A Space Odyssey

 I went to see 2001: A Space Odyssey when it first came out. It was an event. My family piled into the station wagon and drove down to Denver to see it on the biggest screen in our region: The Cooper. Watching a movie in Cinerama was a big enough deal for my five year old brain to comprehend, but the story of man's evolution through time and space was a visual treat that transformed my mind. 

I was five at the time. 

As I suggested, the trip to Denver was an event in and of itself, but the movie that was unleashed on all of us was a trip none of us had fully anticipated. Hearing all that Strauss pumped through the newly developed transistorized sound system was awesome without anything to look at, and the low rumble of Also Sprach Zarathustra was a revelation that would eventually attach itself to Elvis Presley, Peter Sellers, and The Simpsons. But nothing before or since rocked me back in my seat like Stanley Kubrick's bombastic vision all those years ago. 

I was five at the time. 

America was still on its way to the moon. Mister Kubrick got me there first. Not content to stay in the neighborhood, he pushed on to the moons of Jupiter. And beyond. I stared in wide wonder as the story of man's voyage through the solar system unfolded before me an my family. When the intermission came, we were just a little too stunned to jump up and take advantage of the concession stand. There was so much to try and piece together, and where was this voyage taking us? 

I was five at the time. 

Settled back in our seats, my parents had purchased my older brother and I souvenir space capsules full of watery orange drink, but my eyes never left the screen. HAL, that paranoid android, proved to be as cold and calculating as any movie villain I had ever seen. 

I was five at the time.

When the psychedelic slit screen sequence erupted in front of my eyes, I figured this must be what going to heaven must be like. 

I was five at the time. 

On the way home, my older brother and my parents tried to make sense out of what happened in the end. I was focused on my now emptied space capsule. I dreamed of making my own trip to to the stars. I dreamed of making my own movie someday. 

I was five at the time.