Kaypro's Odyssey Files

Telecommunications help bring 2010 to the silver screen. 

by Jessica Horsting

When MGM chief Frank Yablans first asked director Peter Hyams to head the filming of 2010, a sequel to the science fiction classic 2001, his immediate response was an emphatic "No way." His reaction was not unreasonable; many professional filmmakers felt 2001 was a definitive film—so complete that no sequel could do it justice. Filming 2010 implied a sacrilege akin to writing the Bible, Part II.

The original film was inspired by an Arthur C. Clarke short story "The Sentinel." Under the distinctive direction of Stanley Kubrick, and in collaboration with Clarke, the concept of the story was interpreted and expanded into the landmark, feature length space odyssey. Clarke subsequently wrote a novelization of that film, then followed up with a best-selling sequel, 2010. Both novels examine the consequences of man's first contact with an intelligent, alien life form.

Hyams appreciated both the artistry of the Kubrick film and the renown of writer Arthur C. Clarke. Hyams felt confident he could handle the project, having recently directed two feature films, Outland and The Star Chamber. But still, he was hesitant. He saw 2010 as "a frightening challenge . . .the first film was a classic."

Apparently, the challenge was irresistible. Hyams agreed to undertake the project.

His next worry involved faithfully translating Clarke's story to the screen. He had been asked not only to direct, but to produce the screenplay based on the best-selling book. His solution was simple and straightforward. Following Kubrick's lead, Hyams solicited the novelist's help: "I wanted Arthur not only to know everything I felt had to be done, I wanted his input — not only his blessings, but his ideas . . . ." Clarke in turn was delighted to assist, with the one stipulation: that he be permitted to work from his home.

In Sri Lanka.

Clarke at his Kaypro IIx.

A tiny island nation off the coast of India, Clarke's home was 14 time zones and almost 8000 miles from Los Angeles where the film was being made. Hyams thought they could work it out, though the question was how? The hoped-for simple solution to Hyams' scripting problems had gotten a teeny bit complicated.

The time differential made conventional telephoning extraordinarily inconvenient, requiring one or both of the men to stay up to ungodly hours in the morning to consult with one another. Using a mailing system would involve extensive, not to mention expensive, delays. The obvious alternative was a computer link. The only problem remaining was to select the hardware.

It was at this juncture that Destiny and the Kaypro Corporation conspired to provide a solution.


Two times 2

While Hyams and Clarke had yet to decide which microcomputer to employ, Kaypro Corporation had already contacted the Sri Lanka Foundation as part of their promotion agenda involving the donation of a Kaypro to the Third World Fundamental Studies Program. The Sri Lanka Foundation is an organization initiated in part by Clarke himself, and he remains an active participant. Clarke has been a long time user of small computers and is intimately familiar with the technology. He was naturally curious to take a first hand look at the gift Kaypro 2.

After inspecting the unit and discussing the virtues with director Hyams, the two men decided the Kaypro 2 would be ideal for their purposes. In exchange for a promotional screen credit, Kaypro agreed to provide twin units to Hyams and Clarke. The production company went one step further and purchased two additional units — one for the 2010 documentary team and one for Clarke's long-time associate Steve Jongeward, who acted as his Los Angeles liaison during production.

Having settled on the hardware, the next problem was a technical one of communications protocol. This was solved neatly by Clarke, Jongeward, and the good advice of Jim Swanner— Kaypro retailer and all-around nice guy.

Most communications programs available for the Kaypro 2 didn't provide the versatility that Clarke and Hyams felt was required. They needed a system that would allow each unit to send and receive lengthy messages with a minimum of time and error, a system that would deliver a missive which would patiently wait to be retrieved on demand, and above all, one that would perform dependably. Buzz words like "baud rate," "multifile capacity," "synchronous/asynchronous transmission," and "protocol accommodation" took on new significance for all involved.

But Clarke knew where to turn for help. At Clarke's suggestion, Jongeward contacted Jim Swanner. (Clarke knew of Swanner's expertise in telecommunications, and subsequently wrote the foreward for Swanner's book, Electronic Mail for Microcomputers.) Jongeward and Swanner investigated available software to find a program that would fit the bill. Swanner provided Mycroft Lab's MITE (Mycroft Intelligent Terminal Emulator), which features a multifile transfer protocol that was ideally suited to the filmmakers' requirements.

