By Lee Pfeiffer
There has been some fanfare about the "discovery" of 17 minutes of footage cut by Stanley Kubrick from 2001: A Space Odyssey. The missing scenes were alleged to have been found in a salt mine storage facility owned by Warner Brothers (Studios routinely keep valuable footage and photographs in salt mines to prevent deterioration.) However, Warner Brothers says the studio has always been aware the footage has been in its vaults so it isn't really a new discovery. Moreover, WB says it has no plans to utilize the footage in any future release of the classic film. Kubrick was known to exercise dictatorial control over his films and was loathe to add footage after he decided on a final cut. Since his death, his family has continued to prevent additional footage from being released as extras on DVDs. Some years ago, I co-wrote and produced the special DVD edition of Dr. Strangelove for Sony. My partner on the project, David Naylor, tracked down the legendary pie fight sequence that Kubrick cut from the climax of the film. Despite high level appeals to the Kubrick family, Sony could not win approval from them to include the footage -even though Sony arguably controlled the rights. The studio did not want the stigma of going against the Kubricks' wishes. Thus, we respected the decision and were only able to use still photos from the sequence in our documentary about the making of the film. For more about the 2001 footage, click here