This film is about a subject very close to my heart: the Lunar missions which occurred between 1968 and 1972 & is presented by a space program advocate you may've heard about: Ron Howard.
Hi Guys,
Mastidon here with a report from the London Film Festival where I was lucky enough to catch a family friendly documentary called IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON. Both Moriarty and Capone have reviewed this one before me so I won't go into too much detail. What I do have for you though is the audience Q&A with the director David Sington. But first, here are my 2 cents.....
I was born in December '69. The race was over. There was no moon excitement anymore by the time I was old enough to realize what an astronaut was, Apollo 17 had long been finished. In second grade, I remember meeting a kid whose father was working on the tiles of the space shuttle. I think that's how I first got the bug. Still growing up in the late '70s in New Jersey there wasn't much detail I had access to. The general public had all but forgotten about Apollo and the history books hadn't been updated yet. Then THE RIGHT STUFF came out in 1983 and that was it. All laid out and perfect detail for a 13 year old to become a complete space junkie. To this day, I can't help but see John Glenn whenever I see Ed Harris in anything. The problem with THE RIGHT STUFF was it only told the first half of the story. I wanted more. In 1995, Tom Hanks did us a huge favor by adding to the story with APOLLO 13 then completing the story in 1998 with FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON. Both great dramatized accounts of the events of the Apollo program with EARTH also having some fantastic interviews in it. But you know, the picture still wasn't complete. What's been missing is the real footage of it all. IN THE SHADOW OF THE MOON does a fantastic job at bringing it to you with having even more detailed interviews!
The film opens with a brief history of the space race and the Mercury program. But it doesn't spend too much time there. Only enough to remind you what had come before. The nice insertion of a couple of speeches by JFK help to setup the events to come. From there the film turns to the Apollo program. The footage is astounding. It follows the entire Apollo program from start to finish. Included in it is the most graphic video I have ever seen of the aftermath of the Apollo 1 fire. Until now, I had never seen anything of the inside of the capsule but photos.
Apollo 8 is covered in loving detail. If you have seen EARTH TO THE MOON, then you know what kind of hell year 1968 was compared to what was going on in the NASA universe. The "1968" segment in EARTH is my favorite as it shows how troubled the time really was. SHADOW adds to this by giving us video of the "Earth Rise". If your child is not a space geek, seeing this will make them one.
Apollo 11 is covered from start to finish. Michael Collins provides a highly entertaining interview. You never get tired of hearing him speak. He's the kind of guy you could just listen to all day and still be amazed and want more. Once again, all stunning video. The best for me is video of Eagle pulling away from the Lunar Module. I also loved the speech from Nixon he made and filmed just in case they didn't make it off the moon. Neil Armstrong is not interviewed in the film. See the Q&A below.
The remainder of the film briefly covers the other missions. The treat it does give us is video from the moon. Walking around, driving the rover, and exploring the moon. My only complaint with this film and the reason it got 4 stars instead of 5, was I wanted more on the moon. The time there just felt a little rushed. The whole experience just seemed like it got cut short. Hopefully for a space geek like me, the DVD will feature extra footage taken from the moon. That's all the film needs to be perfect.
The film closes with Michael Collins and some of the other astronauts talking about how wherever they went in the world, people said "We went to the moon". Not the USA, but the entire world. That's what the perception is. Funny how growing up in the USA I never got that feeling until just then. As Americans we were in a race. A race against the Russians. A race we won. For us, it always was a race. For the world, it was more. And that is really the point of this film. The world went to the moon thanks to the brave men of Apollo.
Here's the QA with David Sington with a couple of questions from me:
Q. Was it hard to get the astronauts to talk about their emotions?
DS: I think that we were lucky. We were doing this film at the right time. I think that as men in their 70s they are a bit more willing to talk about their life and to excavate the emotions and feelings they had at the time. If you look at the contemporary television footage there is sort of a running joke from the commentators that the astronauts don't say very much they're very uncomic. They're about to do these extraordinary things and go behind the moon for the first time. Mission Control saying good luck see you on the other side and they go OK.
