MovieChat Forums > 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) Discussion > should have been made in the '70s

should have been made in the '70s


2001 had too much of a '60s influence in terms of lenses, "Swinging London", and the gaffering work by Bill Jeffrey. The movie would have worked much better if it had been made between 1972 and 1976.

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A couple I know are getting married...
...the fools

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2001 had too much of a '60s influence in terms of lenses, "Swinging London", and the gaffering work by Bill Jeffrey. The movie would have worked much better if it had been made between 1972 and 1976.



"Swinging London" cliches aside, the '60s had a looking-into-the-face-of-eternity about it.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the ultimate film epic, couldn't have been done without that element. It could only have been made in the middle of that haunted, fractured, schism of a decade.

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So very well said!

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"Swinging London" cliches aside, the '60s had a looking-into-the-face-of-eternity about it.

2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, the ultimate film epic, couldn't have been done without that element. It could only have been made in the middle of that haunted, fractured, schism of a decade.


Your attempt to brush off the shenanigans of Swinging London is laughable, so I'll ignore it. You ignored my other points, so I'll reinforce them.

I feel like the '60s approach to gaffering was bad because of that nihilistic approach. Facing the abyss, you end up with all kinds of bizarre and dangerous rigs, with unbalanced loading and sprawling potentially fatal unearthed live leads. This may have been fine for those haunted and fatalistic electrictions, but it created a dour vibe on set which comes through on film, to the film's detriment.

It wasn't until the early '70s that British gaffering hit a purple patch, and this would have been the ideal time to make the movie. At that time you'd find ad-hoc rigs with balanced voltage exceeding custom made moulded factory equipment. Inspired gaffers would use wet bamboo on outdoor shoots to repair severed lines, and keep mobile and flexible with stable animals that were cheaply available from the collapsed equine sector that had finally succumbed to decades of competition from automobiles.

As for '60s lenses, well, what can I say but "sunspots and watermarks". Ha!

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A couple I know are getting married...
...the fools

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In a similar vein, I suppose Michelangelo should have waited another decade to paint the Sistine Chapel because then slightly safer scaffolds would have been available?

PrometheusTree64 has it exactly right. 2001 couldn't have been made as it was except at that time, in the creative ferment of an era that championed the power of the imagination & the artist's vision -- and an era where the dream of traveling not only to the moon but to the stars was a dominant part of the zeitgeist. The 1970s? Very different in tone, in scope, in aspirations.

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In a similar vein, I suppose Michelangelo should have waited another decade to paint the Sistine Chapel because then slightly safer scaffolds would have been available?


He did wait another decade, and it had nothing to do with safety. Waiting added danger to his work.

Study your art history.

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A couple I know are getting married...
...the fools

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So you're just another trollish troll trolling trollishly.

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He did wait another decade, and it had nothing to do with safety. Waiting added danger to his work.

Study your art history.


If you knew anything about Michelangelo, you would know he actually made a blueprint of a mechanized cherry picker, aka a mechanical scaffold.

Study your art history.



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One of these days I'm going to cut you into little pieces.

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Your attempt to brush off the shenanigans of Swinging London is laughable, so I'll ignore it. You ignored my other points, so I'll reinforce them.

I feel like the '60s approach to gaffering was bad because of that nihilistic approach. Facing the abyss, you end up with all kinds of bizarre and dangerous rigs, with unbalanced loading and sprawling potentially fatal unearthed live leads. This may have been fine for those haunted and fatalistic electrictions, but it created a dour vibe on set which comes through on film, to the film's detriment.

It wasn't until the early '70s that British gaffering hit a purple patch, and this would have been the ideal time to make the movie. At that time you'd find ad-hoc rigs with balanced voltage exceeding custom made moulded factory equipment. Inspired gaffers would use wet bamboo on outdoor shoots to repair severed lines, and keep mobile and flexible with stable animals that were cheaply available from the collapsed equine sector that had finally succumbed to decades of competition from automobiles.

As for '60s lenses, well, what can I say but "sunspots and watermarks". Ha!



I didn't "brush off" and "ignore" your other points; they just didn't resonate as valid.

In fact, much like your above post, your points came off as (dare I say it??) pretentious. Knee-slappingly, in-yo-face pretentious.

But I assume you're deliberatelty doing that to be funny, and you've succeeded.

Good job.

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7 rs later:
Well, the discussion title DOES say 1970...😂

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