Great article on the voice behind HAL 9000 in Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey. From The New York Times:
The Story of a Voice: HAL in ‘2001’ Wasn’t Always So Eerily Calm
“I’m sorry, Dave, I’m afraid I can’t do that.”
Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you know the voice.
HAL 9000, the seemingly omniscient computer in “2001: A Space Odyssey,” was the film’s most expressive and emotional figure, and made a lasting impression on our collective imagination.
Stanley Kubrick’s epic, a journey from pre-human history to a possible infinity that doesn’t need humans at all, is probably the most respected, if not the most beloved, science-fiction film of all time.
The story of the creation of HAL’s performance — the result of a last-minute collaboration between the idiosyncratic director Stanley Kubrick and the veteran Canadian actor Douglas Rain — has been somewhat lost in the 50 years since the film’s release in April 1968. As has its impact: Artificial intelligence has borrowed from the HAL persona, and now, unwittingly, a slight hint of Canadianness resides in our phones and interactive devices.
Great story and a fun bit of cinema history.
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