• Listen: Mike Kaplan describes how his single written for 2001: A Space Odyssey came to be.
    ***
    “I’ll still love you in 2001,”
    were the words ending the proposed single MGM Records president Mort Nasatir had brought for Stanley Kubrick to approve.
    Stanley and I avoided each other, listening to the song intended to capitalize on his film phenomenon that was changing the way people looked at movies. As it ended, we locked eyes, incredulous at the banality we’d heard.
    In his calm, deliberate, inarguably logical voice,  Stanley turned to Nasatir and said,
    “Mort, I don’t think so.  Let’s see what The Beatles come up with.”
    There had been rumors and then a communication with Kubrick that The Beatles were writing a single about the film, sort of confirmed by John Lennon’s statement,
“I see 2001 every day.”  But nothing had been produced thus far.
    Nasitir took the record with him as he left the 26th floor conference room of the MGM Building.  The 26th floor held the offices of MGM’s advertising-publicity department and their conference room, the largest meeting space in the building. It faced a bank of elevators, providing quick access to visitors and to the key MGM employees who were facilitating the release of 2001.
    Immediately after Kubrick’s arrival in New York, the conference room became his headquarters – a cousin to the War Room in DR. STRANGELOVE –with multiple phone lines and enough wall space to hold the dozens of clip boards holding every review and article and 2001 ad, in chronological order, from newspapers and magazines throughout the country.  Stanley studied these daily.
    My office was 40 feet away through the publicity wing. Having gained Stanley’s confidence and respect, I became 2001’s marketing strategist, spending most days in the war room, brainstorming and strategizing how to creatively maximize 2001’s evolving cultural impact.  The film was the center of my life.
    It was an exhilarating period, as 2001’s importance grew from an initially confounded critical reception to an awesome appreciation of 2001’s profound visuals and revolutionary style that audiences contemplated and debated.
     “Did you believe that?” he said, shaking his head at the Nasatir fiasco.
    Changing tones, he looked at me with his piercing eyes that held you transfixed:
    “I hear you write music. Why don’t you write something?”
    2.
    Stanley never asked a question without a purpose.  I was shaken – first that he knew about my music, which was very private, and secondly, that he thought I’d be capable of writing something appropriate.
    Surprised, embarrassed and uncomfortable that a personal side was being exposed, I mumbled, “I don’t know what I could do. I lean towards standards.”
    His penetrating gaze didn’t flinch. It was his “That answer’s not good enough” look.
    “I’ll see,” I stammered.
    Years later, looking at intended artwork for the poster for A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, we were discussing potential lettering.  Stanley directed, “ When you meet the artist, ask him to give the logo a shot. He’ll back off, saying he doesn’t do title treatments, but I’ve found that when someone creative gets it right in one area, they often come up with something inspired in a related area.”
    After prodding airbrush artist Philip Castle, his result, with some refinement, became the internationally recognized CLOCKWORK logo within his startling design. I subsequently followed Stanley’s advice with other poster artists on future campaigns and a perfect title treatment often materialized.
    Stanley knew that 2001 was in my blood; that my instincts had affected the film’s continuing build.  He was betting I’d bite.
    In a fog, I retreated to my walk-up apartment, which was two brownstones away from the MGM Building on the same side of 55th street.  On intense days, I’d never cross a street, having a business lunch or dinner at San Marco or Geroges Rey, top restaurants on the street level of those brownstones. They often became East Coast extensions of MGM’s commissary.
    My apartment was a small one-bedroom, the bed squeezing the walls. The bigger room had a tiny kitchen —  providing a constant cockroach battle – a wall of stereo equipment, a sofa and an old upright piano.
    Stanley had a vast network, encyclopedic knowledge and a soft-spoken persistence in gleaning every bit of information that might interest him from everyone he encountered. But how did he find out I composed?  It could have come from Joanna Ney, my close friend and colleague who was MGM’s magazine contact, and was similarly impassioned about 2001 and Kubrick. I never asked her. Or once, when Mort Seagl became the number two man in the department, he asked what I really wanted to do and I said, “write a Broadway musical.”
    3.
    Stanley’s sourcing still remains a mystery but his proposition churned in my head. How could I capture 2001? It was out of my league. Impossible. It would have to be original, conveying the film’s quest, spirit…symphonic, operatic, transforming. Unique in structure.  Impossble….Out of my league.
    It became a secret challenge. I began to think about it every spare minute.
    Among the major breakthroughs that changed  the perception about 2001 was critic at large John Allen’s unexpected full page essay in The Christian Science Monitor. We had used his piece to counter the negative press that greeted the film. In it, Allen made the case that Kubrick had taken film to new heights, using a non-verbal, non-linear design that placed us in another world, encompassing exploration, evolution, metaphysics, re-incarnation.
