Latest / All The Right Movies / Apollo 13 (1995) | Ep. 47 - Part 1

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Apollo 13 (1995) | Ep. 47 - Part 1 · All The Right Movies

• 0:04
  All the right movies, Apollo 13 flight controllers, you need a
• 0:08
  go. No go for launch booster, go
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  retro go network go recovery, go.
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  We are go for launch Apollo 13. A million things couldn't have
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  gone wrong. Our next broadcast will be from
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  the surface of the moon. One did in Houston.
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  We have a problem. The Odyssey is dying.
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  Failure is not an option. We're just going to figure out
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  how to stay alive. Apollo 13 rated PG starts
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  Friday, June 30th at theaters everywhere.
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  Apollo 13 was released in 1995 and became one of the biggest
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  hits of the year. Telling the real life story of
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  NASA's moon mission, it became a fight to return home.
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  The movie sits among the most popular director Ron Howard and
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  its star Tom Hanks. My name is John and the steely
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  eyed missile men with me are Matt.
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  Hey, this piece of shit's going to get you home.
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  And Westie. Gentlemen, it's been a pleasure
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  flying with you. Houston, we have a podcast and
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  ATRM are talking Hanks, Howard and NASA's finest hour and
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  gentlemen, failure is not an option.
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  Not on my watch. Hello and welcome to all the
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  right movies. 3 hours of boredom followed by 7 seconds of sheer
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  terror and a podcast on classic and hit films.
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  Sums it all up, all right? Yep.
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  Well, this time out we've got a couple of firsts, haven't we?
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  We do. Yep.
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  We've not covered a Ron Howard movie before, and even more
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  amazingly, this is our first time with Tom Hanks on ATRM
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  Classic. Wow.
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  Yeah, it is. Yeah.
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  Good grief. Unbelievable, right?
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  That's crazy that. It's one of the biggest movies
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  of the mid 90s as we get into the story behind Howard and
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  Hanks docudrama blockbuster Apollo 13.
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  Nice. Before we take off though, a
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  quick mention of Atrm Patron. Do you think?
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  Sure. Why not?
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  So if you're a regular listener to our ATRM Classic podcast, you
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  can help support what we do and help ensure we keep doing it by
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  becoming an ATRM patron. Patrons get access to our bonus
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  podcast episodes called Double Feature and the Watch List.
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  That's two bonus episodes per month.
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  Yeah, and access to our whole ATRM Classic archive.
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  There's literally hundreds of hours worth of listening in
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  there now. So if you like Tom Hanks and who
• 2:39
  doesn't, we've not covered him on ATRM Classic before, but
• 2:43
  there's a lot of stuff in our bonus episodes, Big Saving
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  Private Ryan, Philadelphia. Yep.
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  Loads and loads of other classics in there as well.
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  So to find out more, visit patreon.com/all the right
• 2:55
  movies. Or you can subscribe directly on
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  Apple Podcasts or on Spotify as well.
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  Easy. Yeah, it's worth you don't as
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  well that they're just them two episodes on Patron.
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  We cover 8 films just on the watch list and double feature
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  per month. That's right, it's a hell of a
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  lot of films. Days.
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  Well, back to the era now, though, and it is Apollo 13.
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  It is your choice, this one, Martin.
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  So why are we talking about it? Ever since I was a kid, this is
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  the subject I've been fascinated by the space race, the whole
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  history of NASA. So any film about it?
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  First Man, Hidden Figures, the right stuff.
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  I'm right in there with that in this one, Although I vaguely
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  knew the story, I didn't know the details, and I just didn't
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  realize just how precarious the whole situation was in getting
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  the astronauts back alive. And I think the greatest tribute
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  I can pay the film is that even if you know the end, and even if
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  you know Ron Howard isn't going to make a film where Tom Hanks
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  dies in a big ball of flames in the atmosphere at the end.
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  Imagine if he did. Imagine if he.
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  Did I mean be amazing if he did? But like 2020 minutes, you kind
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  of doubt it. You get that card opener, you
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  kind of forget it's definitely going to have a happy ending.
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  It's just one of the greatest true stories you could talk
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  about. Really saw the superb cast.
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  Ron Howard, not necessarily the most exciting director in the
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  world, but he's had such a long career, I think he does deserve
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  at least one episode. Absolutely he does, and I
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  remember this one being released at the time really well.
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  So In the Cinema in 1995 was a big film at the time and I liked
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  it a lot. I think that most people did,
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  based on one of the most extraordinary real life stories
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  you could ever hear in the field.
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  Apollo 13 mission. Like a successful failure.
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  Yes, they call it. Yeah.
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  And it is the first time we've covered a Tom Hanks movie on
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  ATRM Classic before. I had to put a message in our
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  WhatsApp group confirming that because I couldn't quite believe
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  it. Yeah, you did?
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  Yeah. It is.
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  You'd be furious, Hanks. That's what's wrong.
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  Man called that. That's why I made that.
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  So yeah first thing we've talked about Hanks the first time we
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  talked about Ron Howard and the director.
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  He's also an ATRM subscriber on ex Strange view.
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  Oh wow OK pays US money, Ron Howard, right OK, brilliant yeah
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  we'll talk about how the film was made.
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  Of course, compare the film to the real life mission and I've
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  not seen Apollo 13 for a long time before this episode, so
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  looking forward to discussing what we all think of it now and
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  we'll see. Have you got a problem I've.
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  Always got a problem. You know me.
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  Always I'll find one if I haven't got one.
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  And I'm not accepting bribes from Ron Howard.
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  I'm putting it out there now for everyone listening.
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  But he's not little money to say that Apollo 13.
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  Amazing. I mean, it's not it's not my
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  bag. Is it the old space race?
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  Let's be honest. Let's does it exist?
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  Does space exist? Let's get into that.
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  Here we go. No, I remember this one coming
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  out and it was a proper like this is what my dad's choosing
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  from Blockbuster. I have to all sit around and
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  watch it. It's going on 1st.
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  Like when the take away arrives, this is going on 1st.
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  I don't give a shit what anyone else has got.
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  We're watching this one. Yeah, it's a it's a Ron Howard
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  films. Pretty the most Ron Howard film
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  of all the Ron Howard films. I think it's got all of these,
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  these hallmarks, all of these trademarks.
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  I think the cast are fantastic. It's such an ensemble cast and
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  every such an actors, director, which we'll get into.
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  I think everyone's wonderful. There's such sense of peril, but
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  at the same time, like a coloring book.
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  It's like the like a Lady Bird Book of Witches and say, the
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  Lady Bird Book of Space. It's just like it tells you the
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  facts, but you don't quite believe that there's that much
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  going to go wrong. Yeah, it did set the base for a
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  lot of films that followed. I think it set the tone.
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  I think it was massive for 1995, this film.
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  There's a lot of shots in it that I saw 90s.
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  So I think it is an important film.
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  It is important to talk about and one that I think is kind of
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  lost a little bit. So it's good to kind of dig this
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  one up and see how important it was at the time and how
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  important it still is. So Apollo 13 was produced by
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  Universal Pictures and Imagine Entertainment, distributed by
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  Universal and released on the 30th of June 1995.
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  Filmed a variety of locations across Florida, Texas and
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  California. The film was directed by Ron
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  Howard, written by William Broyles Junior and Al Reinert,
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  based on the book Lost Moon by Jim Lovell and Jeffrey Kluger,
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  and it stars Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, Bill Paxton as Fred
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  Hayes, Kevin Bacon as Jack Swaggart, Gary Sinise's Ken
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  Mattingly and Ed Harris as Gene Kran.
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  Yeah, wow. NASA's angriest flight director.
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  Wonderful. Everyone's angry with the flat
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  top. Like Kurt Russell in Stargate.
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  It's a flat top. Everyone's angry with the flat
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  top. Let's get ourselves to the
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  Kennedy Space Center, then, should we?
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  Let's do it. Let's do it.
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  We're counting down to the beginning of Apollo 13.
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  Burn them engines. The beginning.
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  Apollo 13 is mostly known for the outer space set scenes, but
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  it's a little while before we get to that.
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  We are going to be talking about the moment where the team blast
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  off into space, but first we're meeting the Apollo 13 crew.
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  We are. So we start at the home of NASA
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  astronaut Jim Lovell and his wife Marilyn.
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  It's July the 20th, 1969, the night of the Apollo 11 moon
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  landing, and the Lovells are throwing a party to celebrate.
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  Yep. So how are these opening scenes,
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  Matt? Really confident.
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  There's something very horny about those days.
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  When there really is, yeah, I want to live there without.
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  Talking to Do you think the director was in happy Days by?
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  Yeah, it's waiting for potty to turn up.
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  Yeah, the funds coming in. I mean, yeah, even though it's
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  60s America, there's something really relatable about this, the
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  days when everyone would gather around the TV to watch something
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  historical unfold. And likewise today, that kind of
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  experience is just so fractured now.
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  We all watch things differently and at different times.
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  And it is really reminiscent to me of like when you were a kid
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  and you have these family get togethers and everyone comes,
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  aunts and uncles and cousins. So it's really relatable.
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  But I think the other stand out for me is I love how immediately
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  geeky these astronauts are. It's not like it's Clooney, Pitt
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  and Tom Cruise stood there. These guys do look like science
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  teachers that don't remotely look like men who are going to
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  be blasting off into the great unknown and pushing for like 1
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  of mankind's greatest achievements.
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  There's something really relatable about them straight
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  away. Yeah, it is a nice way to start.
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  The party does what it needs to in terms of taking us into this
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  world of people who are like obsessed with space travel by
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  celebrating the first moon landing, which works introduces
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  our main characters in terms of Jim, his crew, the family, and
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  also sets the tone for the film of being light but also for me a
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  little heavy-handed at the same time.
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  Some of the dialogue is pretty on the nose, like when Ken and
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  Fred are in the lounge and Ken's, like, my cousin called,
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  asked to be bribed to be on Jim Lovell's crew told him they just
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  wanted to get the best, like, real 90s movie taught that.
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  And that's not the end of it. And Jack talking to Tracy.
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  Yeah, talking the module. Unbelievable.
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  To be the least subtle sexual metaphor ever.
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  It's the open of the film. It's the first dialogue you
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  hear. Outrageous.
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  But what it does set up well, I think, is the relationship
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  between Jim and Marilyn, played by Kathleen Quinlan.
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  Yeah, really good actress. And I think she hangs clear of
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  each other really well. Yeah, Jim and Marilyn's
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  relationship is the heart of the film, I think for me, and the
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  scene between them in the garden looking at the moon sets up
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  effectively. So in all, yeah, strong
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  character based opening I think. So the film started the voice
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  over narration and a brief history of the Apollo space
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  program and concluding Apollo 1 where 3 astronauts were killed.
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  Originally there was a lot more filmed around the Apollo 1
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  disaster and how it affected the Apollo 13 crew, but all those
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  scenes were cut. Yeah, Howard said that you can't
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  start a story on Apollo 13 with 7 minutes about Apollo 1, which
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  kind of makes sense. Yeah, I mean, many of the
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  directors would have started it like that and all Fincher would
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  have. He definitely can't.
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  And some of the things we've seen, the party sequence, are
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  based on reality. So the production designer was
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  Michael Cornblith and he and his team were given access to family
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  photos of the real Level family and they use these to recreate
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  their real house in Houston. So the Levels living room had an
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  authentic Yellow Pages, Life magazine and TV Guide, all from
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  the correct weeks. Nice, yeah.
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  Yeah, Meredith Boswell, she was a set director, and she said
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  that she briefed her team by saying wherever Ron swings his
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  camera, it needs to work and look authentic.
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  So, like, painstaking attention to detail.
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  Nice. Also, like, when Jim's, like,
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  get a haircut. Yeah, even though Jay's hair is
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  already really smart. Yeah, it's all right.
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  Like he saw us three, Yeah. I'm getting more naturally Tom.
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  It's fine. And Jay is played by Max Slate,
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  who was also in Three Ninjas, if you remember.
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  He was in Three Ninjas. That's absolutely correct.
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  I mentioned that opening voice over narration.
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  I've looked but I can't find it. But the voice over narration
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  sounds like Robert Mitchum when he did the voice over narration
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  from Tombstone. It does sound like Mitchum,
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  yeah. And I'm like, what's that,
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  Robert Mitchum? It could have been, yeah.
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  Yeah, yeah. Terrifying Mitchum.
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  Yeah, he is. But it does sound like the
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  tombstone narration. It sounds pretty much the same.
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  And we see that Jim has a Time magazine Men of the Year cover
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  displayed on the wall in the lounge.
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  And this was based on a real Time cover about Apollo 8, which
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  was the first MAN mission to the moon in 1968.
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  Yeah, they've had the illustration redrawn, and Jim
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  Novel's face has been replaced with Tom Hanks.
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  Yeah, which is quite a nice touch.
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  Yeah, yeah. And we see later that Marilyn
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  has a NASA comms speaker where she can listen in to the comms
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  going on between Mission Control and the ship.
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  And this was something that NASA families actually really did
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  have. Wow, yeah.
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  Yes, Quark Box it was called. Pretty high tech for the time it
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  seems to me. It does.
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  It's pretty amazing, yeah. Listen to the conversations
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  taking place like in Swiss. Yeah, and this one comes with a
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  split die up there, tight to the side of it, by the looks of it.
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  That's the best kind, The Brian Depala version.
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  The team version and the opening scenes we'll see Jim driving a
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  Corvette. Beautiful.
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  And in the 60s Chevrolet had to deal with NASA where they give
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  all the astronauts a free Corvette every year.
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  Probably just the only reason I'll be an astronaut.
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  To be fair, I wouldn't be in space.
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  Which is why astronauts in Hollywood films always seem to
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  drive flash for sports cars in real life.
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  Wow. Jim Lovell had a silver Corvette
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  but it was changed to red for the film.
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  Hasn't Ken got a gold 1? Yeah, yeah, yes.
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  Man, that's what I was straight in with the gold one, Yeah.
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  Yeah. Little red Corvette, though,
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  surely. Like Prince.
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  Yeah, absolutely. I imagine Prince saw a bit more
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  action than Lovells did. I hope that guy who pulls up to
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  him alongside at the lights, he wants to drag race him.
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  Like fleeing back to the future. That's outrageous.
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  Come on, McFly. How's it hanging level?
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  And just following this sequence as well, he has that incredible
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  talk with Jeffrey when he's just sitting on the floor, and he's
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  just so worried. This kid, he's fantastic.
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  And I remember if he's in Kindergarten Cop, right?
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  Yeah. And he's just talking to him as
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  if he's an adult. And I think there's a lot to
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  learn from that as a parent because he's trying to.
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  It's like Ron Howard's direction for the whole film.
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  Like, he tells him the peril, but it's very light.
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  He tells him the things that go wrong, but things are going to
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  be fine. And I think that's a really
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  reassuring way to do it and just an incredibly strong character
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  arc for for Jim. And you can see where his
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  emotion is. You can see where his confidence
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  is. And it harks back again, which
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  we'll mention when we get into it.
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  But when he turns around later and just says, is it the door?
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  It breaks my fucking heart every time that it's just incredible
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  delivery. But it's this scene that sets
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  that up and how it does that so many times he sets it up early
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  and knocks it down later. And this is one of the earliest
• 14:20
  examples of that and it works so well.
• 14:23
  Yeah, it does. They're talking about Apollo 1
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  on there, which we mentioned before.
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  That was when the tickets crew one on Earth orbit in 1967, but
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  in rehearsals or if we asked him what were killed when they
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  couldn't get the door open. And yeah, that line later on is
• 14:35
  quite nice when Jeffrey says, was it the door?
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  And just before this we see sequence of bored Apollo 13
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  where everything goes wrong and Jim is blown out into space, but
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  it's only a nightmare that Marilyn is having.
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  And the real Marilyn later said she did have nightmares like
• 14:51
  this, and it was because Jim had taken her to see Marooned, which
• 14:55
  was in 1969. John Sturgis film starring
• 14:57
  Gregory Peck and Gene Hackman about a group of astronauts who
• 15:01
  get trapped on a mission in outer space.
• 15:04
  What's he thinking? Exactly.
• 15:06
  A bit in concert about that, yeah.
• 15:09
  Hackman as well. Furious.
• 15:11
  Yeah. Sure man, this is.
• 15:13
  I want to watch this film though. 3 podcasters who got
• 15:15
  their heads blown up. For that dream sequence, I think
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  it's one of the most like visual and visceral moments in the
• 15:23
  film. It's like the James Cameron
• 15:24
  version of Apollo 30 is blowing off.
• 15:26
  Yeah, left and right, like Fight Club.
• 15:28
  Yeah, and that's the opening moon landing.
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  His character intros and Prince songs.
• 15:34
  Who'd have thought? Who'd have thought?
• 15:36
  Time to get the guys in the Saturn 5, I think.
• 15:38
  Oh yeah, and. Try and get some more Prince
• 15:40
  songs in there too if we can do that.
• 15:45
  From the relatively light hearted opening, it's down to
• 15:47
  NASA based business as we head to Cape Canaveral.
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  In these scenes we see the big launch as Apollo 13 sets off for
• 15:54
  the Moon, but not before Command Module pilot Ken Mattingly is
• 15:57
  taking off the mission. It's flight surging horseshit
• 16:00
  this much it. Really is.
• 16:02
  How does it work for you? I mean, I love Howard players
• 16:05
  are visually that incredible shot of level standing next to
• 16:08
  the rocket being wheeled out on those massive tracks to get the
• 16:11
  news. And then the cut to Deke's
• 16:13
  office where he gets the explanation, and then that cut
• 16:15
  to the training room for the even worse news.
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  Because like, I just can't imagine anything more
• 16:20
  disappointing than this, can you?
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  If you can? And the way it cuts from Jack
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  getting the news that he's bumped up to the mission so he's
• 16:26
  whooping in delight and then bam, it's just that cut straight
• 16:29
  to Ken's devastated face. Yeah, that's a great cut.
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  It's a great. Cut.
• 16:33
  Yeah. And I think Gary Sinise, he's
• 16:34
  probably the unsung hero of the film in terms of performance for
• 16:37
  me. Oh.
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  Absolutely. Yeah, 100%.
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  He's great in this. Like, he does get a fairly meaty
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  role in terms of having to deal with the disappointment, but
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  then he's called back interaction to help save them.
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  And I think it resonates more because you have that early
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  scene where he's the one that says, no, let's go back in.
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  We we didn't nail it well enough.
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  Yeah, on that first try. Let's get it right.
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  Let's get it right. So.
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  You can tell how like on it he is and how focused he is, which
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  just makes the scene all more devastating for him.
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  It does. I don't quite get why Jim tells
• 17:06
  Kane it was his call to take him off the mission when it
• 17:08
  definitely wasn't. No, no, came for your worse.
• 17:11
  So then he doesn't go any further with it, I think,
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  because he's just going to go upstairs and have a word and
• 17:14
  he's just, if he says this is my call and he's like, right, well,
• 17:17
  it's nothing more I can do about it.
• 17:18
  I bet you that was a tough one then.