The Kaypros, fitted with Hayes Smartmodems and the MITE program, were installed: one at Clarke's home in Sri Lanka, one at Peter Hyams' office in Culver City.

Clarke and Hyams were ready to get down to business.

Their communications took the form of long, daily "letters" left on their respective machines; questions, solutions, and suggestions that could be thoughtfully laid out and considered — then sent or retrieved instantly. Starting in September of 1983, the two men communicated over aspects of the script for eight months. The result was a screenplay that strayed from the novel in certain respects, but with changes that were a cooperative compromise between the writer and the filmmaker — a rare, almost unique occurrence in novel-to-film translations.


Birth of a book 

Telecommunicating with Kaypros soon became a fact of life for the 2010 production team. The computer link proved so important that it became the focus of a one-hour documentary detailing the filming, "The Making of 2010." (Filmed with network presentation in mind, the documentary is scheduled to air in December as an adjunct to the release of the film.) It was not merely the mechanics of the link that warranted the attention, it was the special nature of the conversations.

The communiques between Clarke and Hyams encompassed more than simple problem solving. The daily "chats" became a chronicle of the evolution of the film. "The conversations are in themselves a documentary," said Jongeward. As an experiment, he began to collect and edit the disk-recorded dialogue. The conversations proved to be such a rich source of material that (with the blessing of Clarke and Hyams) Jongeward developed a book as a companion to the film.

Titled "The Odyssey Files," the volume is a compilation of the communications that took place between September of 1983 and February of 1984. Included in the book is an introduction by Clarke as well as an appendix, titled "MITE for Morons." Chagrined, Jongeward confessed, "Arthur wrote that last part for me." The book promises an unusual glimpse into the creative exchange that characterizes filmmaking. It should also provide a unique record that traces the ideas of the two men from conception to on-screen reality. (One small step for man; one giant leap for the inter-office memo.)

Jongeward admits that the communications link was not always flawless. Most of the difficulties were generated at Clarke's end of the world. Relying on cable-to-satellite-to-cable transmission, the weakest link in the chain was the primitive state of communications technology in Sri Lanka. Steve notes, "It seemed that, for days before or after a monsoon, you could count on cables being knocked down or washed away somewhere near Arthur's home."

Satellite transmissions occasionally posed a problem. "When it became overloaded, you didn't get cut off, you were down!" lamented Jongeward. But neither he nor anyone else complained about the performance of the Kaypros.


Clarke as seer

Clarke has legitimized his own prophecy.

The communications link between Hyams and Clarke has a significance beyond what has been reported above. At the risk of understating the case, what we have here is serendipity of cosmic proportions. By participating in the link, Clarke has, in a sense, legitimized his own prophecy.

A little background should make this clear.

Arthur Clarke is not a formally trained scientist, but he has gained tremendous respect from the scientific community for his innovative thinking about the applications of technology. He is no stranger to computers and telecommunications. In fact, he is credited with originating the concept of communications satellites.

In an article appearing in a 1945 issue of Wireless World (titled "Extraterrestrial Relays"), Clarke described his concept: three satellites orbiting 22,000 miles above the earth, parallel to the equator, relaying radio and television signals all over the world. Triangulated properly, they would allow radio signals to circumvent the obstacle posed to such signals, namely the curvature of the earth. The satellites would eliminate the need for signal repeaters which had long been used to get signals from hither to yon.

In hindsight, Clarke's solution seems elementary. But when his idea was accomplished a few years afterwards by the then fledgling NASA, Clarke was awarded the Franklin Institute's Gold Medal for his prediction.

It is the technological outgrowth of his 1945 idea which allowed Clarke to stay in his comfortable Sri Lanka surroundings while participating on a film being made halfway around the world.

Similar prophecy is also inherent in the Clarke-Kubrick collaboration, 2001. The events depicted in that film have been reproduced, bit by bit, in real life. The 1968 film preceded and accurately simulated such events as the space walk, the moon landing, Skylab, the shuttle program, and cooperative ventures in space. There were a score of tiny details theorized by the first film that have since been substantiated as fact with almost uncanny accuracy.

That sort of precision is Clarke's stated wish for 2010. His career as an author, inventor and technological seer is guided by his fervent commitment to scientific accuracy. In turn, director Hyams seems determined to faithfully translate Clarke's vision to the screen—with a little help from their Kaypros.




