Kubrick-A-Brak: Or how I learned to Deny Ignorance and Love the Truth

This is the first part of my first real thread. I hope it goes well.

Reason vs. Logic

I have noticed throughout my travels in conspiracyland a particularly pernicious belief that the moon landings were faked in a studio by Stanley Kubrick. The idea is charming and I can see how people could want the master filmmaker to be the director of the ‘Ultimate Trip’. In this post I will present evidence as to why this supposition is false, as well as explain why the Apollo missions could not have been faked using late 60s early 70s film making technology. Let the fun begin!

It’s 1964. Stanley Kubrick has recently contacted British science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke to create what he calls “the first truly great science fiction movie.” Clarke and Kubrick hit it off and 2001: A Space Odyssey was to be the fruit of their labors. The movie was released in late 1968 to what can be best described as mixed reviews. Most people, regardless of their comprehension of the plot, were blown away by the visual effects. Even now the average person wonders at how some of the scenes were filmed. Let me tell you.

Kubrick filmed 2001 in England at various studios around the Isle. His nature as a perfectionist resulted in a four year filming period, most of the time devoted to pre-production and special effects work (he was still editing the movie while on the way to its American premiere). Anyone who has seen the movie knows that its vision of the future is very close to technology we have today. Arthur C. Clarke in the book describes a device called a “Newspad” that is letter sized, with a touch sensitive flat screen surface. It could interface with a network of sites through the use of hypertext and used a GUI with thumbnail icons-all conceived in the late 1960s…in the movie, Bowman and Poole, the astronauts, use them to watch a BBC program on their mission. Advanced stuff.

However, with all the interesting technological suppositions shown in the film, its portrayal of space flight is the most important. I know that Kubrick and Clarke went to great lengths to ensure scientific realism in the movie; going to so far as to having real aerospace engineers design the vehicles depicted on screen, using men in the artificial intelligence field like Marvin Minsky, and asking astronomers for their insights into extraterrestrial life.

Yet even with all of this experience, many factual errors crept into the film. The most flawed of all being the scenes set on the moon at Clavius Base and the Monolith site.
These images show the unrealistic appearance of the lunar surface. It strikes me as odd that this kind of unrealistic depiction if the surface would have been in the movie, considering that after the Rangers and Lunar Orbiter probes showed that the surface is actually heavily eroded, not like the sharp rock spires and hard edges seen here.







The scenes of Floyd and company heading down into the excavation site of the Monolith, shows an accurate dark lunar dust, but no apparent effects from reduced 1/6th gravity. Kubrick went to great lengths with wire-work for the EVA scenes later in the movie, but not to show men bouncing on the moon! Why avoid something that reduced his level of realism? Because it would have been too hard for his film team to create a life-like effect.



Now, jumping ahead to the July 20, 1969, American astronauts are about to land on the moon. With bated breath at least one billion people on earth watch and listen for failure or success. A ghostly image appears on television; climbing down the LM ladder is Neil Armstrong. He steps off the landing pads, and proclaims “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” Pretty darn poetic, pretty darn epic. Men have now entered the realm of myth and legend.

The next day, I am completely sure, some folks already started to think that the thing was faked. “Going to the moon is next to impossible, they must have staged it.” Soon, people start to say that Stanley Kubrick may have been hired by NASA to make this ‘fake’ mission, and make it look totally believable. As a matter of fact, Arthur Clarke himself wrote the script (which he often complained about not getting his royalty check from the government). How then, did the director make this production a reality?

From the believers of this hoax concept, Kubrick created the sets, filmed the landing, and faked the photos all while filming ‘2001’. While it is true that ‘2001’ took four years to make, it seems to me unlikely that he would have had the time and energy to create such a monumental ruse look real. MGM paid nearly $95,000,000 in adjusted 1960s dollars to make ‘2001’. The US government spent $1.4 TRILLION dollars (adjusted for inflation) for the entire Apollo program. I am confident that Stanley Kubrick would have told them he would fly to the moon himself to film the landing!