• 17:19
  Okay, yeah. So I think this is one of the
• 17:22
  moments where the film makers looked out a bit with the real
• 17:24
  life story because the real kinematically was pulled from
• 17:27
  the mission at the last minute after failing a medical and add
• 17:29
  some great character drama. So I don't think it's handled
• 17:32
  totally perfectly because I mean, surely as soon as this
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  comes up in real life to find out Ken's been exposed to
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  rubella, it's over. There's no discussion.
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  He's a risk and he's grounded. Everyone kind of understands
• 17:42
  that. Whereas the movie kind of takes
• 17:44
  the angle of making Doctor Berry, played by Christine
• 17:46
  Clementson, so of the bad guy when he obviously had no choice.
• 17:50
  Undermines the reality a little bit for me.
• 17:52
  But as a narrative development, it's really good.
• 17:54
  It's gonna tap and do it really well later on when Ken returns
• 17:57
  to the mission. Like the prodigal son.
• 17:59
  Yeah, yeah. Knight in shining armour.
• 18:01
  It's great. Don't give me anything they
• 18:02
  don't have up there. Brilliant.
• 18:03
  Yeah, it's fantastic. It's his part in words.
• 18:05
  He's like, I haven't got the measles, I won't get the
• 18:06
  measles. And he knows.
• 18:07
  Yeah, I love that. And Garrison, he says really
• 18:11
  good, especially in that scene where he's pleading his case,
• 18:13
  the opening shot, which starts in tight on Ken's face that you
• 18:16
  talked about Marty and then it pans out to reveal Jim and Fred.
• 18:19
  That's great, that. Yeah, that is great.
• 18:21
  Yeah. And then when Jack gets the call
• 18:22
  that he's on the mission, just in the shower with some new
• 18:24
  woman. Listen to the Steppenwolf.
• 18:31
  The life I wish I had I. Mean everyone has to, let's be
• 18:36
  honest. Yeah, because in real life, the
• 18:38
  original crew for Apollo 13 was supposed to be Alan Shepard,
• 18:42
  Edgar Mitchell and Steward Rusa. But when Shepard took I'll with
• 18:45
  an NAE disorder, the crew was bumped to Apollo 14 instead and
• 18:49
  replaced with a backup crew for Apollo 11, which was Jim Lovell,
• 18:53
  Fred Hayes and Ken Martini. But then, seven days before
• 18:56
  launch of the Apollo 13 backup crew, Charlie Duke called
• 18:59
  Rubella from a friend of his son and Martini had never been
• 19:02
  inoculated, so he had to be replaced by Jack Swaggart.
• 19:05
  Right. Yeah, don't feel too bad for
• 19:07
  Ken, though. He was the pilot of Apollo 16,
• 19:09
  which did land on the moon in 1972.
• 19:11
  So he got his moment. He did.
• 19:13
  And two of that fairly famous names he mentioned there, Mark
• 19:16
  Alan Shepard was the first American in space.
• 19:18
  Yes. He was the guy who played golf
• 19:19
  on the moon. Oh, yeah.
• 19:20
  Yeah. And yeah, Edgar Mitchell.
• 19:22
  I know because he later came out decades later and said that he
• 19:25
  knew for a fact that aliens have been visiting Earth for some
• 19:28
  time. Beautiful.
• 19:31
  Like a men in Black. Men in black love it.
• 19:33
  Well, he didn't seem like Men in Black.
• 19:35
  I just imagined it that way. And Gary Sinise plays Ken
• 19:39
  Martin, as we've said, and Ron Howard had told him he could
• 19:41
  read for any part he wanted aside from Jim Lovell.
• 19:44
  And after you read the scripts, Nice.
• 19:46
  Went for the part of Ken. Yeah.
• 19:48
  He is really good in the film. I think he's.
• 19:50
  Really, really good, yeah. I mean, Ken's no, Lieutenant
• 19:52
  Dan, obviously not fair to expect that.
• 19:55
  He scores legs for a start. You ain't got no legs,
• 19:58
  Lieutenant. Damn.
• 19:58
  Not far off like that. And when it goes into the actual
• 20:02
  launch, I mean, this is just, you know, America.
• 20:06
  Fuck yeah, isn't it? It's just men.
• 20:09
  America flags. It really is.
• 20:13
  Racism from gym I've under fed going to event.
• 20:16
  Unbelievable kings of the world, absolute masters of the empire
• 20:22
  that own the whole world. And it's just I'm going to give
• 20:25
  these guys a beautiful ride. I know you are, Sir.
• 20:27
  And do you need more air? No, I don't even need oxygen.
• 20:30
  I'm American. Fuck you.
• 20:32
  I love that anyone says to me, do you need more air?
• 20:35
  It's always yes, always. Yes, please.
• 20:39
  Yes, please. I would love more air because I
• 20:41
  need that. And it's just the way that
• 20:44
  Howard frames this, the way he moves the camera, the way the
• 20:46
  music builds, the way the dialogue works.
• 20:49
  The intro to Ed Harris here is wonderful, just moving that box
• 20:52
  around the whole control room to him.
• 20:55
  And then it's just held up. You just see the waistcoat, and
• 20:57
  then it cuts away and you don't quite know why it comes back and
• 21:00
  he's wearing it, and it's just pristine.
• 21:02
  And I was thinking, I never really fancied getting a
• 21:04
  waistcoat until now, and now I really fancied getting one.
• 21:08
  It's just so beautifully done. It's so brush and like, just
• 21:11
  setting the tone. It's like, this is important.
• 21:14
  And if you don't think it's important, don't watch the rest
• 21:16
  of the film because this is how serious we're taking it.
• 21:18
  And Ken, like I said with that beautiful gold Corvette, Yeah,
• 21:22
  knows exactly where it stands. And even when he's not on the
• 21:25
  mission, that views fucking outrageous.
• 21:27
  Everyone else is fighting. Where am I going to be?
• 21:29
  That's that's beautiful. Get a photo from there.
• 21:31
  That's wonderful view knows where to be and from ignition to
• 21:35
  lift off. You know, when it breaks away
• 21:37
  from the tower and it starts, that's the most 90 shot when it
• 21:40
  just comes down and it starts breaking away from it all.
• 21:43
  And Michael Bay must have just been going.
• 21:45
  I'm going to do this for the rest of my life.
• 21:48
  My career from now. On yeah, exactly.
• 21:50
  He's watching it good. Yes, yes.
• 21:51
  And again, all the cameras inside and it's sort of what if
• 21:55
  that was a transformer? And I'm just saying, Michael,
• 21:57
  his head just exploding watching this in 95, just getting so
• 22:00
  excited about it. You know, there's women crying,
• 22:03
  there's men doing it. It's all just so bombastic and
• 22:07
  it's really enjoyable. But watching it now, I just
• 22:10
  think wow, this is just so, so much.
• 22:13
  It's so on the nose. Like Ron Howard has broken more
• 22:15
  noses than Mike Tyson. It's outrageous how square he
• 22:21
  makes it. But I mean, just the launch
• 22:22
  sequence. It needs to be bombastic.
• 22:24
  It needs to be in your face. It needs to punch the air.
• 22:26
  And it really does all those things it.
• 22:29
  Really does. I'll let the Mission Control set
• 22:32
  up as well, where we'll meet all the Houston team, where we move
• 22:34
  from one to the next as a role. Like go for launch.
• 22:36
  Yeah, yeah. Sets of all the characters that
• 22:38
  we spend the next 90 minutes within about 20 seconds, which
• 22:40
  is really good. Yeah, and it's been done over
• 22:42
  and over again. Has.
• 22:43
  Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, so many times.
• 22:45
  Yeah. And Gene gets a round of
• 22:47
  applause for his white waist coat.
• 22:48
  That's. Great, but looked, if you just
• 22:50
  accidentally left you snook a joke in there.
• 22:55
  But I know that Howard said that NASA asked if they could use
• 22:57
  footage of the launch from the film for using their museums.
• 23:00
  And how I called it the most cinematic thing I've ever done,
• 23:03
  which I wouldn't disagree with. It's really visual.
• 23:05
  It really is, yeah. Yeah, part CGI, part miniature
• 23:08
  photography, and I think it still holds up.
• 23:11
  It does. I mean, it's Dean Cundy behind
• 23:12
  it. Let's not forget.
• 23:13
  I mean, he's, you know, two years ago he did Jurassic Park,
• 23:16
  so he knows what he's doing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 23:18
  Yeah. And yes, I know it's all
• 23:20
  stripping off their suit as soon as you're in space.
• 23:21
  Reminds me of Jane Fonda in Barbarella.
• 23:24
  Of course it does. What does that do?
• 23:29
  But the whole thing, I think it's really well put together
• 23:31
  and holds it well. Yeah, it does.
• 23:32
  Yeah, I don't think it's a it's very much at all this sequence.
• 23:35
  It's still huge with the visuals, huge for that sound.
• 23:38
  But what always strikes me is what an absolutely terrifying
• 23:41
  job, like the size of that explosion just to get you off
• 23:43
  the ground. Yeah, yeah, crazy.
• 23:45
  No wonder Marilyn and Fred's wife are just in T It's like you
• 23:48
  have to be some kind of lunatic to do this.
• 23:50
  I know it's more than once. Like it's insane.
• 23:54
  I find it hard, you know, when you go to bed and you're like
• 23:56
  you're reading a boot and you just think, do I need a pace
• 23:58
  before I go to sleep or not? Do I know?
• 24:00
  Do I need to go? I might as well go now.
• 24:02
  The amount of times I'm in from that journey, from putting a
• 24:04
  space suit on it, just being in the I'm thinking fucking hell I
• 24:07
  need to go again now. Yeah.
• 24:12
  Film the Mission Control scenes Howard wanted to shoot in the
• 24:14
  original Christopher Say Craft Junior Mission Control Centre in
• 24:18
  Houston, but when they visited they realized it was far too
• 24:20
  small. So Michael, Karen Bliss and the
• 24:23
  set decorator Meredith Boswell had measurements taken and they
• 24:26
  created an exact replica at Universal Studios.
• 24:29
  Yeah, one of the consultants on the film was Jerry Bostick, who
• 24:32
  was a flight controller during the real missions.
• 24:34
  And he said that one day he left the set and stood waiting at the
• 24:36
  elevator for a couple of minutes because he forgot that it wasn't
• 24:38
  real. Job well done.
• 24:42
  Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's the feedback you
• 24:44
  want, isn't? It too, right?
• 24:46
  And the computer screens were seen in the control room.
• 24:48
  They were all controlled by a piece of specially written
• 24:51
  software and I was managed by a computer below the set.
• 24:54
  And how it said that the software was problematic though,
• 24:57
  and at one point they lost three days of film and waiting for it
• 25:00
  to be fixed. Right.
• 25:02
  I think the screens all look really good.
• 25:04
  They do, obviously rudimentary back in 1970, but the displays
• 25:07
  all look great and authentic to me.
• 25:09
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 25:09
  That part of the set was used again in The Hunger Games,
• 25:11
  Mockingjay as well. What was it in the District 13
• 25:14
  control room? Yeah.
• 25:16
  Yeah, yeah. The visual effects supervisor
• 25:18
  was Robert Legato, and he said the plan was to use real stock
• 25:21
  footage of Saturn 5 taken off and cut to that.
• 25:24
  But he told Howard shooting new footage would look much, much
• 25:26
  better. Howard said.
• 25:28
  If you're going to do that, can you shoot it like Martin
• 25:30
  Scorsese would shoot it? Just do that.
• 25:34
  Just do a scores. Is it OK?
• 25:36
  That is incredible direction. So look, I don't watch Color of
• 25:39
  Money and realize that edited the pool scenes to stay on some
• 25:42
  shots for two or three frames before cutting.
• 25:44
  So they did exactly the same thing when they added the launch
• 25:46
  sequence. Like if I watch Color of Money
• 25:48
  and then wanted to do the launch sequence, the camera would just
• 25:50
  be going round and round. Round dual pressure in there
• 25:55
  kicking off. Stamping on level space.
• 26:00
  And the effects team who created the launch sequence for a
• 26:02
  digital domain. And to create it, they used a
• 26:05
  combination of miniatures of the Saturn 5 rocket, background
• 26:08
  shots of Cape Canaveral, and then shots of explosions filmed
• 26:11
  on the backstage. They filmed it at 240 frames per
• 26:14
  second is how it wanted it to play in slow motion, and it was
• 26:17
  then composited all into one shot.
• 26:21
  Yeah, they were sent real footage by NASA, have Saturn 5
• 26:23
  taking off, and they use that to recreate what the those huge
• 26:26
  fireballs look like using the take off.
• 26:29
  And you know that, like, wide shot of the rocket where the
• 26:30
  camera's really shaky and the rocket looks dead small.
• 26:33
  Yeah. That wasn't even a miniature.
• 26:35
  That was a toy. Wow.
• 26:36
  Made by Revel of Saturn 5 that they bought for like $20.
• 26:38
  Yeah. I think what's impressive as
• 26:41
  well is that the launch is all in, like, broad daylight.
• 26:43
  There's no way to hide anything. But it still does look pretty
• 26:46
  good. Yeah, it looks really good.
• 26:48
  Ron Howard later said that some critics had a problem with the
• 26:50
  scene where Marilyn loses a wedding ring in the shower, said
• 26:53
  it was too obvious as a bad luck woman.
• 26:55
  But this really happened. The real Marilyn level said she
• 26:57
  dropped a ring down the shower drain and had to get a plumber
• 27:00
  in to find it. I would rather that was in the
• 27:02
  film with the plumber was coming in, not just scratching at the
• 27:04
  door. Well, the plumber teams open is
• 27:07
  Jack straight in the shower? Well, like a porn film.
• 27:11
  You mean you'll fix your ring? Yeah, see a problem with mine?
• 27:16
  Karma. That's ridiculous.
• 27:20
  So yeah, the launch sequence is the first time that we'll see
• 27:22
  flight director Gene Kranz. He's overall director on the
• 27:25
  mission and becomes one of the major characters played by Ed
• 27:28
  Harris. So what are our thoughts on him
• 27:29
  in the film? I think he's incredible in this.
• 27:32
  I mean, he's like the ultimate boss because yeah, he'll kick
• 27:36
  your ass to get the drop done, but he doesn't do it in an
• 27:39
  asshole where he does it in a way that makes you feel really
• 27:42
  motivated. Like when he says, gentlemen,
• 27:44
  that is not acceptable. You don't go.
• 27:46
  Oh, fuck off. You tried then.
• 27:48
  Wouldn't dare. I know you wouldn't dare.
• 27:50
  You've got no Dean. You're right.
• 27:51
  I will try better this time. I'll get it done.
• 27:54
  And those scenes where everyone's arguing about the
• 27:56
  best way to get them home, which I really love.
• 27:58
  I love those scenes. E has got the ability to to shut
• 28:01
  the whole room up and pick up on the smartest opinion in the room
• 28:05
  and go. Is that the deal?
• 28:06
  Not for that. Yeah, that's good.
• 28:07
  Yeah. He takes control, but he also
• 28:09
  has faith in everyone else. He's not guided by ego.
• 28:12
  It's not like I'm the only one who can decide what to do.
• 28:16
  He's got faith in everyone around him and so much
• 28:17
  determination. May not like failure is not an
• 28:20
  option. Like if he could go into space
• 28:22
  himself and guide these guys down, he would do it.
• 28:25
  He's just really inspiring. I love this performance.
• 28:28
  Yeah, if I was a sum of Ed Harris and Apollo 13, I think it
• 28:31
  would be terrifying. Surely the angriest guy to ever
• 28:35
  work for NASA. There's a moment later on when
• 28:37
  they're talking about getting the new start of procedures up
• 28:39
  to the astronauts. Yeah, an engineer says I'll get
• 28:41
  an estimate and Gene goes crazy, Say God damn it, I don't want an
• 28:45
  estimate, I want the procedure. Kicks a hole in the wall, yeah.
• 28:49
  He's fantastic, isn't he? Ed Harris?
• 28:51
  Yeah. Howard always wanted Ed Harris
• 28:53
  to play Gene Krantz and see why, but when he was asked, Harris
• 28:56
  had first said no as he didn't see what he could bring the part
• 28:59
  at all. Howard called him up personally
• 29:01
  and told him he saw Gene as pivotal in the film and
• 29:04
  convinced Harris to do it. Yeah, even gets given quite a
• 29:07
  few clunky exposition lines, which just knocks them all out
• 29:10
  of the park. Absolutely.
• 29:11
  I think the word is just inspirational.
• 29:13
  I think you just, you get he's inspirational where you just,
• 29:15
  you don't want to do anything wrong by him.
• 29:17
  But you know, if you go to him with a problem, Yeah.
• 29:19
  Like if you've just started there and you haven't been paid
• 29:21
  and you're 2 days over and you just go to genes that I haven't
• 29:23
  been paid, you'll be paid that afternoon.
• 29:25
  Yeah. And he's got, he's a real human
• 29:26
  being, but a real leader. And like I said.
• 29:28
  Real inspiration, yeah. I was going to say, does anyone
• 29:31
  in movies look as good as Ed House with a buzz cut?
• 29:33
  But I think you've made into a competition, Wesley, with Kurt
• 29:35
  Russell I. Have Kurt Russell Stargate.
• 29:39
  And we've talked about that white waist court, and that's
• 29:42
  based on reality. That's how the real Jane Crance
• 29:44
  used to dress when he was in Mission Control.
• 29:46
  Amazing. In the lead room, getting the
• 29:47
  nickname White Flight In the vest he wore during the Apollo
• 29:51
  13 mission that's now on display in the Smithsonian Air and Space
• 29:54
  Museum in Washington. There you go.
• 29:57
  Yeah, and Howard falls off like a real pro, what he does.
• 30:00
  It's also got the Apollo 13 Insignia on there, which has
• 30:02
  quite a nice story behind it. Yeah.
• 30:04
  So that Insignia shows the Greek God Apollo's three horses in
• 30:07
  front of the moon. It was designed by an artist
• 30:09
  called Lumen Martin Winter, after the real Jim Lovell saw a
• 30:12
  mural he painted of Apollo in a New York hotel.
• 30:15
  Right. And after the film, Tom Hanks
• 30:17
  apparently bought that original hotel mural for Jim Lovell as a
• 30:20
  gift. Oh, wow.
• 30:21
  Which is nice. Classy, generous mine, Hanks.
• 30:23
  Yeah. Really generous.
• 30:24
  That's really rich as well. To be fair, I'd be generous.
• 30:26
  I was rich. It's massive as well, probably
• 30:29
  like what the hell am I going to do with this?
• 30:31
  I'm really generous as it is. Don't give us any more money.
• 30:35
  And we're through the beginning of Apollo 13.
• 30:38
  We've met all of our main characters in Jim, his family,
• 30:41
  his crew, and the Houston Mission Control team.
• 30:43
  This is where it all begins. It is really is the director.
• 30:52
  The director of Apollo 13 was Ronald William Howard.
• 30:56
  Having made his name as a TV actor in shows like The Andy
• 30:59
  Griffith Show and Happy Days, and then in movies like American
• 31:02
  Graffiti, he moved into filmmaking.
• 31:04
  I made a success of that as well.
