Log24

Monday, November 12, 2018

Half Crazy

Filed under: General — m759 @ 10:42 pm

Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL in Kubrick's 2001 , reportedly
died at 90 on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2018. A piece from the Sunday,
April 1, 2018, print  edition of The New York Times  recalls that . . .

When HAL says, “I know I’ve made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal,” Mr. Rain somehow manages to sound both sincere and not reassuring. And his delivery of the line “I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do” has the sarcastic drip of a drawing-room melodrama and also carries the disinterested vibe of a polite sociopath.

Kubrick had Mr. Rain sing the 1892 love song “Daisy Bell” (“I’m half crazy, all for the love of you”) almost 50 times, in uneven tempos, in monotone, at different pitches and even just by humming it. In the end, he used the very first take. Sung as HAL’s brain is being disconnected, it’s from his early programming days, his computer childhood. It brings to an end the most affecting scene in the entire film.

— Gerry Flahive in the online New York Times 
 

"A version of this article appears in print on , on Page AR13 of the New York edition with the headline: HAL 9000 Wasn’t Always So Eerily Calm."

This  journal on the above online date, March 30, 2018 —

"Program or be programmed."
— A saying by Douglas Rushkoff

See as well the following link from this journal
on Armistice Day, the reported date of Mr. Rain's death —

"Halmos + Tombstone."

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