Moonstruck

Q: There have been so many films about the moon. Why wander into the fray?

A: It’s extraordinarily simple: there are seven billion people on the planet and nine of us have stood on another one. I went into it without any particular expectations of what the film would be, but wanting to meet these guys and talk to them. Like everybody else, I had seen films over the years like Apollo 13, and often what came out of the mouths of the astronauts seemed rather stale and predictable. I had a gut feeling that perhaps now we might get something a bit different. Not to be morbid about it, but there are 12 people who have walked on the moon, three have already died, and the rest are all in their 70s. These men are the ultimate realists, so they all know they’re not going to be around forever. My producers had been working on a space drama for the BBC, and they came up with the idea that it was time to gather together the remaining living moonwalkers to make a testimony for future generations. I came on board to help execute it.

Q: The notoriously reclusive Neil Armstrong, first man on the moon, didn’t participate. Were you disappointed?

A: Everyone said to us: “Just keep on going, eventually you’ll wear him down and he’ll say yes.” Firstly, the man has an absolute right to decline or accept whatever interviews he wants. Secondly, I rather respect his decision to be reticent about the whole business, because I think in some ways he’s helped to preserve the mystique and the mystery of what he’s done. If he popped up everywhere talking about “one small step for man,” I think the whole thing could become devalued.

After a while, as the film took shape, I began to get less and less concerned about getting him in there, and I felt like he had made quite a good decision for us. I think, paradoxically, the film is actually stronger for the fact that he’s there, but he’s not there. We go to the moon, but we don’t go to the moon, if you see what I mean. There is always finally some mystery about that moment. But of course, [in archival footage] you see him talking and also, everybody else is talking about him. He really is the centre of the movie. I rather got to like that about the film. Towards the end of it, I stopped sending him my monthly e-mail and said: “Mr. Armstrong, you’re probably right about this and I’m going to stop bugging you.”

Q: His reluctance to trade on his celebrity feels like one of the most pronounced differences between that generation and the current one.

A: All of [the Apollo 11 astronauts] were born in 1930. They’re a pre-TV generation and one of the things they all have in common is a devotion to the written word, which is part of what makes academic success. They were all successful kids, top of their class at every stage, and they’re all bookworms. The best way to ingratiate yourself with an Apollo astronaut is to send him a good book.

Q: But I did see a clip online in which Buzz Aldrin seems to be having a pretty good time at Sundance. He looks all right in a leather vest.

A: Oh yes, they’re party animals as well. I didn’t get that into the movie. What they say and what you read about the base at Apollo – oh my. They’re also military types, soldier-sailors, and they know how to party.

Q: How did you obtain the unseen footage?

A: At the time of each mission, NASA made a little half-hour documentary, which was partly footage from space and partly footage up from the ground. They released these docs to the media and that’s the footage that’s been copied and seen worldwide forever. The other material that wasn’t on those tapes was put in cold storage under liquid nitrogen to preserve it. We knew that NASA had decided that high-definition video was sufficiently advanced to make it worth bringing the film out and transferring it to high-definition video. This became, as it were, a new set of masters that would be more easily distributed. The material was becoming available, and we happened to be the first people to be able to make full use of it.

Apollo 11, the first manned Moon expedition, blasts off on July 16, 1969. (HotDocs Film Festival)

Q: Some of the footage has a rougher look, even some markings. I like how the imperfect footage contrasts with the technical perfection of the missions. What were you thinking there?

A: There’s all the stuff which was shot on the ground that’s on 10,000 rolls in the NASA archives. A lot of it had never been looked at since it was shot. Our colleagues were opening original camera rolls. That’s how we got a lot of stuff from mission control that’s never been seen before.

The reason that it hadn’t been used is that it’s slightly technically compromised. We’d use it anyway, clean it up a bit. The film-editing style was just different in the past. For us, we didn’t mind the rough footage. We use a lot of film “run-outs” [where the viewer sees the blank tail end of the strip of film] because sometimes, just as a film runs out something wonderful happens. A classic thing is with the Apollo 11 mission, when just as the film runs out, Charlie Duke at mission control pulls this amazing face, like: “We did it!” He sticks his tongue out and rolls his eyes, and if you took a straight view, you wouldn’t be able to use that film, because it’s starting to fog and goes right to the run-out. But we can use it because that’s the editing style that we’ve adopted.

Q: One of the things that’s emphasized in the film is that while the space race was born out of this great national rivalry between the U.S. and the Soviet Union, the world responded to the missions with a sense of collective accomplishment: all these euphoric celebrations in India, Japan, Europe. Even though you’re British, did you feel ownership over the achievement?

A: I do remember when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, the way in which the whole world was pulled together for that brief moment. I actually saw those first steps in Spain as a little boy because we were on holiday. We were invited next door by this Spanish family to watch it on TV. It literally brought an English and Spanish family together to watch this American achievement – an American achievement, but also a human achievement.

Like a lot of people, I took it for granted that one day I would go to the moon. I remember thinking: “Well, maybe I should go to university in America because perhaps it would be easier to go to the moon if I were American.” As it happened, in the end I married an American, so maybe one day...

Q: It’s so hard to imagine any event, even space travel, uniting the planet like that today. The globe seems so much more divided now, although of course, the true cliché is that we’re more connected than ever. The film struck me as a lament for that kind of unity.

A: I agree. It’s not a partisan political film, but I think like any film, it gets political in the end. We’re political animals, anything we do has a political dimension. I think the film is a reminder of a great thing that was done in the past, and it’s also an invitation to the present to pick up that battle, to pick up that torch and run with it. By that, I don’t mean necessarily going to the moon. Apollo had an extraordinary generosity of spirit about it. There was a confidence in the ability to do things, and solve problems no matter how impossible seeming, and I feel that’s desperately needed to overcome our pressing global problems, and climate change in particular.

I think the film does have an environmental message. One of the most important legacies of Apollo was recognizing just what the planet Earth is. One of the interesting things to me is these guys know that viscerally, not just intellectually. They’ve been there; they’ve seen it with their own eyes. There’s a certain urgency and impatience when you talk to them, that somehow we are not really picking up on that message. [John F.] Kennedy was very important that way, at galvanizing the nation. I hope the film is a reminder that with a political will, and by pulling together, it is possible to solve problems that seem more difficult, but really are not more difficult, than going to the moon. To us, the film is an elegy and a rebuke and an invitation.