2001 A Space Odyssey Actor Keir Dullea Interview Prior to Release Live From the Bitter End 1967

How can I come after this man? Well, you're not going to perform here. I'm very moved. About a year ago, I was doing a film in the northern wilds. Let me introduce you first. I want to tell everybody, and those who aren't old enough to have seen you, that's one of the things. Oh, come on. Here's a young actor who usually plays the neurotic, psychotic, cathartic parts. He was in David and Lisa, and I'm sure that's going to be an all-time great. Bunny Lake is missing. His name is Kia DeLay. Let's all have a round of applause. Okay. Kia, you've been around a while since David and Lisa, right? Well, listen, I actually started playing so-called psychotic roles before that with a picture called The Hoodlum Priest. Oh, that's right. I've been a victim. I say victim with quotes around. It's been fun. But a victim of the so-called typecasting system for a long time. Can I just say something else? Actors always get up here, and they talk about their career. They talk about the pictures they're doing. But I'm very moved to be here today because this is a different kind of interview show. It's very intimate, and everyone's very close, and the people are very young. And this excites me, and this music excites me. You know, I was about to tell you, a year ago I was up in the northern wilds of Canada. It was very cold, and one night I was feeling a little down and depressed and cold, mainly. And we went to a coffee shop in Toronto, and I saw this man get up and sing. It was Ritchie Havens. I'd never heard of him. And I walked out of that place, and I felt very warm all over because, you know, he's saying things that need to be said today. And it's beautiful. I was at a press conference regarding a film I was doing. It was a foreign press, and a gentleman asked me, Why do you think that music has gone so much further in being daring and taking chances and saying things and trying out new things than films? Although films have also done the same thing, but not as fast. And it's a very simple answer. It's because the leaders in film are younger. It's that simple. It's a different generation. You mean the leaders in music? Leaders in popular music, in the music that the young people want to hear today. They're younger. And we think about a Stanley Kubrick who's considered, you know, they always talked about him being young. Well, you know, he's 38 or 39. He is young for a filmmaker. But the kids that are making it today in music are 20, you know, 18, 19, 20, 21. And I think that's the reason. I think it's very beautiful. I think it's very exciting. We've got to go for commercials. We'll be back in a minute with some more with Keir Dullea. Listen, Keir. I don't like that. Make a good staging. Listen, Keir. They've been telling me I can't say things. You know, I'm learning all about this thing. And a nightclub owner, all of a sudden I've got to have new phrases. I can't say the things I normally say in the club sometimes. You know, so they give me a whole... Don't laugh at that. There's always a game to play. Yeah, but we're going to... You've got to play the game on television a little bit. Always in life. In life, too? As an actor, right? I think as a person. As a person. How did you break the mold of the type of typecasting you had, which did get off the subject, right? For the two movies you've just done. Because I'd like to talk about that. Well, I appeared in Playboy. Actually... The centerfold thing in Playboy? I did appear in Playboy. As a matter of fact. Not the centerfold, not yet. I haven't quite broken the mold enough for them to put me there, but at least... I did a picture of Sandy Dennis called The Fox, based on a D.H. Lawrence short story. That's the one I was doing up in Canada. Yes, yes. And I play a... I had an experience the other day. I was at a party, and somebody was asking me about The Fox, and somebody overheard us. This young lady looked around, and she said, Gee, I just saw a special screening of that a couple of days ago. I said, oh really? She said, yeah. She said, did you see it? And I said, yes. And she said, very good. What did you... Did you have something to do with it? And I said, yeah. There are only three human beings in the picture. Right, right, right. Two women and one guy. Make you feel great. And I said, yeah. No, it was exactly the reaction I hoped for, because she said... I said, yeah, I was in it. She said, you were the boy? And I said, yeah. And that is exactly how different the role is from the way people see me, because it's a very kind of animalistic, kind of sexual, unintellectual kind of role. It's about a guy who comes in between two women, one of whom has a lesbian tendency, and he's just a young guy who's a seaman. He comes in, he sees one of the girls, and zappo! He wants her, you know? I hope he doesn't lose it. He becomes the catalyst. Does he lose it? You know, that's terrible. You don't mind losing your girlfriend to another guy, but God forbid you should lose your girlfriend to another girl. Wow, huh? That really hurts, you know, that kind of thing. It's the first picture that I've been, I must say, truly proud of. Really? Since David and Lisa. I've done about five pictures since David and Lisa. And there's always something you can find that you like, you know, maybe your own performance or something, but this is the first picture. It's an honorable picture. It's a rather unusual picture. I won't say, I won't go into it, but it's... It's tough for an actor always to be proud of everything, because you do your job, and then from then on you don't know what's going to happen. Well, I've been very lucky. If anything could happen to it between... If you can be proud, I would say... I'm proud of three films that I've done out of about nine, and that's a third. That's a pretty good average. That's excellent. What's the other film with Kubrick? Stanley Kubrick. I also play a very different kind of role. I play an astronaut. And this film was started in 1964. He's been editing it for two years. I've heard about that, yeah. Actually, 2001 really refers to the release date. That's going to come out. It'll be interesting seeing myself 20 years younger, you know, going through time. Oh, come on. That's a bad joke. It's going to come out soon, though. It's going to come out in March. How did he get the cooperation? I heard that NASA helped him, that he got people from the government. It's incredible. How did he get all those people to get involved with this movie? He's a rather electric man. I think he's one of the true geniuses of our time. This picture will be what Citizen Kane was in its era. I truly believe this. He got NASA to give two of their top scientists two-year leaves of absence. He got 40 corporations to send specialists, and each specialist in that particular area, whether it be heavy industry like Vickers Armstrong or Honeywell Corporation. They even had Howard Johnson restaurants and American Express. They computerized the most likely development of their particular specialty. To figure what would be in the future. Yeah, and each of the sets took from six months to a year to build. For example, one of the sets we had was a 41-foot-tall, 40-ton centrifuge that was not built by set makers. It was made by Vickers Armstrong, people that make airplanes. They went in there. They broke out the sides of the walls of the largest sound stage in England for the driving mechanism. This thing is 40 feet tall, and it revolves and creates artificial gravity, so you can walk a 360-degree circle upside down around and come right down again. Fantastic. I'd be anxious to see that. It's a film that kind of deals with the real, not corny, bug-eyed monster, old-fashioned science fiction view of what it would mean, but the real effect of the knowledge that extraterrestrial or people from another planet or outside our universe were to have visited us. And that doesn't mean you ever see them, but what it would do, both theologically and sociologically, how it would really affect people. It's like living with a bomb. We take the bomb so for granted. We know it's there, but we don't live in terror of it because it's so imminent. We'd go nuts if you believed it. But during the Cuban crisis, people went mad. They went and stocked up with food, and they dug air raid shelters. But the real knowledge, tomorrow if it was announced that extraterrestrials were on the way, really on the way, what would it really do? It would really panic people. What I'd like to do now is introduce, I think they're the first co-ed group we've had on our show, a co-ed group. They're from the West Coast. It's certainly a great change. Here they are, the Sunshine Company.