Listening to Stanley Kubrick (14 page)

23. For a complete and thorough analysis of the score for
Spartacus
, please see pp. 134–158 in Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer.

24. Modes as we know them today are collections of notes, much like the major and minor scales used in the Western system. Historically, modes go back to ancient Greece, although the modes used today have their origins in the Catholic Church of the eighth and ninth century. There is little known about Roman music, but a modal context seems to signify ancient times to audiences.

25. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 142.

26. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 144.

27. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 146.

28. Parts of Hearst Castle stood in for Crassus’s home.

29. Both the Production Code Administration and the Legion of Decency suggested the film be cut.

30. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 148–149.

31. Norman Kagan,
The Cinema of Stanley Kubrick
(New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1972), 77.

32. Sanya Henderson erroneously identifies the wind instrument as an “ancient saroussophone” [sic]. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 152. The instrument known as the sarrusophone was invented by Pierre Louis Gautrot in the 1850s, intended as a replacement for oboe and bassoon in outdoor bands. The instruments of the sarrusophone family are akin to saxophones, and they share so much in common that Adolphe Sax sued Gautrot over the similarities in design. Jerome Roche, “Sarrusophone,” in
The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians
, ed. Stanley Sadie (London: Macmillan, 2001), 296–298.

33. Henderson,
Alex North, Film Composer
, 154.

34. Kirk Douglas did his part to end the blacklist, hiring Dalton Trumbo, a member of the “Hollywood Ten,” as a screenwriter on
Spartacus.

35. Roger Hickman,
Reel Music
, 272.

36. Neil Jackson, “Stanley Kubrick,” in
Contemporary North American Film Directors: A Wallflower Critical Guide
, ed. Yoram Allon, Del Cullen, and Hannah Patterson, (London: Wallflower, 2000), 302.

37. Robin Nobel, “Killers, Kisses . . . and Lolita,”
Films and Filming
7, no. 3 (December 1960).

38. Vladimir Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
(New York: McGraw-Hill, 1974), xx.

39. James Harris interview with Robert Corliss, quoted in LoBrutto,
Stanley Kubrick
, 200.

40. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, xx.

41. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, xxi.

42. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, xx.

43. Letter to Nabokov January 17, 1966, Stanley Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London.

44. Letter from Vera Nabokov to Harris, December 14, 1960, Stanley Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London.

45. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, 127.

46. LoBrutto,
Stanley Kubrick
, 199.

47. Bob Harris is probably best known to later generations as the composer of the theme song to the Spider-Man animated television series.

48. Herrmann left Hitchcock’s
Torn Curtain
over the same issue. Herrmann biographer Steve C. Smith details the situation between Hitchcock and Herrmann in the thirteenth chapter of his book
A Heart at Fire’s Center: The Life and Music of Bernard Herrmann
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 267–275.

49. Peter J. Levinson,
September in the Rain: The Life of Nelson Riddle
(New York: Billboard Books, 2001), 206.

50. Levinson,
September in the Rain
, 206, and LoBrutto,
Stanley Kubrick
, 214.

51. Levinson,
September in the Rain
, 103.

52. Gene D. Phillips and Rodney Hill, “Nelson Riddle,” in
Encyclopedia of Stanley Kubrick
(New York: Checkmark Books, 2002), 299.

53. Awards Database for Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.
http://awardsdatabase.oscars.org/ampas_awards/BasicSearchInput.jsp
.

54. Nelson Riddle: The Official Website
,
http://www.nelsonriddlemusic.com/nr_tv.htm
.

55. Cooke,
A History of Film Music
, 441.

56. Luis M. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns in the Films of Stanley Kubrick
(Rochester, NY: Camden House, 1999), 56.

57. Schultheis, “Expanse of Possibilities,” 268.

58. Levinson,
September in the Rain
, 206.

59. “Best Bets,”
Cash Box
, April 28, 1962.

60. Gerrit Bodde,
Die Musik in den Filmen von Stanley Kubrick
(Osnabrück: Der Andere Verlag, 2002), 62.

61. An obvious reference to Edgar Allan Poe’s poem “Annabel Lee,” which deals with the death of a woman, the young love of the narrator.

62. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, 5–8.

63. Nabokov,
Lolita: A Screenplay
, 56.

64. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns
, 56.