    The song that seemed closest to what could be achieved was MACARTHUR PARK,  Jim Webb’s abstract, fully orchestrated ballad performed by actor Richard Harris. It was seven minutes long and broke all the rules for what could be a popular success.
    Using Allen and Webb as jumping off points, a structure began to take shape. For me, 2001 was a film of discovery, of man’s potential, his violence, his arrogance, his place in the universe. As the film progressed, one was drawn to higher levels of understanding and awareness.
    The music began to build in repetitive melodic sections reflecting the film’s layers, each a stage of progression… RIDE, GLIDE, FLY, SOAR. Chords were used dramatically. Inspired by Stanley’s use of Strauss, one section was tried in waltz tempo as the spacecraft danced to “The Blue Danube.”  It was developing its own structure.
     The entry point was the title itself. Between the written editorials and how fans spoke of it, 2001 was mainly called “two thousand one”. However, some said “two thousand AND one” or “twenty-o-one.” (The early aught 21st century years are now most often cited– O7, 08, 09, etc.)
     These different pronunciations seemed a parallel to the ways 2001 stimulated the film’s many interpretations and in repeating them, signaled an entry to another level the song was addressing.
    It began to consume me and I’d spend lunch at the apartment pounding away. Ned Stewart, the novelist who lived below, knocked on the door about three weeks into this compulsion to ask what was I playing. When I said it was about 2001, he seemed to understand and nodded.
    4.
    No one else heard it or knew what I was trying to do, aside from Audi Marks, my girlfriend, who encouraged me to continue, though she had little escape in the cramped apartment. Her brother, Ira, had some music contacts and got excited when I asked him about making a demo. His girlfriend, Niaomi Gardner, a former folk singer, had a deep, appealing voice with substantial range.
    We had no money; Ira called out some favors. I’d have to play piano in order to save costs.  The arrangement was automatic as the song developed. The four movements and the coda would run over four minutes. It became a family enterprise.
    We rehearsed for a week before the recording date. Naiomi got the nuances in rhythm and feeling. Ira found a professional musician to play the harpsichord, which would add body to the arrangement and complement the piano. That made me more nervous as I was already reluctant to be the pianist.
    The date arrived. Audi and I met Ira, Naiomi and the harpsichordist at the studio along with the engineer, whom Ira knew and who had seen 2001 three times. We’d only have to pay a nominal fee for the studio as the session was scheduled for a late hour.
    We laid down several takes. I felt buoyed hearing the harpsichord, which enriched the music and made me feel it was being accepted by a professional musician. I forgot I was the composer and concentrated on the playing to relax.  It was the only way to quell the butterflies in my stomach.
    When we finished, the engineer came out smiling.  His verdict, “It sounds like the movie.”
    ***
    It was four or five weeks after Stanley had posed the question. I hadn’t spoken about it since.
    The next morning, I told him, warily, that I had composed a song and made a demo.
     Without any hesitation, as if he were expecting it, he said, “Come out to the house this weekend. I’ll hear it there.”
    Stanley had moved to England before making LOLITA, shooting all of his subsequent films there, always finding inventive ways of creating the setting in England – whether it was New England for LOLITA or Vietnam for FULL METAL JACKET. In 1968, when 2001 premiered, he hadn’t been in New York for more than a decade.
    5.
    He arrived by ship, cutting en route, planning to live at the Pierre Hotel with his wife, Christianne, and daughters, Katharine, Anya and Vivien, through the first wave of key city openings of his five-years-in-the making epic.
    Stanley was very conscious of his expenses which would be charged against the film. He was shocked at the cost of food and room service at the Pierre, especially the $1.50 for fresh orange juice ($9.70 today). He compared the menus of 20 equivalent hotels intending to move to the hotel that would be more reasonable. As the juice prices were all in the ballpark and as it was obvious he was going to be in New York for longer than he originally planned, he decided it would be more cost effective to rent a house and moved with his family to Great Neck on Long Island.
    As anything Kubrick was instant news, it was soon reported that he had rented the house that F. Scott Fitzgerald had used as the setting for Jay Gatsby’s mansion in THE GREAT GATSBY.  Pure press fabrication.
    ***
    Ira and I drove out on Sunday afternoon to present Stanley with the song. The house was large and there was a sort of gazebo at the end of the property facing Long Island sound. It could have held the light signaling “Daisy” in the novel.
    Stanley brought us into the den – a large room with lots of windows facing the water, sparsely furnished. He offered a drink. Anya then appeared carrying a small victrola made of light wood, which she placed on a small table against a wall.