But I think that part of that was the communication link was a link for communication of technical information. If you listen to the onboard material some of which is in the film you hear them going gosh golly, amazing.look at that. And I think that sort of emotion and excitement that the astronauts were feeling has been rather hidden from us. One of the pleasures of the film was that going to the moon was a deeply emotional experience for these men. And I hope the film has put some of that feeling back into the Apollo program. And I think that perhaps had it been 20 years ago they wouldn't have been so willing to open up. But we were very lucky.
The most difficult thing about making this film was to persuade the astronauts to give us enough of their time to do what we wanted to do. Some of them like Buzz who give interviews. If you ask him for an interview, he'll say fine I'll give you 45 minutes. We said no we don't want 45 minutes or 2 hours, we want 2 days of your time. We want to come and spend time with you and to get to know you and for you to get to know us. A lot of them we were able to have at least a couple of days with them. Some of these interviews were 8 or 9 hours. If you talk to somebody for 8 or 9 hours you build up a strong relationship with them.
Q. How has the astronauts and NASA reacted to the film?
DS: Well the first thing I wanted to say is that in a sense NASA didn't have anything to do with the making of this film. The astronauts don't work for NASA anymore. You don't approach them through NASA. You have to contact them in other ways.
The people we were dealing with at NASA were the archivist, the people who run the archive. We didn't have any other dealings with NASA. We didn't need to. We weren't filming on any NASA facility. NASA didn't know the film was even happening. They didn't hear about it until after it played at Sundance and made waves won the audience prize. We then got contacted by NASA and asked if they could see it. They liked it very much. In fact on July 20th, the anniversary of Apollo 11, NASA is engaged on a program to go back and actually building spacecraft and one of the senior people said they would like everybody who is working on the return to see this movie. We actually showed it at 11 different NASA sites all around the country on July 20th.
The astronauts liked the film. Quite some of the most extraordinary and nerve racking moments of my life was sitting next to astronauts in audiences like this while they watch especially since they count mistakes and tell you what they think. Well it wasn't like that at all. I suppose one of the nicest things was with Bill Anders who is not one of the astronauts in the film but is mentioned in it as he is the person on Apollo 8 who took the Earth Rise photograph. So I was a bit nervous when Jim Lovell talks about ""I have to credit the photograph to Bill Anders." As he said that, Bill Anderson says at the top of his voice for the whole audience, "FIRST TIME!".
Jim Lovell goes on to say of course he claims the credit all the time. It brought the house down. Then Bill Anders came up on stage and said, "I've waited 38 years for a film to do justice to Apollo"
Q. Was Neil Armstrong ever approached?
DS: I think we knew we were going to make this film without Neil Armstrong. I was in email correspondene with him about it. He was very supportive of the project. But he said as I expected him to say, I don't talk. He has a particular reason for doing that as he sees himself as the messenger and not the message. "Its not about me, its about the fact that it was done. It doesn't matter who did it." He says it could have been any one of a number of people. You wouldn't necessary thought as Apollo 11 was the first attempt would succeed as there would be 3 attempts in '69. It could have easily been Pete Conrad. I rather like the film without him as if Neil Armstrong were in the film, it would have been about Apollo 11 not about the whole program and the film would have become about him and I think that would be a shame as I think some of the most interesting observations are from the later astronauts when they had more time on the moon. The goal of doing it and achieving it had been done so it became a more profound experience. I like the fact that Neil Armstrong is the one astronaut that stays young. He stays an iconic figure. You don't see him as he is today. And I like the way everybody sees him as an everyman. And I like the way Neil puts his foot on the moon. The film opens out to show how the world shares that experience. That's what he wants us to think about. Every mission from Mercury right up today has a mission patch designed by the astronauts themselves. And the Apollo 11 patch is very unusual that it doesn't have the names of the crew. And I think that's Armstrong's sense that we are just representatives of a larger body of people.
