The mysterious beauty of Stanley Kubrick‘s “2001: A Space Odyssey” still resonates and haunts more than 45 years after it was first released into theaters, blowing the minds of an entire generation of movie-goers. And while there has been plenty printed about the movie since then, this might be one of the very first books about the movie ever to hit shelves. Now thanks to the interwebs, you can see how it must have felt like back in 1970 when the phenomenon was just picking up.
The folks over at Cinephilia And Beyond have generously put the rare, out-of-print book “The Making Of Kubrick’s 2001” online for your perusal and it’s definitely worth a peek. And this isn’t just some cobbled together studio job. It’s penned by Jerome Agel, co-author of Buckminster Fuller‘s “I Seem To Be A Verb” and collaborator with Marshall McLuhan on “The Medium Is The Massage” and “War And Peace In The Global Village,” and it goes pretty deep: among other things, it includes the original Arthur C. Clarke short story “The Sentinel” that inspired the movie, a rare Kubrick interview with Playboy magazine, reviews, a massive photo insert, plus insights from all kinds of people that worked on the movie.
Give it a read below and after that, be sure to check out our feature “2001: A Space Odyssey”: 5 Things You Probably Didn’t Know About The Film.