The moon landing was a giant leap for movies, too
In this July 20, 1969 photo made available by NASA, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin works on a solar
wind experiment device on the surface of the moon. Neil Armstrong / NASA via Associated Press
Caribbean Life, J BQ uly 19–25, 2019 43
By Jake Coyle
NEW YORK (AP) — In 1964, Stanley Kubrick, on
the recommendation of the science-fiction author
Arthur C. Clarke, bought a telescope.
“He got this Questar and he attached one of his
cameras to it,’’ remembers Katharina Kubrick, the
filmmaker’s stepdaughter. “On a night where there
was a lunar eclipse, he dragged us all out onto the
balcony and we were able to see the moon like a big
rubber ball. I don’t think I’ve seen it as clearly since.
He loved that thing. He looked at it all the time.”
Space exploration was then an exciting possibility,
but one far from realization. That July, the NASA’s
Ranger 7 sent back high-resolution photographs from
the moon’s surface. Kubrick and Clarke, convinced
the moon was only the start, began to toil on a script
together. It would be five years before astronauts
landed on the moon, on July 20, 1969. Kubrick took
flight sooner. “2001: A Space Odyssey” opened in
theaters April 3, 1968.
The space race was always going to be won by
filmmakers and science-fiction writers. Jules Verne
penned “From the Earth to the Moon” in 1865,
prophesying three U.S. astronauts rocketing from
Florida to the moon. George Melies’ 1902 silent classic
“A Trip to the Moo” had a rocket ship landing in the
eye of the man in the moon. “Destination Moon,’’
based on Robert Heinlein’s tale, got there in 1950, and
won an Oscar for special effects. Three years before
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the lunar
surface, “Star Trek’’ began airing.
It’s no wonder that the moon landing seemed like
the stuff of movies. Some conspiracy theorists claimed
it was one: another Kubrick production. But the truth
of the landing was intertwined with cinema.
Audio recordings from Mission Control during
Apollo 11 capture flight controllers talking about
“2001.” The day of the landing, Heinlein and Clarke
were on air with Walter Cronkite. Heinlein called it
“New Year’s Day of the Year One.”
The landing was a giant leap not just for mankind
but for filmmaking. The astronauts on board Apollo
11 carried multiple film cameras with them, including
two 16mm cameras and several 70mm Hasselblad
500s. Some cameras were affixed to the lunar module
and the astronauts’ suits, others they carried on the
journey. Their training was rudimentary, but they
were filmmakers. Armstrong, Aldrin and Michael
Collins were all later made honorary members of the
American Society of Cinematographers.
Those images, broadcast live on television, were
crucial proof for the mission. Filmmaker Todd
Douglas Miller, whose archival-based “Apollo 11” has
been one of the year’s most acclaimed and popular
documentaries, believes they constitute some of the
most important images in cinema history.
“How could you argue with Buzz Aldrin’s landing
shot with a 16mm camera using variable frame rate
and shutter exposures out the lunar module window?’’
marvels Miller. “I mean, come up with a better shot in
cinema history than the landing on the moon. And
likewise, Michael Collins in the command module
seeing the lunar module come off the surface of the
moon. They’re incredible shots on their own and
they’re also technically astute.”
The possibility of traveling to the moon had
long invigorated the dreams of storytellers. But the
realization of that vision, and the images it produced,
opened up entirely new horizons. The moon landing
inspired films that greatly expanded the realm of
science fiction and began an ongoing dance between
the space program and the movies: two sunny
industries driven by technological discovery and
starry-eyed daydreams.
Many of the foremost filmmakers then coming
of age turned to space. George Lucas debuted “Star
Wars” in 1977, the same year Steven Spielberg released
“Close Encounters of the Third Kind.” Ridley Scott’s
“Alien,” suggesting a less harmonious universe, came
out two years later.
Science fiction runs on its own parallel timeline.