So, even though the Apollo program cost 1.4 Trillion dollars; no actual lunar landings were accomplished. Hmm. Kubrick, the supposed director, walks away from all this hard work with what, a cool couple billion in the bank? No. He makes nothing. He can’t even scrape funding together for his dream project about Napoleon. Why would Kubrick, and by extension Clarke, agree to perpetrate such a fraud?
There is no reason at all.

Next week, how special effects technology couldn’t have been used to effectively fake the images we see today.

Very well written post. Have you have seen Kubrick's Odyssey? Most of what you say makes alot of sense and I would say I agree with some of it but there may be a couple things you missed.

Arthur Clarke himself wrote the script (which he often complained about not getting his royalty check from the government).

He wrote the script, much as Steven Spielberg wrote the script for the shining but Kubrick changed what he wanted when he wanted and there is mystery when it comes to some of those changes, some of which makes you scratch your head as to why the changes were made in the way that they were. I would outline them but Kubrick's Odyssey is a great film and I would encourage those interested in this subject to watch the film and draw there own conclusions.

There would have been no need for Clarke or Spielberg to be in on anything whatsoever. I'm not saying that the moon landings are fake, I'm saying, if they were, there would have been no need for the authors of the scripts to be told about any of it. Kubrick would have been the only one needed in such a scenario.

No. He makes nothing. He can’t even scrape funding together for his dream project about Napoleon.

Stanley Kubrick's dream project was 2001. It was his whole life, I would argue that this project far outweighed the Napoleon project and addressing the money issue, where as the government is concerned, can we be completely sure about the money issue? Obviously, you would not give him billions of dollars to just drop in some commercial account. Assuming any of this was true, you would have to also assume they would have hid and laundered the money with some competence.

It strikes me as odd that this kind of unrealistic depiction if the surface would have been in the movie, considering that after the Rangers and Lunar Orbiter probes showed that the surface is actually heavily eroded, not like the sharp rock spires and hard edges seen here.

An unkown place conjured up in the imagination of people who thought about the moon in that time period would have imagined more than likely the scene that Kubrick painted, making it foreboding was probably to entice the watcher into an emotion. A set comprised of slow rolling hills, flat terrain and lunar dust just doesn't capture the same feeling in my opinion and this was probably the thinking behind the scenes of the lunar surface.

I flagged this, then un-flagged you, personally.
Your thread has good effort put into it, but your head is stuck in a small box of reality because of your fantasy of how you think the people in power of this world really think. It's not worth the effort to repeat what's been repeated countless times on here, your mind is made up I think, so I'll just agree to disagree with you.

Kubrick, the supposed director, walks away from all this hard work with what, a cool couple billion in the bank? No. He makes nothing. He can’t even scrape funding together for his dream project about Napoleon. Why would Kubrick, and by extension Clarke, agree to perpetrate such a fraud?

Yes why? Because your story is fantasy. What was NASA going to do kill him if he spilled the beans? This is an old tired story, congratulations for telling it again for the billionth time.

Originally posted by JibbyJedi
I flagged this, then un-flagged you, personally.
Your thread has good effort put into it, but your head is stuck in a small box of reality because of your fantasy of how you think the people in power of this world really think. It's not worth the effort to repeat what's been repeated countless times on here, your mind is made up I think, so I'll just agree to disagree with you.

I agree with you 100 percent Jibby, I left my flag though because at least it is written intelligently and set up nicely but I too am tired of having the conversation, I am always bated when it comes to Kubrick though, I truly believe he is the most intelligent director in film history and I feel passion when it comes to discussions about him lol.

reply to post by Illustronic


I think you misunderstand, I do not think Kubrick directed the moon landings. I am stating my opinion in hopes of generating a good discussion.

reply to post by Helious


I gave him a star for the good effort in thread design, but I am hoarding my flag, because my votes counts damn it!

reply to post by Helious


Great points, especially on the moon's surface as depicted by Kubrick.

I think that if Arthur Clarke didn't know his script was used for Apollo 11-then he probably found out while appearing with Walter Cronkite during CBS' coverage of the event

Originally posted by NuminousCosmos
reply to post by Helious

 

Great points, especially on the moon's surface as depicted by Kubrick.

