One of the things this pint sized actor loved about working with the permanent A list director, is that the director was convinced he at least once had s.e.x. with an alien.

Tom Cruise

Stanley Kubrick

Stanley Kubrick’s strange fear during the filming of ‘2001: A Space Odyssey’

Such odd behaviour was elicited in his 1968 classic 2001: A Space Odyssey, a sprawling exploration of space, evolution and human origins. Perhaps sci-fi’s greatest ever achievement, the film became a significant cultural and cinematic achievement, with fellow director Steven Spielberg calling the film his generation’s “big bang” and George Lucas noting that the film was “hugely inspirational”. Alien and Blade Runner director Ridley Scott even went so far as to say that he believed Kubrick’s film was so good that it ‘in a sense killed the science fiction genre’.

Written during the Space Race during the mid-1950s, Stanley Kubrick became increasingly paranoid that aliens would be discovered before the release of his sci-fi epic, therefore making his film redundant. For a producer, such uncontrollable real-life events can be a nightmare for their film as audiences’ tastes change along with the circumstantial mood of the nation. With on-screen aliens set to feature in Kubrick’s Space Odyssey, the idea of real-life extraterrestrials being found before the release of the film became a genuine concern. This was so much so that the director even tried to take out “alien insurance” with Lloyd’s of London, in case the discovery of alien life ruined the plot of his film. – Source

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