[ExI] shortening attention spans

[spike]

...


> - seeing young people encounter Kubrick's 2001 for the first time is
instructive. Anders

Funny story: 2001 came out in 1968 or so as I recall.  It was just before
the moon landings, and being as I was in second grade and living on the
Space Coast of Florida, and liked AC Clarke, and space was the happening
thing, we looooved 2001.  Near the end of that film when Dave Bowman is in
the process of doing whatever the hell is happening right there, Kubric
decided to attempt an ethereal cinematic description of Clarke's already
vague prose using a color reversed image of what looked to us Florida kids
like the Everglades.  So the story was going along fine, all out in space
and such, then suddenly we were asking "Why are we flying upside down over
the Everglades with the wrong color filters on the cameras?"

The local theatres showed that film every day for months.  That crowd just
kept lapping it up, couldn't get enough 2001.  The only reason they ever did
take it away is that the stoners discovered the cool thing to do was "drop
acid"  or "turn on" I think they called it, and have the LSD hit right when
they went into the "psychedelic" bit there.  They reported that it was
"groovy" and "far out" and such, but Titusville was a flat top, squared off
military town, and by god they were just not having that kind of goings on.
So out went Kubric, and I don't think that local theatre ever did bring back
another Kubric film.  Can't trust em, dontcha know, even the name Kubric
sounds a little too much on the commie side, corrupt the youth and such.

{8^D

spike