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?

WE'LL BE BLUNT:

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

We need to start raising significantly more in donations from our online community of readers, especially from those who read Mother Jones regularly but have never decided to pitch in because you figured others always will. We also need long-time and new donors, everyone, to keep showing up for us.

In "It's Not a Crisis. This Is the New Normal," we explain, as matter-of-factly as we can, what exactly our finances look like, how brutal it is to sustain quality journalism right now, what makes Mother Jones different than most of the news out there, and why support from readers is the only thing that keeps us going. Despite the challenges, we're optimistic we can increase the share of online readers who decide to donate—starting with hitting an ambitious $300,000 goal in just three weeks to make sure we can finish our fiscal year break-even in the coming months.

Please learn more about how Mother Jones works and our 47-year history of doing nonprofit journalism that you don't elsewhere—and help us do it with a donation if you can. We've already cut expenses and hitting our online goal is critical right now.

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