the Oscar for Best Picture but it was about three anonymous guys that divested themselves of who they were to all of us publicly and became those characters I mean that's the whole thing about good actors maybe even Steve McQueen I thought was a really good actor I knew Steve pretty well maybe Steve could have done 2001 I mean a good actor is supposed to become an anonymous character based on what the writer and the director have offered us and so I'm going to take that back I'm going to back I'm going to kind of back that up a little bit by saying I'll say I talked you into it you did you can make you can use movie stars in a film and if the movie is compelling enough you forget the filmography of the character in the film the only reason I thought of him was he was and we've talked about this this is a big Tarantino point about how we don't have enough McQueens now people that didn't really need dialogue but just seem like stars they just you could read their faces and something about them and you're like oh that guy's a movie star well also for such a film with so little dialogue you know that you need somebody on the other hand though like he obviously is encouraging these actors to kind of drain some of their inherent charisma and McQueen could so effortlessly communicate charisma so maybe that isn't what he would have wanted out of one of the astronauts yeah okay I'm going to go back to your point you're right McQueen 2001 The Space Odyssey but maybe Hackman could have done it I don't know yeah Hackman could have done it so he was he was a legendary million takes guy who was that Kubrick yes where are you in the because we have like you always hear stories about like Clint Eastwood's like two takes let's move on to the thing where are you in that in that scale I'm six to eight probably six to eight takes what are you trying to accomplish in the six to eight what are you trying to find out from the actors well I'm it varies because the number of takes I make depends on whether I feel that it is all the actors are going to be able to contribute or or is it all I want or need the actors to contribute I have to make that determination on every take so I've done 30 takes before I've done 30 takes with certain actors and but I've also done two takes with certain actors right it all depends Anthony Hopkins on Amistad came over to me before we shot the movie and he said I'm going to give you a little insight into how I work take one I'm just getting a feeling of about how it's sounding and how it's feeling to me take two I'm going to nail it take three you can use parts of it but after take three you're not going to want to use any of the parts of those takes. And he told me ahead of time that he's good for about three. And Take two. Take two, Tony. We did a couple more takes. We did five, six takes. But Tony is one of the most intuitive actors, and his choices are almost gifts. I don't know where it comes from, but when he makes a choice and he finds a moment, the moment is not a moment that he has thought about a lot. It's a moment that comes to him. It's intuitive. It's right. It fits the shoes of the character. He's walking in, and then that's it. He's giving you his best shot. I love shit like this. Our favorite one ever is Nicholson and a Few Good Men when they did all the Colonel Jessup courtroom scenes and he was done. And they're like, all right, now you can go. We can use this stand-in. We're going to get the other one. And he's like, no, no, I'm going to stay. I'm going to just keep doing this over and over again. And they're like, really? He's like, yeah. No, I love it. He loves to act. Also, it's fun. You get actors that have done 300, 400 performances on stage. They want to do a lot of takes. Right. Because every night they bring something else to the theater. They bring something else to the character. They find other ways of expressing things that don't throw the other characters off that aren't going to sabotage the company because they suddenly come up with a better idea than the playwright. They're not going to do that. Or some of them, most of them are not going to do that. But I find that if an actor who's had a lot of stage experience, you really, he desires more takes. And I'm fine. And if an actor comes to me and says, when I work with Leo, Leo likes to watch his own takes. When I did Catch Me If You Can with DiCaprio, he likes to go to the monitor after every take and look at the take back. And it gives him ideas. And he says, let me have one more. Let me have one more. So I might do 9, 10, 11 takes because Leo feels he hasn't explored it sufficiently. So I will wait for Leo to tell me when he thinks he's got it. I'm not going to, be a big overseer, you know, as a director and say, no, I think it was great on take four. We're moving on. If I got a schedule problem, if I'm losing the light and we're racing the light, yeah, I'm going to be a little more, come on. I hope you felt that enough because we're not doing it again. We can't do it again. But short of that, I'm going to let an actor tell me when they think they've given me their best take. Leo grinds tape. Who knew? Not surprising. Grinding tape like a quarterback. It's like Patrick Mahomes. And other people are just like, whatever, Stephen, let's, I trust you. You're one of the greatest directors ever. Sometimes I have to, especially in this later area of my career, I've got to sometimes go to an actor and say, you know, if you want another take, you can ask me for another take just because I'm expressing joy that I love what you just did. It doesn't mean that there's something I haven't seen yet that you know you haven't given yet. So if you, so I have to go to the actors and say, don't be intimidated, you know, because I made E.T. Tell me that you, and you know, and your childhood was informed by it. Tell me if you think you have more to give. Don't take cut print as an answer. I don't know if our guy Stanley was doing that. Seemed like he had a different manner. Yeah. In terms of approaching actors. Making the movie we mentioned, he spent five years developing it, got involved with Arthur C. Clarke, kept doing it. And I'll say, I'll say people, there's a lot of great research on this. There's been documentaries, multiple books. Yes. But he, the most interesting thing of all that stuff, the cliff notes, Clarke had the book ready to go and he's like, you can't do it until the movie comes out. And he's like paying him on the side because he was banking on the money from the book. He said, no, no, no, you got to wait. You got to wait until the movie comes out. And then movie came out, releases the book. But that's, that's a lot of trust you got to do. So they worked on the script together. And it seemed a little tumultuous in the research. Between them? Yeah. Like working on the script and stuff. I don't know if it was perfect, but it got to where it needed to get to. I don't know anything about their working relationship, but they, they were, they were both, they were not hive minds. They were not hive minded. They were single minded visionaries who I'm sure had alternative points of view and common points of view. But whatever the magic was between Clarke and Kubrick, man, we're so grateful to both of them. Have you ever had somebody like that, that you were just like partners on this thing where you had to sketch out this whole thing and spending, you know, months and months and years with one person? I have, I have a deep partnership with Tony Kushner and I have an equally deep partnership with David Koepp. And it has been just, just, I'm just lucky that they're on this planet. To, to tell stories with me. Can you talk about like the relationship that you have with a writer like that, who you return to over and over again? And what, what happens when they have an idea that you don't like, or how do you come to a common ground? Well, if there's, it depends. I mean, I mean, both, they're two completely different people. Number one, Tony Kushner is, is a, is a Tony award winning Pulitzer prize winning playwright and an Academy, multiple Academy, award nominated screenwriter. And David Koepp is one of the most commercial screenwriters in Hollywood history. Yeah. And they both have different ways of working, which I really love. And I've got to be the flexible one here. I have to be the chameleon that doesn't, I'm not asking them to conform to the way I work. I will conform to what makes them great writers. And so I have to listen more than I talk. Sometimes. But it's, it's just when you, I've always said, look, I always said that Shakespeare said at first, he said it best. He said, the play is the thing. And without a screenplay, I'm nothing. I'll just take my iPhone and take a lot of really, really nice still photographs. But without a screenplay, I absolutely am lost. And so for me, the writer is the most important person in my life. Interesting. This is a funny one too, though, because you and Kubrick are, we're somewhat alike in this way. All of his movies are based on something. He was always on the hunt. It sounds like for material, for something that could make for a good story, but then you have to shape the story. In this case, he approaches Clark and he has the original idea, but the Clark story, the Sentinel is a huge inspiration for the idea that he has. And so they take parts of an preexisting story and then they fold it into one section of this smaller movie. It's this really unique version of, of story synthesis that again, like I was trying to find some other examples of a movie like this. There's just not any other movies like this. Yeah, there, there aren't, there aren't. Hey, can you answer me this? Did Arthur, Arthur Clark's book rendezvous with Rama happened before? I think it follows follow. I think it's 73. Okay. Cause that, that had similar themes. Yeah. So yeah, when they were working this Kubrick wrote to Clark's agent about his workload, cause they weren't getting along. And he said, I get up, I get up at 7:00 AM hit the studio about eight 15 beginning