65. Schultheis, “Expanse of Possibilities,” 269.

66. Bodde,
Die Musik in den Filmen von Stanley Kubrick
, 61.

67. Louis Sobol, “New York Cavalcade,”
Journal-American
, June 29, 1962.

68. Earl Wilson, “It Happened Last Night,”
New York Post
14 May 1962.

69. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns
, 54–55.

70. “When Johnny Comes Marching Home Again,” Library of Congress,
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/diglib/ihas/loc.natlib.ihas.200000024/default.html
.

71. Letter from Marvin Cane, V.P. Columbia Pictures Screen Gems TV Music and Record Division, January 16, 1964, Stanley Kubrick Archive, University of the Arts London.

72. Ciment,
Kubrick: The Definitive Edition
, 152.

73. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns
, 55.

74. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns
, 55.

75. This is a device Kubrick had used before. The cheeriness of the song contrasts the starkness of the landscape in much the same way that the upbeat “Singin’ in the Rain” contrasts the cruel violence of Alex and his gang in
A Clockwork Orange
.

76. Garcia Mainar,
Narrative and Stylistic Patterns
, 56.

Chapter Three

The Music of the Spheres

2001: A Space Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey
was, in many ways,
the film that changed everything. For Stanley Kubrick, it divides his early and middle works from his mature works; for film history it is a dividing line between traditional and experimental; and for film scores it is a watershed. Both controversial and influential,
2001
was made possible because of Kubrick’s growing bankability as a director. In 1964, Kubrick was coming off a string of successes, with
Spartacus
,
Lolita
, and
Dr. Strangelove
. Despite being the darkest of black comedies,
Dr. Strangelove
convinced the studio heads at MGM that Kubrick knew what he was doing. MGM expected Kubrick to deliver a traditional narrative film in about two years, for about two million dollars. In the end, the project would take four years to complete, and the price tag would soar to more than ten million dollars. It also lacked the instant popularity of some of Kubrick’s successes of the previous decade. Although the stunning visuals received attention quickly, the film itself puzzled some viewers. Film critic Pauline Kael called the film “redundant,” “monumentally unimaginative,” and a “limp myth.”
1
In fact, it was quite misunderstood when it was released. But then a couple of very surprising things happened: a revised marketing strategy changed people’s expectations of the film (and therefore their experience of the film), and the soundtrack became a best seller.

In the decades since the release of
2001: A Space Odyssey
, critics have come around to the film, which is now considered a classic in the realm of science fiction, and indeed of film itself. Many viewers consider this film to be Kubrick’s masterpiece, representing the peak of his ideals as a filmmaker. It is breathtakingly beautiful, with incredible special effects, and a visual language that elevated the mainstream film to an artistic level. It confused some who wanted a traditional linear narrative, but it intrigued and inspired others.

Kubrick’s gamble paid off. There is no doubt that he knew it would, of course. Kubrick’s belief in his choices had passed from a quirk of his youth into the territory of parody. Despite outside pressures of the studio and his collaborators—Arthur C. Clarke and Alex North among them—Kubrick showed a level of steadiness and commitment to his own ideas that remains an examplar of autonomy to auteurs, one that will not likely be duplicated.

Kubrick was autonomous, and his auteurship is taken for granted, but was Kubrick a solitary figure? Was he the proverbial lone wolf, responsible for every aspect of filmmaking? Evidence seems to support this. Even the way Kubrick scored his films from
2001
onward suggests a man who wanted so much control over all aspects of his film that he would rather use preexistent music than deal with a living composer who might disagree with him. But that is perhaps an overly simplified model of Kubrick’s working procedures during the last three decades of his career. Even Wendy Carlos, with whom Kubrick collaborated on the scores for
A Clockwork Orange
and
The Shining
, calls the director a “collaborative . . . open person.”
2
He appears to have listened to suggestions from many people throughout these thirty years, but in each case, made the final decision himself alone. Kubrick would likely not have claimed that he was capable of doing all of it himself; he understood that he needed collaborators. They provided options, which were what he craved, especially in cases where he was not able to articulate exactly what he wanted. This aspect of Kubrick’s filmmaking as it pertains to musical scores will become clear in this and the following chapters.

