March 7, 2016

Stanley Kubrick Urban Legend Bleg

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What’s the point of having a blog if you can’t help out a friend once in a while? So let’s see if anyone can answer this little trivia question about 2001: A Space Odyssey:

I’m trying to verify a story about a piece of direction that Stanley Kubrick gave Keir Dullea (who played Dave Bowman) for the scene where Bowman is getting his dinner on board Discovery. As Bowman pulls the little trays of food from the ship’s automated kitchen, it’s obvious that the containers are hot and that he’s trying not to burn his fingers.

The story is that Kubrick’s instructions stemmed from his being unhappy for some reason with General Mills, whose logo is prominently displayed on the automated kitchen. Kubrick was getting back at General Mills by showing that something was not quite right with their technology.

Has anybody heard this story? If so, where? I have been searching the web, watching YouTube videos of the actors discussing the film, viewing the special features on the Blu-ray discs, paging through my books, and can’t find any reference to it.

Has anyone else heard this story?

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WE CAME UP SHORT.

We just wrapped up a shorter-than-normal, urgent-as-ever fundraising drive and we came up about $45,000 short of our $300,000 goal.

That means we're going to have upwards of $350,000, maybe more, to raise in online donations between now and June 30, when our fiscal year ends and we have to get to break-even. And even though there's zero cushion to miss the mark, we won't be all that in your face about our fundraising again until June.

So we urgently need this specific ask, what you're reading right now, to start bringing in more donations than it ever has. The reality, for these next few months and next few years, is that we have to start finding ways to grow our online supporter base in a big way—and we're optimistic we can keep making real headway by being real with you about this.

Because the bottom line: Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism Mother Jones exists to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we hope you might consider pitching in before moving on to whatever it is you're about to do next. We really need to see if we'll be able to raise more with this real estate on a daily basis than we have been, so we're hoping to see a promising start.

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