Last night’s Black List reading of Stepheny Folsom‘s 1969: A Space Odyssey, Or How Kubrick Learned to Stop Worrying and Land on the Moon was somewhere between okay and underwhelming. It was great to visit the Los Angeles theatre (which was built in 1931 or thereabouts) but the sound was imprecise and echo-y and ricocheting all over the large auditorium, and so I really couldn’t hear a good portion of the dialogue.
Plus the show began 45 minutes late, which is pretty close to unforgivable in my book unless you offer an apology once the show finally starts. (Nobody did.)
As for the script itself…well, I can only say that the reading didn’t feel like enough. It’s an amusingly crafted piece about a con job that never quite comes off, and about the natural disharmony between a bunch of Washington tap-dancers and flim-flammers and a genuine artist with a prickly personality.
All I got from it was a rat-a-tat-tat feeling. The applause was polite and perfunctory and that’s all. Want my advice? Start the fucking show promptly next time.
1969 is a better script than Quentin Tarantino‘s Hateful 8, a Petrified Forest-like ensemble piece which had a live reading at the Ace Theatre a while back. The reading of Hateful 8 was nonetheless a more engaging “show” than the Kubrick thing. More personality and pizazz, etc.
1969: A Space Odyssey is about a White House Public Affairs assistant (Kathryn Hahn) who persuades superiors to allow her to hire Stanley Kubrick (Jared Harris) to shoot a faked moon landing in case the Apollo 11 moon mission turns into a tragic failure. But the inevitable arguments result. Kubrick gets more and more testy and nobody likes or respects each other.
It’s basically a piece about a dishonest enterprise that leads to a lot of snippy bickering and loud exhalings and eff-yous and dismissals. I sat there and listened and didn’t care. But I didn’t mind it.
Thomas Sadoski (The Newsroom) played real-life NASA Public Affairs administrator Julian Scheer. Shannon Woodward played Kubrick’s assistant, Kara Downs. Mad Men alumni Rich Sommer and Aaron Staton performed various roles. Clark Gregg played CIA honcho Richard Helms.