It resides beyond contemporary reality while at the
same time being informed by it. It’s built on future
dreams past. Lucas was inspired by the 1936 serial
“Flash Gordon.” Spielberg, who later made Kubrick’s
“A.I.,” referred to “2001,’’ not the moon landing, as the
genre’s “big bang.’’
But, unmistakably, a new frontier opened when
Apollo 11 landed. Philip Kaufman purposefully began
his 1983 Oscar-winning epic “The Right Stuff,” based
on Tom Wolfe’s book about the daring test pilots of
the space program’s early days, with Chuck Yeager
(Sam Shepherd) on a horseback.
“‘The Right Stuff’ is right from the beginning a
continuation of the Western,’’ Kaufman says. “The
hero of ‘The Right Stuff’ is a spirit. It’s called the
Right Stuff and it’s something that’s ineffable. It’s the
ultimate modesty in a way. It’s in the great laconic
characters of the Western. You don’t brag. You do your
task in the best way possible. And maybe, as in ‘The
Searchers’ or ‘Shane,’ you walk away at the end.”
The extraordinary height of achievement of the
moon landing has ever since been a measuring stick
for America. The partisan reception to last year’s
“First Man,’’ with Ryan Gosling as Armstrong, was its
own reflection of the country’s present. Kaufman, 82,
imagines an ongoing search for “the right stuff.’’
“How do we refresh that sense of adventure?” he
wonders, citing the touristy lines on Mount Everest.
“How do we memorialize the landing on the moon
not just with parades and self-congratulation but a
sense of reverence for the greatness of the people who
did it?”
Ever since the moon landing made fantasy real, a
strain of science-fiction has ridden scientific accuracy
for big-screen spectacle. Ridley Scott’s “The Martian’’
(2015) and Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar’’ (2014)
took physics-based approaches to tell reasonably
plausible tales of space travel, with scientists as
consultants. NASA helped extensively on Ron Howard’s
Oscar-winning ``Apollo 13” (1995). Weightless scenes
were filmed 25 seconds at a time on NASA’s KC-135
plane, in momentary zero gravity.
Margaret Weitekamp, curator of space and sciencefiction
history at the Smithsonian’s National Air and
Space Museum, sees a reciprocal relationship between
filmmakers and scientists, with ideas flowing between
the two — often to the benefit of NASA.
“When you see films in the post-Apollo era that
really capture the spirit and triumph and the glory of
human space flight, like `The Right Stuff’ and `Apollo
13,’ you see a direct increase in approval ratings for
NASA and human space flight,” Weitekamp said.
“After ‘The Martian,’ NASA had one of the largest
recruiting application pools that they’ve ever had for
the astronaut program.”
Other filmmakers saw something different, and
lonelier on the moon and the potentially lifeless
reaches of space. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky,
who found “2001’’ too sterile, sought to make a more
human space drama in “Solaris” (1972). The space
station was shabbier, the emotions more earthbound.
The French filmmaker Claire Denis, in this year’s
“High Life” with Robert Pattinson, similarly went to
space only to wrestle with many of things she always
has: sex, violence, parenthood.
``A lot of science fiction films are about conquest,”
Denis says. “In that void, that huge universe, there’s
not many things to fight, unless you do ‘Star Wars’
and there’s an alien living there.’’
As has been often said, we went to the moon and
ended up seeing the Earth more clearly. For Kubrick,
glued to the Apollo 11 broadcast 50 years ago, that
was literally true.
“I remember very clearly when we first saw a picture
of our Earth, Stanley was immediately disappointed
and depressed that he hadn’t gotten the model of the
Earth in ‘2001’ the right color,” Katharina recalls.
“In the film, it’s very pale blue and misty and cloudy.
But we hadn’t really seen it yet. We didn’t know how
clearly we’d be able to see it. He just said, ‘Oh gee, I
should have made it bluer.’”
Follow AP Film Writer Jake Coyle on Twitter at:
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/jakecoyleAP