• 31:06
  Apollo 13 was Howard 11th feature in a filmography that
• 31:09
  already included some big titles like Splash, Cocoon, Willow and
• 31:13
  Backdraft. Ron Howard no strange anything
• 31:16
  productions then? Matt No and Jim Lovell was a
• 31:19
  fan. He said that Ron Howard really
• 31:21
  followed this. Down the line.
• 31:22
  Another director might have put this on Mars with David Bowie,
• 31:26
  which I watch for sure. Too right?
• 31:28
  He's still not David Lynch. Jim Lovell saw Willow and
• 31:31
  thought this is the fucking guy. But how did Howard do as
• 31:35
  director of Apollo 13? I think it's a story that's just
• 31:38
  absolutely tailor made for his sensibilities because Ron
• 31:41
  Howard, he's never made a film in his life where it's morally
• 31:44
  dubious or it's narratively complex or ambiguous.
• 31:47
  He's a very straightforward, down the line directed, get the
• 31:51
  story told. So Apollo 13 is perfect for him
• 31:54
  because it's heroic, it's emotional, it's very black and
• 31:57
  white in the sense that everyone in this story is a good person.
• 32:01
  There's no one with like malevolent intentions in this
• 32:04
  film. It's a bunch of intelligent
• 32:06
  people pulling together to save the lives of three men.
• 32:09
  And because it's so straightforward and because you
• 32:11
  can imagine on a run how it's set, there's probably never been
• 32:14
  a crossword. He seems like a real peoples
• 32:16
  person. So he can get James Horner in to
• 32:19
  give the film emotion and he can get all all that cast on board.
• 32:22
  And he does give the film a real sense of jeopardy because of the
• 32:25
  way these events played out. You know, there's been an
• 32:27
  explosion. Now this has gone wrong.
• 32:29
  Now the carbon dioxide is building up.
• 32:31
  You know, it's mana in his hands.
• 32:33
  Really. It's the stuff that he can do
• 32:34
  really well because it's very straightforward.
• 32:36
  And yes, generally speaking, he's a pretty safe director.
• 32:39
  He doesn't color outside the lines.
• 32:41
  But this is sorry, that doesn't need that.
• 32:43
  It's exciting enough as it is. And I think that's what Howard
• 32:46
  knows. And I think when the story is
• 32:48
  good enough, Ron Howard is always good enough.
• 32:50
  It's when the story needs more from him that his films fall
• 32:53
  down. But this isn't one of them.
• 32:55
  I agree, I mean he did already have previews before 1995.
• 32:58
  Ron Howard like we said, and I think Apollo 13 fits that.
• 33:01
  Classic 90s bold being very much a Steven Spielberg type of film.
• 33:06
  I mean, there was plenty of those back then, but I think
• 33:08
  Apollo 13 is one of the best examples.
• 33:10
  He tells the story really well, a script full of character
• 33:13
  drama, tension and scale. And I think how I realizes all
• 33:16
  that very well. I care about what's happening.
• 33:18
  I care about the characters, and I think that's mostly what he's
• 33:20
  focused on. What works really well is when
• 33:23
  all the issues come in the second act, we're not just
• 33:25
  cutting between the command module and Mission Control.
• 33:28
  Howard regularly cuts back to Marilyn and the family, too,
• 33:30
  which had loads of character weight for the best.
• 33:32
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 33:33
  What I would say is that with the best films that kind of take
• 33:36
  us into a world that's unfamiliar to us, in this case
• 33:38
  the world of NASA, I always feel like I've learned something.
• 33:41
  Yeah. We talked about Master and
• 33:42
  Commander a while ago, and that makes me feel pulled into like
• 33:45
  18th, 19th century life would say.
• 33:47
  Yeah. Goodfellas does the same with
• 33:48
  the New York Mafia. There's lots of other examples,
• 33:51
  but I don't, I don't get that quite as much from Apollo 13, to
• 33:54
  be honest. It all feels very surface level
• 33:57
  to me. And I had the advantage of it
• 33:59
  being set only 25 years after the events.
• 34:01
  And I had some of the people involved on the set.
• 34:03
  Jim Lovel was there, NASA's Jerry Bostick was there, Tom
• 34:06
  Jones was there. The astronaut, not the Welsh
• 34:08
  tiger. OK, Right.
• 34:11
  The sex bomb, baby, you said. A light, light Nazir up.
• 34:20
  And tonally, like we've said, it is a bit on the nose.
• 34:23
  Jim and Maryland have got, like, the perfect marriage.
• 34:25
  And when their daughter Barbara shows up, she's like a rebel
• 34:28
  listening to somebody love dressed like she's going to
• 34:31
  Woodstock. Yeah, we're just listening.
• 34:32
  Like, the Andy War symbol on the bedroom wall feels very much
• 34:36
  like a recreation of the setting rather than being there, if you
• 34:38
  know what I mean. But yeah, if the main criticism
• 34:41
  I can give a film is it it's got Jefferson Airplane on the
• 34:43
  soundtrack, then that'll do for me.
• 34:45
  Yeah, exactly. I think how I does a really good
• 34:46
  job, rock solid job, which is kind of his 40 and telling the
• 34:50
  story and delivering the drama at a big scale and I think this
• 34:53
  is surely my number one film of his.
• 34:56
  Category, yeah. Yeah, I think when you're
• 34:58
  talking about Ron Howard, like he doesn't quite care about
• 35:00
  them, real finite details, as long as on the surface it makes
• 35:03
  perfect sense. Like The Beatles have split up,
• 35:04
  which is listening to Hendrix. But what you're doing, Ron, that
• 35:08
  makes no sense. Whatsoever.
• 35:10
  Oh Gee, golly, gosh, it doesn't matter.
• 35:12
  You know? It's just like he's got that
• 35:14
  kind of vibe. But like I said, I mean, it has
• 35:17
  got his touch to it. I think it is very much
• 35:19
  Spielberg influenced. I think it's very much Zemeckis
• 35:21
  influenced. I think that's why Dean Cundy
• 35:23
  got involved. He'd work with both of them.
• 35:25
  He did Back the Future, he did Jurassic Park.
• 35:26
  And he's like, right, well, I'm going to do something and kind
• 35:28
  of go up to these guys to the same sensibility to that same
• 35:32
  kind of, I want to be an American director.
• 35:33
  And I think he's telling this story because he wants to tell
• 35:36
  the story of an American success story that isn't necessarily a
• 35:40
  huge success, but it it shows that he is kind of floored in
• 35:43
  his filmmaking and floored in his personality where he's not
• 35:46
  bombastic and confident. So I think it's a balancing act
• 35:48
  from Ron Howard here, but a balancing act that he does
• 35:50
  really well. He spins a lot of plates, but I
• 35:52
  think he knows which ones to let fall.
• 35:54
  And he doesn't let many fall, to be honest.
• 35:56
  And when they do, they don't really smash.
• 35:57
  They just kind of land on the floor nicely.
• 36:00
  And I think that just sums up Ron Howard.
• 36:01
  And this film does. It is the most Ron Howard.
• 36:03
  Like I said, it's the most Ron Howard film of all Ron Howard
• 36:05
  films. Yeah.
• 36:07
  Do you think he would be a better director if he was a bit
• 36:09
  more hard hitting at times? I don't know if he if that's in
• 36:12
  his nature. And I think for someone to think
• 36:14
  that the need to be hard hitting, that would be
• 36:16
  detrimental to him as as a person and as a creative and as
• 36:19
  an artist. I think you need to stay true to
• 36:21
  who you are and the stories that you can tell.
• 36:23
  And everyone's got boundaries. Everyone's got brackets on them.
• 36:26
  But no, I don't think he would be.
• 36:28
  I think he's great. He knows his boundaries and he
• 36:30
  sticks with it. The angriest film he's ever made
• 36:32
  is The Grinch. And this wasn't the first film
• 36:39
  to be made about Apollo 13. The first one actually came in
• 36:41
  1974 when the channel ABC made ATV movie called Houston We've
• 36:47
  Got a Problem, and that starred Robert Culp and Sandra D It
• 36:50
  focused more on Mission Control in the astronauts.
• 36:52
  It wasn't well received. In fact, Jim Lovell called it
• 36:55
  fictitious in pure taste and a disservice to the flight crew in
• 36:59
  ground personnel. Well, there you go.
• 37:01
  Even that's not that damning, is it?
• 37:03
  It's like Ron Howard talked about it.
• 37:05
  Yeah, very articulate. Yeah, and that's his life
• 37:09
  they're talking about. He's just, well, that's, I don't
• 37:10
  really think that's factually accurate, if that's all right
• 37:13
  for me. Yeah, I mean, I've not seen
• 37:16
  that, but I know that the three astronauts who are surely the
• 37:18
  main characters of the story, they aren't actually in who?
• 37:21
  Still, we've got a problem at all, right?
• 37:23
  Which seems a pretty strange creative decision to make.
• 37:25
  Yeah, very much. Odd so Lost moon The Perilous
• 37:28
  Voyage of Apollo 13 was a non fiction book in 1994, Co written
• 37:32
  by Jim Lovell and the writer Jeffrey Kluger.
• 37:35
  The Apollo 13 mission was it was, of course, a huge news
• 37:38
  story when it happened in 1970, and studios were bidding on the
• 37:41
  rights of the book as early as 1992 when it was still being
• 37:44
  written. Right.
• 37:45
  Jeffrey Kluger, like you've just said that knew exactly what he
• 37:48
  had and started sending his manuscript around Hollywood
• 37:50
  studios as soon as he finished the 1st chapter.
• 37:52
  There was a studio, Bidden War, and it was won by Imagine
• 37:55
  Entertainment, a production company owned by Ron Howard and
• 37:58
  Apollo 13's producer Brian Grazer.
• 38:00
  They bought the rights for over $500,000.
• 38:03
  Alright, in it. That's alright, 500,000.
• 38:05
  That's not bad based on one chapter.
• 38:08
  I've got a couple of chapters lying around.
• 38:12
  Get them off the run right on Twitter.
• 38:14
  I don't really think this is good enough, but it's a really
• 38:16
  good try. Wesley, cheers.
• 38:20
  Yeah. So Joey Bostic, who we mentioned
• 38:22
  earlier, he was in NASA fight controller on the Apollo
• 38:24
  missions. His son Michael was vice
• 38:27
  president. And Imagine Entertainment.
• 38:29
  And it was Michael who told Howard and Grazer about the book
• 38:31
  coming out and said that they should make the film and OK, and
• 38:33
  that's how they got involved. And there were quite a few
• 38:36
  repayments just by members of Ron Howard's family in the film.
• 38:39
  His brother Clint Place, Seymour Libra got one of the fight
• 38:41
  controllers. He he who's in all of Ron
• 38:43
  Howard's from, so you definitely recognize him.
• 38:45
  He's always wonderful. Yeah, he's great.
• 38:47
  His father, Rance Howard, he plays the priest we see in
• 38:50
  Marilyn's house, confident her when it all goes wrong.
• 38:53
  And his wife, Cheryl and daughter, Bryce Dallas Howard is
• 38:56
  obviously very famous herself these days.
• 38:58
  They are extras in the launch sequence.
• 39:00
  And Ron Howard's mother, Jean Spiegel Howard, she plays Jim
• 39:03
  Lovell's mother, Blanche, and she's great.
• 39:05
  She's really she's great. Anyone who's a redhead is
• 39:07
  probably just related to Ron Howard, let's be honest.
• 39:13
  Blanche is crazy. She's great, yeah.
• 39:15
  Yeah, she's fucking great. My Jimmy, you could land a
• 39:17
  washing machine. You what?
• 39:18
  And Bryce Ellis Howard is easiest spot in the launch
• 39:21
  scene. She's dressed all in yellow and
• 39:22
  has the air. That's freaking red hair.
• 39:24
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 39:24
  And the real Marilyn Lovell, she's next right in that
• 39:26
  sequence as well. All right.
• 39:28
  Oh, lovely. Yeah, nice.
• 39:29
  The first film Ron Howard directed was Grand Theft Auto in
• 39:32
  1977. It was distributed by New World
• 39:34
  Pictures, Roger Coleman's production company, and Howard
• 39:37
  paid Coleman back by giving him a small role in Apollo 13.
• 39:40
  He's in the scene where Jim is given the tour of the Kennedy
• 39:43
  Space Center and plays a senator who asked Jim a few questions.
• 39:47
  Yeah, when Jim says I'm slated to be the commanding officer of
• 39:49
  Apollo 14, Coleman's the guy who goes if there isn't Apollo 14
• 39:53
  Dick, then, which is a bit harsh.
• 39:54
  Yeah, I know. Yeah.
• 39:56
  Yeah. I'm going to pay you back,
• 39:58
  Coleman, by making an absolute asshole.
• 40:02
  Before we leave Ron Howard for now, we have our first pick, one
• 40:05
  question. OK.
• 40:07
  So one of the many, many benefits of becoming an ATRM
• 40:10
  page, Ron, is that we'll answer your questions on the show.
• 40:12
  And we have one now from Catherine Price.
• 40:14
  So, hello, Catherine. Hello, Catherine.
• 40:16
  Hello, Catherine. Now Catherine doesn't just have
• 40:18
  a question, she's got an epic story to match the film.
• 40:21
  Brilliant. Wow.
• 40:21
  OK, get a load of this. Go for it.
• 40:23
  When I was younger, my family and I were on a church retreat
• 40:26
  in the mountains and got snowed in for five extra days.
• 40:29
  The only food we had to eat was French toast and the only movie
• 40:32
  we had to watch was Apollo 13. I can't eat French toast
• 40:35
  anymore, but I still love Apollo 13.
• 40:38
  Well. My question is, what do you
• 40:42
  think of French toast? No, it's not I.
• 40:44
  Was going to say I'd take French toast over Apollo 13 any fucking
• 40:47
  day of the week. Question is, if you're snowed in
• 40:53
  atop a mountain, what 2 movies from the legendary year of 1995
• 40:57
  do each of you want with you? One for reasons of personal
• 41:00
  nostalgia and one for reasons of the impact it's had on the film
• 41:03
  industry as a whole. And Catherine also says,
• 41:06
  gentlemen, it's been a privilege listening to you.
• 41:08
  Thanks for all you do. Thank you SO.
• 41:11
  Thanks for tuning in, Catherine. Yeah, but Matt, 1995 was a big
• 41:14
  movie year was. Which 295 flicks are you taking
• 41:17
  to your snowy retreat? OK, so I'm taking with me for
• 41:20
  personal reasons. I'm going to take 7.
• 41:23
  You only, you only take two. That's my crack that I'll take
• 41:26
  7, then I'll take 10. I would take 7 because seeing
• 41:32
  that at 15 was a real mind Bender for me that just really
• 41:37
  made me think, wow, films can go there.
• 41:39
  They can be that dark and that grip and, and I've never lost my
• 41:43
  love for that film since. And then in terms of impact, I'd
• 41:46
  have to say a Toy Story, you know, just reinvented animation
• 41:50
  as we knew it. I mean one of the biggest
• 41:53
  impactful films of the 90s, easily.
• 41:55
  Definitely. Absolutely.
• 41:57
  Yeah. So Catherine's first criteria.
• 41:58
  Personal nostalgia. I mean, there's a few of 95 to
• 42:01
  fit the bill for me. Bad boys I liked, yeah.
• 42:03
  Batman Forever, I liked. Brave Heart Outbreak.
• 42:06
  Yeah, it's When She When Nature Calls, a film that I vividly
• 42:11
  remember renting from my local video shop and at least three
• 42:14
  separate occasions in 1995, maybe more, is Mortal Kombat.
• 42:18
  Wow. Wow, OK.
• 42:22
  Just checking, we're not snowed in together, right?
• 42:24
  That'll be a fucking nightmare. Toy Story and Mortal Kombat
• 42:27
  double feature. Fuck this, I'd choke on the
• 42:30
  French toast. That rave score as well.
• 42:32
  Oh yeah, that was it. I've not seen you for decades,
• 42:36
  so I've no doubt it still holds up.
• 42:37
  Surely at the time I did love it.
• 42:40
  So for nostalgia it has to be that.
• 42:42
  Yeah, get over here, Mortal Kombat.
• 42:44
  Wasn't Christophe Lambe in that? He was played, written.
• 42:47
  Love it. Isn't Kylie in that?
• 42:48
  No, that Street Fighter. Or Street Fighter?
• 42:51
  Oh, I'm going to get the two confused.
• 42:52
  When Van Damme was on hideous amounts of coke.
• 42:55
  I'm thinking to say money there. So I've heard.
• 42:58
  Don't at me. And in terms of impact on the
• 43:01
  film industry, but the same ones as you might 7 would be up there
• 43:04
  for me and probably my pick if we were talking favorite film.
• 43:07
  But as Catherine said, industry impact, then I would say the
• 43:10
  same. Tom Hanks again in Toy Story.
• 43:12
  Groundbreaking, influential, and one that I can't wait to recover
• 43:15
  on the podcast 1. Day one day it'll get in.
• 43:18
  Yeah, falling off that snowy mountain with style.
• 43:21
  I'll be in there with Toy Story. Nice.
• 43:24
  And Westy. Yeah, I didn't realize what
• 43:25
  snowing in. Does it have to be from 95?
• 43:27
  Because alive would be good. But if we go 95, I'd say
• 43:36
  nostalgic. I'd have to say heat, really.
• 43:39
  Right. Yeah.
• 43:40
  For me, it's the film I've seen the most from that year.
• 43:43
  I think it's one that I'll always go to and it's really
• 43:45
  long and if we snowed in, it's on for the longest that I can
• 43:48
  think of. And then industry impact,
• 43:50
  another one that's really long, but again changed a lot of the
• 43:53
  scope is Braveheart, obviously usual suspects as well was right
• 43:57
  up there. I mean, what a world that was
• 43:59
  close to the net, Congo, Judge Dred, they were all kind of like
• 44:02
  really nostalgic. I'm getting goosebumps.
• 44:04
  Imagine All right lads, I've got Judge Dredd on VHS.
• 44:07
  Like get the fuck out West like Captain Scott isn't, I'm just
• 44:10
  going for a walk and maybe sometime and just die with Judge
• 44:13
  Dredd clutched to be frozen Bunny to answer.
• 44:17
  He didn't brave hard for me. The biggest surprise there?
• 44:20
  You weren't taking Braveheart twice.
• 44:21
  I know, yeah. One free try, yeah.
• 44:26
  Apollo 13 was nominated for best feature at the Oscars.
• 44:29
  Do you remember lost two that year?
• 44:30
  Matt Olreno. Well, it'll be Braveheart.
• 44:33
  It was Braveheart. Well, imagine.
• 44:34
  And for us though, Apollo 13 among the best films of Ron
• 44:37
  Howard. Definitely, yeah.
• 44:39
  I think it's the best Ron Howard film.
• 44:40
  Yeah, the cast. Ron Howard was already an
• 44:48
  established Hollywood name at the time he made Apollo 13, and
• 44:51
  the same was certainly true of his main cast.
• 44:54
  We've talked about Ed Harris and are now going to go all in on
• 44:57
  the three astronauts who make up the mission that Bill Paxton is
• 45:00
  Fred Hayes and Kevin Bacon is Jack Swaggart.
