2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

Dr. Floyd: [prerecorded message speaking through TV on board Discovery while Bowman looks on] Good day, gentlemen. This is a prerecorded briefing made prior to your departure and which for security reasons of the highest importance has been known on board during the mission only by your H-A-L 9000 computer. Now that you are in Jupiter's space and the entire crew is revived it can be told to you. Eighteen months ago the first evidence of intelligent life off the Earth was discovered. It was buried 40 feet below the lunar surface near the crater Tycho. Except for a single very powerful radio emission aimed at Jupiter the four-million year old black monolith has remained completely inert. Its origin and purpose are still a total mystery.

---

[choosing sandwiches from a cooler while flying over the lunar surface]
Dr. Floyd: What's that? Chicken?
Dr. Bill Michaels: Something like that. Tastes the same anyway.

---

Dr. Floyd: [after completing the space station's voice-print identification] See you on the way back.

---

read more quotes from 2001: A Space Odyssey...

Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick disagreed on what HAL's birthday should be. Kubrick wanted HAL to be about the age of a child, so his death would have more emotional impact. Clarke insisted such an old computer would not be used for an important mission. In the book, HAL's age was four years (12 January 1997), while in the movie it was nine years (12 January 1992). This disagreement resurfaced nearly thirty years later when film critic Roger Ebert held a birthday party for HAL 9000 by screening 2001 in Urbana, Illinois in 1997, the date and place of HAL's birth in the novel (Ebert was also born in Urbana). Clarke and Kubrick were both invited. Clarke accepted his invitation and made an appearance at the festivities via satellite, but Kubrick declined, stating that they missed HAL's birthday in 1992. Another inconsistency in this scene is the name of HAL's first instructor. It is Mr. Langley in this movie but is Dr. Chandra in all other books and movies in this series. Since HAL is saying all this while being shut down, this could be interpreted as a result of memory failure.
Marvin Minsky, one of the pioneers of neural networks who was also an adviser to the filmmakers, almost got killed by a falling wrench on the set.
MGM took a four page advertisement in the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Star to launch its publicity campaign for 2001: A Space Odyssey during 25th February 1968.
read more facts about 2001: A Space Odyssey...