Welcome to ODYSSEY ~ KEIR DULLEA ONLINE @keirdullea.org a site dedicated to the career of actor Keir Dullea. Best known for his role as Commander Dave Bowman in Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece 2001: A Space Odyssey. In a career that has spanned five decades, Keir has worked in film and television including Law & Order, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, Castle, Damages, The Hoodlum Priest, Bunny Lake Is Missing, The Fox, Paperback Hero, David & Lisa, Madame X, Isn't It Delicious, and the sequel to 2001, 2010: Odyssey Two. Keir's favourite medium is the stage where he's starred in such projects as the original production of Butterflies Are Free, On Golden Pond, Cat On A Hot Tin Roof, P.S. Your Cat Is Dead, Doubles, Dr. Cook's Garden, I Never Sang for My Father, The Shawshank Redemption, Tales from Hollywood, The Cherry Orchard and many other workshop productions.
Upcoming Projects
Film:HBO'S Fahrenheit 451 playing The Historian Status: Post-Production
ODYSSEY ~ KEIR DULLEA ONLINE @ keirdullea.org is a website dedicated to the work of American actor Keir Dullea. I am in no way affiliated with his person, his management, nor his family. All content, except otherwise noted, is copyrighted to their original owners and no infringement is intended and no rights implied. Content contained within are subject to fair use and used here either in whole or in part as a commentary on the work and career of Keir Dullea.
Actors from a Kubrick classic offer details of personal space
Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood visited Australia to discuss their roles in one of the most iconic films of all time, Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey.
There are many distinctive elements to Stanley Kubrick’s 1968 2001: A Space Odyssey – from extraordinary visual effects to challenging themes, from brilliant production design to inventive use of music. One of its most distinctive details is the soft, deceptively calm voice of HAL, the super computer, who suddenly goes rogue during the space mission that takes up the second half of the film.
Yet it’s not a voice the people making the movie ever heard on set. Keir Dullea and Gary Lockwood, both 77, played the two astronauts, Dave Bowman and Frank Poole, whose encounters with HAL are part of cinema history. But Kubrick hadn’t found the voice he wanted for HAL, they recall, so during production various people delivered HAL’s dialogue.
Dullea – whose character hears that famous, ominous line ”I’m afraid I can’t do that, Dave” – often found himself talking to the first assistant director, Derek Cracknell, whose Cockney accent he’s quick to imitate. ”It was like working with Michael Caine,” he says. ”In my case,” says Lockwood, ”Stanley played HAL with me a couple of times.”
At first, Kubrick thought of using a female voice, and calling the computer Athena. Then he was going to cast American actor Martin Balsam, but felt he sounded too New York. Nigel Davenport was on set for a week, Dullea says, before Kubrick decided he was too English.
It wasn’t until post-production that Kubrick settled on Canadian actor Douglas Rain.
Dullea and Lockwood are in Melbourne this week to do a Q&A session after a screening of a 70mm print at the Astor Theatre on Friday, and to appear at Supanova pop culture expo at the Showgrounds at the weekend.
They are happy to talk about the tiniest detail of 2001, to reflect on what Lockwood calls ”a societal game-changer”, and to talk about a director who was open to anything and everything. And there are new things for them to learn about the film after all this time.
Dullea mentions the cut between the end of the first sequence and the beginning of the second, in which a bone tossed into the air by a murderous ape ”morphs into a space vehicle. That wasn’t just any space vehicle,” he says. ”I’ve only recently discovered that it is a nuclear weapon in constant orbit around the Earth.” There is more and more to uncover, both men say, every time a new generation comes to the movie. And they’re always happy when they know people are seeing it on the big screen, as Kubrick intended.
I have a review of Keir’s upcoming film SPACE STATION 76 where he plays the part of Mr. Marlow. Not sure of what the film is about, but one of the influences mentioned was the 70s science fiction show Space: 1999. I used to watch this show and it was really good. It starred then husband and wife acting team Martin Landau as Cmdr. John Koenig and Barbara Bain as Dr. Helena Russell. The two of them helped the marooned inhabitants of Moonbase Alpha and its aimless wanderings throughout space after being thrown out of Earth’s orbit in the wake of a nuclear explosion. The show was really good and had many of the model makers who worked with Stanley Kubrick on 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY including Brian Johnson. The show ran two seasons, though the second is not as good as the first. Landau quit the series after several run-ins with executive producer Fred Friedberger. The show would have gone another season but according to Landau, “We were sunk by the Titanic.” Sir Lew Grade who ran ITC had decided to go into film and the first film he green lit was Raise the Titanic starring the late Richard Jordan and David Selby. It subsequently ate all of Space: 1999‘s budget, considering each episode cost a whopping $1 millon to make. The film came from the book written by Clive Cussler. A clip from Space: 1999 will be included below the review. The show also starred Barry Morse, Nick Tate, Zienia Merton, Prentis Hancock, Clifton Jones, Anton Phillips, Tony Anholt, John Hug and Catherine Schell.
Film Review: ‘Space Station 76’
A low-key indie comedy that deftly mixes ’70s attitudes and futuristic sci-fi.