• 45:03
  We'd have to start with the guy in charge though, surely?
• 45:06
  Oh yeah, surely. Yeah.
• 45:07
  So Tom Hanks, his commander, Jim Lovell, a family man and
• 45:10
  astronaut bumped up from Apollo 14 to 13.
• 45:13
  He commands the flight crew and is the character who we mostly
• 45:16
  follow throughout the movie. Love the moon, doesn't he,
• 45:19
  Wesley? Oh, he loves the moon, doesn't
• 45:21
  he? Loves it more than Wallace.
• 45:29
  He really, really loves that. He really wants to get there.
• 45:31
  And it is lid on thick. I get it.
• 45:33
  He wants to land on the moon. He wants to walk on the moon.
• 45:35
  Fucking hell, I get it. All right, calm down back or.
• 45:38
  Cool off. But Hans is just America's
• 45:41
  darling at this time. I mean, he's just come off the
• 45:43
  back of Forest Gump. He can do no wrong.
• 45:46
  But Hans has done so well, is just married into the Ron Howard
• 45:50
  sensibility, and he totally rules with it.
• 45:53
  He's just on board and he is 100% given in to that director's
• 45:57
  vision and he knows exactly how he needs to play this.
• 46:00
  And there's no peril, there's no anger, there's no aggression
• 46:03
  from any of the characters. Everyone's understanding,
• 46:05
  everybody gets on. You just think that every single
• 46:08
  person in this film is friends with each other.
• 46:10
  He's just goodness personified. He's just honesty, integrity.
• 46:15
  Imagine this guy cheating on his wife.
• 46:17
  Never going to happen in a million fucking years.
• 46:20
  Imagine this guy abandoning anybody at any point.
• 46:23
  No, never going to happen. Imagine him just stealing the
• 46:26
  bag of Crisp. It's not going to happen.
• 46:28
  So there's just no flaws in the character whatsoever.
• 46:31
  And I think Tom Hanks plays this and knows that, and he really
• 46:34
  does play on it, but not in a way that's that pushes the
• 46:38
  audience away or makes it cheesy.
• 46:41
  You don't feel like he neglects anybody.
• 46:42
  You know, when he gets the mission and he goes back home
• 46:44
  and he says, how about the moon? And his whole family are just,
• 46:46
  you know, so excited because they know what it means to him.
• 46:49
  And then he leaves his family to go and concentrate on the
• 46:51
  mission. Now, it for any other director,
• 46:53
  it would be, I've got the mission.
• 46:55
  It's #30 And she could say, I'm not happy about this.
• 46:57
  He's like, look, I've got to go. I don't want to talk to you
• 46:58
  about it now. And leave her and just abandoned
• 47:01
  her. But it does it.
• 47:01
  She never feels abandoned by him.
• 47:03
  Everything just feels so really well thought out and very, very
• 47:08
  safe. And in 1995, in Hollywood,
• 47:11
  there's no leading man who's any safer than Tom Hanks.
• 47:15
  Absolutely. I mean, this was his 21st role
• 47:17
  in the film Tom Hanks and he was in the middle of a full film Rd.
• 47:20
  that was Philadelphia, Forrest Gump, Apollo 13 and then Toy
• 47:23
  Story. Toy Story, Yeah.
• 47:25
  And he's won best actor at the Oscars the two years running
• 47:27
  before this. So yeah, not an exaggeration to
• 47:30
  see. He was probably the biggest
• 47:31
  movie star in the world at the time.
• 47:32
  Safe hands. Very, very safe hands.
• 47:34
  And that's what he brings. This isn't the role that calls
• 47:36
  for the hard hitting drama of like Philadelphia or the
• 47:39
  uniqueness of Forrest Gump, or like the larger than life
• 47:41
  character that Woody is. Jim's calm, he's professional,
• 47:44
  he's reserved. And I think what Hanks brings
• 47:46
  mostly is just kind of being Tom Hanks.
• 47:49
  Charisma. Yeah, I love Hanks.
• 47:51
  Yeah, we all love them. Yeah, the character should have
• 47:53
  been called Jim. Love them and the very first
• 47:56
  scene we like Jim, I mean a loving family man who was a
• 47:59
  leader and who we want to follow.
• 48:01
  Obviously you want Hanks in there.
• 48:02
  That's all I'm going to hear now.
• 48:07
  I probably wouldn't call among his very best performances
• 48:09
  because I think this kind of thing probably came quite easily
• 48:12
  to him at the time. Yeah, it's an ensemble piece and
• 48:14
  he fits in, doesn't he? Yeah, but one of his biggest
• 48:16
  films when he was at his biggest, so I think he's great
• 48:19
  to watch. I think my favorite moment of
• 48:20
  his in the film is maybe when Jim's on the news report and
• 48:23
  he's telling that story. You were being lost over the Sea
• 48:25
  of Japan and the ARGY leading him home.
• 48:28
  Classic Hanks Earnsness. Yeah, it's great.
• 48:31
  I love it. Yeah, yeah, really nice.
• 48:33
  Just absolutely why you fellas say this is peak 90s Tom Hanks
• 48:36
  mean that decade as you said it just belonged to him and I think
• 48:39
  it's because that every man quality he has.
• 48:42
  So you believe him as anything, The lawyer, captain in World War
• 48:45
  2 baseball court, Forrest Gump and now an astronaut.
• 48:48
  He's got that ability to make every single role recognisable
• 48:52
  and relatable, but at the same time very grounded with with the
• 48:55
  real human frailty. Like, he's not Superman up
• 48:57
  there. He'll do his best.
• 48:59
  He'll he'll keep the other two calm.
• 49:01
  But that might not be good enough in this situation.
• 49:03
  And that's just Hanks through and through.
• 49:05
  So really good. I mean, yes, if someone said
• 49:07
  this was in their top five Hanks performances, I'd be a bit
• 49:10
  surprised. But as you've said, it's just
• 49:13
  the period where he could do nothing wrong.
• 49:15
  Yeah. So we all love him, but when
• 49:17
  Imagine first got the rights to the book, there were some other
• 49:19
  names aside from Tom Hanks discussed as potential to play
• 49:22
  Jim, if you've heard any. Yeah, I've heard of a couple.
• 49:25
  I know John Travolta was apparently considered, which
• 49:27
  would have been amazing. Dancing.
• 49:29
  Yeah, Dancing on the Moon, The real Jim Lovell.
• 49:34
  First one of Kevin Costner to play him, which I can see in 95
• 49:38
  because Lovell said he looks a bit like me.
• 49:39
  Kevin Costner. Yeah, exactly.
• 49:45
  So on the news with Jeffrey Kluger, the Co writer of Lost
• 49:47
  Moon, and he said that he went for dinner with Tom Hanks early
• 49:49
  on in production and told him that Jim Lovell had been keen on
• 49:52
  Costner and Hanks was like jeez, he's going to be really
• 49:54
  disappointed when he sees me, then maybe I can do something
• 49:57
  with me here. But after working together on
• 50:01
  Splash, Hanks was always the person who Ron Howard wanted,
• 50:04
  and he sent Hanks a script as soon as it was finished.
• 50:07
  And Hanks called Howard and said there were 4 roles he'd always
• 50:10
  wanted to play. A baseball player, a soldier, a
• 50:13
  cowboy, and an astronaut. He played a baseball coach in a
• 50:16
  league of their own and a soldier.
• 50:17
  And Forest comes to said nice. What the hell?
• 50:19
  I'll do it. Nice.
• 50:20
  And a cowboy and Toy Story. Yeah.
• 50:22
  And apparently the crew on the film called Hanks the closet
• 50:24
  astronaut because he already knew so much about NASA and the,
• 50:27
  like, Gemini machines and the Apollo missions.
• 50:29
  And Ron Howard said that one day when they were Cape Canaveral,
• 50:32
  Hanks dragged him out of bed early in the morning to watch
• 50:34
  them after notes in action, as he put it.
• 50:36
  And when he got there, it was basically 3 astronauts walking
• 50:39
  across a car park into a building and how it was like
• 50:42
  what, me out of bed for this? Such a nerd.
• 50:47
  You know that bit when the broadcasting back in the plane
• 50:49
  like Spirit in the Sky by Doctor in the medics, and then Fred
• 50:52
  plays that joke on them and he's like, oh, and that that book
• 50:55
  that you heard there was that was Fred Hayes.
• 50:57
  But he always gets us with that one, you know what I mean?
• 50:59
  It just seems so genuine that he knows everything about it.
• 51:02
  It's great. It does.
• 51:04
  Yeah, it does seem genuine. When Hank signed on, he received
• 51:06
  the telegram from Jim Lovell that said welcome aboard Apollo
• 51:09
  13 for Bowden and they prepare for the role.
• 51:14
  Hank spent four days with the real levels at their home in
• 51:16
  Texas and the real Marilyn. Lovell said Hanks perfectly
• 51:20
  portrayed the way the Jim talked and all of his mannerisms.
• 51:23
  Right, just like Tom Hanks said, yeah.
• 51:26
  Didn't try. And Kathleen Quinn, and she
• 51:30
  visited the Levels home as well. And, you know, the Naval Academy
• 51:33
  ring that hangs ways in the film.
• 51:35
  Yes. That belonged to Jim Lovell and
• 51:36
  gave it hangs to wear. There's lots of nice little
• 51:39
  details in there. Yeah.
• 51:39
  That's on his wedding finger as well, isn't it?
• 51:41
  Because when he's putting his helmet on, like the start of the
• 51:43
  mission, it's just, it's right center of the frame.
• 51:45
  Yeah. Right.
• 51:48
  Yeah, exactly. Yeah.
• 51:49
  Yeah. Before we sign off on Tom Hanks,
• 51:51
  it's time for our second DATRM patron question.
• 51:53
  It's on Tom Hanks, and this time comes from Richard Hooley.
• 51:56
  Hello, Richard. Hello, Richard.
• 51:58
  Hello. Richard So Richard's question,
• 52:00
  Tom Hanks is one of Hollywood's most versatile actors and whilst
• 52:03
  not on the level of a deal Louis or a De Niro, he sometimes
• 52:06
  doesn't get the praise he deserves for his acting ability.
• 52:09
  How highly do you guys rate him as an actor and where would you
• 52:12
  rank him in terms of the greats? So what do you think, Matt?
• 52:16
  I think with Hanks, what it is is he's the perfect middle
• 52:19
  distance between an actor and a movie star.
• 52:22
  So you you don't get the method acting, chameleon equality side,
• 52:26
  Richard said of De Niro or De Lewis.
• 52:28
  And equally he's never going to be headlined in movies in the
• 52:31
  way that's it Tom Cruise does or George Clooney would do.
• 52:34
  It's not that kind of Christmas he has, but what he has is the
• 52:38
  thing that everyone says about him.
• 52:39
  The thing I mentioned already is that he's just the ultimate
• 52:42
  everyman, which is why he's so believable, like I just said.
• 52:44
  And I think that feels like it's backhanded compliment.
• 52:47
  But I think it's also something that's easier said than done.
• 52:50
  You know, not everyone can do the amount of roles that Tom
• 52:53
  Hanks can do. So I don't think he's someone
• 52:55
  who sells the film on his name alone.
• 52:57
  But he's somewhere. If you see him in a film, you
• 52:59
  know, you're going to get a really good level of quality
• 53:02
  from him. So where would I rate him?
• 53:04
  I mean, it's, it's difficult to say.
• 53:06
  I don't really like kind of rate them by numbers, but I think for
• 53:09
  somebody who's 1/2 best actor Oscars back-to-back, the amount
• 53:13
  of films he's headlined for so many decades, you'd have to put
• 53:16
  him up there really in amongst the very best, even if he's
• 53:19
  like, say that kind of middle ground between great actor and
• 53:22
  great movie star. Yeah I agree, I mean he has won
• 53:25
  two Oscars and it's possibly the most beloved actor of his
• 53:27
  generation, so I'm not sure I would say he doesn't get the
• 53:29
  praise that he deserves. And like most, I'm a huge fan.
• 53:33
  Tom Hanks name attached to a film makes me more likely to
• 53:35
  want to see it for sure. I always think of him as being a
• 53:38
  similar mole to James Stewart, like kind of down to earth charm
• 53:41
  and one of the most like likable screen presents as you could
• 53:43
  ever see. And it's filmography is up there
• 53:46
  with the very best hit after hit, classic after classic.
• 53:48
  We've mentioned some, but big Saving Private Ryan are two
• 53:51
  others and Lords Moore one of the greats and in the top tier
• 53:55
  of Hollywood acting legend. For my money, I think people
• 53:57
  will be watching Tom Hanks in movies many, many, many years
• 54:00
  after we're all dead, which is a cheery thought.
• 54:03
  Yes, it is lovely. And that bombshell.
• 54:07
  Yeah. I mean, I totally agree.
• 54:09
  I think The thing is with Hanks, especially in recent years, it
• 54:12
  depends on on the subject, on the content.
• 54:14
  And I think he really makes a film, a film.
• 54:17
  He really does bring something home to it.
• 54:19
  But he needs to have the right director and he needs to have
• 54:22
  the right content. I mean, imagine Castaway with
• 54:25
  anybody else. Yeah.
• 54:26
  Yeah, he completely makes up and he's by himself.
• 54:29
  I mean, Captain Phillips, he's brilliant in that.
• 54:31
  Yeah. Yes.
• 54:32
  But the term for me was when he made The Da Vinci Code, which
• 54:34
  was a huge film. And it's Ron Howard again, and
• 54:37
  he's kind of the leading man in that.
• 54:38
  And I think he was miscast. He can't carry it.
• 54:41
  He couldn't get his charisma across.
• 54:42
  I think the less you give Hanks to do, the better he is.
• 54:45
  That's why he's amazing in Philadelphia, because he doesn't
• 54:48
  lead the way, He just does enough.
• 54:50
  That's why he's amazing in Forrest Gump, because he just
• 54:53
  uses the material. He doesn't have to come up with
• 54:55
  anything else. Saving Private Ryan again, just
• 54:58
  plays the choir. Captain amazing, brilliant in
• 55:00
  this because he knows his role. Give Hanks the right role and
• 55:03
  he's incredible. Give him the wrong one and he'll
• 55:05
  disappear. But yeah, at this time, one of
• 55:08
  the very best. But as as we've seen from the
• 55:10
  likes of Pacino, as we've seen from the likes of De Niro, it
• 55:13
  does kind of fade. But this is the point where I
• 55:15
  thought, yeah, I'll watch anything he's in in the in the
• 55:17
  90s was his peak. No major award recognition for
• 55:21
  Tom Hanks, for Apollo 13. Like I say, this was the first
• 55:24
  time in three years he didn't win Best actor at the Oscars.
• 55:28
  It was Nicolas Cage for leaving Las Vegas.
• 55:30
  Yeah, that, yeah, great performance.
• 55:32
  That would be fair, yeah. Yeah, as Jim Lovell, though,
• 55:35
  pretty much classic Hanks, isn't it Classic Hanks?
• 55:37
  Jim Lovem. The second Apollo 13 crew member
• 55:44
  we're going to talk about is Luna Module pilots Fred Hayes,
• 55:47
  played by Bill Paxton. Nice.
• 55:49
  Slated to become the 6th person to walk on the moon.
• 55:52
  We watch as Fred's dream is shattered, he has a running or
• 55:55
  two with Jack, gets really cold, and ultimately does make it
• 55:59
  home. Yeah, he could eat Yass over a
• 56:02
  dead rhinoceros mat. So how we feel Paxton as.
• 56:05
  Fred, he's great. I think all three bring a
• 56:08
  slightly different kind of relatability and what Paxton has
• 56:11
  is that slightly blue collar, slightly awe Shooks farm boy
• 56:16
  persona. And again, it makes you realize
• 56:18
  these guys are such geeks, the the maths nerds and they're up
• 56:21
  there in Paxton really brings that out.
• 56:23
  But every time I watch this, I think you know what?
• 56:25
  That would be me up there. I'd be the one vomiting.
• 56:28
  I'd be the one where it hurts when I urinate.
• 56:30
  I'd be the one who gets I'd. I'd be the one doing stupid
• 56:33
  stuff like pulling on the lever and the broadcasting to make
• 56:36
  that you. Split the bag I.
• 56:37
  Definitely split the bag. Oh no, he brings real goofiness,
• 56:41
  which I like because and he does that thing with with the lever
• 56:44
  because he knows his kids are watching and he wants to make
• 56:46
  his kids laugh. And I really like that.
• 56:48
  So he's this kind of sweetheart of a man.
• 56:50
  He's a geeky, goofy dad, but he does bring out that tension.
• 56:53
  He has to swipe away, doesn't trust him as much as he does
• 56:56
  can. And that's really effective.
• 56:58
  And then probably the famous, I mean, you, you've said, John, I
• 57:00
  could eat the ass out of a dead rhinoceros.
• 57:02
  That wasn't said by the real Fred Hayes.
• 57:04
  Unfortunately, it's been reported that it came from, of
• 57:07
  all people, Gary Busey. And point break.
• 57:09
  Because he was visited, he was visiting the set one day and he
• 57:12
  said the same line in point where, Yeah, yeah.
• 57:14
  Why was Busey in there? Why not?
• 57:17
  He's great. You could do anything in 95,
• 57:20
  Busey man, he'd get anywhere. Like Hanks?
• 57:23
  Yes, we've got Paxton, Hanks, Bacon, Harris in Sinise.
• 57:27
  This is surely the most 1990s cast in any film ever.
• 57:31
  It has to be. This is all the lads, all the
• 57:33
  90s. Lads the only one missing is
• 57:34
  Goldblum that. Would be great it.
• 57:38
  Would have been and a bit like Hanks's Jim, I think Bill
• 57:41
  Paxton's a good piece of casting Miss Fred again.
• 57:43
  We'll see him play a bigger personalities and more eccentric
• 57:46
  parts in this. Fred's another professional
• 57:48
  collected astronaut into that family man, so Paxton kind of
• 57:51
  brings himself to it. And if a popular actor and will
• 57:53
  like him without too much work having to be done.
• 57:56
  Yeah, you get to one of the few moments the flight crew cast get
• 57:58
  to act out. When Fred snaps the Jack for
• 58:00
  steering the tanks and then when he miscalculates how much oxygen
• 58:03
  they have left because he just leaves Jack out the
• 58:05
  calculations, that's outrageous. And yelling at Jack, He's
• 58:11
  throwing up, he's shivering his ass off.
• 58:13
  I'm not sure he can overwhelm his face travel to be.
• 58:15
  Honest, I don't think so. And again, not the most
• 58:18
  challenging role of Paxton's career, maybe, but he does what
• 58:20
  he does. But like the character and care
• 58:22
  about what happens to him. So yeah, well cast.
• 58:25
  Yeah, in really well cast, I think, so much so that you kind
• 58:29
  of forget he's in it. I think that's that's the whole
• 58:31
  point. You can watch it again.
• 58:32
  You go fucking hell, Bill Paxton's in this and you're
• 58:34
  constantly reminded by the cast because they all just settle
• 58:37
  into the roles and nobody's fighting for attention To me.