day. That generally ends around 8:30 PM. I go home, say good night to the children, have dinner, work on the novel and go to bed around midnight. I do this seven days a week. Who said that? When Kubrick said that's like me prepping for pods. Like you watch it, the entire Cooper catalog to get ready. He really sounded demanding and was just, that was it. He's working on something. That's what, he's doing interesting though. Polanski asked him if he'd ever taken drugs and Stanley said, I never had, I never will. Not because he had a problem getting high, but because he didn't know the source of his creative gift and didn't want to fuck with it. Oh, I love that. I love the acknowledges that he had a creative gift. Yeah. I mean, a lot of filmmakers are shy about even confessing that they have any gift at all. Those, those who have been really successful. I don't know anybody in my circle. I mean, I paint models with directors at Guillermo del Toro's house every weekend and not once during those model painting and making sessions as anybody refer to themselves as gifted. Well, it's interesting that he knew he had something and probably didn't want to veer from it, both in the structure of his day-to-day life. Maybe, maybe he drank some wine. I don't know, but I don't know. We talk about, I mean, we talk about, we certainly talk about stuff we've done and how, how much fun it is to make movies and, and cook up stuff that never existed five seconds ago. And suddenly you get an idea of where that idea come from, what came from being born and living and experiencing everything. And that's where your ideas come from. But yeah, but we never, we never look at each other like we're, I think Guillermo del Toro is a genius, but Guillermo will never refer to him that way. Nor will I ever say to Guillermo, you're a genius because that's, that's, it's going to make all of us blush. I mean, that's something that we don't, we don't talk about. We don't think of ourselves, any of us that way. We think of ourselves as people that love doing what we do, but it's the hardest thing we've ever done. There is nothing harder. I can imagine except raising children. Then in my profession, there's nothing harder than, than, than directing a movie. I'm the opposite. I tell Sean, I'm a genius all the time. That's actually true. Yes. I've been working with him for almost 15 years. Yep. So they do the premiere for this movie and it goes badly. And, and Kubrick's wife said, Stanley was tearing himself to shreds. He's saying, Oh my God, they really hated it. He was heartbroken. He couldn't sleep. Couldn't speak. beat couldn't do anything was shattered felt terrible and then what we talked about the young people started to come out did you ever have an experience like that when you released the movie and you were like oh my god they hated it and just went into a spiral um no i've never gone into a spiral usually when i have a movie that opens i go away somewhere where nobody can find me and where i can't read anything i try to go away i go because i it's my excuse for taking a vacation the film gets released and then i go somewhere and it's been really therapeutic and it's it's it's good and i i know if something's not going well of course i know when something's i didn't before the internet uh it was harder to find out before the internet you had to have somebody call you and and you know the person that calls you and says your film's a bomb is not a person you're going to want to have dinner with the next week uh but now now if your film is is a huge success or is a middling success or isn't a success at all you it gets you it just osmosis through the the current you know the current social state of the art that we're all enveloped in and and uh but i still can get away and and so i don't have to stress out you know there's some this is a little bit of a confusing one with 2001 because critically it's very split and there are some extremely sharp elbowed kind of nasty yeah pauline kale not a fan very tough piece and then there's some that are very laudatory right out of the gate yes and then the movie it seems like in the first week it does okay business yes it's not a bomb but it just does okay and then it seems like you said like it seemed like people caught on one weekend something else really helped that movie catch on the marketing department at mgm and i i want to give stanley credit for this but suddenly it i don't think stanley actually came up with this slogan but the marketing department at mgm put on all the posters and they're like oh my god i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this i'm gonna do this and all the billboards 2001 a space odyssey the ultimate trip and appeal to the psychedelic generation did he anticipate though that this was going to be a drug trip movie when he was making it i i asked him that question and he actually said he doesn't think the movie is a drug trip movie and he sort of is and i'm not saying he's in denial of that because i don't really know you know if that's the reason that it eventually did so well and people saw it i i think it's i think drugs notwithstanding the film itself is a drug you don't need to smoke marijuana to get off on 2001 a space odyssey and like me who's never taken drugs i went to that movie and that was a drug and to this day it continues to be something that every year i need a little bit of a 2001 fix in me well he wins his only oscar that he won for a movie which was uh visual effects nominated for director screenplay art direction yes do you remember who wins that year for best picture uh in 68 yeah no oliver with an exclamation point oh oliver oliver yes oliver you mean we did it in the 60s we put exclamation points oh my goodness oliver of course that was carol reed's first oscar yeah yeah so painful one for me one of my favorite directors ever but it's one of my favorite musicals is it it's one of my favorite musicals i love that i'm not a fan of don't know that one i can tell you i'd like another another podcast i'll tell you why i love that movie well i love the choreography especially by ona white in that movie i can talk to you about that later 10 million dollar budget for for uh 2001 yeah double what they gave him i think he he jacked it up they gave him like 4.5 he's like i have about 10 did you ever jack it up higher than that on a movie well jaws was budgeted for 3.5 million and it cost 10 because it went over schedule 100 days they were okay with that trade well no they weren't okay with that eventually they were okay with that the second day of release but not until they got you back by making seven sequels are we are we done with jaws sequels how many have we had four i think we've had three right three sequels was it four or three three sequels yeah the last one was a 3d movie yeah yeah jaws two was solid um it wasn't bad uh second biggest movie in 1968 um and then what 2001 yeah that was great um we mentioned pauline kale said it was the biggest amateur movie of them all and there's only one hour's worth of a good movie here la times guy loved it roger ebert four stars we always do a roger ebert review oh great great yeah the film creates its effects essentially out of visuals and music it's meditative does not cater us wants to inspire us enlarge us goes on he he loved it um we're gonna do some categories okay hold on buckle up you can see but he has photographic recall of the sequences he's gonna be fine in this this is not gonna be a problem i'm gonna give you some choices for most rewatchable all right most rewatchable scene this is the premise of the podcast you're hopping into a movie and it's like oh shit this scene's coming i gotta this is 2001 yeah the most rewatchable scene yeah i'm gonna give you some choices um dawn of man the beginning with the apes leading on to the leopard which holy shit the leopard scene we didn't talk about that yet these are people in monkey costumes and they're just planning a play acting leopard jumping out and this is something that happened yeah was that i i just couldn't believe it i thought i don't know how i thought they did this but they did it the way with a real leopard and a guy in a gorilla suit yeah well and kubrick was like i hope this works i hope the guy in the gorilla suit got uh got uh got a stunt adjustment unbelievable um so we got that such a great choice because it just jolts you awake in the movie uh we get the ape figuring out that bones could be a weapon leading into the big fight with the two gangs we get floyd and the astronauts checking out the buried artifact big sit down with the russians which is our second summit of two rebel gangs um jogging scene into the eating scene into the house and then we get the ape and the ape and the ape and the ape and the interview how does the lip reading thing yeah that's my favorite scene in the movie okay explain my favorite scene in the movie is where they for one thing these guys should have known that how 9 000 could read lips i mean they should have known that after all uh you know he he holds up a sketch he made and he says that's a very good rendering dave so he's already comments about dave bowman's artwork dave's got to realize that he's got tremendous visual acuity so when they rotated the pod you know rotate pod rotate pod please how rotates around the best moment in that movie though is uh cutting to hal's uh eye that peter jackson i understand has in his archive oh what yeah i hear that peter jackson has the prop eye that foretells a uh a response to one of the categories oh my god yeah yeah and and and i think that's my favorite scene in the movie because i didn't see it coming i must say like bowman and pool i did not see that coming it's funny what that they didn't use the nfl coaches calling in the play covering the mouth yeah yeah that was their big mistake that's bowman's play sheet what was he he forgot what they were supposed to be running there with the formation where they're supposed to be using the the that's such a great moment of trusting the audience to understand