The Birth of
2001: A Space Odyssey

There are a few musical references in the pages of the novel
2001: A Space Odyssey
. The appearance of the first monolith is accompanied by a drumming sound; Dave Bowman recalls hearing some unnamed music when he wakes up from hibernation in the Texas training center; another astronaut, Frank Poole, hears his family singing “Happy Birthday” to him during the mission; and, of course, there is HAL’s “mental breakdown” to the strains of “Daisy Bell.” (The latter two are the only musical directives in the script). There is also the description of music Dave Bowman listens to after he is left alone on the
Discovery One
spaceship. In the film, we assume Bowman leaves
Discovery
in the pod right after disconnecting HAL’s memory, but in the book a much longer time passes. Bowman fills the silence of the empty ship with plays and poetry and then with opera. He chooses operas in Italian or German so he will not be distracted by the narrative or by the words, but finds that the presence of human voices makes him feel even more alone. Clarke then describes Bowman’s reaction to Verdi’s
Requiem Mass
. “The ‘Dies Irae,’” Clarke says

roaring with ominous appropriateness through the empty ship, left him completely shattered; and when the trumpets of Doomsday echoed from the heavens, he could endure no more. Thereafter, he played only instrumental music. He started with the romantic composers, but shed them one by one as their emotional outpourings became too oppressive. Sibelius, Tchaikovsky, Berlioz, lasted a few weeks, Beethoven rather longer. He finally found peace, as so many others had done, in the abstract architecture of Bach, occasionally ornamented with Mozart.
3

Music was part of the development of this story and film at every stage. Before the cameras rolled, Carl Orff’s
Carmina Burana
inspired Kubrick and Clarke, who were apparently so taken by the dramatic music that they briefly discussed commissioning the score for the film from Orff.
4
Film historian Royal S. Brown mentions that Bernard Herrmann, “the pioneer of inventive science-fiction scoring,” was asked to score the film, but his fee was too high.
5
Kubrick was, at one point, listening to the music of Gustav Mahler, especially the Third Symphony, for possible inclusion in the score.
6
Kubrick did end up commissioning a score from Alex North, but did not use it, and that part of the story will be discussed in detail below.

Another musical work makes a cameo appearance in an early draft of the novel. Clarke published excerpts from some of these drafts in a book called
The Lost Worlds of 2001
, published in 1972. At one time, Clarke and Kubrick had imagined that there were other astronauts besides Bowman and Poole awake on
Discovery
. In this particular iteration of the story, another astronaut, Peter Whitehead (who is in hibernation in the final draft and identified only as “Whitehead”) is in one of the pods performing some extra-vehicular activity when he experiences a malfunction that sends the pod hurtling away from the mother ship. There is no chance of rescue. One of his last requests is for Dave back on the ship to play him some music, “something cheerful,” he says. He asks simply for the Beethoven’s
Pastoral
Symphony.
7

Because music was so important to the development of the story, it is not difficult to see why music is such a crucial element of the film
2001: A Space Odyssey.
The film is as much an aural experience as it is a visual one. Music, while not strictly part of the narrative, is still an important part of the storytelling, and a significant part of the film-going experience, enhancing the ideas of discovery, weightlessness, loneliness, and chaos.

2001: A Space Odyssey
was Kubrick’s follow-up to
Dr. Strangelove
, a classic dark comedy that ended with nuclear annihilation. The later film, Kubrick’s first foray into the genre of science fiction, allowed the director to leave Earth and its petty problems behind, traveling into a future where the Russians and Americans have backed away from the abyss of war, although theirs is a tenuous détente, with the Americans obfuscating details about the anomaly on the moon. Instead of weapons, there is technology: scheduled flights into space, an orbiting station, a base on the moon, and spaceships that can travel all the way to Jupiter. But before we can get to the cool, clean future, Kubrick takes us far back into the past, to the Dawn of Man. Music takes on narrative duty, tying the disparate threads together, although there is a great deal of silence in the film as well, emphasizing perhaps the vastness of space and the isolation of individuals.

