An Ape Odyssey

2001: A Space Odyssey and Planet of the Apes were released the same week in April, 1968. I had the good fortune, at the tender age of seven, to see them both that year: A double feature. I don’t remember which movie screened first. I do however, remember feeling as if I had tripped and fallen into a deep, dark rabbit hole. During the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” sequence, I recall closing my eyes from fear of that unknown.
What was beyond the infinite?
Planet of the Apes, although it did have heightened moments of suspense – The spacecraft crash; The first roundup of humans; Charlton Heston escaping through Ape City, culminating with “Get your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape;” And of course the final twist: A half-buried Statue of Liberty – What struck me more was the young lust I felt for Nova – Linda Harrison. I wanted to be T-a-y-l-o-r on horseback, with the raven-haired Nova clutching my waist, as we embarked on an epic journey Beyond the Planet of the Apes.

But then there was HAL. And now I think 2001, must have been the 2nd feature – How could it have been, otherwise? HAL lulled me into a meditative anxiety, the first half of the film. I was f-e-e-l-i-n-g-s-l-e-e-p-y… But then, with one cut of Franke Poole’s lifeline, I lurched awake. Something was happening. My stomach started churning. “Dave, please stop.” After he and I somehow managed to get through the pod bay door without our helmets, and then past the infinite, we landed up in some strange sterile room lit from the bowels of the renaissance.

My mind, like HAL’s, was blown apart. That night, I had a difficult time falling asleep. Every shadow on the wall was either a monkey, or a monolithic slab of unknown origin. When I did sleep, nightmarish images of Dr. Zaius chasing me through color-soaked corridors of prehistoric deserts and Peter Max pools of acid, shook my cerebral cortex. I woke up in a sweat and stumbled into my mother’s room where, unbeknownst to me, she and my step-father were having their own difficulties navigating the darkest regions of Jupiter Apeland.

“Mom… I can’t sleep,” I whined. She woke up, her mouth agape in horror as she looked across the room at me. The shadows on the wall came to life. My mother pointed, and screamed. My step-father leapt to his feet. I cried as they jumped up and down on the bed like two screaming extras from a Godzilla movie, running away from a Gorilla army led by the HAL 9000 computer.

Twelve years later – I’m in my second year in college. Baseball is on my mind day and night, and yet I know that this will probably be my last year playing second base. One night after a double-header, I saw that the school was having a free screening of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I had seen it a few times since ‘the premiere’ in 1968 – mostly on television, though. I couldn’t pass up a chance to see it in the theatre again. It was a terrible print, filled with scratches and splices that competed with the over-modulated strains of Strauss and Ligeti.

The next morning I found the professor who taught the only cinema history and production class the college offered, and told him I wanted to make movies.