Copyright © 1984 by Jessica Horsting. All rights reserved.
Originally published October 25 1984 in Kaypro Users Magazine.
Images © 1984 Arthur C Clarke Foundation,  © 2015 MMXOA.

Star Dreck [Review]

2010, the sequel to Stanley Kubrick's 2001, is an epic shuttle to nowhere.

by James Wolcott

As scientists on a Soviet-American search for the monolith's secrets,
Lithgow (l.) and Scheider flail about in 2010's zero atmosphere.

The black monolith of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, that domino without a dot, makes a return visit on 2010, joined by other monoliths that dance and converge like iron filings magnetized by the swirling cosmos. (The uncharitable might say that those monoliths look like swarms of shaving stubble being sucked down a drain.) Written, produced, and directed by Peter Hyams (who it seems wasn't up to any of those tasks), 2010 lacks the eerie quiet and zero-gravity drift of Kubrick's visionary expedition; it isn't a light-streaming hallucination. 2010 is a message movie - a peacenik plea for the United States and Russia to mend their differences so that both may witness a fruitful awakening. It's the greening of the universe, with a monolith sitting in the new Garden of Eden.


This swampy Eden looks like the lush spot where Spock was planted at the end of Star Trek II, and 2010 has the frowning, constipated look Star Trek had when it was trying to think. But even with a heavy brow, the Star Trek movies have some personality and bits of business, lightening moments of bad acting. 2010 has hatchet-faced Roy Scheider, whose taut tendons and orange-brown complexion suggest an Indian war chief who has just endured a purification ritual and emerged cruelly honed. Perhaps if he simply let go a little, he'd have something of William Shatner's relaxed, potty appeal. Here, his zippers look too tight.


For a movie that intends to be a celestial climb toward enlightenment, ascending through colors into blinding white light, 2010 doesn't offer much to enthrall the eye. Even the monolith lacks the iconic, hovering majesty that it had in the first adventure - this slab isn't worthy of fear or worship. No, the pleasures of 2010 are primarily aural: the harsh, rapid inflections of Helen Mirren's Russian accent (Mirren plays a cosmonaut); the hurried, frightened breathing of John Lithgow as he space walks above one of Jupiter's moons; the courteous, plaintive misgivings of HAL the computer; the playful clicks of a pair of dolphins. But the tiny, amusing distractions to the ear are of little help, because most of the time we're face to face with the movie's ponderous, immovable boredom.

In Capricorn One (1978), a pop thriller about a faked moon landing, Hyams showed some narrative zip and made amusing, functional use of TV rock heads like James Brolin and Hal Holbrook. 2010 doesn't have any of that Flying Tigers acceleration; its themes and incidents come neatly sliced. Scenes in which Scheider dotes on his son can be filed under Domestic Human Interest, conversations about U.S.-Soviet tensions in Central America belong in the Topical Political Comment folder, and so on. The exposition is so slow and redundant (everything in the opening titles is reexplained in later conversations) that it's as if Hyams feels compelled to update the story at intervals for latecomers in the audience. Cinematically, 2010 is a small step for a man, a giant step back for mankind.


Except for Roy Scheider's grimacing, the actors tend to coast, and who can blame them? Madolyn Smith, too good for this material, is stuck on Earth playing the Loyal Wife Back Home while the pouty, punk newcomer Natasha Shneider (who's described in the publicity as "a classically trained Russian rock'n'roll star" - well, awwwright!) is stuck in a module and clings to Scheider's warrior chest. Keir Dullea, looking as young as yesterday, reprises his role from 2001, but he might as well have sent in a body double, for all he has to do. The cast is carry-on luggage on this epic space shuttle to nowhere. 2001 swept the heavens clean of untidy human life, but its pristine, balletic vision at least seemed to derive from Stanley Kubrick's austere moodiness. 2010 doesn't derive from anything. It's an impersonal hosanna to peace with a big-bang miracle finish issuing from the skies like a greeting card from God. The monolith is the stamp on the envelope.

(Illustration by Melissa Grimes. Originally published in Texas Montly, January 1985)

Add 16 Years to '2001' and the Result is '2010'

by Aljean Harmetz


HOLLYWOOD

“How do you continue a classic?” asks Peter Hyams. The answer, says Mr. Hyams, who is currently directing 2010, a sequel to 2001: A Space Odyssey, is: with a great deal of anxiety and awe.

