Pat Flannery writes:
What's odd about the one on the Discovery is that it's not located where you
think it would be in the control sphere; you would expect it to go around
the equator of the sphere dividing it into front and back halves for maximum
diameter on the centrifuge, but it's aft of center.

This is a quirk that I think helps authenticate the movie. Of course you'd
start out with a paper design that places it squarely on the equator only to
discover later you have to move it to make way for lab space, or other gear
that for one reason or another has to be close to the command module. So you
back the centrifuge back towards aft to make room, making it slightly smaller
in the process. Sounds like the typical design trade-off to me...

The rotating set in the movie was indeed 40' in diameter. It also points
out what I always thought was the big problem with 2001; it's fascinating to
look at the thing going around, but it doesn't add one whit to the storyline
(what little there is of it) while being very hard and expensive to produce
(as in $750,000 dollars back when that was real money) The whole movie is
like this spectacular gift box with sparkly wrapping paper and glittering
bows and ribbons all over it...and nothing much inside, a triumph of
packaging over content.

You mean like Avatar and Waterworld?

Essentially contributing to the visuals of a movie is major. Sometimes even
more so than the plotline when it comes to an audience draw. The story of the
Wizard of Oz was well known when the definitive movie came along in the
30's. But the big draw wasn't just the story; it was the music, the sets, the
actors and the careful presentation of color framed around what starts and
ends as a B&W movie.

For 2001, it seems that the overriding quality Kubrick was going for was
disorientation. I think he was striving to provide this quirky environment
that you could never quite get confortable with, a constant reminder of where
you were during the movie. There was more alienation going in that movie that
just that provided by the esoteric monolith. A movie very much of its time,
the late 60s...

Dave