Moonwatcher

Posted on January 30, 2003 in Encounters

Last night, I met the man who Arthur C. Clarke calls “the most famous unknown actor” in the world.

The movie scene in which he etched himself into the memory of everyone who looks forward to the greatness which humankind might achieve takes place in what many consider to be one of the remarkable and puzzling motion pictures of the 20th century: 2001, A Space Odyssey. (DVD) (VHS)

Yes, I met the mime in the man-ape suit, the man who beat the bone and threw it into the heavens to become a spaceship. I met Moonwatcher.

Nanette almost forgot to mention that he was doing the signing when she made the announcements for our writers’ group on Monday. I didn’t forget. The second I saw the sign in the lobby at Barnes and Noble in Aliso Viejo, I wanted to go for two reasons: first, it was about one of my all time favorite Stanley Kubrick films. Second, the man behind the mask just had to know something about the great apes and current trends in the history of evolution. He’d be a good talk, I prophesied, for either reason.

I rounded the corner and found the pink-shirted gentleman sitting behind a square black table waiting for someone to approach him. I sat myself right down and told him that I considered his scene to be among the most memorable in cinema. I told him about my degree in anthropology and we started to chat about gorillas, chimpanzees, and evolution. Nanette joined us promptly at seven and two other buffs — including a new member of our writing group — appeared within the quarter hour.

I underestimated Dan Richter. I knew he’d have interesting things to say about Stanley Kubrick, his part in the film, how they did it, what he’d learned from examining the films made by Jane Goodall’s husband, etc., but he’s done very much more. For one thing, he published the work of Alan Ginsberg and William Burroughs: he knew these men. He was the close friend of Yoko Ono and John Lennon: for four years, he lived with them, helping them produce the movie Imagine. He’s climbed mountains, been in the jungles around the Viruga Volcanos, survived lung cancer.

His bio says that he works as a film industry executive now.

What can I say? It was Dan’s show. He enraptured us with his stories of the famous persons we all had read about, the making of the film, Stanley Kubrick, his climbing adventures, and his understanding about what we knew now about the behavior of great apes and the course of human evolution. We barraged him, between his long, animated expositions, with our own questions. And he left us with an article of faith: to use life to do what you want to do, to create.

One fellow, a middle-aged gentleman named Eric, asked him about the end of 2001. I laughed and called it “the great Huh?!” Dan smiled and politely recapped the filmmaker’s story. I added, when he was through, the words from the novel: “He was master of his whole world and he wasn’t sure what he would do next. But he would think of something.”

(I have to admit that I love watching the end of 2001 with people who have never seen it before. I like to leave them with as few explanations as possible. The thinking about this beautiful scene stimulates them.)

When it was over, he teased that he’d pegged me coming in the door. “I knew you were a Kubrick fan the instant you walked up,” he said. The others laughed at my theatric gasp. Oh no! I was pressed from a mold! Classifiable! Dan laughed and said “Don’t worry. I like Kubrick fans. You’re my people.”