what is happening yes it's not over explained what's transpiring but because of the way he shoots the astronauts and then cut does that cut that you're describing we get it we get it in a very clear way but here's what what also happens he strategically places that scene just before the intermission so you go black and it says intermission on the screen for maximum impact um how attacks pulls he's trying to fix the pod dave tries to disconnect how just what do you think you're doing dave that's my other favorite dave i'm afraid no i love that daisy uh we get the stargate approach which is i think in the running for the let's get stoned and watch this later greatest scenes of all time i'm sure that's been yeah that that's that's i i the reason i go for the i'd love because i love cal so much as a character my favorite moment in the movie is a character moment but my favorite visual effect in the film is is is the slit scanner they used that doug trumbull created with stanley kubrick who conceived this amazing idea to do this stargate effect it's out of control and then the it's out of control even now yeah then the ending boheman goes through the stages of life the music all that stuff what do you have sean uh most rewatchable i think one that we didn't mention is when they were doing the movie and they were doing the movie and they were doing the movie they land on clavius and are witnessing the monolith and that like selfie moment that they're taking and that was great right right before that sonic that was no it hits you know that's such a bracing it's the film is so quiet at so many times and it it jostles you yes so abruptly um and i always like to watch that scene because he at a certain point he puts the camera on the astronaut's shoulders and it turns into a horror movie it's before hal even shows up in the movie it's true the movie gets very scary intense and you described it as like a like it is so you are waiting to find out what's going to happen yes and then we get this sonic hit and then it just cuts into the future and we don't know what what's happened No. That's the other, that's his conceptual audacity, Stanley Kubrick's. You go from the high-pitched omission of a sound that makes everyone hold their space helmets because it's going right through their suits into their ears. And you go right from that, which is hurting the audience's ears, at least in the pantasius theater it was with that, the monaural or the stereo sound system they had in those days, it hurt the ears. And then it goes into complete silence. And then suddenly it's quiet and you see, you know, Jupiter mission 18 months later. And then this huge ship comes in, which I think inspired George to do the first shot of Star Wars with that huge Imperial destroyer coming over the top of the screen. I think I like when he disconnects, tries to disconnect how I think it's my favorite part, but I will say in the 4k era, I haven't seen this movie in a theater because it was Kim, but. In the 4k, just when they're landing on the, uh, on the space station, the detail of everything is amazing. Like you can see every, everything they crevice every, I just don't understand how they did it. I don't either. Do you remember the scene where the shuttle that takes, that takes, um, you know, Heywood Floyd to Clavius, the shuttle, when it lands, it's on. Some kind of a huge, uh, almost like a mono. It's like an elevator. It's like a, and it comes, starts coming down. Now you see what it looks like. And if you look very carefully, it, for me, it looks like an Egyptian sculpture of an Egyptian head with the two eyes, which are the windows, the red window lights, but the windows are, are, are spaced equally apart. And there's a flat nose in the center. And it looks like an Egyptian. Egyptian head. And, and, uh, and there's something, just something about the, at the, the way you could anthropomorphize on what all of these designs remind us of in the, of, of, of the ships and the shuttles they were using. And all the, the, the opening Dawn of Man sequence and all the space stuff, they're meant to be these kind of reflections of each other, like ancient history and evolution of man. And the original monolith was a tetrahedron. It was more of a pyramid. It was not kind of large rectangular shape that way. And so this idea of the development in Egyptian societies, and then the, you know, what, what that meant to technology and evolution as people, like all of this stuff kind of mixing together in the story and that, whether that's intentional or not, you feel that cause you're thinking about all this stuff as you're watching the movie. When I asked Stanley about the, uh, what I thought was the Egyptian sculpture coming down, Stanley looked at me, actually it wasn't, he didn't look at me. We're on the phone. And he said, um, is that what you think it looks like to you? Stanley sometimes answered questions with questions. He was really interesting about that. We had a kind of a real interesting. Yeah, you both, this is how you guys are together. Oh, is that so Bill? What do you mean Bill? Uh, what's the most 1968 thing about this movie? You mentioned Pan Am and the, and the grip shoes, uh, and Howard Johnson's, which you say is still around. I'm not positive. I know, it's a lot of, it might be in middle America, maybe somewhere on the East coast or in Ohio or Indiana. What was the other one that doesn't exist anymore? There's well, Pan American doesn't exist anymore. Um, my two would be the intermission, which just doesn't happen anymore. And then just starting a movie with three minutes of a black screen and weird music. Nobody would do that. It doesn't say overture. It doesn't, it doesn't present that we're all going to sit here quietly. It just starts. Right, right. It's such like, uh, it's such like a 1960s, seventies choice. I just don't ever think that would happen. Because there were these big roadshow epics that made, you know, arguably one of the greatest movies ever made Lawrence Arabia, you know, Ben Hur followed all the, all that roadshow. You had started out with an overture and then the titles come on. Dr. Zhivago starts out with an overture in a dark theater. The titles go out West side story starts with an overture and then this, the titles come on and, um, one film after the other, you know, that's, I don't know if it's going to be the same, but I think it's going to be the same, but I think it's going to be the same. I think it's going to be the same, but I think it's going to be the same, but I think it's going to be the same. That's stylish. I miss that. What was your 1968, most 1968 thing about the movie? I have a couple. I mean, Stephen, just the story that he told at the very beginning, the idea of a movie becoming a phenomenon because people are smoking marijuana in a movie theater, like that just could not, that's so perfectly 1968. Yeah, sure. I mean, the idea that 2001 is a long ways away is very 1968, you know, we are approaching almost double the time. That's the other thing that's telling it wrong. Right. We're not even close to that technology. We're not even close. In some cases, the one thing that really strikes me is, so it's a movie made entirely without digital effects in which handmade tools are used to explore a film about man discovering the utility and danger of those tools. There's something fascinating because we don't, we just literally don't make movies this way anymore. There are no films of this scale and size that would be made entirely by hand. And the fact that this film, not every film from 1968 still looks this good. If you look at the ape costumes in this movie versus the ape costumes. The ape costumes in Planet of the Apes, they're not close. One looks like it's aged badly. The other looks really good. Yeah. But the space effects and the ship effects and the models in this movie and those hand-painted stars that you talked about, they look as good as any movie that is out right now. It's amazing. And, you know, they had a whole department that did nothing but put black paint on white stars. Because when one of the, when the Jupiter mission ship passes and starts blocking out stars, it's done. It's done in two different passes. They shoot the stars first with a camera moving basically to allow the mothership, let's say, to come into the frame. You know, Kubrick had an entire department of young people that did nothing but blot out the stars with black paint to make it look like it was being occluded by the ship that's entering frame. Crazy. I mean, it's a handmade movie, guys. It's a handmade film. And the last handmade film I saw was Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio. Yes, that's stop motion animation. That's the last vestige of the handmade movie. Even when we were working with Aardman at DreamWorks, releasing Aardman's movies, the last couple movies they made were, they looked like they were, you know, done with, you know, armatures and stop motion. But the last couple were done on the computer. Did you have a most 1968 thing about this movie? The only, no, the only 1968 thing about this movie was the, was the, how can I say this? The, I'm trying to find the right word. 2001 had nothing to do with 1968. There was no 1968 when you're watching 2001. Right, true. The whole year went away. Right. Whatever the year stood for, whatever was relevant about that year, for two and a half hours, is irrelevant while you're watching, or 139 minutes. I think I saw the 161-minute version. I'm not sure I did, but I think I saw in the first week the longer version. Yeah, because he ended up cutting it. Before he cut it to 139, right. But 1968 was completely obliterated by 2001. We haven't mentioned that either, though, that this is a very tumultuous time in America, at least. Number one tumultuous. