“Apollo 13”– Boldly Going Where No Film Crew Had Gone Before

With the  4^th of July coming up fast, there can be no better moment to contemplate Ron Howard’s 1995 epic, Apollo 13. At a time of angry partisan divide, it’s encouraging to look back at a point in recent history where the entire country—in fact, the entire world—was on the same page. And when, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, we’re all despairing about the American way of life, it’s heartening to remember a crisis that turned into a triumph.

You may recall that in April of 1970, three astronauts blasted off from Cape Canaveral, headed for the moon. Unlike the Apollo 11 mission the previous year, this one occasioned no great amount of press coverage. When Neil Armstrong and his two-man crew departed for the lunar surface in July of 1969, the whole world was watching. Armstrong’s slow-motion steps on the moon—the first by any human being—were cheered by virtually everyone in range of a TV set. The Apollo 12 mission in November 1969 was blissfully uneventful, which meant that by the time James Lovell, Fred Haise, and Jack Swigert strapped into their seats in April 1970, few members of the public were paying much attention. Journalists who interviewed the men before their departure questioned whether they were nervous about the number thirteen. True to their training as tough-minded men of science, they all expressed total confidence in their mission and in each other. Little did they know that an on-board explosion would cripple their spacecraft, leading to the very real possibility that they’d never return to earth.

I thought a great deal about Apollo 13 while writing Ron Howard: From Mayberry to the Moon . . . and Beyond. Howard’s film, which I consider a highlight of his long career, points up the many bad omens for those in search of them. Lovell and his crew had been scheduled for Apollo 14, but fairly late in the game were shifted to the earlier mission when astronaut Alan Shepard, returning from medical leave, needed additional training time. Then, three days before the launch, astronaut Ken Mattingly was booted from the crew, over the objections of his teammates, because of exposure to measles. So Swigert was a last-minute replacement, and the film nicely captures the awkwardness between three men (played by Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon) who were not entirely comfortable with one another.

 The script also makes room for the feelings of those on the ground. Marilyn Lovell, wife of Jim, is sympathetically portrayed by Oscar-nominated Kathleen Quinlan as a supportive but anxious helpmeet, trying to juggling her own fears and her responsibilities toward those left behind. Ed Harris was nominated for playing Gene Kranz, who as director of Mission Operations must somehow keep his cool while leading the mission-impossible effort to bring back the stranded astronauts safely.

Some of the film’s strong sense of authenticity comes from the fact that NASA was an integral partner in its production. The space agency, figuring that Americans would not return to the moon for many decades to come, reasoned that this film (based on Lovell’s own memoir, Lost Moon) could be used as an historic record of the near-disaster. NASA therefore provided full access to its documents and facilities, even giving Howard and his three astronauts the unique opportunity to film in brief spurts in the K-135 aircraft (nicknamed the Vomit Comet), used by generations of astronauts to experience weightlessness. I’ll close with high praise for James Horner’s stirring score, and for the film’s poignant reminder that there’s no place like home.

Bill Paxton and Below-the-Line Hollywood

We’re all stunned by the passing of Hollywood good-guy Bill Paxton at the early age of 61. I remember him particularly from Apollo 13, where he played astronaut Fred Haise, and of course from TV’s Big Love. But his obits remind us that he started out in the business working for (who else?) Roger Corman. Like so many in Hollywood, Paxton was an alumnus of the unofficial Roger Corman School of Low-Budget Filmmaking.

Paxton’s first film assignment, back in 1974, was in the art department for Corman’s Big Bad Mama, a Depression Era romp starring Angie Dickinson at her sexiest and most deadly. Frankly, I don’t remember him. As the production secretary on that film, I was responsible for cast and crew getting paid. But most of my efforts were directed at the department heads, like art director Peter Jamison. I wouldn’t have had much to do with a lowly set dresser, which was Paxton’s credit on this film.