I think that if Arthur Clarke didn't know his script was used for Apollo 11-then he probably found out while appearing with Walter Cronkite during CBS' coverage of the event

The thing about Stanley Kubrick is that he had deep seeded roots with Free Masonry. What ties specifically is open to debate but you can see that hidden meanings and skewed hints at vague messages was extremely important to him. He was tormented, again, by what exactly is open to debate.

When watching his films, don't take anything for granted, question everything and when you think you have seen one of his films enough, watch it one more time. He knew things, things he wanted to say but couldn't and sadly, what those things were, we are left to speculate about but I'm sure that if you put enough work into it, you can put the pieces together for yourself. The one gift that Kubrick left us with is the truth but that truth must be discovered for yourself.......

Sir Arthur C. Clarke know the truth about Tycho & Europa....

Originally posted by Helious
Very well written post. Have you have seen Kubrick's Odyssey? Most of what you say makes alot of sense and I would say I agree with some of it but there may be a couple things you missed.

Arthur Clarke himself wrote the script (which he often complained about not getting his royalty check from the government).

He wrote the script, much as Steven Spielberg wrote the script for the shining but Kubrick changed what he wanted when he wanted and there is mystery when it comes to some of those changes, some of which makes you scratch your head as to why the changes were made in the way that they were.

The analogy is that Stephen King and Arthur C. Clarke wrote the original stories and Kubrick adapted the stories for film.

Kubrick changed the plot-- or added the plot.

Kubrick's version is more obviously a story about transcendence than Clarke's. The created joining with the Creator and becoming Creator.

If it was not so deeply serious a matter, one could titter and blush at the erotic docking sequences set to the Blue Danube Waltz-- the phallic Pan Am ship approaching the orbiting station and the parting moon based doors opening to accept the bulbous moon lander. And if the joyous climatic change from the romantic, steady and purposeful build-up in Johann Strauss' Waltz is missed on most listeners it was not missed by Kubrick. We are supposed to make the connection... so to speak.

So we see technology as ascending from the inanimate to the animate, and in the HAL 9000 we see technology ascending from the active but unconscious to the discerning, moralizing, conflicted, and self-directing. Overlapping this is the ascendance of man which both begins and ends the story. From apes warring over a watering hole to a fetus dwarfing the Earth with the power and thoughts to act on it-- with Godly benevolence.

Therefore, Kubrick, far more than Clarke, is focused on technology not as a measure of man's progress, but as a measure of man's transcendence-- not as a symbol of man's growth, but as an analogy of mankind's becoming Other.

The long psychedelic sequence in the film has a spiritual flavor that Clarke's published version lacks. In the book, we are given images of giant and extinct races of aliens, but with Kubrick, images are about the astronaut being changed-- becoming something wonderfully New. Kubrick has, in fact, remade the story as primarily spiritual-- about awakening, whereas Clarke's own ideology tends to eschew such contemplation with more emphasis on the organic-- evolution instead of transcendence.

There is, perhaps, a connection to the topic in all of that (not to mention it can make watching 2001: A Space Odyssey more fun!) in that Kubrick was a not technician for hire-- but a story teller. Kubrick has something to say and it was that passion which drove him to his perfectionism in his work. He picked King's The Shining not because he thought the story needed telling-- but because he had a better story to tell than did King.

Perhaps the most Kubrick-like story of Apollo 11 was not televised, and the communication link from Aldrin intentionally silent at NASA's request. Related to that intentional silence is the reading from the book, Genesis in a prior Apollo mission-- now that would have fit a Kubrick script-- but no one claims THAT beyond Low Earth orbit mission and its films and pictures were hoaxed. Most likely, that is unknown because the hoax blogs do not mention it.

Which reminds me... The actions of Buzz Aldrin inside the LM after landing but before exiting the craft and which NASA wanted no one to know about are part of history. Others have written about it and Buzz Aldrin talks about it but it serves no part in a moon landing hoax.