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. A very violent year and a very complicated. Vietnam is raging. Yeah. And this is kind of a retreat from that, but also kind of that call to the self and to think about who you are in the world. It's true. And I think Stanley, look, Stanley knew history, and he watched the news. He knew he was really up on every current event, which also undermines the fact that people think he was a recluse. You know why Sean hates the year 2001? Why? Because it was the year Tom Brady got the Patriots starting job. And ended up winning six Super Bowls for the Patriots. I do hate that. Sean's a Jets fan. Yeah, I do hate that. Oh, so you're not a Patriots fan. Not a Patriots fan. You're not a Patriots fan. No, I'm a New Yorker. I'm sadly a Jets fan. Our next category, don't judge us, but we love the movie Boogie Nights. So do I. It's the Floyd Gondoli Butter in My Ass and Lollipops in My Mouth Award for something I just enjoy. Something about this movie. We didn't give this one to you. Sean and I are going to do ours. Okay. Here's mine. According to his brother-in-law, Kubrick. Kubrick was adamant that the trims that he made, the 19 minutes, would never be seen. And he burned all the negatives afterwards. And this is like a famous thing, which I guess I didn't fully know about. That he would just get rid of everything because he was so, so horrified that anybody would take anything from a movie and put it in another movie. He burned all the models. He makes the movie and then destroys all the other pieces of it so it can never come back in any way. This is like me deleting sports tweets. This is crazy. Well, what he's doing is he's striking the sets. Right? Yeah. Do you care about what happens to stuff from your movie after the movie? I save everything. I mean, I have a huge, huge collection of props from all of my films. That's really smart. I save everything. I don't know if you've noticed what's happened in that world. There's the whole prop auction world. But I save everything not to give it to Heritage Foundation to sell. I save everything in an archive. So can you have like a little mini Hall of Fame at this point? No, but if the Academy Museum needs anything that I've got, anything in my collection. Jaws is on display right now, right? Jaws is on display right now at the Academy Museum. What's the single greatest thing you have from one of your movies? The single greatest thing. I think, well, it's not one of my movies. The single greatest thing I possess in terms of Hollywood icons is I've got Rosebud the Sled from… Welles' movie. I saw it. You saw it. You did see it. I saw it in my office. I had a heart palpitation when I saw it. Well, I moved to New York. As of January 1st, we became residents of New York State. And I've moved everything to New York City. So that lives with me in New York. Oh, I saw it at just the last minute then, I guess. Yeah, you did, last minute. What did you have for Floyd? I just love when a movie refuses to explain itself. We're in a time of ultimate lore. Where we have to… It's not just that there are wider worlds that are explained and there's rationale for character choices. But a character's specific trauma tends to explore and explain the reason for the movie's existence. This movie is completely disinterested in that. And I wish that we had more… The fact that this movie endures and lets us spend two hours sitting in a room trying to figure out what we think it's about, how it makes us feel. That's just my… That's one of my favorite things about movies. And this is… Is this maybe the single… Like the signature example of, well, what do you think at the end of the movie? It's the opposite of sports, right? Sports, we have wins and losses. And we can argue about stuff like who is the MVP and stuff like that. This movie, you could come away… Like my son… My son's getting into movies and he's watched this four times. He loves this movie. And we've had like real talks about what do you think of the end and just these variables to it that… I don't feel like happens as much with movies anymore. You almost have to go backwards. This movie has so much room for every single person who sees this movie to personally put their imprimatur on to it. It allows… Stanley left so much room, just like interpretive impressionistic art, even expressionist art, he left so much room for us to draw our own conclusions. And make ourselves a part of his vision. But then he said, oh, you think I'm done doing this? Here's The Shining. That's right. And it all started over again, didn't it? I mean, Room 237, an entire documentary about how to interpret The Shining. That's absolutely right. I'm not even sure. What's your interpretation of The Shining? Do you have one? Of The Shining? Well, I recreated some of The Shining in Ready Player One. I love that movie. It took me a while to love it. I didn't love it when I first saw it. I believe in the… I'll tell you a story about Stanley. I haven't told the story very often publicly. I'll tell you a story about Stanley. When I saw the movie, it came out. I had finished Raiders. I was in England. And I went out to eat with Stanley. And he wanted to know what I thought of The Shining. And because Stanley is… He's not brutally honest. He's got… He's really careful about his honesty. But he's honest. He'll tell you if he doesn't like something. And he'll tell you why it didn't work for him. And I said to Stanley, he said, did you like The Shining? I said, yeah, I really liked it a lot. And he stopped me right there. He says, no, you didn't. I said, why? He says, because I can tell. You didn't like it a lot. You might have liked it, but you didn't like it a lot. What did you really think of The Shining? And I told him that there were certain things that confused me because I was in love with the book. I love… I loved when the heaters, the generators blew up. I mean, I love the topiary animals coming to life. Right. You know, there's a lot of things in the book I loved. And I just said, and he said, is there anything that you… Tell me other things that you didn't like. You didn't like it because I didn't include those things that I cut out of the book. And I said, Stanley, I liked the movie. I'm not saying I didn't like it. But I had liked it more had Jack Torrance had an encounter with those topiary animals that were reanimated. Yeah, that would have been a fun set piece. That would have been fun. And Stanley said, what did you think of Jack? And, of course, I love Jack Nicholson. He's one of my favorite actors of all time. Always will be. But I said, but I thought Jack was kind of big. He was big. The character was big. You know, he was doing big, big things. And Stanley said… Stanley said, okay, so you didn't love Jack. I said, no, I'm not saying I didn't love Jack. I'm just saying that Jack was, I thought you let him have his head, so to speak, you know. And he went running, not for the bar, and he went running for the hills. He really expressed himself. It was very kabuki. And Stanley laughed. And he said, okay, I want you to, without thinking, name your top ten favorite actors of all time. Go. And I reeled off ten names. And the second I got to the last name, he said, where's Cagney? I said, what, Stanley? He says, where's Cagney on your list? If James Cagney isn't at the top of your list, you're not going to understand what Jack and I did with his character. You're not going to get it. If you did not put Cagney at the top of your top ten list. End of conversation. That was it. Jesus. James Cagney. That's great. But do you see the wisdom of that? Yeah. Of course. I mean, that's brilliant. But were you listing more naturalistic leading men? I don't even remember the names that I said because he had me on the spot. Yeah. I mean, he was, look, Stanley is witty and he's funny. The other thing that people don't give him credit for is he's got a devilish sense of humor. And he's a really funny guy. He's a great laugher. So, but he kind of pushes you in that kind of a way. So, when Stanley asked me a question, when he says jump, I don't say how high, you know, Brad. This episode is brought to you by chat GPT. Imagine you're running a professional sports team. Nice. Imagine the player contract report is due today. Not so nice. You've got performance notes from the coaching staff. You've got a salary spreadsheet from your analyst. Three rounds of back and forth emails with the agent. And all of it is scattered absolutely everywhere. Well, that's where chat GPT work comes in. It's a new way to use chat GPT for bigger multi-step projects. Give chat GPT work access to your apps and files and can create real work documents. For instance, spreadsheets, slides, structured reports. You can bring all those to your next meeting. And when you don't need answers, you need help just getting the work across the finish line. Chat GPT work can move your projects forward while you stay in control. Put chat GPT to work on your most ambitious ideas and projects. Get started. Just go to chatgpt.com by selecting work mode available on plus and pro plans. This episode is brought to you by the Hulu original series, Chad powers starring our friend Glenn Powell. This season, the walls are closing in on Chad's biggest secret. And with his future on the field, hanging in the balance, he'll have to win back the one coach who wants nothing to do with him. Watch the new season of Chad powers now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney plus for bundle subscribers terms apply. What's aged the best is the next category. What is it? What's aged the best. So we've talked. We've talked about it. We've talked about some of the stuff, but what do you think is the single thing that's aged the best from this movie? What is age? The best aging, like a fine wine, like all these years later. Wow. How 9,000 is aged the best. I think that's the correct answer. I agree. That's number one. This is like probably the easiest. What's aged the best we have. There are hundreds of things in this movie though. Oh yeah. I have a bunch. Go through a couple. I mean, wanted to establish the sci-fi blockbuster as a Hollywood staple. Yep. Um, video phones, voice print identification, artificial intelligence, video tablets, zero gravity toilet, the growing