"In the Shadow of the Moon", New documentary gets a favorable review Options

[jrdahlman]

Raymond Chen, a programmer for Microsoft, went to the Seattle International Film Festival. As mentioned in his blog, he walked into "In the Shadow of the Moon" almost by accident and came out raving about it. From his description, it sound like a film we would enjoy.

http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/archive/...01/3019282.aspx

If I may quote:

"This was absolutely wonderful, a documentary consisting of stunning never-before-seen NASA footage from the Apollo missions and interviews with most of the surviving astronauts who have been to the moon. (Of the astronauts, all of whom are extremely well-spoken and quite funny, Michael Collins steals the show.) If this movie goes into general release, I strongly encourage every space buff to run, don't walk, to see it. The footage of the Saturn V launch brought tears to me eyes. I give it a 5 out of 5.

There's a spectacular shot taken from the inside of a spent stage: You watch the next stage ignite and the spacecraft fade off into the distance, then as the spent stage loses attitude, the earth comes into view before the film finally runs out. During the Q&A after the movie, one person asked the director, 'How did the film of that sequence survive re-entry?' The answer: The film was ejected from the spent stage and fell to earth. High-altitude planes were in pursuit with giant nets trailing out behind them. That was one insane game of 'catch'.

The special surprise guest at the screening was Bill Anders, the crewmember from Apollo 8 who took the famous Earthrise photo. He quipped that Frank Borman actually took the first Earthrise photo, but Borman had the disadvantage of using the camera loaded with black-and-white film; Anders had color film in his camera.

Bonus story #1 from Gene Cernan: 'My father was alive when the Wright brothers made their first flight; he could hardly believe that I walked on the moon. My son was five years old; he thought it was no big deal.'

Bonus story #2 from Charles Duke: 'After I returned, the flight doctor told me that at launch my heart rate was 144.' A beat. 'John's was 70.' Cut to interview with John Young: 'I'm old. My heart can't go any faster.'"

[dvandorn]

Well, I saw it yesterday. I was impressed.

For one thing, of the nine men still alive who walked on the Moon, they had commentaries from eight of them. Only Neil Armstrong chose not to participate -- and it's not like we didn't see and hear him, from contemporary recordings and films. Interestingly, perhaps in silent memory of them, there were almost no images of the three moonwalkers who have passed on -- Conrad, Shepard and Irwin -- with Al Bean only even mentioning Pete's name once.

There was a good amount of commentary from a guy who only ever flew as a CMP, too -- but then again, Mike Collins has such a startlingly intelligent wit and delightful way of telling a story, I was *really* happy to see a lot of him in this piece.

The next most prolific contributor was Charlie Duke, and this again met my wholehearted approval. Charlie was always the most enthusiastic of the guys who went to the Moon, and while he has lost some of that frenetic energy with age and the calming influence of his faith, he was more boyishly happy in his reminiscences than I've seen him in years. He even admitted to having been so incredibly relieved when Apollo 11 finally touched down on the Moon that "...I couldn't even say Tranquility. I said 'Twangquility' or something like that." Which is very true.

Charlie had one of the best insights into himself and into Neil Armstrong, as well. He said something along the lines of (paraphrasing from memory, here) "Neil was the best guy to be the first guy on the Moon. He was real -- controlled. He had a lot of control, he thought up that great line. I wouldn't have been a good choice, I wouldn't have had any control, I would've just screamed 'Yahooooo, I'm on the MOON!' or somethin' like that..." In point of fact, Duke was the *only* guy to let out a scream when his LM landed, and he did sort of holler "That first step on the lunar surface is SUPER, Tony!" when he had his own shot at climbing down that ladder and setting his own foot onto the Moon.

I was very pleased to see John Young appear, albeit somewhat briefly. He had some very pithy and insightful things to say, though. Just like John -- never use six words when three will do.

Al Bean was confident and happy. Dave Scott was only on screen a little, but as always he was well-spoken. Cernan, as usual, came off as a cheerleader who hasn't yet realized that high school is over. Schmitt was reserved and somehow sad. Mitchell showed the sense of awe and wonder that the trip brought out in him, never to be put back in the bottle like the proverbial djinni.

There were maybe 20 seconds of footage that I had never seen before, almost all of it from one of the trasnposition and docking maneuvers. There was a very nice piece of film editing, though, that I had never seen before -- someone matched the multi-loop MOCR recordings to the 16mm film being shot in the control room on July 20, 1969, and we got to watch Charlie Duke throughout the descent, hearing the actual words he spoke *and* watching his face as he spoke them. That was a very nice piece of work.

Finally, they end the film running each and every one of the guys' reactions to being questioned about the "moon hoax" thing. From John Young's "Why would you want to take the most impressive thing people have ever done and crap on it like that?" attitude to Charlie Duke's "I could maybe see faking it one time -- but NINE TIMES???? Why in the world would anyone do that?" to Mike Collins' "You ever have two people who know a secret? You can't even keep it then. You just CAN'T <breaking out in laughter> you CANNOT have TENS of THOUSANDS of people in on a secret like that!"

It was an amusing way to end the piece.

-the other Doug