It was in the spring of 1968 that 2001, Stanley Kubrick's half-satiric, half-reverent vision of the bland and depersonalized future of the human race was thrust at movie audiences accustomed to science-fiction movies containing gigantic bugs, decaying monsters or malevolent aliens.

Though Mr. Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke, the respected science-fiction author, who had co-written the screenplay, had envisioned a cinematic parallel to Homer's “Odyssey,” and though critics were divided in their opinions, there was no mistaking the reaction of audiences.

Despite its mystical ending and deliberate tedious stretches designed to demonstrate the boredom of space flight, 2001: A Space Odyssey, was the fifth most successful box-office attraction in a year dominated by The Graduate. Since then, it has been reissued twice and earned M-G-M a total of more than $24 million in North American theaters.

“When I first saw 2001, says Mr. Hyams, “I was 25 years old. It was like finding a note in a bottle that said, 'There are no limits, no parameters, except your imagination ...' “

Since 2001 was made nearly a decade before the success of a movie almost automatically triggered a sequel, it has taken 16 years for MGM/UA to follow 2001 with 2010.

Now, at 41, Mr. Hyams, the writer-director of such science-fiction adventures as Outland and Capricorn One, is pitting himself against a classic.

The crew of the Leonov.

In 2010, which stars Roy Scheider, John Lithgow, Bob Balaban and Helen Mirren, a team of American and Russian scientists put aside their political differences to travel to Jupiter in search of the astronauts of 2001 and to find the meaning of the mysterious black monoliths created by some superhuman intelligence.

When Mr. Hyams was approached a year ago by Frank Yablans, the vice-chairman of MGM/UA, his first reaction to the prospect of directing the sequel was to call Stanley Kubrick, whom he had never met, to ask for his blessing. “He said it was O.K. with him,” Mr. Hyams says.

But it is clear that for Mr. Hyams making a sequel to 2001 is an emotional minefield. “No matter what I do on 2010 I can't live up to people's expectations. But it's desperately important to me that Arthur Clarke and Stanley Kubrick feel what they started 18 years ago isn't besmirched,” Mr. Hyams says.

“Nobody in his right mind can rip off 2001 or be stupid enough to think he can do what Kubrick did.”

Mr. Hyams urgently explains that his movie is not poetry, that it is “very, very accessible,” “a thriller with a beginning, middle and end,” “a hopeful and emotional movie with a focus very different from Kubrick's focus.”

But an hour later, all the wisps of anguish have been tucked away. Striding the set and shouting orders at his crew, Mr. Hyams is a brusque and peremptory movie director.

On MGM/UA's Stage 15, the largest sound stage in Hollywood, the spaceship that has been sent to discover what happened to the astronauts of 2001 sprawls like an inert plastic starfish. Unlike the Enterprise of Star Trek, with its mile-long corridors and ballroom-sized bridge, the Leonov of 2010 is narrow and cramped.

Made of gray plastic, the Leonov – named for Aleksei A. Leonov, a Soviet cosmonaut and friend of Mr. Clarke – has ominously low ceilings. Most of the available space is crammed with dials and levers. Computer-generated images compete with data readings on the nine monitor screens above control panels eerily backlit by fluorescent tubing.

“Our ship is no Holiday Inn,” says Mr. Hyams, whose production is expected to cost more than $20 million. “The last consideration is comfort. My image for the spaceship was the submarine in Das Boot.”

“We were building Das Spaceship,” says Albert Brenner, the production designer for 2010. “With the real space shuttle Columbia, the engineers put in a facility for a human whenever they could find a bit of space. The spaceship in 2001, the Discovery, was 800 feet long and looked like it was designed by an interior designer.”

“The spaceship in 2001 looked like the GE Kitchen of Tomorrow,” says Syd Mead, the visual futurist who designed the Leonov's lumpy exterior, encrusted with tubes and plates bolted together.

It is not a lovely exterior. For the ship's interior, however, cramped does not necessarily mean ugly. In the medical bay, the six cryogenic chambers for the scientists who will spend most of the 14-month trip to Jupiter in frozen sleep look like children's beds modeled after race cars, complete with stripes.

Syd Mead's console design for the Leonov.

If Arthur Clarke, who co-wrote 2001 from his short story The Sentinel, doesn't like 2010, it will be partly his own fault. Between Sept. 16, 1983 and April 15, 1984, he corresponded almost daily with Mr. Hyams by computer from his home in Sri Lanka. Since night in Sri Lanka is day in Los Angeles and vice versa, each man went to his computer in the morning to find the questions the other man had asked or answered overnight.