Those outside the film industry may not be quite aware of how many people it takes to make a movie. They see (if they bother to stick around) the long strings of names listed in a film’s end-credits, but they don’t understand the implications of the jobs we call “below the line.” A film crew is in fact something like an army going into battle. There are numerous departments, hierarchically arranged (e.g. the cinematographer holds sway over the camera and lighting crews), and department heads are largely responsible for hiring and overseeing those who work in subordinate positions. Even in the famously down-and-dirty Corman world, a certain discipline is imposed by this arrangement. If Paxton had not moved into acting with a tiny role in Corman’s 1975 Crazy Mama (a Cloris Leachman flick not to be confused with Big Bad Mama), he might have climbed up the chain of command into crew positions of greater responsibility. As it was, he continued to accrue art department credits until 1987, though a relationship with fellow Corman alum James Cameron moved him into big-time acting roles by way of  1984’s The Terminator and 1986’s Aliens (“Game over, man!”).

 Working production on Big Bad Mama, I discovered the life of a crew member. I’ll never forget an eager-beaver PA (production assistant) who was clearly raring to make his mark in the movie game. No youngster, he was rapidly going grey, and had a wife and kids whom he’d moved to L.A. in pursuit of his filmmaking dream. I wondered at his choice of vocation. If, in his forties, he was willing to take the lowliest of positions on a non-union Roger Corman crew, I didn’t see how his family would survive. Fortunately, I think he wised up. The IMDB lists his credits only on two Corman films. I’m hoping he went back where he came from and fulfilled his career goals some other way. 

Also on Big Bad Mama I met Teri Schwartz, a young woman both efficient and good-humored. As the film’s second assistant director, she was a steady, calming presence. For those who don’t know, an assistant director is never going to make it into the directorial ranks. Rather, the job is largely administrative, involving taking care of actors’ paperwork. The A.D. also ushers actors and extras to the set at the right moment and makes sure to avoid snafus. Teri was so good at this that she became a producer on hit films like Sister Act. And now she’s the much-respected dean of the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television. Some below-the-line folks make it to the top with a vengeance.

"Gravity": In Space No One Can Hear You Yawn?

Don’t get me wrong: Gravity is an impressive achievement. In filming a saga of astronauts stranded in space, Alfonso Cuarón (hailed for such distinctive work as Children of Men and Y Tu Mamá También) has artfully used all the cinematic tools that today’s Hollywood has to offer. Since I can’t wrap my brain around technology, I can only marvel at Cuarón’s creative use of CGI and other tricks to show Sandra Bullock and George Clooney navigating weightlessly through Zero-G. And the realistic views of the sun rising over the rim of our own planet are staggeringly gorgeous.

Why then, didn’t I feel moved as well as impressed?

We human beings have always been fascinated by the idea of space travel. Georges Méliès, back in 1902, filmed the fanciful voyage of some scantily dressed cuties, whose rocket ship hits the Man in the Moon smack in the eye. By the Sixties, when the space race between the US and the USSR had heated up for real, Hollywood couldn’t get enough of astronaut movies. Roger Corman’s War of the Satellites tried for a thriller involving space aliens, and Don Knotts, in The Reluctant Astronaut, played the challenges of weightlessness for laughs. But none of this prepared Sixties audiences for 2001: A Space Odyssey, with its mind-blowing view of a future in which space travel is routine and computerized technology is a way of life. Fans are still arguing about the film’s meaning, but its visual portrait of life in space is still aesthetically unforgettable. Then a decade later came Alien, which discovered that a spaceship full of astronauts was a rip-roaring backdrop for a monster flick.

Alien found suspense by picking off its characters one by one, until we were down to the gutsiest of “final girls,” Sigourney Weaver’s Ripley. By contrast, the suspense in Gravity is of a less gimmicky sort: we are asked to invest our emotions in the fate of someone who may or may not have the guts, stamina, and ingenuity to survive a life-or-death situation. This is hardly unique in the annals of Hollywood. Think Cast Away, 127 Hours, The Life of Pi, and Robert Redford’s upcoming All is Lost. I found Sandra Bullock’s plight gripping, but never enough to make me forget that it’s only a movie. The reviewers who’ve commented on the B-movie aspects of Gravity’s plot are quite right.  There’s the relationship between the grizzled veteran and the green-around-the-gills rookie, along with a cascade of unfolding disasters, and (of course) the eye candy of Bullock facing death in her skivvies.    

