Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

I'm not saying they can't include it as a seamless branching option with the existing film(depending on whatever deals they have in place with the Kubrick estate). If they can, go for it. Doesn't hurt me none.

I'm just saying, IMO, they shouldn't. Include them as bonus features and end it there. But if they end up releasing a "Special Edition", my life won't end on the spot. Unless Dr. M has already exhausted next year's birthday wish. :(

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Oh, goody and when I literally JUST finally bought the blu.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

I think it's fair to say that the longer version, while not the definitive version, was approved buy Kubrick since he allowed it to be shown at the premiere.

If he didn't like the longer cut to begin with, he never would have shown it to anyone. And if he was just curious to see how it would play to an audience, he could have easily had a test screening (even if the process wasn't as common back then).

And what if the premiere audience had responded positively to the later excised footage? Would Kubrick have left it in?

I doubt any filmmaker has ever had an "I love this cut and hate all others" feeling toward one of their own films.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

They do when there's a theatrical cut that was messed around with by some studio executives.

As for 2001: A Space Odyssey it's hard to say what Kubrick felt about the subject since we really don't have the information necessary to know.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

from the Kubrick Archives 2001 The Production: A Calendar

1968

March 13. Kubrick returns to the United States. While the last special effects shots are still coming in, he edits the film. Several scenes are omitted, including the purchase of a bushbaby for Dr. Floyd's daughter, Squirt; routine activities on the moon; shots of the astronauts' families; shots of the ping-pong table, shower, and piano in Discovery. After a screening for the MGM executives in Culver City, California, Kubrick cuts the prologue and all voice-over narration from the film.

March 29. Screening of the film for Life magazine.

March 31, April 1. Washington press previews.

April. The discovery of man-like jaw bone in southern Ethiopia pushes man's history back to the four million year mark

April 1, 2. New York press previews of the film in Loew's Capital Cinerama Theater

April 3. New York premiere in the Capital Theater

April 4. Los Angeles premiere.

April 4, 5. Kubrick cuts nineteen minutes from the films original running time of two hours and fourty-one minutes, shortening scenes including "Dawn of Man," Orion, Poole jogging in Discovery, and Poole in the pod.

April 6. Final version released in New York in the Cinerama Theater on Broadway, sixteen months late and at a cost of $4,500,000 over the original budget of $6 million.

Early April. Kubrick edits the 2001 trailer.

July. Publication of Clarke's novel, 2001: A Space Odyssey, The paperback edition sale exceeds one million copies.

December 21. Apollo VII carries man into a moon orbit for the first time.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

As the previous post says it has always been my belief that Kubrick cut the film after it's early screenings and that was not unusual at all for Kubrick. He also cut "A Clockwork Orange" and "The Shining" after their release. I heard most of the cut footage was from the early "Dawn of Man" type scenes. In the 70's it was always a good idea to see a Stanley Kubrick film the first week it was released.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

From Wiki:

Kubrick filmed several scenes that were deleted from the final film. These include a schoolroom on the moon base—a painting class that included Kubrick's daughters, additional scenes of life on the base, Floyd buying a bush baby from a department store via videophone for his daughter, details about the daily life on Discovery, additional space walks, astronaut Bowman retrieving a spare part from an octagonal corridor, a number of cuts from the Poole murder sequence including the entire space walk preparation and shots of HAL turning off radio contact with Poole—explaining the non sequitur of HAL's response to Bowman's question, and notably a close-up shot of Bowman picking up a slipper during his walk in the alien room—the slipper can still be seen behind him in what was then the next shot[85]. The most notable cut was a 10-minute black-and-white opening sequence featuring interviews with actual scientists, including Freeman Dyson,[86] discussing extraterrestrial life, which Kubrick removed after an early screening for MGM executives. The actual text survives in the book The Making of Kubrick's 2001 by Jerome Agel[87]. If the music intro and outro are included, 29 minutes of film have been excised from the theatrical version.[88] Kubrick's rationale for editing the film was to tighten the narrative; reviews suggested the film suffered too much by the radical departure from traditional cinema story telling conventions. Regarding the cuts, Kubrick stated; "I didn't believe that the trims made a critical difference. [...] The people who like it, like it no matter what its length, and the same holds true for the people who hate it".