concern or belief that alien life exists relevant to your film. Um, the presence of brands everywhere. Also, I've thought of minority report when I was watching this as well. Something you did in that movie. Um, the Kubrick, one thing that really sticks out to me is that foreboding and mysterious style that a movie without a narrative engine can still draw you in has aged very, very well. Um, and also, uh, famous people watching, watching videos of themselves when the astronauts are watching the news segment about them and the interview, which is such a social media thing right now. I thought that that was so clever and him kind of seeing the future on that one in particular made me laugh. You had a lot of what I had. I also would add a mysterious government coverup of something unsettling. It's age well, uh, a movie that pulled off no dialogue in the first 25 minutes or the last 23 minutes just as an achievement. So, it seems I, I can't imagine anyone even trying to pull that off now. Not just for Fifi, right? Space Oddity from David Bowie came from this movie that's right the solo astronaut space traveler movie gimmick which then eventually became The Martian Project Hail Mary like just sending people out by themselves I feel like this probably invented this this story has aged the best Carrie DeLay said that during the New York premiere all these people walked out including Rock Hudson who left early and was heard to mutter what is this bullshit will someone tell me what the hell this is all about Rock Hudson just furious The Who contacted Kubrick about directing Tommy after this movie and he said no because he was doing Clockwork Orange brilliant of The Who to tap into Stanley for that well they were upset so the next album they did Who's Next was them urinating on a monolith thought that aged the best using classical music over a real score and then we had we got to talk about the moon stuff with that ends up circling back in The Shining but the way he films Outer Space and then we go to the moon the next year and then the conspiracy starts that he might have filmed the moon landing and it didn't happen and then he has fun of it in The Shining and Danny's wearing an Apollo 13 shirt and all these people think he filmed the moon landing what are your thoughts on this well because because Stanley was always he was great inside of in Choke he was terrific in creating putting himself inside of any kind of what you could call a you know a conspiracy theory and I think Stanley really enjoyed I didn't but we never talked about this Stanley and I so you think he loved that people thought this and he's like I'm leaning into this to fuck with them I think he loved that people thought that the moon landing was fake and Stanley directed the fake moon landing I think not ever having spoken about this knowing Stanley as little as I do or as much as I do I think he loved I think he would love that there are sequences in the movie the moon surface clavius landing where you're like this is a little too close to the imagery that we saw one year later it definitely feels like it is inspired by now he also at least what I read was kind of slavish to accuracy and details of what certain things would have been like too and we did obviously have a lot of footage of space at this point so he's working with materials to replicate something that he thinks is real but it is eerie if you look at the Aldrin and Armstrong photos especially the high resolution photos that we see now that have been sort of like developed in the aftermath of the landing how similar they are to a lot of stuff in the movie my hottest take is we did land on the moon but they also had Stanley film or use space stuff just because they couldn't have actually shown video and they did the hybrid model great shot Gordo award for the most cinematic shot named after the great Gordon Willis we call it great shot Gordo oh actually that's a good title for that yeah I've heard that before I have the ape in slow motion learning how to use a weapon and how he filmed that would be my favorite what do you have Sean? I think the match cut that Steven described earlier is probably the number one answer the one I like the most is the floating pen and I liked learning about how they did that shot he never really cracked it I know how they did the shot but you just took my answer oh okay well then you explain how they did it that was what I was going to say with the floating pen was one of my favorite shots they simply put a very large piece of circular glass and the pen you can tell when the flight attendant takes the pen off she doesn't take it out of midair it pops into her finger because it's been it's been stuck with a very light tape or a little light adhesive onto the glass but the glass is slowly turning on a motor it's not hand turning because that that would be uneven you could tell that it was a human turning it so there's a lot of a little motor turning the glass apparently double-sided tape had just been invented and they adhered it with double-sided tape but let me tell you my other favorite shots let's my other favorite shots is everything at the dawn of man involving the first time ever front projection screen were used to make you think you were actually outside you never saw a process shot a process shot like that before you never saw in the history of movies Stanley got this Scotch 3 sort of 3D front projection material that when you put a projector right next to your camera lens it can't be too far away from the center of your camera lens but when you put another lens next to this lens and you project that image probably taken with a Hasselblad or some very large negative strip of film and those were still photographs those weren't moving those were still photographs of sunsets of different parts of the world and when you project that against the screen its return is so bright you can almost with a light meter read an F11 or an F16 just from the return of that light it made and that's why when the when the when the tiger or the the leopard the leopard yeah you can see you can see the front projector reflected in the leopard's eyes that thing that chatoyance that's inside the eyes of the leopard that is actually the leopard got in the way of the light you see that in the forest outside when you take a light and you see animals running around the forest well that's that's the only giveaway during the dawn of man that there was some technique being used to create those vivid backdrops it's such a happy accident because then it makes you wonder why there's something so animated about that leopard you know it's like they have something up on these apes which are humans in ape costumes right exactly so what I made what I made Close Encounter is the third kind I got the same front projection Doug Trumbull brought that front projection material into to the studio yeah and there's one couple scenes when I have my actors against the front projection material and Doug Trumbull and Richard Yuricich and his whole special effects group had to generate the effects first and then project the effects it was mainly lightning in clouds and that was done in the cloud tank on Close Encounters we had a cloud tank and it made very realistic clouds and we put lights behind inside the water behind the actual paint that was being jetted with great force into the water which creates cumulus clouds and we had lights behind it and when he photographed that in 65mm we had a 65mm or 70mm projection onto our front projection material and it made it look like we were really outside during a distant a long time ago electrical storm I think Sean's gonna explode I'm in heaven yeah I think Sean just passed out but I learned so much from Doug I mean Doug Trumbull taught me so much about special effects which of course he and Stanley had devised you have a hall of fame great check order award winner Brody the got the beach trombone shot yeah that was which you can recreate at the academy museum right now you can you can do that with your own iPhone yeah I love that when did you think of that one I thought of it I didn't even realize it had been done before because I don't remember it being done before but later Brian De Palma was the one because he knows Hitchcock better than anybody Brian said you stole that from Vertigo I said no I didn't he said yeah Hitchcock did that in Vertigo that's easy you start with you start with a 100mm lens you put it on a dolly and as you're as you're dollying in you're zooming back come on that's been done before but I didn't know that I did it I did it first in Sugarland Express not as effectively when the snipers are getting the beat on the police car with my main principal characters approaching the house where the supposedly the the foster child is Lou Jean Poplin's child is in the house I did it the first time there it didn't work as well and then I was able to use it effectively in Jaws wow quick ones Sarah Connor Award for Would Modern Technology Ruin This Movie we've talked about it I think one of the things that makes this movie great is they had to think outside the box and they did you know so I it wouldn't ruin it but I think it would hurt the legacy and the greatness today's technology yeah well you say if he had the same digital tools that we have today I just feel like part of the legend of this movie is it's like watching somebody make a world-class meal based on like some leftovers and the leftover groceries you know what I mean like the stuff we had back then and now if he had all this AI stuff yeah it would be cool but I don't know would you have people dotting out stars no you wouldn't you wouldn't you'd lose that stuff if you if you didn't if you used AI you would you would unemployed about 400 people wouldn't have jobs right yeah I it's funny you know Project Hail Mary has come up a couple times and they shot that movie as very practically relatively speaking they built sets and they shot on sets which is not common for movies like this nowadays and I hope that there's like a little bit of a