Having arrived at a somewhat slower speed – from Sri Lanka to London by SwissAir, London to New York by Concorde, by shuttle to Washington and then another plane to California, Mr. Clarke was strolling the plastic floors of the Leonov two weeks ago, a cheerful, burly man wearing a yellow T-shirt advertising one of his businesses, underwater skin-diving safaris off the coasts of Sri Lanka.

Mr. Hyams's script has been adapted from Mr. Clarke's 1982 novel, 2010: Odyssey Two. The search that is the basic premise of the novel is intact. However, Mr. Hyams is focusing on a subtext about the politics of Russians and Americans having to get along together.

Mr. Clarke – who has just recovered from an encounter with “a nasty parasite; it's virtually impossible to avoid parasites in Sri Lanka,” he says blithely – called the writing of 2010 almost accidental. He had written and published a movie outline based on another of his books and had discovered “that you can get in 10 pages all the guts of a novel without the hard work of having to write a novel. Having found out how satisfying a movie outline was as an exorcism, I wrote an 8- or 10-page sequel to 2001 and sent it to my agent to send to Omni or Playboy. He sent it straight back and said, 'You have to write the novel.' And I suddenly realized that I wanted to!”

On Stage 30, where Esther Williams used to swim, stuntmen fly across the chasm that was once her swimming pool. Beyond are the bright red cellophane brains of HAL 9000, the soft-voiced computer who was the most human character in 2001. And perhaps the most human emotion in that movie was HAL's terror as he was destroyed by the astronaut Dave Bowman.

For 2010, Douglas Rain, the Canadian actor who was the voice of HAL in 2001, was in and out of MGM/UA before one frame of the film was shot. The actors in the new movie react to his prerecorded voice.

But another ghost from 2001 did roam the sets for a week. Keir Dullea – the Dave Bowman who turns into a star child at the end of 2001 – says he had “the same feeling I had at my 30th high school reunion. The people were different but the campus was exactly the same. The most poignant scene for me was having the voice of HAL to work with: two disembodied voices in a set from 18 years ago.”

His part in 2010, Mr. Dullea says, is “the character everybody talks about for the first two acts, who finally appears in the third.” Like Mr. Rain, Mr. Dullea is often approached by fans of the first movie. They are usually people, he says, who want him to explain the film's ending. He has come to consider the ending a comment on the “cyclical” nature of existence. “The existence of man is a bone in the eye of eternity,” he says. “A caveman throws a bone in the air, and in the wink of an eye it turns into a spaceship. My character, as he ages, reaches up in the same fashion the caveman did.”

Sometimes the other actors in 2010 envied Mr. Dullea his role as a disembodied voice.

“Our space suits were unbelievably heavy because they were designed to be worn in a weightless environment,” says John Lithgow, who plays Curnow, an American rocketry expert who panics during a space walk. “They weighed 100 pounds. We hung like sausages on unbelievably heavy leather harnesses. We couldn's sit down because our suits wouldn't let us bend at the pelvis. They lowered us to the ground and we lay there like knights who'd fallen off their horses. Then someone would come around and put a pillow under our heads.”

“They laid us flat like cords of wood,” says Elya Baskin, a Russian actor who came to the United States in 1976 and who recently played the prominent role of a circus clown who wants to defect in Moscow on the Hudson.

In Russia, he said, “The Government tells moviemakers what should and shouldn't be done. In America, the market tells you. So there's the same percent of good films and bad films in each country. Actors are privileged people in Russia, so people in the movie industry here and there look the same – a little bit phony, a little bit cool.”

Mr. Lithgow, who has been nominated for an Academy Award as best supporting actor for the last two years for his performances as a transsexual in The World According to Garp and as a timidly adulterous banker in Terms of Endearment has a catalogue of “the other hideous things they exposed us to on 2010.”

“The cryogenic sleeptank suits had a fishnet effect with brass beads at all the junctions. It was like sitting or walking on pebbles and my body would be crisscrossed with red welts at the end of the day. The days we had to wallow around in yellow tempera pigment, we'd wear surgical masks until the moment of shooting. They refrigerated the set for an entire day so one character could explode with vapor when he opened his faceplate.”

Then he smiles and adds, “With actors, the more you suffer, the more interesting you think it is.”


(Originally published in New York Times, June 17, 1984) Source