Sunday 29 November 2020

SPOILERS FOR 2001

 Following on from those portraits of Saint Jerome working from home, I feel the absence of books acutely in Dr. Dave Bowman's isolation. I read here that Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, wondering how best to depict a superintelligent extraterrestrial onscreen, decided to ask Carl Sagan. They're clearly no fools. Nor of course is Sagan, who advised them not to even attempt such a thing, but instead merely "suggest" the alien. The appropriately unfathomable abstractness that resulted didn't stop Kubrick trying to take out insurance against actual extraterrestrials contacting Earth before the film could be released and showing him up. Lloyds of London refused however, and according to Sagan they "missed a good bet" which begs the question: "Why did they refuse? Why? WHAT DID THEY KNOW?"
 
 

5 comments:

  1. This is "I want to bet that Barcelona is the capital of Spain" all over again, isn't it?

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  2. To tie in with your previous posts on Los Angeles ...

    To be fair, very few Angelenos would know what this was, either. But it made me laugh.

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