Turning
2001
into a film was a unique experience in adaptation since Kubrick and science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke essentially cowrote a story knowing that it would become both a novel (with Clarke as the author) and a film (with Kubrick at the helm). In 1964, it was Kubrick who sought out Clarke as a collaborator on a science fiction project, and Clarke, who lived in Sri Lanka, began the process by sending some short stories to Kubrick. According to Clarke, Kubrick “wanted to make a movie about Man’s relation to the universe,”
8
and one of Clarke’s short stories, “The Sentinel,” caught the director’s attention. Written in the late 1940s for a competition (which it did not win), it was published in 1951 in the
Avon Science Fiction and Fantasy Reader
under the title “Sentinel of Eternity” (the story was later published in other collections). The kernel of “The Sentinel” that ended up most important to the plot of
2001
is the presence on the moon of an artifact left there by an alien species. The narrator of the story theorizes that the object is meant to trigger a message to the alien people who buried the object on the moon. The message might be that the human race has advanced sufficiently enough to travel into space. Whether the alien people will react to this development with a generous welcome or with a hostile attack is left untold.

In the film
2001
, at different points in the story, rectangular monoliths (not a pyramid as “The Sentinel” describes) appear. Although Kubrick is not explicit on the point, these monoliths are alien intervention. At each appearance, they urge the human race forward to a new stage in its development. The first appearance takes place back at the Dawn of Man. A barely bipedal australopithecine, Moon-Watcher (as he is named in the novel), touches the monolith (as do his tribe-mates), and soon realizes that bones can be used as weapons against a neighboring tribe, and they can also fell animal prey. This development allows for the consumption of meat, which in turn makes the animals stronger, expanding their brain capacity and the ability to control their environment. Instead of showing all of these incremental changes on-screen, Kubrick ingeniously omits these steps by cutting from Moon-Watcher’s bone—flung triumphantly into the air after a kill—to an orbiting satellite.

As in “The Sentinel” story, there is an alien artifact on the moon. Clavius base detects a magnetic anomaly in the large Tycho crater (called TMA-1 for Tycho Magnetic Anomaly-1). Excavators then find under the moon soil a rectangular black monolith identical to the one seen in the Dawn of Man sequence. This time, it emits an earsplitting sound aimed at Jupiter, urging a manned spaceship to eventually follow the direction of the sound. Once there, an astronaut, Dave Bowman, encounters a third monolith, the effects of which are harder to interpret.

Clarke and Kubrick spent four years on their collaboration. They began in 1964 and undertook the daunting task of writing a story about future space exploration from the vantage point of the dawn of the space race. They had to be careful to write what could not be disproven over the ensuing years of space travel.
9
It was a complicated process; Clarke didn’t just write a novel that Kubrick adapted to the screen:

Toward the end, both novel and screenplay were being written simultaneously, with feedback in both directions. Some parts of the novel had their final revisions after we had seen the rushes based on the screenplay based on earlier versions of the novel . . . and so on.
10

The film premiered in April of 1968 and the novel—which sold more than a million copies—appeared in July of the same year. In 1966, long after MGM expected a finished film, Kubrick was asked to put together some scenes for MGM (ostensibly to show them where their money was going). Clarke reports that this screening, which he attended, featured Felix Mendelssohn’s
Midsummer Night’s Dream
and Vaughn Williams’s
Antarctica Suite
, the former for scenes of weightlessness and the latter for the Stargate effects and scenes on the moon.
11
Although he used neither of these pieces in the film, Kubrick used the latter work on set to create an appropriate mood for actor Kier Dullea in the filming of the Stargate sequence.
12
In the end, Kubrick ended up with only preexistent art music on the soundtrack, and it was something of a coup for director and for the studio. An extremely popular and financially successful soundtrack, it far exceeded anyone’s expectations.

Classical Music in Film

In using preexistent art music in his film Kubrick was bucking the established practice of having a single composer write the score for his film. But, perhaps unintentionally, Kubrick’s musical choices drew on an even older tradition from the early days of film, when newly written film scores were not the norm. In fact, in the silent film era, musical accompaniment was often at the discretion of individual film pianists, who were called upon to choose appropriate music for scenes and to play that music live, often without the opportunity of viewing the film ahead of time. Sometimes the “score” consisted of a list of suggested preexistent pieces to play during specified scenes in the film. These lists, called cue sheets, provided recorded timings of scenes and the intended emotional tenor of the images.

In 1924, Ernö Rapée, a conductor and virtuoso pianist, published a collection of classical and popular tunes (transcribed for keyboard) categorized into general emotions or physical actions. The collection was called
Motion Picture Moods for Pianists and Organists: A Rapid-Reference Collection of Selected Pieces.
The subtitle refers to the table of contents printed in the margin of every page listing the fifty-two moods and situations in the book. The organist could then easily switch from one mood to another.