I’m married to an aerospace engineer who once seriously hoped to join the astronaut corps. And I myself, as a U.S. Pavilion guide at Osaka’s Expo 70 just one year after the first moon landing, quickly learned to respect the challenges of space exploration. I well remember suffering, along with everyone else, when the astronauts of Apollo 13 seemed to be lost in space for real. Ron Howard’s 1995 movie version of that apparently doomed mission had me breathless with suspense, even though the outcome was well known. I cared more in Apollo 13 than in Gravity because Howard’s characters seemed more complete. I knew all they were risking in human terms, and I desperately wanted to see families reunited and lives on earth continue onward.

Which doesn’t detract from Gravity’s accomplishment as a darned good technothriller. The engineers I know have given high praise to its grasp of space science. And for me it’s accomplished something else: now my husband doesn’t yearn to be an astronaut anymore. 

From the Earth to the Moon . . . and Beyond

Along with an international group of engineers and space scientists (don’t ask!), I’ve just survived an insider’s tour of NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia. An earnest engineering type, showing us around a large hangar full of futuristic space equipment, quipped, “By the way, this is where they filmed the moon landing.” Later, explaining an elaborate contraption that had once helped astronauts practice landing a spacecraft on a simulated lunar surface, a different guide warned that we’d spot clips of the place on the Internet: “This facility is all over those conspiracy sites.”

Some people will never accept that Neil Armstrong and colleagues actually left their footprints on the moon. They’re quick to assume it was merely Hollywood-style razzle-dazzle. And why not? We all know that the special-effects wizards of movieland can convince us of practically anything.

Of course low-budget filmmakers of the Roger Corman ilk have never worried much about depicting space travel realistically. For Roger in his heyday, timing was all. Shooting War of the Satellites a mere three weeks after the Russians launched Sputnik, he was so keen to capitalize on the public’s new interest in outer space that his visuals approached the preposterous. Example: the Corman astronauts, wearing cute little jump suits with lots of zippers, blasted into the stratosphere while sitting comfortably on what look like lawn chairs equipped with seatbelts. Just prior to liftoff, they solemnly adjusted their chairs so that their legs extended into a reclining position. Not exactly convincing, but since there’d been no man in space at that point, who knew different?

By contrast, when Ron Howard shot Apollo 13, dramatizing Commander Jim Lovell’s account of the one U.S. lunar mission that nearly ended in tragedy, he wanted to keep as close to the truth as possible. This mindset was reinforced by NASA’s hope for a factual record of a mission that, though it failed to achieve its original goal, could be seen as a victory of American brainpower against tremendous odds. Astronaut Dave Scott, who served as one of the film’s technical advisors, made the compelling case that human beings would probably not return to the moon for a hundred years. Given that the existing documentary footage of the Apollo 13 mission was far from complete, Scott argued that Howard’s film must preserve for future generations an important episode in the history of manned space flight. So Howard took on the burden of historic correctness, scrutinizing every set detail and every snippet of dialogue for accuracy.

The greatest challenge was conveying a sense of weightlessness within a space capsule. For the first time in movie history, cast and crew were allowed abroad NASA’s zero-gravity simulator, the KC-135. This high-flying Boeing 707, once used for the training of astronauts, could be guided by an expert pilot into a series of parabolic arcs. At the height of each parabola the plane’s occupants would float weightlessly for several blissful seconds, before slamming to the floor when gravity hit them with double its usual force. Filming occurred in 23-second bursts over a grueling series of three-day stretches. Though the KC-135 is known as the "Vomit Comet" for a reason, Howard and his team quickly showed that they were not Hollywood wusses. Howard himself eventually announced a new goal: to be the first director to shoot a movie on the moon. Needless to say, he’s still waiting.