While the majority of moviegoers, both the everyday and savvy, often think that the "test screening" process is a fairly new tool in Hollywood, such notions are far from the truth. Would you believe that a filmmaker as renowned as Stanley Kubrick would use test screenings as a way to help cut his films, even as far back as 1968? No? Well, you'd be wrong!

At the time of the release of Kubrick's masterwork 2001: A Space Odyssey, the director significantly reshaped the film after early screenings. The director, who since then spoke rarely if ever about his films (or anything else, for that matter) was quoted at the time on the recutting: "I had not had the opportunity to see the film complete with music, sound effects, etc., until about a week before it opening, and it does take few runnings to decide finally how long things should be, especially scenes which do not have narrative advancement as their guideline."

Kubrick then trimmed 19 minutes off the film's then 159-minute runtime, resulting in the version we see today. Kubrick also apparently felt that the reason the film played "slow" during these early screenings was due to the age of the audience in the attendance, as well as the film's nontraditional structure. "I just felt as I looked at it and looked at it that I could see places where I could tighten up, and I took out nineteen minutes. I didn't believe that the trims made a crucial difference."

So, what was snipped? The opening sequence "the Dawn Of Man" was trimmed, the early scenes on the moon and in Discovery 1, and even reportedly added two title cards to make the film ore understandable ("Jupiter Mission, 18 months Later" and "Jupiter beyond the Infinite.")

Will we ever see this cut footage resurface someday? Not likely, It isn't on the DVD, and according to Kubrick biographer Jan Harlan at a roundtable discussion earlier this summer, the director was so adamant the deleted footage never be seen, that he "even burned the negatives." Ouch!