• 58:40
  It's all just on the level. Even at Harris doesn't kind of
• 58:43
  raise above anyone else. Everyone's on this plateau and
• 58:46
  it just makes perfect sense and they stay within the character
• 58:48
  arcs that they need to stay within.
• 58:50
  And Paxon really could have Hamed this up.
• 58:52
  Could have been the one who's who's I'll Oh my God, I've I've
• 58:56
  put everyone in danger. He could have been, you know, he
• 58:58
  had, like you said, Johnny has the moments where he snaps.
• 59:00
  He has these moments where he should have really stood out in
• 59:02
  them scenes, but reins it in a little bit.
• 59:05
  He does a really good job with that and makes a really good job
• 59:07
  of it and makes it very, very believable.
• 59:09
  I think all of the crew up there are believable for who they are
• 59:12
  and who the patrier, especially Paxson.
• 59:15
  Yeah, well, Bill Paxson wasn't a showing to get the part of Fred
• 59:17
  Hayes and again, some of that pretty big names were confident.
• 59:21
  Would like to know who. I'd love to.
• 59:23
  Would you like to know more? Yeah, Michael Keaton was
• 59:28
  apparently considered. The big keys that have been.
• 59:30
  Good. Yeah, OK.
• 59:31
  Far too intended to kick Jack out in the space he would have.
• 59:33
  He's Batman by then as well. He twice.
• 59:35
  Let's get nuts you. Want to get?
• 59:39
  Nuts. And apparently John Cusack and
• 59:41
  Charlie Sheen both turned the role down, because that would
• 59:43
  have been pretty good, I think. Yeah, yeah, he.
• 59:45
  Would have been really good. Yeah.
• 59:46
  Wouldn't change it though, would we?
• 59:47
  No. No, I think both of them would
• 59:49
  have been good as Jack, but I think Paxton's brilliant is
• 59:52
  Fred. He's the middle ground.
• 59:53
  In the moment that Fred throws up in the Monty of that was
• 59:55
  based on reality. During the mission, the real
• 59:58
  Fred Hayes did throw up because he'd been ill with the virus a
• 1:00:00
  few weeks before the mission, and during the production they
• 1:00:03
  used Beef a Roni. For the bump, yeah, it looks
• 1:00:06
  disgusting, that. Does like that big charge he
• 1:00:09
  spits out? And during production,
• 1:00:12
  apparently Paxton lost a bet with Hanks about something.
• 1:00:14
  And the fourth it was that he had to eat what was left of the
• 1:00:17
  beef. A roni in the tip?
• 1:00:20
  No thanks. So Bill Paxton has Fred Hayes,
• 1:00:24
  good supporting turn for us. Really good.
• 1:00:28
  Yeah, the final member of the flight team is command module
• 1:00:33
  pilot Jack Swaggart, played by Kevin Bacon, a late replacement
• 1:00:37
  to the crew. When Ken Mattingly becomes a
• 1:00:39
  medical risk, Jack is the guy who has to dock at the LM and is
• 1:00:42
  the guy who steers the tanks, leading to the problematic
• 1:00:44
  malfunction. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:47
  Maybe he should just hold his breath, Matt.
• 1:00:50
  Maybe should. How's Kevin Bacon as Jack?
• 1:00:53
  Really great. I mean, we talked about him not
• 1:00:54
  too long going to pay it on episode.
• 1:00:56
  And yeah, and I said then he's got a really unique presence and
• 1:00:59
  he kind of stands apart from everyone a little bit.
• 1:01:02
  And that really works for this scenario.
• 1:01:04
  And obviously they've tweaked the reality of the situation
• 1:01:07
  slightly because in real life there would be so focused on the
• 1:01:10
  job at hand at getting home that there wouldn't be bickering.
• 1:01:13
  And they did absolutely trust Swaggart because that's the job.
• 1:01:16
  You trust your backup crew. And he wasn't a Rocky like the
• 1:01:19
  film kind of suggests. So no one is really ready to be
• 1:01:22
  out of the set. But to be fair, that wouldn't be
• 1:01:24
  that interesting to watch play out on screen.
• 1:01:26
  So I think giving Swaggart that kind of mini arc where he's
• 1:01:29
  dropped into it at the last minute and he has to prove
• 1:01:31
  himself, I think that really works of the film.
• 1:01:33
  And it really works for an actor like Kevin Bacon because he does
• 1:01:37
  have that kind of slightly unique personality that he
• 1:01:39
  brings to this. Yeah.
• 1:01:40
  And it's that question thought, is he as good as matinee?
• 1:01:43
  And that really works when Jack pulls it all together at the end
• 1:01:46
  and he does power up the console and the spacecraft to get back.
• 1:01:49
  So yeah, I think he gives Bacon something to really get his
• 1:01:52
  teeth into, which the film needs, and I think he's really
• 1:01:53
  good. Yeah, it would have been a bit
• 1:01:55
  shit of everything. All right, Jack?
• 1:01:56
  Yep. Fine.
• 1:01:58
  Exactly. Yeah, I'm already in.
• 1:02:00
  I'm. Fine, No sweat.
• 1:02:02
  Yeah. Yeah, absolutely.
• 1:02:03
  Jack, isn't he? Until he's.
• 1:02:06
  Part of the crew, every time we see him, he's either about to
• 1:02:08
  have sex or has just had sex. Like.
• 1:02:11
  Austin Powers. Well, I thought that was just a
• 1:02:15
  slightly lazy 1990s character throw, like, oh, meet the young
• 1:02:18
  pirate hotshot. A bit of a loose cannon.
• 1:02:19
  Yeah. But apparently the real Jack
• 1:02:21
  Swagger did have that reputation.
• 1:02:22
  Oh, really Nice. Yeah.
• 1:02:24
  There's a book called Falling to Earth Co written by Al Warden,
• 1:02:27
  who was on Apollo 15. Right.
• 1:02:28
  And he said that the real Swagger was a bachelor.
• 1:02:30
  He would throw a party every weekend at his part.
• 1:02:32
  And he had a girl in every port. And we make the girl paid when
• 1:02:36
  he went on a date. Amazing.
• 1:02:38
  Come on, Jack, gentlemen, about it.
• 1:02:40
  This man is my God, putting the swagger in swagger.
• 1:02:44
  Yeah, well, Kevin Bacon, an actor, we all, I think, or most
• 1:02:47
  people like going in another big star and that all helps.
• 1:02:51
  I like him generally Kevin Bacon, and I like him here as
• 1:02:53
  Jack. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:02:55
  I really like him as Jack. I think it's like Matt said,
• 1:02:58
  touching on playing the, you know, the rookie card is
• 1:03:00
  creative license. And it does need that pitch of
• 1:03:02
  peril, that young rookie coming in and he's just a little bit of
• 1:03:05
  a hotshot, you know, coming off the back of, you know, it's a
• 1:03:07
  long time since Top Gun, but it's always in the back of your
• 1:03:10
  mind, isn't it? You see guys on aircraft
• 1:03:11
  carriers punch in the air and you just think Top Gun.
• 1:03:14
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like shame.
• 1:03:16
  Yeah, you don't. Yeah, it's just like you will go
• 1:03:19
  and he taps into that. And I mean, in 95 as well.
• 1:03:22
  And he wasn't as well known as he is now with everything that
• 1:03:25
  he's done since. I mean, he was in absolutely
• 1:03:27
  everything since. And like I said about Paxton, he
• 1:03:29
  plays the part, you know, of that member of the crew
• 1:03:32
  incredibly well and so does big and he understands the role.
• 1:03:36
  He absolutely takes it on board and he's not scared to be the
• 1:03:38
  one who looks like a little bit of a rookie, looks like a little
• 1:03:41
  bit of a football. But he plays it with a plum and
• 1:03:43
  with confidence. And you believe in him and you
• 1:03:45
  want that, that bit at the end where he does kind of come
• 1:03:48
  through and you do punch the end.
• 1:03:49
  You do believe in it. What we haven't mentioned is
• 1:03:51
  their chemistry together. I think their chemistry together
• 1:03:53
  is really, really strong and they all kind of understand each
• 1:03:56
  other and you can tell they all respect each other as actors and
• 1:03:59
  they all respect each other as characters, which really comes
• 1:04:01
  across. It does the chemistry as you
• 1:04:03
  like. It's really good.
• 1:04:04
  Yeah, and like you, the roles, Kevin Bacon's name wasn't
• 1:04:07
  necessarily the first book there.
• 1:04:09
  So according to reports, Brad Pitt turned down the chance to
• 1:04:12
  play a Jack, but that was to start in seven and said so.
• 1:04:15
  Fair enough. Yeah, fair enough.
• 1:04:17
  But also Val Kilmer also turned it down, but that was so he
• 1:04:20
  could star in the Ghost in the Darkness.
• 1:04:22
  Instead. Maybe not the wisest of choices.
• 1:04:27
  No major award recognition for Kevin Bacon for his role in
• 1:04:30
  Apollo 13. I mean, I like him, but he's not
• 1:04:32
  getting any Oscars, surely. And that's our main cast.
• 1:04:36
  We did talk about Ed Harris as flight controller, Gene Cranz
• 1:04:39
  earlier and in our three space bound astronaut, Tom Hanks as
• 1:04:42
  Jim Lovell, Bill Paxton as Fred Hayes and Kevin Bacon as Jack
• 1:04:45
  Swaggart. A classic 90s cast.
• 1:04:48
  Probably the best. Very 90s, very 90s.
• 1:04:51
  Just needed goblum. Would have been the ultimate boy
• 1:04:53
  band. This episode of All the Right
• 1:05:03
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• 1:06:16
  The middle. Heading into the middle of
• 1:06:21
  Apollo 13 and things are starting to motor.
• 1:06:24
  The team have pulled off a successful launch and are on
• 1:06:27
  route to the moon. We're going to talk about the
• 1:06:29
  problems the crew face after it all goes pear shaved, but before
• 1:06:32
  that they are some key space set scenes to talk about they.
• 1:06:36
  Certainly are. So the crew are in space, and at
• 1:06:39
  first it all seems to be about Jack the lad.
• 1:06:42
  First off, Pilot Jack is tasked with docking in the command
• 1:06:44
  module with the lunar module. And then the faithful moment
• 1:06:47
  where Jack steers the tanks. Yeah.
• 1:06:49
  So Westie, which are you talking about?
• 1:06:52
  I'm going to talk about the Jack Putney's money, where his mouth
• 1:06:54
  is. You said it at the start.
• 1:06:56
  Let's see if you can actually dock this ship.
• 1:06:58
  Let's see if you can satisfy who you need to satisfy.
• 1:07:02
  And I think it is a really great moment.
• 1:07:03
  It reminds me, you know, when you're playing the computer game
• 1:07:05
  and it's really good and you're enjoying it, but then you get to
• 1:07:07
  the skill level, which is normally Level 3 and you have.
• 1:07:09
  To do this. Horrible balancing act where you
• 1:07:12
  have to kind of balance this thing and it's, it just seems to
• 1:07:15
  be impossible. But it's great.
• 1:07:17
  And he said we've got a good separation.
• 1:07:19
  And it's like, you kind of do it, you know, Doc, this rookie,
• 1:07:22
  and it's like all this back and forwards and it really, it's
• 1:07:24
  rife with tension. It really builds it.
• 1:07:26
  And he's like, I'm on top of it. And he's like, you don't believe
• 1:07:29
  him? And there's that moment where
• 1:07:31
  everyone's kind of like itching in the seats and it goes back to
• 1:07:34
  the control room and then it just the way it's almost there,
• 1:07:37
  but then has to bash the side, doesn't it?
• 1:07:40
  And then you get looking at each other and they're like, oh shit,
• 1:07:44
  he'll go, it's not going to work.
• 1:07:46
  And then actually goes in. Of course it's fine.
• 1:07:49
  Like what? Why is he up there?
• 1:07:50
  If anyone's got any doubts whatsoever in this guy, there's
• 1:07:53
  only three of them. Why doubt him at all?
• 1:07:56
  That's what he's trained to do. That's his fucking job.
• 1:07:58
  Of course it is. But still, then we need this
• 1:08:00
  tension because because it's a Hollywood film and you need it
• 1:08:03
  to kind of push the tension along a little bit more and it
• 1:08:05
  pushes it along a little bit more and sets it up really,
• 1:08:08
  really nicely because it's just that small level of tension.
• 1:08:11
  You need one small mistake and they are fucking done for.
• 1:08:14
  So it really does set the tone for what's going to come later
• 1:08:17
  and you expect something worse to happen, but you don't know
• 1:08:19
  what it's going to be just yet. But Howard plants the seed here,
• 1:08:21
  and it's great. Yeah, just before this is where
• 1:08:24
  we get that broadcast from the ship back to Worth and Henry
• 1:08:27
  heard the NASA PR guy sees to Marilyn, one of the networks
• 1:08:30
  said we made going to the moon as exciting as taking a trip to
• 1:08:33
  Pittsburgh, right. And I think the right, in fact,
• 1:08:36
  that's a bit harsh on Pittsburgh.
• 1:08:37
  That broadcast back to Earth is dull, is dishwater.
• 1:08:43
  Then the woman Jack has to dock the ship might be a bit of 2001.
• 1:08:46
  Yeah. Yeah, the kind of hot beat.
• 1:08:48
  But I've seen. I debated Jeopardy in there and
• 1:08:51
  does show that Jack kind of knows his stuff after all.
• 1:08:53
  Yeah. Yeah, the sound of the locks
• 1:08:54
  kicking in is really reassuring and said.
• 1:08:57
  Yeah. Yeah, thank God.
• 1:08:58
  Yeah, he's done it. We need that on the sound
• 1:09:00
  design. Thank God.
• 1:09:01
  In the film, Jack's Wiggett is portrayed as a rookie who might
• 1:09:04
  be out of his depth as well as I've just said.
• 1:09:06
  So Jim Lovell said the real Jack's Wiggett was actually one
• 1:09:08
  of NASA's best pilots and he had no problem at all docking the
• 1:09:11
  ship, which I would have loved that.
• 1:09:13
  If you just eaten an apple or something, do a little one.
• 1:09:17
  Stephen with his feet? Yeah.
• 1:09:18
  No deal with his feet. Yeah, that's not a problem.
• 1:09:22
  I brought me on joystick. And how we knew one of the
• 1:09:26
  biggest challenges in making the film would be shooting the zero
• 1:09:29
  gravity scenes about the command module.
• 1:09:31
  The looked into using digital effects and having the actors
• 1:09:34
  strapped in the harnesses, but neither really worked.
• 1:09:37
  And how we discussed the idea with Steven Spielberg,
• 1:09:39
  obviously. And he suggested using the KC
• 1:09:42
  135, which is the plane that NASA would use to train their
• 1:09:45
  astronauts to work in 0 gravity. And that was affectionately
• 1:09:48
  known as the Vomit Comet. Yeah.
• 1:09:51
  I'm sure that O'Brien's in South Shields used to have a cocktail
• 1:09:54
  called the Vomit Comet. All of them.
• 1:10:00
  And Spielberg was always in there in the 90s, wasn't he?
• 1:10:04
  Every pie, Yeah. But yeah, the vomit comet.
• 1:10:07
  Basically the plane climbs to like 38,000 feet and then dives
• 1:10:10
  to 15,000 feet, which creates like a weightlessness effect
• 1:10:12
  inside the shell. They did apparently 612 dives in
• 1:10:16
  total. I ended up with like 54 minutes
• 1:10:18
  of footage I had to pick from. I remember that being quite a
• 1:10:21
  big thing at the time that they were filming in real weightless
• 1:10:24
  conditions, which I guess hadn't been done before.
• 1:10:26
  And it holds up great, obviously, because it looks
• 1:10:28
  real. Because it is, yeah.
• 1:10:30
  You think every dive like Paxton did?
• 1:10:32
  The Hudson is that one Express elevated the hell going down.
• 1:10:36
  He definitely did it at least once.
• 1:10:37
  Didn't. He did it at least once, surely.
• 1:10:39
  Yeah, the first scenes in space where we're seeing the
• 1:10:44
  astronauts view of Earth were created using real pictures from
• 1:10:46
  Apollo 8, taken by Jim Love himself on his first flight into
• 1:10:50
  space. Oh wow.
• 1:10:50
  Which is really interesting stuff like.
• 1:10:52
  Yeah, very nice, kind. Of blurs the lines, isn't.
• 1:10:54
  It Yeah, Apollo 8 was the first crude spacecraft to reach the
• 1:10:57
  moon. They went around it 10 times and
• 1:10:59
  then came back. But those images are just
• 1:11:00
  stunning. Earthrise the Cold.
• 1:11:03
  Yeah, lovely. Yeah.
• 1:11:04
  And then after this, you get the moment that everyone's been
• 1:11:07
  waiting for. This is the moment you appear to
• 1:11:10
  go to see this film. And it's probably the biggest
• 1:11:12
  understatement in history. Who's know we have a problem.
• 1:11:14
  I mean, I think you've got several going on, to be honest,
• 1:11:17
  by the sounds of it. I love how it seemed when he
• 1:11:19
  comes out of nowhere because there's been no foreboarding
• 1:11:22
  shot of this thing that explores of being placed into the
• 1:11:25
  spacecraft. And it comes off like you say,
• 1:11:28
  John, this really boring broadcast to Earth, which is
• 1:11:30
  done for laughs. And it's just this very rude
• 1:11:33
  team procedure and they're not even attempting something
• 1:11:36
  particularly dangerous. It's so by the book.
• 1:11:38
  So it comes out nowhere. But then it's just that big
• 1:11:40
  ominous shot of Kevin Bacons finger slowly going towards the
• 1:11:44
  switch. And that's that's when you know
• 1:11:46
  something's going to happen. But as soon as you see that
• 1:11:49
  panel just explode off the side. But you think surely that's them
• 1:11:53
  done for? That looks so catastrophic.
• 1:11:56
  And I think it's the same where all the jargon that we don't
• 1:11:58
  understand, it actually makes sense that we don't understand
• 1:12:01
  it because that makes it all more frightening.
• 1:12:03
  Like, I don't know what a Busby undervolt is, but I know it
• 1:12:07
  doesn't sound good in this situation when it's going off
• 1:12:09
  like that. And I think there's a certain
• 1:12:12
  lines and cinema that you've just got a nail in both the
• 1:12:15
  delivery and the framing and the way that the shots saw.
• 1:12:18
  When Cranz looks to the guy on comms and they do that focus
• 1:12:21
  ball, he just goes see again. And then the cut to Jim Houston.
• 1:12:25
  We have a problem. Yeah, Perfect.
• 1:12:27
  Perfectly done that bit. Yeah.
• 1:12:29
  It is the key point in the film, and I think Howard handles it
• 1:12:32
  really well. It's actually a fairly subdued
• 1:12:34
  moment. Steering the tanks exposes A
• 1:12:36
  malfunction that was there before they even took off.
• 1:12:38
  It is. The temptation might have been
• 1:12:39
  to do it, like, really spectacular with explosions and,
• 1:12:42
  yeah, lots of panels blowing out.
