The Story of a Voice: HAL in '2001' Wasn't Always So Eerily Calm

"I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that." Even if you've never seen the movie, you know the voice. HAL 9000, the seemingly omniscient computer in "2001: A Space Odyssey," was the film's most expressive and emotional figure, and made a lasting impression on our collective imagination. Stanley Kubrick's epic, a journey from pre-human history to a possible infinity that doesn't need humans at all, is probably the most respected, if not the most beloved, science-fiction film of all time. The story of the creation of HAL's performance -- the result of a last-minute collaboration between the idiosyncratic director Stanley Kubrick and the veteran Canadian actor Douglas Rain -- has been somewhat lost in the 50 years since the film's release in April 1968.