What is known of the events to which I refer make no sense at all in any hoax scenario. Private man, with his spiritual nature being expressed in a ancient rite. Kubrick would understand.

reply to post by Frira


Beautifully written. I agree with the philosophical statements you have made here...I have been a Clarke fan since third grade and a Kubrick aficionado since my teens. You've captured the rapture encoded in film and I appreciate you taking time to read what I've written here.

I guess my initial attempt with this thread was to poke holes in the "Kubrick did the moon landing" BS that I constantly see here on ATS. I have a second part with diagrams explaining 60s special effects and camera technology .Everything is ready to go for some future date-whenever it's needed

Originally posted by NuminousCosmos
reply to post by Frira

 

I guess my initial attempt with this thread was to poke holes in the "Kubrick did the moon landing" BS that I constantly see here on ATS. I have a second part with diagrams explaining 60s special effects and camera technology .Everything is ready to go for some future date-whenever it's needed

I had thought something like that might be where this thread was going.

I saw some good stuff from you on another thread about Apollo a day or two ago, so my appetite is engaged-- and thanks.

I flagged you simply because "everything's a conspiracy" guy took one away.

Cheers.

OK we are in some serious disagreement about this so you may as well bring on Part 2 straight-away.

So what you are saying is the reason Kubrick could not have faked the Apollo images we have seen is because "in "2001", the moon wasn't depicted the same way?"

And oh yeah "why would he do it?"

Those are the two pieces of evidence you offer up as to why you started denying ignorance and loving some truth.

Sorry, that's not even evidence, that's just some observations about the subject. And the "title" for Part 1 of your thread is Logic vs. Reason?? That's confusing at best.

My own opinion about the moon landings is that some of the footage we see was indeed faked, whether by Kubrick or someone else - it's obvious at times. That being said, I also believe that we did land men on the moon, and that some of the footage we see is genuine.

I try to remain open-minded and entertain any ideas or speculations if they are backed up with a "logical" or "reasonable" argument. To me that is what denying ignorance means. The minute you believe anything or any idea absolutely is the minute they have you.

And wth I will say what I really think, bring on the flamers.

I just watched 2001 again a few weeks ago, on Blu-ray. I encourage everyone to watch that on Blu-Ray it looks incredible. And no, the high-definition picture did not reveal any tell-tale signs of hidden meaning, but having also read a few of the Kubrick-related threads around here of late, I paid it a bit more attention than I had before.

And it is right in front of you. It is right there. Kubrick is telling you. What exactly he is telling us we may never know, but he knew and he is telling us. We can read the clues and try and take meaning, and even discuss it on the internet, but that is so far from what this thread is. This is hey everyone, everything you ever heard, don't worry, nothing to see here.

Well there is something to see.

People who went and saw 2001 in the theatres were treated to a blank black screen and the haunting music of Ligeti's Atmosphere for ten minutes before the movie started. A screen that is the same dimensions as the monolith from the movie itself. The music playing the same music from the scene of the apes gathered around the monolith, touching it, awed by it, some shying away, some bravely challenging it - the same way those expectant theatre goers gathered around a huge monolith and suspended their disbelief.

And then the movie begins. There is an eclipse and then there are several shots that establish the environment. Mostly panoramic vistas and such. But there are a lot of them. They were all shot using the front-projection technique and in quite a few of them it is hard to determine where the foreground and the screen meet it looks that good. The entire Dawn of Man segment was filmed using this technique in a studio.

So the point is, the beginning of the film is about a big monolith that makes ape-men smart.

The blank black screen the size of the monolith before the film starts is our monolith. So what did it show us?

reply to post by Helious

Stanley Kubrick's dream project was 2001. It was his whole life, I would argue that this project far outweighed the Napoleon project

You have a very narrow perspective on Stanley Kubrick's life. Just because you think 2001 validates your belief system doesn't mean it was Kubrick's whole life. Napoleon was his dream project:

www.taschen.com...

What masonic mysteries do you suppose it would have revealed? Don't you find it suspicious that he died before he could make it? If you're going to weave conspiracy theories, be creative.

I have posted part 2 here: www.abovetopsecret.com...

reply to post by JayDub113


Interesting answer...what do you think is on the Monolith we see?

reply to post by abeverage


Ha. I see a whole lot of things. What do you see?