2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY Screenplay by Stanley Kubrick & Arthur C. Clark comment orion if you see this
TITLE CARD: "PART I AFRICA 3,000,000 YEARS AGO" VIEWS OF AFRICAN DRYLANDS – DROUGHT The remorseless drought had lasted now for ten million years, and would not end for another million. The reign of the terrible lizards had long since passed, but here on the continent which would one day be known as Africa, the battle for survival had reached a new climax of ferocity, and the victor was not yet in sight. In this dry and barren land, only the small or the swift or the fierce could flourish, or even hope to exist. INT. / EXT. CAVES – MOONWATCHER The man-apes of the field had none of these attributes, and they were on the long, pathetic road to racial extinction. About twenty of them occupied a group of caves overlooking a small, parched valley, divided by a sluggish, brown stream. The tribe had always been hungry, and now it was starving. As the first dim glow of dawn creeps into the cave, Moonwatcher discovers that his father has died during the night. He did not know the Old One was his father, for such a relationship was beyond his understanding. but as he stands looking down at the emaciated body he feels something, something akin to sadness. Then he carries his dead father out of the cave, and leaves him for the hyenas. Among his kind, Moonwatcher is almost a giant. He is nearly five feet high, and though badly undernourished, weighs over a hundred pounds. His hairy, muscular body is quite man-like, and his head is already nearer man than ape. The forehead is low, and there are great ridges over the eye-sockets, yet he unmistakably holds in his genes the promise of humanity. As he looks out now upon the hostile world, there is alreadysomething in his gaze beyond the grasp of any ape. In those dark, deep-set eyes is a dawning awareness-the first intimations of an intelligence which would not fulfill itself for another two million years. EXT. THE STREAM – THE OTHERS As the dawn sky brightens, Moonwatcher and his tribe reach the shallow stream. The Others are already there. They were there on the other side every day – that did not make it any less annoying. There are eighteen of them, and it is impossible to distinguish them from the members of Moonwatcher's own tribe. As they see him coming, the Others begin to angrily dance and shriek on their side of the stream, and his own people reply In kind. The confrontation lasts a few minutes – then the display dies out as quickly as it has begun, and everyone drinks his fill of the muddy water. Honor has been satisfied – each group has staked its claim to its own territory. EXT. AFRICAN PLAIN – HERBIVORES Moonwatcher and his companions search for berries, fruit and leaves, and fight off pangs of hunger, while all around them, competing with them for the samr fodder, is a potential source of more food than they could ever hope to eat. Yet all the thousands of tons of meat roaming over the parched savanna and through the brush is not only beyond their reach; the idea of eating it is beyond their imagination. They are slowly starving to death in the midst of plenty. It reached the character limit :/