turn back to that because the practical stuff is what's like the movie doesn't really make sense as an idea if it's if it's just made with digital effects like that's part of what I think one of the reasons why it endures and feels so different from other things is that there's so much same goes for Star Wars I mean when you watch A New Hope everything is tactile you feel like everything feels worn and lived in and real and that stuff matters it's just there's there's a lot of virtue in analog when you look at TCM as much as I watch it you see a lot of virtue in like in like in like in Like in, for instance, San Francisco, you see the San Francisco earthquake, the Great Quake. And you see it being done in analog, meaning they actually had to build big models, probably an inch and a half to the foot, and have them collapse. When you see the Clark Gable movie about the Chicago fire, they had to burn several acres in order to make it appear as if it was all the Chicago burning after Mrs. O'Leary's cow knocked over the lantern. You know, I watch those films in the context of the age and era they were produced, but I appreciate them as much as watching effects in a modern day, in Avatar, let's say, today. I appreciate those handmade effects as much as I appreciate the genius digital motion capture work that Jim Cameron's done consistently with his Avatar films. Yeah. Kid Cudi Pursuit of Happiness Award for Best Needle Drop. That has to be the opening credits. Oh, by far. You named it. That's it. Unbelievable. Come on. The Sean Fennessey Award for Stealth Homage that gives every movie nerd a criteria orgasm. Yes, this award is named after me. And what is the category? It's your category, but what is it again? It's an homage that's in the film to a previous film or an aspect of film history. That only a psycho like Sean or you would notice. There's a great one in this one. Okay, let's hear it. I will say that this movie might be number one. Number one. Number one for the inverse of this award, which is people who have borrowed from this movie. And that there are several, there are inspirations, there are, you've talked about some of them, some of them in your films. There are parodies of the wazoo of this movie. It's appeared on The Simpsons several times. Airplane 2. Mad Magazine, Airplane 2. But there's one in the film that has Kubrick winking at himself, which is that in Dr. Strangelove, Major Kong says, fire the explosive bolts. And in 2001, the entry hatch sign reads, caution, colon, explosive bolts. Oh. Which is his own little. I never saw that. You know something? Look at Sean teaching you about movies. Hey guys, I'm just saying that I'm having such a good time talking to both of you about this movie, but that one insight just makes this day for me. Oh, that's great. It totally does. Best moment in the history of the category. A criteria orgasm right there. We just saw it. I only have a couple of what's aged the worst. We mentioned the intermission, which nobody would do anymore. Especially, it just would never happen. So this is a good one. They mentioned BBC 12. There were only two BBC channels at the time. A little Kubrick joke. Kubrick joke basically saying that England would surpass America with the number of channels in the future. So I researched how many BBC channels there are now in 2026. How many are there now? We have BBC 1, 2, 3, and 4. We have BBC News, BBC Parliament, CBBC, which is children's content, CBeebies, preschool programming, BBC Scotland, and BBC Alba, which is Scottish Gaelic language service. So only 11. So he was wrong. Sorry, Stanley. Missed it. There's still time. By one. By one. One short. Sorry, buddy. You mentioned the sequel as a what's aged the worst. Couldn't agree more. I don't really have any other ones. Well, just the idea that we could shut down AI, I think, maybe under some debate right now. Yeah, true. You know, the whole thing about shutting things down. You know, when I made Ready Player One, I had a great time making it. It was a hard movie to make, but I had a great time with the outcome of the movie in terms of what it said at the very end. You know, after all this stuff and the kids win the Oasis, they get the Easter egg and they're happily askance, kissing in a chair, and the narrator comes over and he says, or they're going to close the Oasis two days a week so people can really connect with each other and get on with normal lives. That was the whole reason I think I made that movie, to basically say that sometimes we have weekends. Weekends, we're supposed to take our weekends off, but there are no weekends in terms of the amount of demand on our time and our lives and demanding that we make our identities. If we make our identities known and shared with strangers, why can't there be one or two days that we take off from that and get back down to having picnics outside somewhere? That's a great idea. I wish I could just put my phone in the ocean, but I can't. My kids are going to hate me for that so much. When they hear this, when they listen to this podcast, and they hear that, say, Dad, you are a square. The Steven Seagal Award for Most Unbelievable Anecdote from the Actual Film Shoot. So they had a dead horse. They had a dead horse painted like a zebra for the shot of the leopard next to the zebra. And apparently the horse had been dead for a few days and was really starting to smell. That was the thing that happened during this movie. Casting what ifs. Kubrick wanted Sterling Hayden for Floyd and MGM vetoed it. Yes, I know. I know. They wanted Henry Fonder, George C. Scott, Landed Where It Landed. I read Holden as well. Yeah, I read Holden also. Yeah, I read that too. But Holden would have been good for Floyd. Floyd, that's what I was thinking too. But Holden would have been like Janet Leigh in Psycho. You know what I'm saying? He never reappears in the movie again. And it would be sort of front-loading a movie that really needs to start with a clean slate. He looked at a bunch of actors, famous ones for The Moon Watcher, The Lead Ape. Including your guy, Robert Shaw. Really? That would have been interesting. Now, where are these facts from? This is why they're half-assed. They're half-assed internet research. They're just on Wikipedia and random articles about the movie. So we've learned as the years go along, we never totally know what to believe, but we talk about them anyway. Okay, so will you wink at me if it's urban legend? Just give me a little so I don't fall into that trap. You never know. What's the biggest urban legend about Jaws, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T.? What's the one that's taken hold that you're like, why is that a thing people think? What's the biggest urban legend? The biggest urban legend that is occurring right now involves my movie coming out, Disclosure Day. Yeah, June 12th. I have made this movie in concert with deep state factions that are hoping this movie is going to be. I remember there's a moment in 2001 A Space Odyssey where he talks about the grave dangers of social dislocation. And that my movie is going to. It's going to somehow, you know, make it easier for people to accept the fact that we have been actively interacting in secret with extraterrestrials for eight to nine decades. Am I starting to believe that? Yes, I am. However, I am not. I made this movie independent of any influence except, you know, what I know and what I've been following for the last seven decades. So you're saying you didn't do it with them, but maybe they have. Maybe they have a point. Perhaps they do. So not working with deep state, but you see it. Okay. Kubrick rejected Martin Balsam for Hal. Oh, Martin Balsam. Yeah, but he's a little New York-ish. Yeah. I can see that. And then Pink Floyd was approached to perform music and they turned it down due to other commitments. Yeah. Wow. I find that hard to believe. Missed out on that one. Yeah, that's why that's on the fringe of I'm not sure how true that is. Dion Waiters Award. So that's like. Somebody who's not the star of the movie, but comes in hot for like 10, 15 minutes. I think it's Hal. I think Hal's the. Who do you have? I have Daniel Richter as Moonwatcher, the chief ape. Because that's an amazing performance. Yeah, that's a better one. That he gives in that suit. You're right. I don't know. I think it's Vivian Kubrick who wants a bush baby and whose father calls her squirt. She is my number two on my list. Recasting couch, director, or city? So we wouldn't put any name actors in this? No, we wouldn't. Okay. No. Half-assed internet research. I'll blow through some of these really fast. It's interesting that one of the astronauts that Hal kills is named after my cameraman, Janusz Kaminski. Kaminski is one of the astronauts in. I didn't tell you this. I was a soccer dad with him for years. Were you really? Yeah. We thought it was so funny when. With Bruce. Yeah. Well, no. It was his daughter. His daughter, Helena. With Helena. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My daughter Zoe's teammate for years. And we always thought it was so funny. He would take photos at the games of these seven-year-old girls. They were the most beautiful youth soccers you've ever seen of these photos that he would take. I think when I first met Janusz, I don't know when I said it to him, I said, Hey, do you know you're in 2001, A Space Odyssey? Right. Well, he would disappear because he was going to make movies with you. That's right. Exactly. Yeah, he's not here. He's making movies with me. Um, so Kubrick was so dissatisfied with the script that he approached some other writers, all of whom turned him down. On 2001? Yeah. Wow. Because he was disloyal. There's a lot of stuff about this, about him and Clark. He's a great writer himself, as you know. Stanley writes a lot of his own movies. 205 special effects shots in this movie. Now, you know how, you know what a paltry amount of shots that is compared to a streaming movie on Netflix? Yeah. Today? 