1971 10 30, 54 years ago
At age 13, I first saw 2001, A Space Odyssey at the United Artists Heights theater in Little Rock, Arkansas. Televised science fiction, such as Star Trek, Lost in Space, and It’s About Time, where aliens, robots, and cavemen all spoke English better than I did, had not prepared me for Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.
When the film ended, I was somewhat bewildered even as I pondered the beautiful and awesome things I had just experienced. Years later, I felt similar sensations after The Rocky Horror Picture Show thanks to Susan Sarandon’s breasts.
In pursuit of understanding, I read Arthur C. Clarke’s novelization of the script, as well as the book he wrote about the movie, The Lost Worlds of 2001. Tim and I endlessly discussed the significance of individual shots and themes of the film and book. What an intellectual excursion it proved to be. I was enthralled.
A couple of times a year, the UA Cinema 150 theater would present midnight screenings of 2001. The theater had a 70-foot-wide screen that curved 120 degrees. If you sat close, the picture would wrap past your field of vision on both sides. The feeling of immersion was fantastically intense.
My friend Tim and I scurried to be first in line for the midnight shows, running to get front row seats before the drug fans could beat us.
Why the front row? To experience the wrap-around light show in the final minutes of the film while high! Drug fans high, not Tim and me high. The closest we ever got to that was mainlining quarts of Dr. Pepper.
Our senior year of high school, Science Fiction was offered as an English class. Honestly! Science Fiction! In Arkansas! Someone in the school board must have had a momentary lapse of judgement. Bless him, that subversive tool of Satan. I hope they let him live.
Our teacher, Miss Nancy Crary, informed Tim and me that we knew considerably more about SF than she, and asked if we would help. We would teach Ray Bradbury’s The Illustrated Man, while she would teach our beloved 2001.
We begged her to swap, but she declined, stating that she had to be very careful how she taught 2001. Possible immolation upon a pile of Isaac Asimov novels by angry Southern Baptists held no appeal for her. Not at her salary, at least.
Tim and I resigned ourselves. There was no way we could avoid the idea at the heart of the story; evolution. Also, aliens. The conceit was that aliens were shaping human evolution, even if they were represented by a 9-foot black slab showing no real interest in anal probes.
I’m not sure which was more offensive to the Arkansan religious authorities of the time, aliens or evolution. Mentioning either could get you into serious trouble, and combing them was especially perilous. Of course, had Charles Darwin teamed with H. G. Wells to do so, The Origin of Species movie rights would have been exorbitant!
Years later, I shared this story with Ray Bradbury. Amused, he was also relieved that I survived high school intellectual witch hunts with minimal trauma. Indeed, I was lucky to have done so, but it was not without help and guidance.
Thanks again, Miss Crary, for saving Tim and me from our nerd selves. Had we burned at the stake then, we totally would have missed Susan Sarandon’s amazing acting skills.
