Most folks know that Stanley Kubrick trimmed 29 minutes from
2001: A Space Odyssey immediately after its premiere. What's less well known is that the original cut was shipped to and screened in multiple cities, where it played for as long as a week.
I saw the original cut of 2001, at the Cinerama Theater in Boston, probably on Saturday, April 13, 1968, just weeks before my 14th birthday. When I saw the film a second time, a year or two later, there were two changes that absolutely startled me. The first was the well-known insertion of the low angle shot of the monolith as Moonwatcher ponders the use of a bone as a weapon. I remember thinking, I don’t remember that at all! At the time, I was unaware that the film had been re-edited.
Descriptions of the other well-established cuts (see the IMBD "alternate versions" page, or www.underview.com/bhpalltrims.html) all ring true to me, but, except for the added title cards, I did not notice them at the time—testimony to their correctness. (The title cards I thought I might have forgotten.)
Near the end of the movie, though, there was another change that so startled and bothered me that I was convinced I was watching an adulterated print. And this change, as far as I can tell with the powers of Google, has never been described anywhere. By anybody.
In the original cut, HAL is absolutely silent as Bowman prepares to enter his chamber and deactivate him. HAL’s monologue that starts at 1:50:06 (in the original DVD release in the Kubrick box set) (“I know everything hasn’t been quite right with me”) is absent. Note that the shot of HAL’s eye in this sequence (to establish that he has a presence in the antechamber and could watch and talk to Bowman) is a closeup insert (actually an addition to the re-edited cut); it’s never established where in the antechamber the eye is because there wasn’t one in the original cut (and if you watch that scene, it’s quite mysterious where the eye might be, in fact). There’s nothing on the soundtrack but Bowman’s breathing as he enters the chamber and uses his tool to begin deactivating HAL, module by module.
I have a pretty vivid memory of HAL starting his monologue (retained intact, just moved on the soundtrack relative to the visuals) after several modules had been deactivated. Watching the existing cut, I’m reasonably certain that it originally started at about 1:52:14, when we see Bowman react with a glance. That means that about 2:08 was cut.
This re-alignment of audio to video was accomplished by a cut at 1:53:12, between the shot from behind Bowman, when he’s extracted half the modules in the top row, to the overhead shot when he has finished the top row and is halfway through the second row. That sort of elision is extremely uncharacteristic of the editing style of the movie, which favors long, complete, unbroken sequences. And in fact, as I remember the original cut, we saw every module coming out -- I have a pretty good memory of a long shot of Bowman floating in the chamber and continuing the deactivation.
Is this clear? To tighten this sequence, Kubrick trimmed 2:08 of visuals from the middle of HAL's deactivation, and he took the audio of that 2:08 and placed it over the preceding 2:08 of the movie, causing HAL's monologue to start as Bowman is entering the antechamber to deactivate him, rather than after the deactivation has started. And -- perhaps more importantly to the perceived pacing -- 2:08 of soundtrack that consisted of nothing but Bowman breathing was cut.
Does the evidence of the film support my memory? Absolutely.
First of all, 2:08 seems right as the length of the elided portion. Bowman inserts the tool to extract the first module at 1:51:43 and the 9th module (having skipped one) at 1:52:52, so he is extracting a module per 8.5 seconds. (In the shot at 1:53:12, fewer than 9 modules appear to be out; this appears to be a continuity error and may have been introduced in the re-edit). The next time we see a good view of all the modules, it is at 1:53:13 + 2:08 = 1:55:21 of the original cut, so 2:29 have passed, and a further 15 modules have been extracted. We would have expected 149 / 8.5 = 17 or 18 at the rate he was going, but there were modules he skipped over (presumably those that are the equivalent of HAL's brainstem and run the ship's life support system) and the extra 20 seconds are easily explained as the time it takes Bowman to skip over those modules, or because he has slowed his pace as he tires, or (most likely of all) because of the leeway in editing between shots. The key point is that 2:08 is absolutely in the ballpark as the time required to extract the modules that comprise the difference between the shots on either side of the edit.
But there is also a smoking gun. Note that in the final cut, the pitch of HAL’s voice has lowered and his speech (“Dave. Stop. Stop, will you?”) has slowed before Bowman has extracted a single module. That makes no sense; the slowed and altered speech has to be a product of the deactivation.
The entire sequence played out differently. In the original cut, HAL’s assertion “I feel much better now. I really do” happens after Bowman has extracted Memory Terminal modules 6 through 3, and is hugely ironic and pathetic. “I can see you’re really upset about this” was originally an understatement so massive it would have been comic if it weren’t so sad, where in the re-edit it’s perhaps too perceptive. “I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over,” in the re-edit, is just an attempt to ward off deactivation before the fact, and comes across as defensive and self-interested, while in the original, it is HAL’S reaction to the feeling of being deactivated, and it is almost heartbreaking. (And note that there is a closeup of Bowman at 1:52:27 that in the re-edit serves no clear purpose, but when HAL's monologue is delayed 2:08, which is to say in the original edit, it shows us Bowman's reaction, or, rather, his refusal to react, to this one part of the monologue that is about Bowman rather than itself). When HAL finally just asks Dave to stop (in a clearly altered voice) when Bowman is much more than halfway through the deactivation process, the alteration of his voice is an unexpected but very clear consequence of the deactivation, and it is again actually rather sad.
I have been carrying this profoundly vivid memory, and telling this tale, for years, but it wasn't until this morning that I went to the DVD to see just how much sense I could make of it. I am very pleased to see that there is not only objective evidence for my memory in the existing cut, but that it’s even possible to nail down the location and length of the edit and see how the audio and video originally synched. I really believe that the original sequence was much better than the re-edit: the only mistake Kubrick made in trimming the film. It bothered the hell out of my the second time I saw the movie, and it bothers me to this day.