• 1:12:43
  Like a Jim Cameron film doesn't do that.
• 1:12:46
  He draws attention to it really subtly with that shot.
• 1:12:49
  After Jack flicks the switch that kind of moves through the
• 1:12:51
  edge of the ship, down the cables to the point where the
• 1:12:53
  valve loaves. Yeah, that's a really clever
• 1:12:55
  shot, I think so. I think it's really well done.
• 1:12:57
  Yeah. It's really well done.
• 1:12:59
  I think it's the moment, it's the payoff because you've taken
• 1:13:01
  a sigh of relief from Jack Duggan, the ship, and you think,
• 1:13:03
  oh, he's just going to do some routine now and then all of a
• 1:13:05
  sudden you're just throwing off kilter.
• 1:13:06
  I think that's brilliantly done by Howard.
• 1:13:08
  Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it is.
• 1:13:09
  So Jim's famous line here, Houston, we have a problem is
• 1:13:12
  based on reality in the real life transcripts, Jack Swaggart
• 1:13:16
  said, OK, Houston, we've had a problem here.
• 1:13:18
  Houston replied, this is Houston, say again, please.
• 1:13:21
  And that's when Jim Lovell then said, Houston, we've had a
• 1:13:23
  problem, but how it changed it to we have a problem.
• 1:13:26
  So it didn't sound like the issue had passed.
• 1:13:28
  Yeah, yeah. The most famous line in the
• 1:13:31
  film. One of the most famous lines in
• 1:13:33
  any Hollywood film, I think, isn't it?
• 1:13:35
  I would say it so it's definitely.
• 1:13:36
  There with them. We're going to need a bigger
• 1:13:37
  boat. Yeah, you'd still see it.
• 1:13:39
  Now take off. You know, Houston, we've got a
• 1:13:40
  problem. Yeah.
• 1:13:41
  It's a great line, to be fair. Yeah.
• 1:13:43
  Yeah, so the crew in space have docked the shape and had a
• 1:13:47
  problem. Their worries only just starting
• 1:13:49
  though. Oh yeah.
• 1:13:50
  Absolutely. I think that might be the oxygen
• 1:13:52
  in. Space The fallout from the tank
• 1:13:58
  steering debacle is severe, with oxygen pouring out the side of
• 1:14:01
  the ship. The moon landing is abandoned
• 1:14:03
  and it becomes a rescue mission. Can we join the team?
• 1:14:06
  Fred and Jack have a fallout and the Odyssey performs A slingshot
• 1:14:09
  manoeuvre around the moon to head back home.
• 1:14:13
  They just lost the moon, Wesley. Yeah.
• 1:14:14
  How's this all work for you? I mean that's a heartbreaker,
• 1:14:17
  isn't it? This slingshot around the moon
• 1:14:18
  when they see it. I mean it's just pure heartbreak
• 1:14:20
  on James face. It's pure Howard here.
• 1:14:23
  He can really dive into this moment because the whole film
• 1:14:25
  slows just for a moment and he realizes what could have been
• 1:14:29
  and the other guys so excited about it.
• 1:14:31
  Not looks like snow. It's so beautiful.
• 1:14:32
  I can see what London says. It's just that sense of loss,
• 1:14:35
  isn't it? It's probably like singing, like
• 1:14:37
  your first love from school. And then you follow them on
• 1:14:39
  Facebook and they're married, you know?
• 1:14:41
  Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's got that.
• 1:14:43
  It's got that like, Oh no, it's just there, but it's miles away.
• 1:14:47
  It's got that kind of heartbreak to.
• 1:14:49
  It's like a romantic heartbreak for him.
• 1:14:51
  But again, it's laid on really thick by Howard, isn't it?
• 1:14:54
  It's so, so thick. And it's intercut with the TV
• 1:14:57
  interviews and it's intercut with the information from the
• 1:14:59
  television telling me what's happening.
• 1:15:01
  And there's that exposition there, but the bit that I kind
• 1:15:03
  of lose it on, and I don't know if you guys do as well, but it's
• 1:15:06
  when he has that dream sequence, when he lands on the moon.
• 1:15:08
  Yeah, it's not needed. It's just a little bit like,
• 1:15:12
  come on, we don't need that. When we know that that's what
• 1:15:15
  he's saying, we know that's what he really wants, and how many
• 1:15:18
  times do we need it hit home that he wants to land on the
• 1:15:20
  moon? It's just so many things that
• 1:15:25
  are just slamming that home to you.
• 1:15:26
  But I mean, to us now, it might seem a little bit over the top
• 1:15:29
  and it might seem a little bit Harmy, but I guess in 95 you
• 1:15:31
  really had to reiterate that point and slam it home and slam
• 1:15:34
  the emotion home. And that's what how it does.
• 1:15:36
  But for me, that moment just takes it a little bit too far
• 1:15:39
  and I'm happy to be back in peril after that.
• 1:15:41
  I think it's just a little bit too sickly sweet and a little
• 1:15:43
  bit too much. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:15:45
  I think the shot through the moon service from the Odyssey is
• 1:15:47
  the orbit. The moon looked really good.
• 1:15:49
  I know that they used the real pictures taken by the Apollo 13
• 1:15:52
  crew to reconstruct it, which is a really good touch.
• 1:15:55
  Oh, yeah. The crew are torturing
• 1:15:56
  themselves. It's like bullseye.
• 1:15:58
  Let's see what you could have won.
• 1:15:59
  I know, right? Yeah, it's a good sequence, the
• 1:16:02
  kind of score works well and how everything goes deathly silent
• 1:16:06
  about the Odyssey and emission control to reflect the fact that
• 1:16:08
  out of contract. And the lightens Gray on the
• 1:16:11
  sequence as well. I think the lighting inside the
• 1:16:12
  modules great. It goes dark and you kind of see
• 1:16:15
  the differences between the two. It's really good.
• 1:16:17
  It is really good and Marilyn likes silently sobbing at home.
• 1:16:20
  That's a bit of a kicker as well.
• 1:16:21
  Yeah, it is. And the scenes in the Mission
• 1:16:23
  Control room are all great. Gene still furious.
• 1:16:26
  Everything. He's like we've never lost an
• 1:16:28
  American in his face and we're sure as hell not going to lose 1
• 1:16:30
  on my watch. He's great.
• 1:16:31
  He's. Wonderful, isn't he?
• 1:16:35
  Is really good. Yeah, I mean, you've said the
• 1:16:37
  scenes in Mission Control there, John, and I really love them as
• 1:16:40
  well. And this is the one where Gene
• 1:16:42
  says failure is not an option that just storms out.
• 1:16:45
  Amazing. And that was made-up for the
• 1:16:48
  movie, actually, but became the tagline on the poster and
• 1:16:51
  synonymous with the mission and NASA.
• 1:16:53
  And it also became the title of an official documentary about
• 1:16:55
  NASA in 2004, and then became the title of the real Gene
• 1:17:00
  Crunch's autobiography. Yeah, the screenwriters, Al
• 1:17:03
  Reinert and Bill Broyles interviewed Jerry Bostick when
• 1:17:05
  they were writing the script and the line actually came from him,
• 1:17:08
  right? So Crunch was like a shamelessly
• 1:17:10
  stole it from his mate. There's a line taken from real
• 1:17:14
  life as well when Jim says, gentlemen, what are your
• 1:17:17
  intentions? Which I think is a wonderful
• 1:17:18
  moment and I'd like to go home. Yeah, it's apparently the real
• 1:17:21
  level said that because we got in here is what, just too busy
• 1:17:24
  taking pictures of the moon. And it was kind of to snap them
• 1:17:26
  back to the reality of the situation, I guess.
• 1:17:28
  Yeah, Hank has a similar line of that in Steven Private Ryan as
• 1:17:31
  well, I think, doesn't he? He does.
• 1:17:32
  He says he wants to go home. Yeah.
• 1:17:34
  Yeah. And then after this, you get one
• 1:17:36
  of my favorite moments because it's been building to this, and
• 1:17:39
  it's the moment where the three astronauts just finally snap at
• 1:17:42
  each other a little bit. And it starts off really quite
• 1:17:44
  bleak because you can see how freezing they are.
• 1:17:46
  The batteries are running out on the portable cassette player.
• 1:17:49
  Fred is at his absolute low step physically.
• 1:17:53
  He's obviously joking, but it is funny when he says it hurts when
• 1:17:55
  he urinates and he blames Swaggart for giving him the
• 1:17:57
  clap. So it just sprinkles a nice
• 1:17:59
  little bit of humor here. And then when Swaggart tells him
• 1:18:02
  he's worked out that their re entry trajectory is wrong and
• 1:18:05
  they'll skip out the atmosphere. Well, how do you figure that?
• 1:18:08
  I can add, I really love that line.
• 1:18:10
  That's really funny. I can add.
• 1:18:13
  But I think it's also probably the biggest scene where you have
• 1:18:15
  to realize, again, they've really dramatized this to make
• 1:18:18
  the characters relatable. I'll talk about this more in a
• 1:18:20
  bit. But ultimately, I think in the
• 1:18:22
  scene, they're reacting like we would react where the tension
• 1:18:25
  would get to us, particularly as they've been slowly poisoned by
• 1:18:28
  carbon monoxide, which they haven't realized yet.
• 1:18:31
  So I think it's fair enough to make that change.
• 1:18:33
  And again, it ends in another big laugh for me when even Jim
• 1:18:37
  has lost it and he's snapping at the pair of them.
• 1:18:39
  And then Houston calls. Are we on Vox?
• 1:18:41
  No, we're not on Vox. Yeah.
• 1:18:43
  Who's from? This is Aquarius.
• 1:18:44
  Go ahead. Yeah.
• 1:18:45
  Yeah, yeah, great. And this is about the time that
• 1:18:48
  we get the return of Ken as well, when we see him at home.
• 1:18:50
  Yeah, we know he's depressed because he's drinking cans, He's
• 1:18:53
  only shaving and he's wearing a vest.
• 1:18:55
  Classic. So it's all in there.
• 1:18:57
  That depression is it. That's Hollywood depression.
• 1:19:04
  Well, I like that show where he goes to bed and he turns the TV
• 1:19:06
  off and we'll see you flush up with Apollo 13 news report.
• 1:19:09
  That's really good. But then imagine you were asleep
• 1:19:11
  and your mate just walked in and turned the light on.
• 1:19:13
  Ken doesn't give a shit. He's just like, oh, hi, John.
• 1:19:17
  This happens a lot. Is it?
• 1:19:18
  Yeah. And then by the time he gets up
• 1:19:20
  to the space sender, he's clean shaven, shirt and tie ready for
• 1:19:24
  action. What a pro.
• 1:19:25
  No hangover. It's like the start of
• 1:19:26
  Apocalypse Now, isn't it? Space again.
• 1:19:32
  Shit. The run out version.
• 1:19:35
  Yeah. In the scenes, the module is
• 1:19:37
  freezing cold and we can see the astronauts breezing as they
• 1:19:40
  talk. Sort of pull that off how I'd
• 1:19:42
  had the universal sound stage refrigerated.
• 1:19:45
  So what we see is really the act as breath very much similar to
• 1:19:47
  what was what freaking did in The Exorcist.
• 1:19:50
  Yeah, yeah. Did that other thing as well I
• 1:19:51
  think. On the thing, yeah.
• 1:19:53
  The temperature on the set was 1° above freezing, so pretty
• 1:19:56
  darn cool. Yeah, and two years later,
• 1:19:58
  Cameron's like, let's just do it digitally.
• 1:20:03
  Yeah. I mean, he's putting them
• 1:20:05
  through enough to be fair. And one of the consultants on
• 1:20:08
  the film we've mentioned Tom Jones, not that one,
• 1:20:10
  unfortunately. He was instead a NASA astronaut
• 1:20:14
  on 4 space shuttle flights. And he said he told Howard that
• 1:20:18
  the argument between Fred and Jack didn't happen and actually
• 1:20:20
  would never happen in real life between two trained astronauts
• 1:20:23
  because of the, you know, absolute professionals, the best
• 1:20:25
  of the best. But Howard said, I know that,
• 1:20:28
  but I'm trying to show attention.
• 1:20:29
  We can only show a sweaty forehead so many times before it
• 1:20:32
  loses its effect. Yeah, it would have been so
• 1:20:35
  boring to cover. It would have been by beat.
• 1:20:37
  Yeah, would it just be? They would have been so calm
• 1:20:39
  because they've been trained for it, haven't they?
• 1:20:40
  Well, that's it, Yeah. They're not going to lose the
• 1:20:42
  temper. Yeah, you do.
• 1:20:44
  It adds the card that for all man conflict you need in the
• 1:20:45
  film I think. Yeah, definitely.
• 1:20:47
  And Walter Cronkite was the anchor of CBS News at the time
• 1:20:50
  of the Apollo missions. So was the person, really.
• 1:20:52
  And lots of the information to the public.
• 1:20:54
  Howard hired him as an actor and he re recorded some of his
• 1:20:57
  reports to make them even more dramatic for the film, which is
• 1:21:00
  great. Oh, wow.
• 1:21:01
  Yeah, he was a person who broke the news about the JFK
• 1:21:03
  assassination, did the broadcast for the Apollo 11 landing and
• 1:21:06
  then this. Yes.
• 1:21:07
  So all over some of the biggest events of the 20th century.
• 1:21:11
  Massive crunk act. Time for our third and final
• 1:21:14
  paper on question. Now it Hawks back to a line of
• 1:21:16
  dialogue we just mentioned a few minutes ago and comes from Adam.
• 1:21:20
  Hi there, Adam. Hi, Adam.
• 1:21:22
  Hello, Adam. So Adam says this movie has a
• 1:21:26
  great tagline. Failure is not an option.
• 1:21:28
  What do you think of that tagline and what are your
• 1:21:30
  favourites in movie history? All right.
• 1:21:33
  So, Matt, what do you think? Well, firstly, I think it's a
• 1:21:36
  great tagline because, you know, it just lays it out there.
• 1:21:39
  Failure is not an option because what is the other option?
• 1:21:41
  It's brilliant. Other favourites mean very
• 1:21:44
  handily. Our last episode was on Blair
• 1:21:46
  Witch Project Mean Westie both said on that.
• 1:21:49
  We love the tagline for that. It's so for boarding in
• 1:21:52
  mysterious and get here on the tagline alone.
• 1:21:55
  And then I thought for other ones.
• 1:21:56
  I mean everyone knows the famous 1 so I thought I'd go for
• 1:21:59
  tagline to that I think are great but from not so great
• 1:22:02
  films. Brilliant.
• 1:22:03
  I got a lot of this. I was like, that's amazing
• 1:22:05
  tagline not to shit film. Yeah, well, that's it.
• 1:22:08
  And I thought I'm going to go down this path.
• 1:22:09
  So first of all, Alien versus Predator, whoever wins, we lose.
• 1:22:14
  That's great. That's really brilliant.
• 1:22:16
  Yeah. Film from the 70s called The Day
• 1:22:18
  of the Dolphin. And the tagline is unwittingly,
• 1:22:21
  he trained a dolphin to kill the president of the United States.
• 1:22:25
  And that's a series film. Unwittingly.
• 1:22:27
  Unwittingly. Get rid of unwittingly.
• 1:22:29
  That doesn't need to be there. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:22:31
  It's that George C Scott. Yeah.
• 1:22:33
  George C Scott. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:22:36
  Incredible. Sounds awesome.
• 1:22:37
  Naked Gun 33 and the third. That tagline was mostly all new
• 1:22:41
  jokes, which I think is brilliant.
• 1:22:42
  Yeah, the other native gun was if you see one movie this year,
• 1:22:45
  you need to get out more. Yeah.
• 1:22:49
  Great tagline to all of them. First native gun, wasn't it?
• 1:22:51
  That's great, yeah. And then the last one, crank to
• 1:22:54
  high voltage, he was dead, but he got better.
• 1:22:58
  Amazing, yeah. Yeah, I have a feeling we've
• 1:23:01
  talked about tag lines before, but yeah, we're kind of game.
• 1:23:03
  It's always fun. Oh yeah, it's great.
• 1:23:06
  I love a good movie tagline. There's too many dimension, so
• 1:23:08
  I've kind of got my top five. OK, go on then. 5th I'm starting
• 1:23:11
  with a comedy one which I remember making me smile and
• 1:23:14
  still does from Dumb and Dumber for How Are You and Lloyd every
• 1:23:17
  day as a no brainer. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:23:19
  Though another good funny one is from the variety of Chucky.
• 1:23:22
  Chucky gets lucky. Yeah. 4th, I've got a 60s
• 1:23:27
  classic in Whatever Happened to Baby Jane, Right?
• 1:23:30
  It's a pretty vicious film about two sisters, and the tagline is
• 1:23:33
  Sister Sister. Also fair.
• 1:23:35
  Why is there blood all over your hair?
• 1:23:37
  Nice, nice. Third, I've got Superman.
• 1:23:39
  You believe a man can fly? I could get a little TV just
• 1:23:43
  thinking about that one. Yeah, you could.
• 1:23:44
  Even if it was a shit tagline, you'd still get Superman.
• 1:23:48
  And second, Tom Cruise Classic in cocktail.
• 1:23:50
  Remember what this one is? It's kind of genius.
• 1:23:52
  When he pours, he reigns. When he pulls, he reigns.
• 1:23:59
  Unfair. It's an obvious one.
• 1:24:00
  Always a tagline I think of when I hear a question like this.
• 1:24:02
  Alien in space, no one can hear you.
• 1:24:05
  Yeah, works on levels. Tagline Genius.
• 1:24:07
  That 1 I think. Right.
• 1:24:08
  Nice. I've taken a little bit of a
• 1:24:10
  different approach for this one because you guys have said the
• 1:24:13
  few of mine. So I've had loads written down
• 1:24:14
  because this is like one of the things I really love when I just
• 1:24:17
  because I collect movie posters as well.
• 1:24:18
  So I think the timelines is really, really important to kind
• 1:24:20
  of pull you in. I think it's something that's
• 1:24:22
  really, really necessary. Yeah.
• 1:24:23
  So what I've done is I've got 3 left.
• 1:24:25
  So what I'm going to do is, this might fall when it's off, but
• 1:24:27
  I'm going to see them and see if you can guess the film.
• 1:24:29
  OK, go on then. You'll get the first one and
• 1:24:31
  then the other two. We'll see.
• 1:24:33
  So who will survive and what will be left of them?
• 1:24:36
  Texas. Chainsaw.
• 1:24:37
  Texas Chainsaw. Texas Chainsaw must say yeah.
• 1:24:39
  Family isn't the word, it's a sentence.
• 1:24:41
  Oh, I've heard that for counting white off.
• 1:24:43
  Is it him, Royal Tenenbaums? Royal Tenenbaums, yes.
• 1:24:46
  Oh nice. Yes.
• 1:24:47
  When he said I do, he never said what he did.
• 1:24:51
  Oh, I've heard that as well. We can't think what it's off.
• 1:24:53
  Oh, it's true. Lies.
• 1:24:54
  True Lies. That worked beautifully, but
• 1:24:57
  yeah, they're three of my favourites.