205, a lot back then. Not a lot now. Not a lot now. Now we're talking thousands. Not a lot now. I mean, one of the reasons for that. is because so many of the shots are so long. There's just not a lot of cutting in the movie. A lot of sustained shots. So if he is getting a special effect shot, if they put a tremendous amount of time into what you're looking at and holding on it. But remember what Stanley was trying to create. He was trying to lure us into a, I guess, not a heightened state. He was trying to lure us into a kind of state of mind where we're going to be relaxed and we'll start to accept anything. I mean, you know how long? I mean, I know he cut about two minutes from the jogging. When Poole was jogging in his daily workout, he cut about two minutes out of that jog. What makes the jog work, though, is the Kachaturian score. Yeah. And it just lulls you. You don't lean forward at that moment watching 2001. You sit back. And I was thinking, how long is this shot going to go on? And what's the point of it? And will there be a point of it? And when there wasn't a point of it, the joke was really on me. Because the point is, he's creating a state of mind for the audience to start to accept things that are going to be a little more conventional in terms of suspense and betrayal and all of the other great, neat things that happen in the movie. Patience. Yes, patience. So Samsung battled with Apple about the originality. The origin of the computer tablet. And one of their cases was this movie. They were like, look at this. This was 1968. You didn't invent anything. Look at that. Goes way back there. So that happened. Only a cut. There was a stuntman that they forgot to put air holes in his suit and he almost got asphyxiated. That happened. The Ferris wheel cost $750,000 that you mentioned. That's a big line item on a movie that cost only 10. Yeah. Well, a lot in its era. 10 is a lot in 67. And then Ligetti's permission, was not granted for this movie and he didn't know his music was in there and they had to settle it after that. There's a lot more. I mean, there's been books written about this movie. Documentaries. There's been multiple Kubrick books. So you can dive into it if you want. Apex Mountains. So this is something we do where we try to figure out shots that are in that thing. But the actual apex of somebody's career was where they had like the most juice possible. Where it was like, not only were they at the peak of their powers, Right. but they're at the point of their career where they could have done anything. Right. Right? That's like the ideal. I have lived to see you explain this to Steven Spielberg. This is incredible. I would say, so for you, you had multiple apexes, but in 82, when you have E.T. and Poltergeist, at that point, you could have probably gone into any studio on the planet and been like, I'd like to do this. And they would have been like, here's a check, Steven. That's an example. Right? So for Kubrick, Okay. I'm with you. I'm trailing behind you, but I am behind you still. So for Kubrick, what was the moment where he had the most of everything going at the same time as the director? Was it this movie? Yeah, I would say this is the movie where he had it together. This is the movie that, this is the movie that made Stanley famous, not just among critics and journalists and people that write about film, but this is the movie where the public, the public discovered him. Would you put space movies for the apex of space movies? Well, this is certainly the, this was certainly the big bang for every single movie about serious science fiction where science is being emphasized. Even Jurassic Park, where science creates the credibility for an audience to believe that, yes, dinosaurs can come back. We have a category called Cruz or Hanks. You've worked with both. You know both of these guys. Yeah. I'd love them both. What's the question? If Cruz, you had to have Cruz or Hanks in this movie, who would you pick? Hanks. It has to be Hanks. Because he made Apollo 13. Right. He did. He's the astronaut guy. Sean can't believe I asked you this. It's wonderful. If he could be an astronaut, Tom, he would give it all up to be an astronaut. I think the answer is both. I think, I think Bowman is Cruz. You could have had each of them. And I think, I think Floyd is Hanks. Can I give you Cruz as the lead ape? How amazing that would have been? Cruz, just like throwing himself into it. A very physical performer. Teaching himself how apes walk for like nine months to prepare for 10 minutes. But the thing is, I think it would have been cool for any of the movie stars to, look, Daniel Craig was a stormtrooper in Force Awakens. Right, right, right. We have another category called Spielberg or Scorsese. Oh. That we have to do since you're here. Okay. I mean, I think it's you for this one. Wait, I got to clear my path. I don't have a palette for this one. No, I think you won this one. I made it a hold on. What was the most, what was the biggest battle we had of that category? Usually it's pretty apparent. Yeah. Oh, of all time? I don't know. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, this one is a no-brainer. This one's an easy one. Picking nits. So this is where we pick little nits in the movie. Okay. The ape costumes in 4K. Sure. It feels a little 1968-ish. Like you could really, a couple times it feels like, yeah, that's probably a guy there. But I mean, for 1968, amazing. We accept, we accept that it's not, they're not real apes. But also there were apes in Planet of the Apes just a year before, coming out the same year as 2001. It's based on it. So it was the year of the ape. And by the way, they're not apes. They're proto-humans. Proto-humans. Yeah. Yeah. Would Hal actually be able to read their lips? Are we, like even now in AI, would we actually get there? Absolutely. You think so? Yeah, I think that's a walk in the park for AI. They're reading our lips right now. Hopefully not. The film never, actually tells us what year it's set. So is 2001 when they go and they get the, when they're taking the selfie and they get the crazy noise? Or was it 18 months later? Which year was 2001? Well, I, I've given that a little bit of thought. I think 2001 is the, it's not a year. I don't think it's a year specific to anything. I don't think it takes place in a year. 2001 is about the millennium. So it is. So it doesn't, it doesn't matter. Okay. I had one more, but did you have, I love that answer. That's a great way to think about it. You just solved it. Did you have a nitpick before we go? Yeah. If Hal's so advanced, why can't he anticipate Dave's move to remove his central function? You know, Hal's flaws, I think, are often overlooked and like the question of did he react this way and turn against the astronauts because of some sort of emotional crisis that he had because he feels fallibility around this plan. Like, what is actually the reasoning for that? And then how does he not anticipate after that, that obviously Bowman is going to try to take him offline? There's some, some questions around that. Hal, a little overrated. I can, I can join you in that nitpick a little bit. When Hal knows that Bowman is inexorably approaching his last mile, the green mile. Yeah. He's, he's going to get, he's going to be executed. Why doesn't Hal turn off all the lights? Mm-hmm. Why doesn't Hal, not everything is, has manual override. That's true. Why didn't he turn off the lights? Why doesn't he close certain ports and, and where there's no manual override controls? And I have an answer for that. I think that Hal somehow knew being so sentient that he was a bad boy and needs to be severely punished. Hal wanted to be shut down. It's like, it's like Grady saying, saying to Jack Nicholson what he should do to his children. Right. Because Grady did it to his. That's right. He needs to correct them. Hal knew he needed to be corrected. And at that moment, Bowman was Jack Torrance. Wow. Love it. That was amazing. Did you have a, another nitpick from this? No, it's almost a perfect film. Okay. I had one more. This movie, it was rated G. What were we doing in 1968? Well, what's really in it though? I mean, what's a, what, we were talking before we started recording. It's scary. Could you bring a kid to see this movie, I guess. Would you bring, how old's your daughter now? Five? She's going to be five. No, I wouldn't bring a kid to see 2001 Space Odyssey even today. I'm going to go PG for this one. But, but I'm not sure what that was about. I think the film, I would have gone PG for it. Yeah. With a two. It's a PG. The most violent thing in the movie is probably the Tapir being beaten in that, little quick cut with the bones, right? I mean, obviously we see pool floating and being killed, but, you know. Don't forget Jaws was PG. So maybe 2001 should have stayed a G. By comparison. If you're grading on the curve of that era, between 65 and 75. Sean's been nervous for two hours and I'm going to do my imitation of Quint getting chewed to death. I'm ready for it. I'm not doing it. I can't do it. Just do it. Just do it. If he ever comes back, I'll do it the second time. I will come back for certain. If you come back and do Jaws with us, I will do Quint. I'd love to do Jaws with you. That'd be fun. All right. He just promised. Just one Oscar who gets it, Kubrick. Best director? For director. Best director. Would you go best film or best director? I would go best film and best director. Just two Oscars. Probably an answerable question. I would also have given Doug Trumbull an Oscar along with Stanley for special effects. Okay. You mentioned this. Why did Hal break down? This is a big part of the dialogue about this movie. Was it legitimate? Was he faking it? Kubrick, we know not to trust him whenever he talks about this movie. movie but he said how had an acute emotional crisis because he could not accept evidence of his own fallibility so my take is that he had these two things right he's supposed to be all knowing everything but he's also smart enough to know when he's being lied to and told that he's basically lying to them about the mission and