While here in Toronto introducing rare 70mm screenings of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey, documentarian Douglas Trumbull dropped a bombshell.
While preparing a now-aborted documentary on the making of the film Trumbull and his partner David Larson learned that seventeen minutes of footage cut from the film by Kubrick shortly after its release has been re-discovered by Warner Brothers. The footage is apparently in mint condition and was stored - bizarrely - in a Kansas salt mine vault.
While there's no firm word on what will happen to the footage now that it is back in WB hands it seems like a safe bet that we'll be seeing an expanded version of Kubrick's masterpiece somewhere in the not too distant future.
While preparing a now-aborted documentary on the making of the film Trumbull and his partner David Larson learned that seventeen minutes of footage cut from the film by Kubrick shortly after its release has been re-discovered by Warner Brothers. The footage is apparently in mint condition and was stored - bizarrely - in a Kansas salt mine vault.
While there's no firm word on what will happen to the footage now that it is back in WB hands it seems like a safe bet that we'll be seeing an expanded version of Kubrick's masterpiece somewhere in the not too distant future.
Cut by Kubrick after its release?
Now I'm curious, because I've never heard about any cuts after the production process was finished, and i'm confident the version out now is actually the film Stanley Kubrick intended to make.
It would be surprising if the footage would explain the story as well as Arthur C. Clarke's book did (to my astonishment the novel reads almost as easy like I'd imagine a "The Five in Space" by Enid Blyton would), but my guess is it would make the movie even more obtuse and long.
Then again that's fun too...
Anyway, I'm looking forward to Warner's 45th (or 50th if I'm unlucky) anniversary's Special Edition Bluray. It will be housed inside a replica monolith and contain both versions of the film as well as Trumbull's finished documentary.
OK, that's wishful thinking on my part but you know you'd want it!
Indeed I do!
Always wondered why WB holds on to awesome asian movies and never releases them. Now I understand: they just don't remember where they stored it. If this is how they archive a Kubrick film, there's no telling where they keep all those unreleased kung fu movies.
The footage was actually found twenty years ago. The salt mine in question is actually a massive temperature-controlled vault that houses a ton of archived film materials (including, at one point, the Johnny Carson shows), so it's not that bizarre. The cut footage is apparently the much-discussed "post-premiere" edits, which are basically just extended versions of existing scenes and nothing that really alters or clarifies the story.