• 1:25:00
  Only got the Tenenbaums wrong because we watched it the other
• 1:25:02
  week for double feature to be fair.
• 1:25:03
  Yeah, that worked. Let's do that again, yeah?
• 1:25:07
  There's a new podcast, new show. Yeah, it is.
• 1:25:08
  Yeah, tag lines. And unlike the Odyssey, we've
• 1:25:12
  made it through the middle of the film.
• 1:25:14
  A big and famous problem argument, freezing conditions.
• 1:25:17
  It's not looking too good for the crew.
• 1:25:19
  Nope. Nope.
• 1:25:20
  And that's just the podcast, The Crew.
• 1:25:28
  Just like the Apollo missions themselves, the production of
• 1:25:30
  Apollo 13 was very collaborative and involved a huge team behind
• 1:25:34
  the scenes, and that's where we're headed now.
• 1:25:36
  We're going to talk about James Horner's work as composer on the
• 1:25:39
  film and the people involved in creating the visuals, but as
• 1:25:42
  ever, it's the writing to start. It is.
• 1:25:45
  It is. So the screenwriters of Apollo
• 1:25:47
  13 were Al Reinert and William Broyles Junior, two journalists
• 1:25:51
  turned screenwriters. Apollo 13 was the first film
• 1:25:54
  writing credit of both straight in with a big voice.
• 1:25:57
  Does it show Westie? How is it right in Apollo 13?
• 1:26:00
  It's very journalistic, isn't it?
• 1:26:02
  I think there's a lot of writing that we're talking about that is
• 1:26:05
  a work in progress. How is this narrative going to
• 1:26:07
  develop? How is this going to twist and
• 1:26:09
  turn? And I think the nor the ending
• 1:26:11
  and they've worked backwards and I think they've kept a lot of
• 1:26:14
  the jargon out of it because it is almost like a news report
• 1:26:17
  where people need to understand every single bit of it.
• 1:26:20
  So they haven't gone too deep. I think it's a very much a
• 1:26:22
  surface review of what happened with scattered emotion for a
• 1:26:27
  Hollywood blockbuster, really. You know, it's layered with
• 1:26:30
  facts. You can't argue with any of the
• 1:26:31
  writing, you can't argue with any of the dialogue.
• 1:26:34
  You can't argue with some of the scenes, you can't argue with
• 1:26:37
  some of the back and forth. But I think it's all here and I
• 1:26:41
  think what they do really well is keep the piercing very, very
• 1:26:43
  tight. It doesn't linger on anything.
• 1:26:45
  You never bored. There's always the next step,
• 1:26:48
  there's always the next level. You're always looking towards
• 1:26:50
  something else. There's all these problems to
• 1:26:52
  solve. It's very much a problem solving
• 1:26:54
  screenplay. And that sets it up and it
• 1:26:56
  knocks it down and you're satisfied.
• 1:26:57
  Sets it up, it knocks it down, it sets it up, it knocks it down
• 1:27:00
  later and you leave this film completely satisfied.
• 1:27:03
  And I think that's due to the right and it's all on the page
• 1:27:06
  because it is based in fact. It's one of them rare films that
• 1:27:09
  was a blockbuster that was actually a docudrama.
• 1:27:12
  It was based and it was riddled in fact.
• 1:27:14
  And you can't argue with it because everyone knew about
• 1:27:17
  this. Everyone knew about Apollo 13.
• 1:27:18
  It was on the television. There's nowhere to hide, there's
• 1:27:21
  nowhere to lie. So what they do is they lay
• 1:27:23
  everything down factually. Then they give it to Ron Howard.
• 1:27:27
  He adds an emotional base to it, and then you get Apollo 13,
• 1:27:30
  which it is what it is. I would imagine you read this on
• 1:27:32
  the page and it comes across very different because you need
• 1:27:34
  the visual ticks and you need the performances from the actors
• 1:27:37
  to bring this screenplay to life.
• 1:27:39
  But what they've done is written everything down that you need to
• 1:27:41
  know as a person who needs to know what happened without being
• 1:27:45
  bogged down with the science of it.
• 1:27:46
  And I think it works really well.
• 1:27:48
  Yeah, the story obviously based on a true story, but the quest
• 1:27:52
  to get back home, it's classic narrative storytelling, isn't
• 1:27:55
  it? Yeah.
• 1:27:55
  It is. It is the Odyssey, basically the
• 1:27:58
  widgets from the start, yeah, but I think the writing is good
• 1:28:01
  writing and Broyles have clearly done their research and the
• 1:28:03
  North, the Apollo missions inside out.
• 1:28:05
  But there's some nice screen writing here as well.
• 1:28:07
  The plotting works how it's problem after problem.
• 1:28:09
  That's what makes the film for me, those kind of beats of
• 1:28:12
  escalating peril. I forget how long it is the
• 1:28:14
  film, to be honest. I think the screenplay would
• 1:28:15
  have been just as long. But you will zip through this
• 1:28:18
  with you reading it. You will absolutely zip through
• 1:28:19
  it. Yeah.
• 1:28:20
  Absolutely, Yeah. I think there's a clear theme of
• 1:28:22
  the power of team collaboration in there.
• 1:28:24
  The Apollo 13 crew routine. Marilyn forms a kind of team on
• 1:28:28
  Earth with Mary Hayes, Fred's wife.
• 1:28:29
  Yeah. Mission controller, A-Team.
• 1:28:31
  And there's loads of teams within teams solving problems
• 1:28:34
  like the CO2 filter issue with our technicians, Like we've got
• 1:28:37
  to find a way to make this. Fit into this.
• 1:28:39
  It's nothing but that, yeah. I mean, imagine writing that in
• 1:28:42
  a screenplay, what they're looking at, but you don't
• 1:28:46
  describe anything on the table. It's just everything's on the
• 1:28:48
  table. I mean, that is classic Apollo
• 1:28:50
  13 dialogue. They do a good job of making
• 1:28:52
  very technical things, little rocket science like
• 1:28:54
  understandable for the audience. Yeah, it's a bit heavy-handed at
• 1:28:57
  time for my taste. Where this, well, things out a
• 1:28:59
  little bit too much. Yeah, you can't power a vacuum
• 1:29:02
  cleaner on 12 volts or whatever it was.
• 1:29:04
  It's like, yeah, we all know what about you?
• 1:29:05
  All that makes sense to me now. OK, 12.
• 1:29:07
  Yeah, and like when they shut down the fuel cell and Jack says
• 1:29:11
  if this doesn't work, we're not going to have enough power to
• 1:29:13
  get back home. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:15
  Everyone knows that, surely? Yeah, 2 professionals with them
• 1:29:18
  who definitely know that. Yeah, you might look at the
• 1:29:20
  camera when you said it. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:29:22
  Just over the shoulder. And by the way.
• 1:29:27
  But it works much better when they deliver exposition through
• 1:29:29
  the news reports for me to do that when they're explaining how
• 1:29:32
  the burn will work. They're really good.
• 1:29:34
  Yeah, it's miles better. So yeah, the right thing is very
• 1:29:36
  90s, a little bit on the nose at times, but very competent with a
• 1:29:40
  clear message, which I think is kind of teamwork.
• 1:29:42
  Makes the dream work. Yeah.
• 1:29:44
  So there's your tagline. Maybe not as good as failure is
• 1:29:46
  not an option. It's definitely not.
• 1:29:52
  Yeah, very much agree. And what works for me about the
• 1:29:55
  rightness, how understandable it makes out there, which you guys
• 1:29:57
  have been touching on so far. Like because there is so much
• 1:30:00
  jog and still in this, it still could be confusing, but it gets
• 1:30:04
  the details right. Like when the explosions first
• 1:30:07
  happened in the double check in Lovell's maths and they're using
• 1:30:10
  those slide rulers. Yeah, I will say what the fuck?
• 1:30:12
  Using a slide wheel with NASA. Yeah, surely not accurate
• 1:30:16
  enough. But that's the truth.
• 1:30:17
  That's the detail that's in there.
• 1:30:19
  You know, when they're trying to decide what's the best plan to
• 1:30:21
  get them home. This engine doesn't work.
• 1:30:23
  This one might blow up. That's why we can't use that.
• 1:30:25
  That's all really well laid out. So like we get it as layman and
• 1:30:29
  you know me, you've mentioned jump at the bit when the CO2 is
• 1:30:32
  rising and they're talking about filters and cartridges.
• 1:30:35
  Means nothing to me, but it's, you know, until they tell Jean
• 1:30:38
  of the wrong shape and he gets that line.
• 1:30:39
  Well, I suggest you gentlemen invent a way to put a square peg
• 1:30:42
  in a round hole rapidly, and that's all you need.
• 1:30:46
  That character of Jean as well is great for the audience
• 1:30:48
  because he he needs to know the answers, but he's not like he's
• 1:30:52
  stupid, but he he says I don't want to know what it's designed
• 1:30:55
  for. I want to know what it can do
• 1:30:57
  and that's the point. We don't want the back story to
• 1:30:58
  all of this machinery. We'll want to know what's going
• 1:31:00
  to happen and move the story forward, which I think is really
• 1:31:02
  important. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:04
  Talk to the guy who put it together on the actual
• 1:31:05
  production line. Yeah, exactly.
• 1:31:07
  All that kind of so sorry. Yeah, that to me is where the
• 1:31:09
  writing really works and emphasizing the scale of the
• 1:31:12
  problems how to deal with here. And in 1991, Jeffrey Kluger was
• 1:31:16
  a writer on Discover, a science magazine.
• 1:31:19
  We had the idea of writing a book based on the Apollo 13
• 1:31:22
  mission. He wrote a letter to Jim Lovell
• 1:31:24
  asking if he could interview him.
• 1:31:25
  Lovell responded and said rather than just be interviewed, he
• 1:31:28
  wanted to collaborate on writing the book, which is great.
• 1:31:31
  Wow. Yeah, Kluge said the first 3
• 1:31:33
  literary agency pitched the idea to all said nobody will want to
• 1:31:37
  read about three men who didn't land on the moon.
• 1:31:40
  That line is kind of in the film.
• 1:31:42
  When Marilyn says about the reporters landing on the moon
• 1:31:45
  wasn't dramatic enough for them, why should not landing on it be?
• 1:31:48
  Yeah. Exactly.
• 1:31:49
  So I wonder if that's a go to that.
• 1:31:50
  We could write a book. We haven't landed on the moon.
• 1:31:55
  Jeffrey Kluger was hired by Howard to be technical
• 1:31:58
  consultant on the film and was on set every single day.
• 1:32:01
  He wrote some of the dialogue for the news broadcasts.
• 1:32:03
  He's in the film as well. He plays the television
• 1:32:05
  reporter. All right, Yeah.
• 1:32:08
  Yeah, he said after he did his first take, he heard Jim
• 1:32:10
  Lovell's voice on the set saying there's going to be no living
• 1:32:13
  with him now. I mean, let me have his moment,
• 1:32:18
  Jim. The whole film is about you.
• 1:32:20
  Company basics, though? Jim Lovett.
• 1:32:25
  So people may be wondering how two guys who had never written a
• 1:32:28
  screenplay before got a gig as big as Apollo 13.
• 1:32:31
  If so, we can tell you. Yeah.
• 1:32:34
  So at the time Imagine Entertainment bought the rights
• 1:32:36
  to Lost Moon, Bill Broyles dropped by the studio he'd
• 1:32:39
  created, China Beach ATV Medical Board Drama.
• 1:32:42
  Right, right. How many medical dramas were
• 1:32:44
  there in the 90s? Loads loads of them.
• 1:32:47
  Too many. You only needed ER as well.
• 1:32:49
  I know. Yeah, I stopped.
• 1:32:51
  After mash. But Broyles was looking to get
• 1:32:54
  into films and he pitched a ROM com of all things to imagine in
• 1:32:57
  the past on that. But because of China Beach and
• 1:33:00
  his military background, Michael Bostick suggested to Ron Howard
• 1:33:03
  that the higher Broyles to have a crack out.
• 1:33:05
  Apollo 13 and Broyles had previously worked with Al
• 1:33:08
  Reinart and his most notable work at the time was For All
• 1:33:11
  Mankind which is an Oscar nominated documentary about the
• 1:33:14
  Apollo missions. So Broyles asked Reinart to ride
• 1:33:17
  Apollo 13 with him. Nice.
• 1:33:19
  Yeah, he'd grown up 25 miles from the Johnson Space Centre in
• 1:33:22
  Houston, Build Royals. And when Bostick spoke to him
• 1:33:25
  about Apollo 13, he apparently said I was born to write this
• 1:33:28
  movie. Yeah, I Then that's OK.
• 1:33:33
  That'll do. That'll do it.
• 1:33:34
  I'm sold on that. So pretty much all the main plot
• 1:33:37
  points in the film are as they happened, but Bolton Reinhart
• 1:33:40
  did make some changes. So firstly they made a lot more
• 1:33:44
  about Ken Mattonly and his plot threat.
• 1:33:46
  His side of the story and the drama around it is only hinted
• 1:33:49
  at in the book rather than described in detail.
• 1:33:52
  That's a really good addition, I think.
• 1:33:54
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. The drama around all that and
• 1:33:57
  like Ken drinking in his vest, that's all got to be in there,
• 1:33:59
  doesn't it? Yeah, of course.
• 1:34:01
  Yeah, the book focuses on what happens in the Odyssey and
• 1:34:04
  Mission Control, but for the film, Ryan, Art and Bryce added
• 1:34:07
  all the scenes with Marilyn and the Lovell family to add more
• 1:34:09
  character drama. That really works.
• 1:34:11
  It does really work, They said. The more research they did, the
• 1:34:14
  more they realized they didn't actually have to make anything
• 1:34:16
  up. Everything was there that they
• 1:34:18
  needed for like a Hollywood movie.
• 1:34:19
  Yeah, absolutely. And Ryan Art said the only
• 1:34:22
  chance they really had to make was after Tom Hanks was cast
• 1:34:24
  because they thought the character they'd written as
• 1:34:26
  Lovell, he wasn't a Hanks type of character.
• 1:34:29
  Yeah, I think you said something like we'd written John Wayne and
• 1:34:32
  the higher Jimmy Stewart. John Wayne over there.
• 1:34:37
  Imagine. That John Wayne would have been
• 1:34:39
  great. Do you want anymore?
• 1:34:40
  I don't fucking need it. Suddenly had lung cancer, so we
• 1:34:45
  have to take one of your lungs. I take them both out.
• 1:34:47
  I don't fucking need them. The man who shot Jim Lovell,
• 1:34:52
  That would be great. An early draft of the script
• 1:34:56
  also had John Sayles as a credited screenwriter.
• 1:34:58
  He's not credited on the final script, but Howard said his main
• 1:35:01
  contribution was writing the scenes with Blanche in the
• 1:35:03
  nursing home, which I think are some of the best.
• 1:35:06
  The best scenes. Yeah, she's fantastic.
• 1:35:08
  She is really good. You wrote loads of stuff, John
• 1:35:10
  Sayles, didn't he? The Howling.
• 1:35:11
  He wrote Oscar, nominated for Passion Fish, and he wrote
• 1:35:15
  Battle Beyond the Stars, which isn't quite so hard.
• 1:35:18
  Yeah. For their work on Apollo 13,
• 1:35:21
  Bill Broyles and Our Reiner were nominated for Best Adapted
• 1:35:23
  Screenplay at the Oscars. Any ideas what won that year,
• 1:35:26
  Matt? Leaving Las Vegas was that
• 1:35:30
  adapted from a book? It was, but didn't win.
• 1:35:33
  OK. The winner was Emma Thompson,
• 1:35:35
  who adapted Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility.
• 1:35:37
  Oh. Right.
• 1:35:39
  OK, yes. For Brian Reiner though, some
• 1:35:42
  very solid work for us, and especially impressive with the
• 1:35:44
  first screenplay. Yeah.
• 1:35:46
  For first one, it's really impressive.
• 1:35:48
  Just writing down the truth and adding some emotion.
• 1:35:50
  Easy peasy poo. That's all you need to do, Yeah.
• 1:35:52
  Does he writing? Of course.
• 1:35:56
  An inexperienced team on writing duties, but to say the same
• 1:35:59
  about the music couldn't be further from the truth.
• 1:36:02
  The composer on Apollo 13 was James Horner, and by the time of
• 1:36:05
  Apollo 13 he'd already worked on over 70 films.
• 1:36:09
  Well. Including two collaborations
• 1:36:11
  with Ron Howard on Cocoon and Willow.
• 1:36:14
  Yeah. So how does the horn hour and
• 1:36:16
  how our team at work this time round, Matt?
• 1:36:18
  I mean, if you can't get John Williams, he had James Horner,
• 1:36:21
  right? That's like the fall back
• 1:36:22
  option. Yeah.
• 1:36:24
  I mean, it. It's not necessarily the most
• 1:36:26
  inspired work in that I don't think.
• 1:36:28
  It's a soundtrack that leaves you with big themes stuck in
• 1:36:31
  your head for days afterwards, but it just beds itself in the
• 1:36:35
  film. And whether it's the military
• 1:36:37
  style drum beat that opens the film and it's kind of all about
• 1:36:40
  the Mission Control scenes, all that, almost like angelic choir.
• 1:36:44
  You get through a lot of the space scenes or when it gets
• 1:36:46
  more tense when things are going wrong in space.
• 1:36:49
  Everything about it works just so well.
• 1:36:52
  And is it a little bit obvious? Maybe.
• 1:36:54
  But there's never one more where I go, oh, that didn't work.
• 1:36:57
  It does all work. And you might notice that James
• 1:37:00
  Horner enlisted some help for Manny Lennox because she
• 1:37:03
  provides the ethereal vocals on several tracks on the Score All.
• 1:37:06
  Right. Yeah, I mean, he's a legend of
• 1:37:08
  his field, James Horner, isn't he?
• 1:37:10
  Yeah. I mean like Glory, Braveheart,
• 1:37:12
  Titanic, Avatar, Cruel, all the big boys.
• 1:37:16
  Mass advance, yeah. Mascazaro.
• 1:37:19
  Yeah. I think he brings the quality
• 1:37:21
  here as well. The main piece that we played at
• 1:37:23
  the start, the launch, it's called Huge and Steering.
• 1:37:26
  If I had to describe the music in one word, I think I would
• 1:37:29
  call it Noble, which kind of encapsulates the film and Tom
• 1:37:32
  Hanks portrayal of Jim Lovell I think as well.
• 1:37:35
  And he has a bit of a reputation as a composer who borrowed from
• 1:37:38
  himself quite a bit and reuses music.
• 1:37:40
  James Horner. We've.
• 1:37:42
  Talked before about how he reuses some motifs from The
• 1:37:44
  Wrath of Khan on aliens. Yeah, he takes from the Pelican
• 1:37:47
  Brief music which he wrote and the music that plays when Jack
• 1:37:50
  docks the Odyssey with the Aquarius.
• 1:37:52
  It's like atmospheric strings. If that piece isn't lifted
• 1:37:55
  directly from aliens then it's almost identical.
• 1:37:58
  I'm waiting for Paxton to start shouting Game over.