    I was certain we’d hear 2001 on an advanced stereo system, approaching the sound in the recording studio, not a portable phonograph made in the 1950’s, which came with the rented house.
    I explained the concept – the success of MACARTHUR PARK; the attempt to write something different that would call up the film and do it justice. We sat down near the record player and put on the demo. The sound was tinny and small. I was in shock.
    He asked to hear it again. I handed him the lyric sheet. He read it and asked about “a garden of personal mirrors.” The line was inspired by an image in Jupiter Space, as six diamond shape mirrors go in and out of brightness. It’s one of the song’s final lines, meant to convey 2001’s transformative power.
    “That’s very good, poetic.”
    We played the demo again. It didn’t sound any better. The speakers were fuzzy; the needle was probably old. All I could think of was the irony of the situation, given the film’s technical brilliance.
    6.
    He then delivered his opinion, “I know what makes a hit single. The music isn’t catchy enough and the words won’t mean anything to anyone who hasn’t seen the film.”
    I was devastated and speechless.
    The song was meant to capture the spirit of 2001 for those who had seen the film, and to then spread the word to new audiences. And it needed to be heard on a decent sound system. I thought Stanley wrong.
    The rejection was too painful, gut-wrenching, the reason I kept my music private.
    I didn’t propose hearing it with proper equipment.
    Stanley offered more refreshment, thanked me, and offered to pay the cost.
    “That’s not necessary.” I said.
    I made a fast exit.  We never discussed it again.
     * * *
    It didn’t alter our relationship. I spent the next year and a half nurturing 2001, conceiving  the successful re-launch in 1970 with the iconic STARCHILD/Ultimate Trip campaign. The next year, he asked me to leave MGM, to work directly with him on CLOCKWORK, writing I was the only one who knew how to handle a Kubrick film. It was an opportunity I couldn’t resist.
    The next two years I was consumed by CLOCKWORK. Afterwards, Stanley and I remained very good friends, speaking at length on his legendary calls, visiting when I was in England. The 2001 single rarely entered my mind.
    Then, in 1994, while working on SHORT CUTS, I played it for Hal Wilner, the eclectic music producer whom Robert Altman had asked to be the film’s music director. The thought was to record it with a full orchestra, including a waltz tempo for the second movement. Hal responded positively. I put it on a back burner.
    Then, as the new century approached, I thought it would be perfect to play at midnight as we entered 2001.  I called Gary Calamar, the adventurous DJ on KCRW in Los Angeles and future soundtrack producer, who liked the idea and played it several times, as 2000 turned into 2001. The response was good.
     * * * * *
    7.
    Postscript: Stanley moved to a large estate in St. Albans in the late seventies. When I first visited him at Childwickberry House, he gave me a tour of the mansion, outbuildings and grounds, the boy from the Bronx, almost in awe of his surroundings, wryly and humbly describing it, as “something out of Evelyn Waugh.”
    Later, he asked if I’d like to look at CAPTAIN BLOOD with him. John Calley, Warner Bros.’ production head, thought it might be a genre to modernize. Always loving swashbucklers growing up, it was exciting thinking Stanley might find the prospect appealing. We settled into a viewing in a comfortable room with a screen  for the 16mm. print Calley had sent. An assistant set up the projector and started the film, leaving once it began.
    We were enjoying CAPTAIN BLOOD but about 15 minutes into the movie, everything stopped, the projector jammed.  Stanley turned on the lights, I could see he was trying to work out the problem. The projector was basic, not many moving parts. Ten minutes of Kubrick attempts to fix the problem ensued before giving up, apologizing. No one was around who could fix it.
    It struck me as ironic that the man who was a technical genius and a perfectionist, was stymied by the workings of a basic 16mm. projector. And it called up that Sunday afternoon on Long Island when a primitive victrola was brought out to listen to music that was intended to capture the experience of the most groundbreaking film in memory.
    It was also very human, very Kubrickian – for within his virtuoso, envelope-pushing filmmaking, all his movies have touchstones of emotional familiarity – birthdays in 2001; Beethoven in CLOCKWORK ORANGE; the loss of a child in BARRY LYNDON; ‘Mickey Mouse’ in FULL METAL JACKET; “Here’s Johnny!” in The SHINING.
    They ground the audience to accept the new life they are witnessing on screen.
     * * *
    About to enter Kubrick’s world again, with a vast 2001 exhibit opening in New York for a six month engagement at the Museum of the Moving Image, I listed to the single again, remembering the inspiring times with Stanley and those creative weeks of trying to meet his challenge at the piano .  .  .
    “It sounds like the movie,” said the studio engineer.
    I know it doesn’t sound like anything else or how I managed to work it out.
    I could never do it again
    * * * * *
    Mike Kaplan