April 19. Went up to the office with about three thousand words Stanley hasn’t read. The place is really humming now-about ten people working there, including two production staff from England. The walls are getting covered with impressive pictures and I already feel quite a minor cog in the works.
Some psychotic who insists that Stanley must hire him has been sitting on a park bench outside the office for a couple of weeks, and occasionally comes to the building. In self-defense, Stan has secreted a large hunting knife in his briefcase.
May 1. Found that a fire had broken out on the third floor of the Chelsea. Waited anxiously in the lobby while the firemen dealt with it . . . visions of the only complete copy of the MS going up in smoke….
May 2. Completed the Universe” chapter-will soon have all Part Three ready for typing, hurrah…. Stan phoned to say he liked the “Floating Island” sequence. Strange and encouraging how much of the material I thought I’d abandoned fits in perfectly after all.
May 3. Finished first draft of the runaway antenna sequence.
May 25. Now Stanley wants to incorporate the Devil theme from Childhood’s End….
June 7. Bad book review in Tribune-says I should stick to science exposition and am an amateur at fiction.
Late June. Read Victor Lyndon’s production notes; they left me completely overwhelmed. Glad that’s not my job. One scene calls for four trained warthogs.
On that note, more or less, I returned to Ceylon after an absence of over a year, and subsequently rejoined Stanley at the MGM studios at Boreham Wood, fifteen miles north of London, in August. His empire had now expanded vastly, the art department was in full swing, and impressive sets were being constructed. My time was now equally divided between the apparently never-ending chore of developing ideas with Stanley, polishing the novel, and almost daily consultations at the studio.
August 25. Suddenly realized how the novel should end, with Bowman standing beside the alien ship.
September 25. Visitors from NASA-Dr. George Mueller, Associate Administrator, and “Deke” Slayton (Director of Flight Crew Operations). Gave them the Grand Tour- they were quite impressed. George made several useful suggestions and asked wistfully if he could have the model of Discovery for his office when we’d finished with it. Deke was later reported to have said: “Stanley, I’m afraid you’ve been conned by a used capsule salesman.” An improbable story-I suspect the fine Italian hand of Roger Caras, Stanley’s vice-president i/c promotion.
October 1. Stanley phoned with another ending. I find I left his treatment at his house last night-unconscious rejection?
October 3. Stanley on phone, worried about ending . . . gave him my latest ideas, and one of them suddenly clicked-Bowman will regress to infancy, and we’ll see him at the end as a baby in orbit. Stanley called again later, still very enthusiastic. Hope this isn’t a false optimism: I feel cautiously encouraged myself.
October 5. Back to brood over the novel. Suddenly (I think) found a logical reason why Bowman should appear at the end as a baby. It’s his image of himself at this stage of his development. And perhaps the Cosmic Consciousness has a sense of humor. Phoned these ideas to Stan, who wasn’t too impressed, but I’m happy now.
October 15. Stan has decided to kill off all the crew of Discovery and leave Bowman only. Drastic, but it seems right. After all, Odysseus was the sole survivor….
October 17. For the first time, saw Stan reduced to helpless hysterics as we developed comic ideas. There will be no one in the hibernacula-all the trainees chickened out, but the mission had to go ahead regardless.
October 19. Collected by studio car, and spent all day working (or trying to work) with Stan. Despite usual crowds of people getting at him, long phone calls to Hollywood, and a “work-to- rule” the unions called, got a lot done and solved (again!) our main plot problems.
October 26. Had a discussion with Stanley over his latest idea-that Discovery should be nuclear- pulse-driven. Read a recently declassified report on this and was quite impressed-but the design staff rather upset.
November 10. Accompanied Stan and the design staff into the Earth-orbit ship and happened to remark that the cockpit looked like a Chinese restaurant. Stan said that killed it instantly for him and called for revisions. Must keep away from the Art Department for a few days.
November 16. Long session with Stanley discussing script. Several good ideas, but I rather wish we didn’t have any more.