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Holy cow! All these "Director's Cuts" have made everyone incredibly cynical. This is almost as big news for me as Metropolis was (and that brought me to tears). I've bought this film on VHS, Laserdisc, 4 times on DVD, and the Blu-ray (which goes for about $10 now, so I can't believe anyone is complaining about double dipping). This is Stanley Kubrick's legendary "lost" original cut of 2001. It won't replace the old one, but as a curiosity, this is incredible.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Interesting. The story often told was that Kubrick burned all the deleted footage from 2001 because he didn't want anyone to see it. I wonder what sort of source this newly-found footage comes from. The original negative? A multi-generation dupe? A 16mm reduction?

Kubrick did not like the idea of audiences learning "behind the scenes" details of how movies were made, or seeing deleted footage. He believed that such things destroyed the illusion of cinema.

The first pressings of the Criterion Collection Laserdisc release of Dr. Strangelove included a text copy of an early draft of the script, which was radically different than the final movie. (It opened and closed with aliens in the distant future visiting the charred remains of Earth and excavating artifacts from our lost civilization.) When Kubrick found out about this, he demanded that Criterion recall the disc. Subsequent pressings dropped the script.

For the Criterion LDs of both Strangelove and 2001, the only supplements that Kubrick authorized were all contextual material about the Cold War and the space program respectively - nothing about the making of the movies themselves.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

But who knows how Kubrick would've felt about it now. A lot could have changed in the past ten years.

I'm pretty sure that Laughton wouldn't have been thrilled with The Charles Laughton Directs The Night of the Hunter documentary, but the fact is that it is interesting to watch. There are other facts that with later films that Kubrick allowed making-of documentaries, like The Shining. Who knows what he'd feel about this, he could have taken this like David Lean did with the Lawrence of Arabia restoration.

There is a point, especially with older films with deceased members of the cast and crew, of where we can either try to adhere to the director's wants and desires, or go with what could be interesting for the public to watch. It could be worse, the Kubrick estate could be like the Welles estate, where we wouldn't even be allowed to buy the films he finished.

I for one would like to be able to see this "premiere version." But like others have said, this cut should not become the 'definitive' version, and should never be as treated as such. If WB were to release new footage in a new cut they should include a disclaimer at the beginning explaining exactly how one should look at this cut.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

You could play the "Who knows how he feels" game till we're blue in the face. It is worth nothing that The Shining documentary was made by his daughter, which probably affected his decision.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

But the point is he allowed it to be released. He could have easily blocked that.

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As I'm in the latter category, I would find an extended cut of the film to be absolutely torturous. However, it's nice to find out that Kubrick knew that he was polarizing viewers.

I'm not sure that I absolutely agree with his statement, however. It's amazing to me how much better THE SHINING plays in its non-US cut; if the powers that be were to come out with an hour-and-a-half-long version of 2001, it could possibly change my mind a bit.

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I don't even know how that'd make sense. A lot of it, in the visual sense, is about the world you're looking at and the feeling you get from it.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Jeffrey Wells has a post (vouched for by Robert Harris in the comments) which provides some info on what's in this footage -- still vague but more specific than most of what I've read. He also states that the whereabouts of this "discovered" footage have been known for twenty years.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Agreed. I generally cite 2001 as my second favorite film of all time, and this is tremendous news. I'm excited. And we already have a near-perfect blu-ray, so bring this one on however you want.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

OK, since the can of worms on other alternate cuts of Kubrick films, can I ask any of you whether you know of an alternate cut of Lolita. Before I owned Kubrick’s Lolita on DVD, I had rented it on VHS. I had an English class where I was doing a presentation on Vladimir Nabokov, who, as many know, wrote the book and co-wrote the screenplay of the movie. I rented the movie again on VHS to show the famous hotel room scene to the class, highlighting the dialogue between Humbert and Lo. I cued up the tape and played it in class. I was surprised to notice the scene went on much longer than how I remembered it and had more dialogue in it (no, no skin or any such thing—just more talk). I knew it wasn’t my imagination because another student in the class asked me where I got the video because he never saw the scene extended like that. I was clueless and thought that it was because it was a newer version of the video (it was the reissued 2001 release with the white cover). When I finally bought it on DVD it was the same old version, I remembered before coming across this mysterious extended version, which I had long returned to the video store (unfortunately a Hollywood Video that has since liquidated its stock). I tried hunting down another VHS of this version and bought three different copies and came across the same old familiar cut.