these two things kind of short-circuited him no the reason i think that how did what he did was how was a narcissist he was a complete narcissist listen to how he brags about uh you know his product his design he brags about where he was born he brags about um how smart he is he brags about the fact that no 9 000 computer has ever made a mistake he's a narcissist he's so smug when he wins that chess match he's so smug when he wins that chess match good game dave you know um i think that the intention i think that's right i agree with you and also that he is obviously inspired by his creator i mean he the narcissism of the human race and could only cut these machines could only come from you're absolutely right that's right because you are a mirror of who you who created you you know uh the creature certainly in gear most movie which i think is the best frankenstein movie ever made the creature was a reflection of victor was victor unanswerable the first shot of the three astronauts we see sure looks a lot like the moon landing as sean mentioned it's still a tiny bit unanswerable do you have i have one good one do you have any other ones um i mean i think who delivered the monoliths is like the ultimate question of the movie yes that's the most unanswerable that's definitely an answerable question right all right here's my here's my good one did this movie ruin the name how i don't know because we had hal holbrook hal ashby and hal linden we have no when was the last time you met anyone under 40 named how well you know any house i don't know any house could could this have been the end of the house i think how was such a villain and so scary in this movie that was it how was out you know i love a hell though i love when falstaff is calling him how you know i love henry or a harold can be a how that's a great name it's a great nickname no house i i don't i i never even thought to name one of my boys how just gone not because of how it was too tied to the computer and the whole thing all right the one piece of memorabilia you'd want from this movie um quick story in this gene siskel loved this movie and he really wanted the monolith and he asked kubrick about getting it and kubrick said it didn't exist and that they threw it away oh and it's gone wow um but what would be your answer for this well i i i actually i actually bought the one piece of memorabilia i wanted from this movie that's never been uttered on this show before no yeah you just trumped us i i i i have um i have uh david bowman's uh spacesuit which i've donated to the academy museum i don't possess i bought it and i donated it to the museum yeah wow that's good well you said peter jackson owns hal's eyes i understand peter jackson owns hal's uh eye that would have been my answer yeah but see there's all these stories of him burning all of these things after they finished the shoot and you said that's him striking the set but they make it seem as though he was burning costumes and all these are all the models and everything like so how did some of these things survive you know to me stanley isn't what i know of stanley is he doesn't remind me of somebody that would do all that that would burn all these props and costumes and i don't know if he would burn all these props and costumes um he also wasn't sentimental at all so he was not he was not himself unlike myself i'm a collector of a lot of memorabilia also a lot of my own memorabilia i collected uh stanley is not sentimental he's not going to be collecting his own memorabilia my only other answer bowl is just because he was from new york jets fan kubrick could have explained a lot with some of the darkness in the movies i mean although they did win 1968 season is the year that they won the super maybe that was it moved to england yeah okay uh coach finstock mr miyagi award for best worst life lesson from this movie i guess it's keep questioning what's out there oh yeah the the best what the best life lesson in in this movie is uh you know never ever close your mind off to an impossible possibility that's better than mine i don't know i don't have a follow-up yeah that's i can't do better than that all right i can't we only have two more categories left i love these categories these are great we had more i cut them down because i didn't know how long we had you i would have thrown more of you um best double feature choice oh i know you could put either this is first or second with the other one you want to go first well my pick would be ai for all the reasons that i talked about interesting and the lineage and the relationship that you both have and the way that the movies i feel like are talking to each other wow it's a pretty good choice mine would be george powell's destination moon made i think in 52 or 50 51 52 because it was the most scientifically realistic film about man's first trip to the moon uh not not taking into account you know uh you know george melie's film yeah uh the first film uh which was more of a pageant less of a of a science project but destination moon it was which which also is a tremendous exercise in suspense echoes a lot of what then became in stanley's vision 2001 a space odyssey but to me that was the first breakthrough movie that makes an audience actually believe that someday we will be able to land on the moon can i tell you something destination moon finally being issued on blu-ray in june it is wow great see full circle my double feature choice is disclosure day opening on june 12th there we go steven spielberg and i've seen it backup choice would be the shining i don't know why but i think it would be really i mean you'd watch 2001 first then the shining but i'd be really interested to just watch both and see what is there any stuff that he took or things or you know what i mean just watching it fresh for five hours but i think the the the connection between uh that movie uh the shining in 2001 is a connection stanley has made with all of his films is what i said when we first sat down to talk about stanley audacity yeah audacious choices who won the movie uh stanley kubrick craig you're up what'd you think of this movie it came out uh were you reborn 1994 all right so you're 26 years late don't screw this up craig no no no this is the third time i've seen it i saw it first in film school when i was 19 and then i saw it again in my mid-20s and now the third time in my mid-30s or early 30s and i have to say my maturity has affected how much i appreciate this movie i have to admit when i saw it when i was 19 i i think i was a little bit underwhelmed and i think i didn't i didn't like the lack of clarity at the ending i didn't enjoy that it was just like ambiguous and essentially you know was left up for interpretation and i have completely pivoted and now that is why i appreciate the movie um believing you know that ambiguity letting yourself use your life experience to kind of inform what you think about the movie um is why i think it's so good and just the attention to detail and the craft and the more movies i've watched over my life you just appreciate it so much more and how mesmerizing the visuals are um it almost feels like i mean these big synchronized spacecraft sequences you almost feel like you're watching like like with these big musical numbers behind it when the scenes end and they kind of go to black for a second these vignettes you almost want to applaud it's like you're at a magic show when you like turn to the person next to you and you go wow how did they do that yeah um i love it the one thing that you guys didn't mention that i think is what the reason why the movie is so successful and so perfect how's voice the choice of how's soft but chilling tone i think makes the entire film i have to that's a good point craig i thought you would open the pod by saying open the pod bay doors steven you know like i thought you could have we're literally we're in the pod bay right now it's so comforting but also ominous and you know there's something beneath it that is that is chilling i'm just gonna walk up the wall later just do a 360 around there well that's it you just completed your first rewatchables a long one you did it what you did too you gave us two hours too that was amazing wow i would have thrown in more categories this was so much fun sean passed out twice you have disclosure day coming i'm elated we're running this on june 1st so you have disclosure day coming june 12th yeah 12 days later yes and then are you are you thinking about the next movie already or no i'm just thinking about disclosure day that's all i got on my mind right now and you promised you'd come back except today and now i'm all i'm thinking about but you promised you'd come back for jaws at some point let's do jaws i would love that was on tape we videotaped it doesn't have to be the 50-year anniversary that's behind us let's do it and i'll do my quint getting eaten impersonation at some point i want to see that i will definitely want to see that steven spielberg an absolute honor thank you bill thanks for being here thank you sean thank you thank you thank you and that's it for the rewatchables what an honor to be here with you guys thank you so much you you Endless summer escapes start here. Travel the worlds of Netflix IRL. Inspired by fan favorites like Stranger Things and Squid Game. Brave the upside down, face off with the front man. Play leveled up arcade games, shop exclusive merch, and enjoy themed food and drinks. Beat the heat. Play, eat, and shop on repeat at Netflix House at Galleria Dallas. Bring your crew and save. Get your tickets today at netflix.com/house. Kroger helps keep you moving with easy to prep meals and convenient snacks from our exclusive brands. Pack a microwavable cup of private selection mac and cheese for a deliciously quick meal that's ready in just minutes. Snacks like Simple Truth Baked Chickpea Crisps and Hot Honey Pistachios are perfect for on-the-go munching, delivering bold flavors and a satisfying crunch. Discover new favorites today. Kroger, fresh for everyone. Thank you.