November 18. Feeling rather stale-went into London and saw Carol Reed’s film about Michelangelo, The Agony and the Ecstasy. One line particularly struck me-the use of the phrase “God made Man in His own image.” This, after all, is the theme of our movie.
November 30. To the Oxford and Cambridge Club with Roger Caras and Fred Ordway (Technical Adviser) to meet Dr. Louis Leakey and his son Richard. Dr. Leakey is just as I imagined him-full of enthusiasm and ideas. He thinks that Man now goes back at least four to five million years. He also confided to me that he’d written a play-a fantasy about primitive man which he thought would make a fine movie. It’s about a group of anthropologists who are sent back into the past by a witch doctor. I said (breaking all my rules) that I’d be glad to see the MS-which is true.
December 16. My 48th birthday-and Somerset Maugham dies. Trying to make something of this (last of the competition?).
December 25. Christmas Day, ha-ha! Hacked my way to Jupiter-slow but steady going.
December 26. Working all day. Stan phoned to thank me for the presents and sent a driver to collect what I’d written. He called later to say that he didn’t think much of the dialogue. I agreed.
That Christmas of 1965 we were really under the gun, and no one had a holiday. Stanley was up against an unbreakable deadline. The enormous set of the TMA 1 excavation, containing the monolith found on the Moon, had been constructed at the Shepperton Studios, in South West London-and it had to be torn down by the first week of the New Year, so that another production could move in. Stanley had only a week to do all his shooting, for the second crucial encounter between Man and Monolith.
It was not until several years later that I remembered another association between Shepperton and space. If you turn to H. G. Wells’ masterpiece The War of the Worlds you will discover Chapter 12:-“What I saw of the Destruction of Weybridge and Shepperton.” This first of all descriptions of armored warfare is still quite terrifying to read:
The decapitated colossus reeled like a drunken giant; but it did not fall over. It recovered its balance by a miracle, and, no longer heeding its steps and with the camera that fired the Heat-Ray now rigidly upheld, it reeled swiftly upon Shepperton. The living intelligence-the Martian within the hood, was slain and splashed to the four winds of heaven, and the thing was now but a mere intricate device of metal whirling to destruction. It drove along in a straight line, incapable of guidance. It struck the tower of Shepperton Church, smashing it down as the impact of a battering ram might have done, swerved aside, blundered on, and collapsed with tremendous force into the river out of my sight.
A violent explosion shook the air, and a spout of water, steam, mud and shattered metal shot far up into the sky. As the camera of the Heat-Ray hit the water, the latter had immediately flashed into steam. In another moment a huge wave, like a muddy tidal bore but almost scaldingly hot, came sweeping round the bend….
Of course, now we have the heat ray, and we can do a lot better than Wells’ feeble Martians with a small tactical atomic bomb. Still, it’s not at all bad-for 1898….
MONOLITHS AND MANUSCRIPTS
I still have the call sheet for that first day’s work at Shepperton on a freezing December 29, 1965. For sentimental reasons-and because it is surely of interest even to the benighted inhabitants of that limbo once called (by one of Hollywood’s lady dragons) the “non-celluloid world”-I would like to reproduce it here. There are few better ways of conveying the behind-the- scenes work that went into every frame of the movie.
My diary records that first day in some detail:
December 29, 1965. The TMA 1 set is huge-the stage is the second largest in Europe, and very impressive. A 150 x 50 x 20-foot hole, with equipment scattered around it. (E.g. neat little electric-powered excavators, bulldozers, etc. which could really work on the Moon!) About a hundred technicians were milling around. I spent some time with Stanley, reworking the script-in fact we continued through lunch together. I also met the actors, and felt quite the proper expert when they started asking me astronomical questions. I stayed until 4 p.m.-no actual shooting by then, but they were getting near it. The spacesuits, back-packs, etc. are beautifully done, and TMA 1 is quite impressive-though someone had smeared the black finish and Stanley went on a rampage when I pointed it out to him.