Youngblood, Gene

   Gene Youngblood was an enthusiastic advocate of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, which he reviewed for the Los Angeles Free Press on April 19, 1968, calling STANLEY KUBRICK’s work a “masterpiece. ” For Youngblood the film offered a combination “every underground filmmaker dreams of ”: both “a personal artistic statement” and “a million dollar corporate investment. ”Youngblood later expanded his coverage of the film in his book Expanded Cinema, published by E. P. Dutton in 1970, considering the film not only “a technical masterpiece” but also an “epochal achievement of cinema. ” The title of Expanded Cinema reflected the optimism of a generation that believed in the potential of the film medium and was evocative of the spirit of the times: it concerned not only “expanded” technical possibilities but also expanded consciousness and creativity. Kubrick, of course,was not an “underground” filmmaker, but his method was far more experimental than Hollywood was used to. Youngblood’s interview with ARTHUR C. CLARKE, which originally appeared in the Free Press, is included in The Making of 2001: A Space Odyssey, ed. Stephanie Schwain (Modern Library, 2000).

   J. M. W.