Joe Leydon
@joeleydon
In space, everyone one can hear you kvetch. That appears to be standard operational procedure aboard “Space Station 76,” an intergalactic deadpan farce that suggests a daft mashup of “The Ice Storm” and “Space: 1999.” With the aid of ensemble players who maintain admirably straight faces amid the absurdity, director Jack Plotnick gets an impressive amount of mileage from a concept — characters in a futuristic sci-fi setting evince ‘70s angst and attitudes — that might seem at first blush barely adequate to sustain a “Saturday Night Live” sketch. This low-key indie comedy could live long and prosper on homescreen platforms.
Working from a script he and four fellow writers originally conceived for the stage, Plotnick establishes a tone of seriocomic soap-operatics in the early scenes while introducing the diversely dysfunctional crew of the Omega 76 Space Station.
Sexually repressed Capt. Glenn (Patrick Wilson, first among equals in a fine cast) is by turns inconsolably glum and inappropriately hostile while mooning for a reassigned comrade. Misty (Marisa Coughlan) pops Valium, spouts New Age aphorisms and avoids sexual contact with Ted (Matt Bomer of TV’s “White Collar”), her increasingly frustrated technician husband. The aggressively chipper Donna (Kali Rocha) seems content in her marriage to Steve (Jerry O’Connell), the father of her infant child. She’s too busy, or too clueless, to note that Steve is having an affair with Misty.
Long-simmering emotions and resentments start bubbling to the surface with the arrival of a new second-in-command, Jessica Marlowe (Liv Tyler), a seemingly self-assured professional who nonetheless comes equipped with her own share of hangups. The already unstable Capt. Glenn has trouble accepting a woman as his equal — yes, this is the future, but it’s a future based on ’70s sexual and workplace politics — while the self-absorbed Misty resents Jessica’s budding friendship with Sunshine (Kylie Rogers), Misty’s neglected young daughter. But Ted has no trouble at all welcoming his beautiful new crewmate.
Aiming more for bemused chuckles than for convulsive laughter, Plotnick and his actors deftly evoke a faux Me Decade ambiance throughout “Space Station 76.” Indeed, given the period-appropriate production values, it will be easy, and amusing, for some viewers to pretend this actually is a sci-fi melodrama that was produced during the ’70s — possibly to complete a double feature with “Logan’s Run” or “Silent Running” — but only recently unearthed and released.
Plotnick also includes a couple of wink-wink nods to genuine sci-fi classics, such as a clever cameo by “2001: A Space Odyssey” star Keir Dullea, or an R2-D2-like droid that serves as a pill-dispensing psychiatrist. Even funnier, though, are the off-the-wall moments that simply emphasize the disparity between dialogue rife with ’70s-flavored banalities — “Your whole vibe is just stressing me!” — and the day-after-tomorrow environment provided by production designer Seth Reed and costume designer Sandra Burns. Predictably, but effectively, the soundtrack abounds with slyly selected ’70s tunes by Todd Rundgren and other artists.
Film Review: ‘Space Station 76’
Reviewed at SXSW Film Festival (Visions), March 14, 2014. Running time: 95 MIN.
Production
A Rival Pictures/Om Films production. Produced by Katherine Ann McGregor, Joel Michaely, Dan Burks, Edward Parks, Rachel Ward. Executive producers, Niraj Bhatia, Frank Mele. Co-producers, Jim Burba, Bob Hayes. Co-executive producers, Ramesh Bhatia, Jack Plotnick.
Crew
Directed by Jack Plotnick. Screenplay, Jennifer Elise Cox, Sam Pancake, Plotnick, Kali Rocha, Michael Stoyanov, based on their play. Camera (color), Robert Brinkmann; editor, Sharon Rutter; music, Steffan Fantini, Marc Fantini; production designer, Seth Reed; art director, Jennifer Moller; set decorator, Kat Wilson; costume designer, Sandra Burns; sound, John C. Taylor; visual effects supervisor, Billy Brooks; associate producers, Billy Brooks, Melodi Hallenbeck, Alexander Koehne, Ilana Marks; assistant director, Jeremy Phoenix; casting, Eric Souliere.
With
Patrick Wilson, Liv Tyler, Matt Bomer, Marisa Coughlan, Kylie Rogers, Kali Rocha, Jerry O’Connell, Keir Dullea.
Keir appeared in a BBC series called THE REAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION talking about 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and Stanly Kubrick. So far he’s done two episodes and I’m not sure if he’ll be in the rest or if there will be a series two. Considering his age Keir is looking mighty fine. The only thing I’d change is that beard! It looks like a small animal ate his face. His features are far too fine for that kind of beardage. Though if he’s still performing in CAT ON A HOT TIN ROOF, then it’s understandable. Either way Keir is still compelling to watch and compelling to listen to.
[317] SCREENCAPS: THE REAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION – PT 1 ROBOTS
[286] SCREENCAPS: THE REAL HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION – PT 2 SPACE
I just found this. An amazing bit of acting from Keir performing a ten minute monologue from “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” as Big daddy. This is likely as close as I’m going to get to seeing him perform in a play so I’m just going to enjoy it. For your consideration.
Yeah I know it’s been a while. Stuff happens. Anyway I have some new uploads. I was able to purchase these photos for the gallery. Not sheep by a longshot so if you’re going to post elsewhere, please credit back to the site. These are kind of rare and I thought they’d be a perfect addition to the gallery. I’ll not list them in post, rather where to find them in the gallery. Enjoy.
