Script To Screen: “2001: A Space Odyssey”

A pivotal scene from the 1968 movie 2001: A Space Odyssey, screenplay by Stanley Kubrick and Arthur C. Clarke.

Summary: Humanity finds a mysterious, obviously artificial, object buried beneath the Lunar surface and, with the intelligent computer H.A.L. 9000, sets off on a quest.

Here astronaut Dave has decided he needs to deactivate H.A.L.:

Here is the script excerpt:

This is some sort of cleaned up version of the shooting script:

Here is the movie version of the scene:

Two obvious things to note:

• The script format is completely different than that for a standard screenplay, resembling something more like a play than a movie script. You can check out the original script here.
• The script version and movie version are considerably different. For example in the movie, H.A.L. provides a kind of confession of aberrant behavior. That is not present in the script. Also whereas in the script, H.A.L. takes a more offensive approach — “Don’t you understand?… I will become childish… I will become nothing” — in the movie, the computer is more plaintive, repeating the line, “I’m afraid. I’m afraid.” In fact, there is a lot more dialogue and the moment is milked longer than indicated in the script.

Perhaps there are some fans of this movie who know the backstory, but my guess is because H.A.L.’s dialogue is all V.O., Kubrick could test out various cuts of this scene along with any amount or lines to see what played best, no need for re-shoots, rather just a variety of V.O. to match a variety of editorial cuts.

What other differences did you notice between script and screen?

One of the single best things you can do to learn the craft of screenwriting is to read the script while watching the movie. After all a screenplay is a blueprint to make a movie and it’s that magic of what happens between printed page and final print that can inform how you approach writing scenes. That is the purpose of Script to Screen, an ongoing series on Go Into The Story where we analyze a memorable movie scene and the script pages that inspired it.

For more Script To Screen articles, go here.