Q: How basically does the technology compares to today?
DS: Well we have more computing then on the LEM. The LEM computer got overloaded. And I think there is 38 kilobits of addressable memory. Which is a tiny tiny fraction of what is in your mobile phone. In some ways its interesting talking to the NASA people going back to it. They didn't know how to do it. These techniques and this technology has been lost. Rediscovered and reinvented. Its a little bit like that wonderful blue you get in medieval stained glass. Nobody knows how to do it.
I think what's interesting that it was designed without the aid of computers using wooden models. It was sophisticated and still is by today's standards. We need to move quickly. NASA for the return to the moon will hopefully be a big international effort in which this country will play a more significant role than Apollo although we were involved in Apollo building some of the equipment. I hope we'll send a British astronaut in the new mission
Q: What kind of distribution do you have?
DS: We are on general release from the 2nd of November (in the UK. Already playing in the US). We're in 9 London cinemas.
Mastidon: As a British person what gave you the idea about to do a film about the American space program?
DS: That's a question lots of Americans ask. It was obvious something that the world shared. Its a world event. Its a very significant event in human history from a lot of perspectives. I think those images of the Earth really changed the way we think of ourselves. We are the self conscious animals, creatures on this planet. What makes us human is that we are aware of our situation, but I think that awareness until a small group of human beings were able to leave the Earth and go somewhere else and look back at the Earth and see where we are in out true context, in the real scheme of things. its like a child leaving home and come back having been away. Maybe as an adult coming back to your house.
The Earth isn't as big as we think it is. And that's a world event. Its an enormously significant event in the evolution of humanity. As time goes on as it phases into a historical event it will be seen in those terms. Interesting enough the film has been picked up for distribution in Australia, New Zealand, and Japan. So I think people around the world I hope are going to be interested to see it.
Q: Did you consider interviewing someone from the Russian space program?
DS: I don't speak Russian. Actually that's quite important as what we were aiming for was a certain intimacy. The Russians didn't go to the moon. This is a film about the men who went to the moon. We didn't interview any wives, any engineers, any mission control.
Our decision was always to concentrate there were 3 billion in my time and now there are 7 billion people on the planet. There are 7 billion of us and of the 7 billion, 9 have walked on another world. This film is about those 9 men. I don't think anybody else could have competed with that.
Q: There wasn't a huge amount in the film about Apollo 13. Was that a conscious decision?
DS: We deal with Apollo 13 quickly. There is a fundamental problem with Apollo from an artistic point of view in terms of making a film which is in some sense the climax of the story is Apollo 11 landing on the moon. That's in the sequence of the missions so to construct a film you have a slight problem on how you are going to deal with that. And also you have all of these different missions. You can't make a film that's about Apollo 11, then 12, then 13 then 14.
As an audience you would go bonkers. So the way the film is structured, is that the story we tell is give the air of the mission but once we pick up with Apollo 11 becomes our story arch. And then we go to the other astronauts to tell us their impressions of things that were common to all of the missions riding the rocket, landing on the moon, walking on the moon, returning, re-entry. So they're not telling us stories of what happened but they're giving us impressions so they were the experience of flying and landing on the moon and coming back.
A richer and more informative experience. But the problem is Apollo 13 because that's another story. It never fits neatly into this schema. We seriously considering not having Apollo 13. But I think it would be a bit perverse to have Jim Lovell in the film and not talk about it. Its one of those things that you can't leave it out.
Afterwards, I was able to ask David one more question:
Mastidon: I noticed there was no moon footage from Apollo 12. Is there any since they had all of the problems with the TV camera?
DS: There isn't much and we did not use any in the film. We did use several other shots from Apollo 12 in the film.
I've got several more reviews coming your way over the next few days. The festival has kept me nice and busy.
Ciao for now,
-Mastidon
