Post Production

I was reading through a collection of Playboy's interviews with noted directors. What stood out was the Stanley Kubrick piece, published in 1968.

He talks about 2001: A Space Odyssey and related scientific speculation. Some of what he says is quite reasonable, even penetrating, some lunatic.

But what you can't miss is his answers are lengthy, formal and impossibly well-wrought. Here's an excerpt--one full answer (not especially long) discussing UFOs. Remember, this was published as an actual interview. How does it sound to you?

KUBRICK: The most significant analysis of UFOs I've seen recently was written by L. M. Chassin, a French air force general who had been a high-ranking NATO officer. He argues that by any legal rules of evidence, there is now sufficient sighting data amassed from reputable sources--astronomers, pilots, radar operators and the like--to initiate a serious and thorough worldwide investigation of UFO phenomena. Actually, if you examine even a fraction of the extant testimony you will find that people have been sent to the gas chamber on far less substantial evidence. Of course, it's possible that all the governments in the world really do take UFOs seriously and perhaps are already engaging in secret study projects to determine their origin, nature and intentions. If so, they may not be disclosing their findings for fear that the public would be alarmed--the danger of cultural shock deriving from confrontation with the unknown which we discussed earlier, and which is an element of 2001, when news of the monolith's discovery on the moon is suppressed. But I think even the 2 percent of sightings that the Air Force's Project Blue Book admits is unexplainable by conventional means should dictate a serious, searching probe. From all indications, the current government-authorized investigation at the University of Colorado is neither serious nor searching.

One hopeful sign that this subject may at last be accorded the serious discussion it deserves, however, is the belated but examplary conversion of Dr J. Allen Hynek, since 1948 the Air Force's consultant on UFOs and currently chariman of the astronomy department at Northwestern Universty. Hynek, who in his official capacity pooh-poohed UFO sightings, now believes that UFOs deserve top-priority attention--as he wrote in Playboy [December 1967]--and even concedes that the existing evidence may indicate a possible connection with extraterrestrial life. He predicts: "I will be surprised if an intensive study yields nothing. To the contrary, I think that mankind may be in for the greatest adventure since dawning human intelligence turned outward to contemplate the universe." I agree with him.

Yeah, right.

I realize Playboy interviews are boiled down from hours of discussion and cleaned up for coherence, but no one talks like this. Kubrick, a control freak, must have demanded some sort of final cut. Either he got to rewrite and polish what he said, or, more likely, what's attributed to him in conversation are actually written responses. For that matter, he probably wrote the questions, too.