Unlike many of the filmmakers I’ve written about in this series — Truffaut and Antonioni and the Archers, who I only just familiarized myself with — I am pretty well-acquainted with the works of Stanley Kubrick. In fact, I’m a big fan. The Shining is one of my all-time favorite horror movies (and still one of the scariest). I appreciate the kinky weirdness of Eyes Wide Shut. A Clockwork Orange is just madly brilliant. And in my estimation, Full Metal Jacket might be the second-best movie about Vietnam ever made. (Trailing Apocalypse Now, of course.)
But 2001: A Space Odyssey turned into 2001: A Sleep Odyzzzz… when I first saw it — yes, back in the year 2001. I was a teenager at the time, so my tastes perhaps had not fully matured. But I saw a lot of classic films back then, and 2001 was one of few that I just couldn’t stomach. “Why is the first 20 minutes a monkey playing with a bone?” I grumbled. “Why does it end with a baby flying through space?”
