10 Things You Didn't Know About 2001: A Space Odyssey
1. An Angry Stuntman Chased Kubrick Off The Set
Much in the same way as Alfred Hitchcock, Stanley Kubrick is known for having some troublesome relationships with his co-workers (see: Shelley Duvall in The Shining), and during 2001’s filming, he had a particularly difficult relationship with stuntman, Bill Weston.
Their feud had a number of incidents, including Kubrick banning Weston from wearing a second safety cable when he was 30 feet above a hard floor, which resulted in a serious accident when his cable broke under his weight.
Another incident saw Kubrick refuse to let Weston punch holes in the back of his space helmet, meaning that Weston almost passed out on numerous occasions.
At one particularly tense moment, Weston got so fed up with Kubrick's antics, that he apparently went off to find the director to “teach him a lesson”.
The always composed Kubrick actually ran off set in terror, which actually meant that the production had to come to a halt for a couple of days.