This was a real fluke occurrence and not my imagination. I did a very lucid, sober presentation and I had a witness that noticed the same thing I did. We were focused on the dialogue in the scene, so it came as a clear surprise to us. Can anyone here shed light on the existence of two different cuts of this movie on VHS? As far as I know it does not exist on DVD (I’m sure someone here would have commented on this by now if it did).

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Yeah, the British version has a longer seduction scene (10 more seconds). When they show it on Turner Classic Movies, they show the longer version.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

No kidding. Is that the only bit that is extended in the UK version? I just happened to luck into that scene when I played it for the class.

Also is the UK DVD extended then?

Thanks for the insight!

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

This is all I found on IMDB:

"The scene where Lolita first "seduces" Humbert as he lies in the cot is a good 10 seconds longer in the British cut of the film. In the U.S. cut, the shot fades as she whispers the details of the "game" she played with Charlie at camp. In the U.K. print, the shot continues as Humbert mumbles that he's not familiar with the game. She then bends down again to whisper more details. Kubrick then cuts to a closer shot of Lolita's head as she says "Well, allrighty then" and then fades as she begins to descend to Humbert on the cot. The British cut of the film was used for the Region 1 DVD release."

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Yep, that's what I remember seeing. Weird that some US VHS wound up with that cut on it and others did not.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

That is the best point of all of this. I don't want it in if Kubrick didn't cut it in. As an "extra" that can be accessed outside of the main film, sure. But not cut into it.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

The rumor that I read is that he had the unincluded footage from all of his Warner Brothers films packed into a truck, and then sent to a landfill and burned personally by Leon Vitali. He could do this, because he had ownership over these films and did his own editing at his house.

2001 would obviously not be included in this category, so I would not be surprised if there were stuff in a vault somewhere that was not cut into the final print.

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You might've read it on this very site:

I suspect this footage survived because it actually made it into a publicly-screened version (the premiere, and possibly the roadshow if some people are remembering correctly) and was presumably handled differently than normal outtakes.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

If that wasn't the direct source, it was certainly copied and pasted on another site. But yes, that is what I remember reading.

Even though I would never want it to be a part of any official version, I would love to see what Kubrick cut out of the US theatrical release of "The Shining".

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

But this footage seems to be part of Kubrick's original cut. If the preview audience had a different reaction, it may have very well been left in the theatrical prints. So this is kind of a gray area.

Deleted scenes would be fine with me, but if the quality is there I wouldn't be against a special extended version.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

As long as they give us BOTH versions on the same disc (or at least in the same set), I agree.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

If this is stuff that even Kubrick found too boring to leave in the movie, then it would be nearly impossible to watch as isolated extras. The only way to appreciate this would be to see it integrated back in the film as Kubrick's original version, again as just a curiosity for those of us who are fanatics for this movie. It's kind of like the History of Middle-earth volumes of Tolkien's original drafts of Lord of the Rings. Not of interest for most people, but fascinating for those who are interested.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

But why is that necessary? The blu-ray of 2001 that is out now is magnificent.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

A) The cut included on the current release is the definitive cut and that needs to be maintained.

B) A new disc could be even more magnificenterer.

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I agree, but they're re-issuing it anyway, right? Give us everything from the current Blu-ray, plus the new stuff, so I don't have to have two copies of the same film on Blu-ray.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

They knew about it all along!:rolleyes:

http://www.slashfilm.com/warner-bros...yssey-footage/

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

and in the Slashfilm article:

so, no new Blu-Ray release planned.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

I think you're misreading that release, Jerome; it means no new cut planned.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Wait, people actually thought there was a possibility that WB would go against Kubrick's express wishes and create a new cut of the film? The Slash article just confirms what we already know. If the newly-discovered footage is included on the upcoming Blu-ray at all, it will be as a bonus feature.

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

Well, there's (re)creating a "new" (old) cut as a bonus and there's (re)creating it and calling it the feature. The two are not the same.

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But even the former would be contrary to Kubrick's wishes, and WB has a history of respecting that, e.g. the back cover of The Shining DVD noting "full-frame as the director intended".

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After his death, Warner re-released most of Kubrick's movies in widescreen on both DVD and Blu-ray, against his last stated wishes.

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Well then, as long as we're violating his wishes, where's the home video release of Fear and Desire already?

Re: Extended cut of 2001 may be coming soon!
 

You've spoken with Mr. Kubrick about Blu-ray extras, then?