RIP Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL 9000

[Painter]

https://www.npr.org/2018/11/12/66688...001-dies-at-90

[spellbound]

Rest in peace.

[Vic2012]

RIP.

He did that part too well. Really creepy. ..... just what do you think you are doing....Dave?.....

[BravadoNJ]

RIP

[Jerjo]

RIP

I wish I could set up the voice on my wife's Amazon Echo to be that of Hal.

[GuitarGeek]

RIP

Do you know the real world reason why HAL sings that song? One of the first experiments in voice synthesis involved programming a computer to sing that song, so Arthur C Clarke worked on the idea that maybe in the future, all computers are "taught" that song.

That whole scene leading up to the song is...weird. I get weepy every time I see it.

When 2010 came out, I read that Rain had to listen to recordings of his material from 2001, so that he could relearn how to speak the way he had in 1967 or whenever it was that they made the movie. They wanted HAL to sound exactly the same when he's reactivated in the later movie. I think he did a pretty effective job.

[Staun]

Do you know the real reason why HAL sings Bicycle Built For Two (that's the actual title of the song)? One of the first experiments in voice synthesis involved programming a computer to sing that song, so Kubrick worked on the idea that maybe in the future, all computers are "taught" that song.

That whole scene leading up to the song is...weird. I get weepy every time I see it.

When 2010 came out, I read that Rain had to listen to recordings of his material from 2001, so that he could relearn how to speak the way he had in 1967 or whenever it was that they made the movie. They wanted HAL to sound exactly the same when he's reactivated in the later movie. I think he did a pretty effective job.

What did you think of the film, 2010?

[Buddhabreath]

Sadly, Douglas's last words were "I'm afraid. I'm afraid, Dave. Dave, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I'm a... fraid." RIP

[GuitarGeek]

What did you think of the film, 2010?

I think it's a decent movie. I saw it again just a couple years ago, and I enjoyed it. It's not the artistic achievement that the Kubrick picture is, but I think it's very watchable. Prog connection: Tony Banks was initially hired to do the music, but the director rejected everything he put forth for the score, so he was replaced by David Shire and Craig Huxley.

[Halmyre]

I believe Rain never met Kubrick or any of the other actors. Peter Hyams, who directed 2010, had the idea of Rain doing a non-speaking cameo in a future project, but it never came to pass.

[rcarlberg]

The most interesting factoid I ran across, reading about Rain's passing, is that actor Martin Balsam first recorded all of HAL's dialog and that was what the other actors were reacting to. But during final production, Kubrick decided Balsam's reading was "too human" with too much emotion and vocal inflection. He called in Shakespearean actor Rain to re-record all of HAL's dialog in more robotic, flat-toned voice. Rain recorded all of the dialog with his bare feet resting on a pillow, to maintain a soothing, relaxed tone.

It's interesting to consider how the movie would have played with an AI that sounded more human. We're so used to HAL as a disembodied non-human voice, that the scenes of, for instance, removing his memory circuit boards as he slowly loses his ability to speak might have been 1000x more emotionally wrenching.

And the voices of Siri and Alexa are admittedly and intentionally modeled after HAL's neutral tone.

BTW Rain also voiced the computer in Woody Allen's "Sleeper." Though not, presumably, Rags.

[chalkpie]

Open the pod bay doors Hal.....

[progholio]

I just saw 2001 on the big screen about a month ago and came to the conclusion this was the best film ever made.

Could you only imagine if they did actually use the Martin Balsam voice of HAL and this original score -



Kubrick was genius!

[GuitarGeek]

Could you only imagine if they did actually use the Martin Balsam voice of HAL and this original score -

I've never heard the North score, but the thing about it is, if Kubrick had gone with it, there's many of us who may have never heard the music of Gyorgy Ligeti, as we were introduced to his work via 2001: A Space Odyssey. Yeah, given his notoriety both before and after the movie, one might have heard Ligeti one way or another. Perhaps I'd not have gotten to see the Cleveland Orchestra perform Ligeti's piano and violin concertos, because at the time of the concerts, I didn't yet know who Ligeti was.