• 1:38:01
  Imagine. But the need to get one needs
• 1:38:06
  to, and a bit more. It's for boarding where it needs
• 1:38:08
  to be tense. It's big and bombastic where
• 1:38:10
  it's bringing the spectacle. Probably not among James
• 1:38:13
  Horner's very best work. For me, it's not Braveheart,
• 1:38:15
  it's not Titanic. Certainly not.
• 1:38:17
  It's not the search for Spock, but still.
• 1:38:19
  What is? Top score from Horner for me.
• 1:38:23
  Yeah, the Big Horn, the big man. Yeah.
• 1:38:27
  I mean, he does exactly what's what needs to be done here.
• 1:38:30
  He turns this bombastic visual into a bombastic audio
• 1:38:33
  experience. You know, he's got the marching
• 1:38:35
  drums. He's got the kind of Civil War
• 1:38:38
  era kind of American flag just kind of there.
• 1:38:41
  It's got this very military vibe to it at certain points.
• 1:38:43
  And then it's got a really family vibe, really emotional
• 1:38:46
  drives. He's everything in his arsenal
• 1:38:48
  just to hammer all of this home and really does what a good
• 1:38:52
  composer does as matches the visual to the sound and again
• 1:38:56
  makes you feel an emotion that Ron Howard wants you to feel.
• 1:38:59
  He does the same in Braveheart, matches that perfectly.
• 1:39:02
  Does the same in Titanic. He matches that perfectly and
• 1:39:05
  he's just very, very good at matching the visuals and really
• 1:39:09
  making the audience feel something.
• 1:39:10
  And like Matt said, if you can't catch John Williams, you get
• 1:39:13
  James Horner because them two guys can could really make you
• 1:39:16
  feel exactly what you need to feel and match that visual on
• 1:39:19
  the screen. And he does that at every turn
• 1:39:22
  of this, this peril. Just a ship floating through
• 1:39:24
  space. And it's terrifying.
• 1:39:26
  I mean, we'll talk about the final scene when we come to it,
• 1:39:28
  but Jesus Christ, that music at the end.
• 1:39:30
  If you don't stand up and punch somebody in the face out of fear
• 1:39:33
  love, then it's it's. Absolutely.
• 1:39:36
  Pointless then, isn't it? But he nails it.
• 1:39:38
  He absolutely nails it on. He knows the assignment, he
• 1:39:41
  knows it very, very well. He knows what we're on.
• 1:39:43
  Howard wants from him, and fuck me does he deliver.
• 1:39:46
  It's not memorable in that you can't hum it back, but you can
• 1:39:49
  certainly feel it back. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
• 1:39:52
  And there's a lot of pop music from the time he used in the
• 1:39:54
  film as well. So during the public broadcast,
• 1:39:56
  which we've talked about, Jim says they're going to play also
• 1:39:59
  Sprack Sogathuster from 2001, which Fred plays Spirit in the
• 1:40:03
  Sky by Norman Greenbaum instead. But in real life they did
• 1:40:06
  actually play the Strauss music. And we also hear The Who and
• 1:40:10
  James Brown and how did want to use The Beatles in the scene
• 1:40:13
  where Barbara Lovell is upset because the split up but he
• 1:40:15
  couldn't get the right. So that's why we hear Purple
• 1:40:17
  Hares by Hendrix instead. Don't pan Hendrix, that's the
• 1:40:20
  wrong choice. What should it have?
• 1:40:23
  Been the Monkeys. How nice.
• 1:40:25
  Big influence on The Beatles. Yeah, the next best thing.
• 1:40:30
  I'd be happy with that. Really funny that as well.
• 1:40:32
  It would have been and Barbara doesn't want to go to the
• 1:40:34
  broadcast because former car and he's left The Beatles, she says.
• 1:40:36
  I mean, don't blame her, to be honest.
• 1:40:38
  That's. Fair enough.
• 1:40:38
  Yeah, that's enough for anyone. Yeah, it is, yeah.
• 1:40:40
  But I think the reason that scenes in there is that in the
• 1:40:42
  real Apollo 13 transcript, there's a conversation where the
• 1:40:45
  crew of the Odyssey asked Mission Control what's happening
• 1:40:48
  back on Earth, right? And one of the controllers says
• 1:40:50
  The Beatles broke up. So I think that scene isn't is a
• 1:40:53
  nod to that, Yeah. Right.
• 1:40:54
  Nice. Oh wow, Wouldn't bother coming
• 1:40:56
  back. Me.
• 1:40:56
  Fuck that, I didn't. Imagine even that.
• 1:40:58
  Fuck sake, back to the moon. Yeah, it's going to burn.
• 1:41:02
  I don't give a shit. I'm not bothered.
• 1:41:04
  Worse than Jack's tax return not going through.
• 1:41:06
  Well, exactly. For his Apollo 13 music, James
• 1:41:10
  Horner was nominated at the Oscars.
• 1:41:12
  He was nominated for Braveheart that year as well.
• 1:41:14
  Yeah, but the winner was Louis Bacolov for I'll Postino, the
• 1:41:17
  Poor's Man. All right.
• 1:41:19
  OK is a thing of beauty, to be fair.
• 1:41:21
  It is, but I mean, it's not Braveheart, is it Jesus Christ?
• 1:41:24
  What is? Nothing, that's my funeral.
• 1:41:26
  It's just the Braveheart soundtrack info.
• 1:41:28
  Everyone has to sit through the whole thing and then throw a
• 1:41:31
  broad sword off the cliffs. Of course, James, hold on one
• 1:41:35
  Apollo 13 or give us Howard, what you need from a musical
• 1:41:38
  point of view. And then some.
• 1:41:40
  Yeah, give us the audience exactly what they need to write.
• 1:41:45
  Moving on to the visuals of Apollo 13, and with it being a
• 1:41:47
  big budget of blockbuster, there's a bit to cover in terms
• 1:41:50
  of both director of photography Dean Cundy and visual effects
• 1:41:54
  work largely handled by Digital Domain.
• 1:41:56
  Right. Dean Gundy on USD.
• 1:41:59
  Big fan, Big big fan of Dean Gundy.
• 1:42:01
  How does work on Apollo 13? I think his work's incredible,
• 1:42:04
  and it's so understated that it's really, really upsets us
• 1:42:08
  because it's so fluid and the staging and the blocking is
• 1:42:12
  second and none. It's absolutely precise.
• 1:42:15
  It's excellent. I mean, the guy who did the
• 1:42:17
  things came from New York. He did back the future Jurassic
• 1:42:19
  Park, Roger Rabbit, and he knows what he's doing with visual
• 1:42:21
  effects. He knows how to do that.
• 1:42:23
  He knows how to put all this together.
• 1:42:25
  It's just the way he moves the camera.
• 1:42:27
  And this for me, absolutely works every single time.
• 1:42:29
  It's very, very Spielberg. It has got that kind of vibe
• 1:42:32
  where it's got that Jurassic Park kind of look.
• 1:42:34
  The way, especially in the control room.
• 1:42:36
  It goes from one person to the other.
• 1:42:38
  Ron Howard's learning a lot from Cundy here more than he's
• 1:42:40
  learning from Howard, I think. And he's bringing a lot of these
• 1:42:43
  his his tactics and his sensibilities to this.
• 1:42:46
  The thing that lets him down, which I don't think it's his
• 1:42:48
  fault, is that it is overlit. It does look a little bit
• 1:42:52
  glossy. There's no shadow in this.
• 1:42:54
  There's nothing for boarding. There's nothing scared.
• 1:42:56
  There's nothing hiding in the frame.
• 1:42:58
  You see absolutely everything, which would have been hard for
• 1:43:00
  him to do. But again, for me, it just plays
• 1:43:02
  safe on the visuals. We see everything.
• 1:43:05
  There's nothing to be scared of. It's Ron Howard being like,
• 1:43:07
  please, no shadow. And even when there is shadow
• 1:43:09
  and they come around the back of the moon and Jim Lovell's beside
• 1:43:12
  himself and he's, oh, fuck me, that's where I was supposed to
• 1:43:14
  land. He still leans forward and
• 1:43:16
  sticks the lamp on just so we can see a little bit more.
• 1:43:18
  You know, it's fine and it is lit and the lighting is
• 1:43:21
  beautiful in that moment. But I think it's just, if you
• 1:43:23
  look at this from just turn the sound off, make it black and
• 1:43:26
  white. Classic Westy.
• 1:43:29
  The Westy version, yeah. Just turn the sound off you like
• 1:43:32
  sort of like did with Raiders, but like turn the sound off and
• 1:43:34
  just watch the blocking. Look at how the camera moves and
• 1:43:37
  how often uses a wide angle lens and you have no idea he's using
• 1:43:40
  the wide angle lens. Even the start, just like when
• 1:43:43
  when Fred Staunton a Ken that whole room, that's a wide lens
• 1:43:46
  and he's coming around it and framing them both in a really
• 1:43:49
  wide lens, but it's not distorting that much.
• 1:43:51
  But he just knows it needs to fit the whole room in.
• 1:43:53
  He needs to fit everything in around them to show their
• 1:43:56
  surroundings and everything that's been achieved in that
• 1:43:58
  room. And it's just things like that
• 1:44:00
  that really lock at home and was said.
• 1:44:01
  The launch sequence is incredibly influential to every
• 1:44:05
  single director who's tried to do action since this film.
• 1:44:08
  This film set the tone for Michael Bay.
• 1:44:11
  It set the tone for Fast and Furious franchise.
• 1:44:14
  It set the tone for where do you put the camera to make it
• 1:44:17
  exciting? How do you use miniatures?
• 1:44:18
  How do you do something where just have no idea how that was
• 1:44:21
  done? And I think from an industry
• 1:44:23
  point of view, a lot of people saw Apollo 13 as a technical
• 1:44:26
  marvel and just went, fucking hell, we're going to take that.
• 1:44:29
  We're going to strip the emotion back and we're going to ramp the
• 1:44:31
  action up. We're going to press Fast
• 1:44:33
  forward on it. And that's exactly what they
• 1:44:34
  did. So Dean Cundy for me in this
• 1:44:36
  film is incredibly underrated because what you did was bring
• 1:44:39
  Action Cinema to something that should not have been as exciting
• 1:44:45
  as it is from a visual point of view.
• 1:44:47
  Turn the sound off, watch it again.
• 1:44:48
  It's an incredible piece of work from a cinematographer.
• 1:44:52
  Yeah, You had worked on some big effects films at this point,
• 1:44:54
  like you see a Wesley, I mean, you've mentioned them, but I
• 1:44:56
  think Jurassic Park, which is a couple of years before.
• 1:44:59
  It's 93, yeah. Yeah, That must have been the
• 1:45:01
  reason how I brought him in, I would guess.
• 1:45:03
  Yeah. And that experience shows, I
• 1:45:04
  think, quite a lot of challenges.
• 1:45:06
  Yeah, but Kundi makes it seem kind of easy.
• 1:45:08
  Yeah, a huge amount of the scenes take place in the
• 1:45:11
  Odyssey, which is tiny, and it could have been dull to look at
• 1:45:14
  where the camera gets right into the actor's face.
• 1:45:16
  There's a lot to make the most of the lack of space, and I like
• 1:45:18
  the way they use sunlight streaming in through the windows
• 1:45:20
  as well to make it all a bit more visual.
• 1:45:22
  Yeah, it's very wide. It's a very wide film.
• 1:45:25
  Yeah, And I think the Mission Control seems to impressive as
• 1:45:28
  well. There's a Netflix documentary
• 1:45:29
  called Apollo 13 Survival and watching that, it's obviously
• 1:45:33
  taking information from the real footage.
• 1:45:35
  But to make it a bit less flat, there's a lot of what seemed to
• 1:45:38
  me like crane shots where the camera, like, swoops between
• 1:45:41
  characters are down to flight controls at the stations.
• 1:45:43
  That's all brilliant. I love all that.
• 1:45:45
  Yeah. And they don't hide their
• 1:45:46
  influences. Wide shuts of the sun creeping
• 1:45:49
  around the edge of the moon of very 2001.
• 1:45:51
  The slow motion shot of the full astronauts walking the board.
• 1:45:54
  The ship is pretty much a copy paste from the right stuff, but
• 1:45:57
  yeah, the influence goes in that way as well.
• 1:46:00
  That shot of the other CD coupling from the ship in the
• 1:46:02
  light drifting off into the distance, that's been copied so
• 1:46:04
  many times. Even Nolan does that in
• 1:46:06
  Interstellar. He does, yeah.
• 1:46:08
  Yeah. I mean, he has some great stuff
• 1:46:09
  to work with. Ian Cundi as Michael Corn Bliss
• 1:46:11
  production design work is superb, but Cundi delivers it as
• 1:46:14
  well. Excellent for me, yeah.
• 1:46:16
  Yeah. And this is one of the first
• 1:46:17
  films as well that was transferred to an IMAX negative,
• 1:46:19
  right. And they said they had really no
• 1:46:21
  problem doing it. They said the frame was just so
• 1:46:23
  perfectly done that the frame of doing IMAX negative and it
• 1:46:26
  really worked. So the screen this and IMAX the
• 1:46:28
  very first to do it, yeah. And they said the frame and was
• 1:46:31
  absolutely spot on. So that's how good he was,
• 1:46:32
  really. Oh yeah, brilliant.
• 1:46:34
  And that's where the Nolan influence comes from.
• 1:46:35
  He's like, Jesus Christ, yeah, you take Apollo 13, add more
• 1:46:38
  emotion and less sense, then make it to start.
• 1:46:44
  And as well as recreating the level house and Mission Control
• 1:46:47
  as accurately as possible, Michael Current Blunt also did a
• 1:46:50
  lot of research in building the sets for the Odyssey and
• 1:46:52
  Aquarius. He got in touch with
• 1:46:54
  Cosmosphere, a huge Space Museum in Kansas, who had plans and
• 1:46:58
  specs for the original machinery, and they were used to
• 1:47:01
  create all of their modules, which is from the original
• 1:47:03
  machinery. Fantastic.
• 1:47:04
  Brilliant. Yeah.
• 1:47:06
  Space Works is the division of the Cosmosphere, who does all
• 1:47:08
  the recreation work, and they've apparently got like 13,000 NASA
• 1:47:11
  artifacts there, so it's like a huge place.
• 1:47:13
  Wow. Lovely.
• 1:47:14
  Great. Imagine thinking of that name.
• 1:47:15
  What should we got? Space works great.
• 1:47:21
  Yeah, I'll do it. Yeah, I'm going to talk about
• 1:47:23
  the effects because I think they're probably a bit
• 1:47:25
  underrated now, how good they are.
• 1:47:28
  One thing Apollo 13 is really significant for is how space
• 1:47:31
  travel could be portrayed in film in terms of the realism of
• 1:47:34
  it, in terms of cutting from shots outside of Odyssey and
• 1:47:38
  then into the craft itself. And it's all absolutely
• 1:47:40
  seamless. So you get those shots where
• 1:47:42
  you're outside or the camera's outside, but you can see through
• 1:47:45
  the window into the craft, you can see the astronauts.
• 1:47:47
  Again, that's something the way I think you take that for
• 1:47:49
  granted. But I think Apollo 13 really
• 1:47:52
  elevated how realistically you could do those effects.
• 1:47:55
  And I think even if the likes of Gravity or Interstellar or The
• 1:47:58
  Martian kind of have outdone them now, that's fair enough
• 1:48:02
  because obviously, you know, time's changed and things
• 1:48:04
  improve. But for 1995, I still think this
• 1:48:07
  looks pretty great. I agree.
• 1:48:10
  Yeah, it was done by Digital Domain.
• 1:48:12
  It was the Effect Studio. You were founded by James
• 1:48:14
  Cameron and Stan Winston, and the visual effects supervisor
• 1:48:17
  was Robert Legato, who'd worked on Star Trek Two Phase 9.
• 1:48:20
  So they did, between them, pretty much everything,
• 1:48:23
  including the launch sequence that we talked about earlier.
• 1:48:26
  Yeah. And I agree, Matt, I think the
• 1:48:27
  work here is really good. Yeah.
• 1:48:28
  Blend of like, photography, models, miniatures, CGI, and it
• 1:48:32
  holds it well for the time it was doing it.
• 1:48:34
  I think it looks excellent. I think one of my favorite
• 1:48:36
  stories is around the moment that they dumped the astronauts
• 1:48:38
  toilet waste in the space. I shot 1.
• 1:48:41
  We see all shooting out the side of the ship.
• 1:48:42
  Yeah. Fred calls it the constellation
• 1:48:44
  of you, Ryan. You were Ryan.
• 1:48:45
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 1:48:46
  They apparently spent a month at Digital Domain doing that in
• 1:48:49
  CGI, but it never looked right through Robert Lagarde or
• 1:48:52
  probably filming a symbol like every in board a spray bottle.
• 1:48:55
  And that's what's actually in the film.
• 1:48:56
  In the weeks of CGI was all canned for the practical Thing,
• 1:48:59
  Yeah. Weeks of pissing about.
• 1:49:04
  That wasn't even written either. Wesley's that funny?
• 1:49:07
  There it is that. Was off the cuff.
• 1:49:08
  Amazing. And Jim Lovell said that the
• 1:49:11
  first time he saw the film, he found the CGI work so
• 1:49:14
  convincing. He thought how did found some
• 1:49:16
  unreleased NASA footage and he'd repurposed that.
• 1:49:19
  Yeah, if you affect school, the guy who was actually there, you
• 1:49:22
  know, you've done all right, I think.
• 1:49:23
  Exactly. Yeah, Yeah, yeah.
• 1:49:25
  Is that my footage now? It's not true.
• 1:49:30
  And the astronaut suits cost get this $30,000 each to make and
• 1:49:37
  they were made to be as realistic as possible.
• 1:49:39
  I mean, for 30 grand, I would imagine it's quite realistic,
• 1:49:42
  right? The helmets really did lock
• 1:49:45
  airtight, meaning that oxygen had to be pumped into the suit
• 1:49:47
  for the actors to breathe again. If I was Kevin Bacon, do you
• 1:49:50
  need more air? Yes, I do.
• 1:49:52
  Definitely. Yeah.
• 1:49:53
  Yes, I do. Thank you so much.
• 1:49:55
  Yeah. They were also made by Space
• 1:49:56
  Works that we mentioned before. So those guys, obviously experts
• 1:49:59
  of what they do, I think. Definitely.
• 1:50:01
  Yeah, there was no Oscars recognition for Dean couldn't do
• 1:50:03
  for his work on Apollo 13 Digital Domain, or were
• 1:50:06
  nominated for Best Visual Effects and lost out to any
• 1:50:10
  ideas what? 95.
• 1:50:13
  It's not my thing, I don't care. It was Babe the talking pig.
• 1:50:20
  Oh, babe. OK.
• 1:50:22
  But a great blend of cinematography and effects work
• 1:50:25
  on Apollo 13 for us. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:50:27
  Looks great. So a huge team of people worked
• 1:50:30
  on bringing Apollo 13 to life and the names were mentioned
• 1:50:32
  there. Bill Broyles, Junior Al Reiner,
• 1:50:35
  James Horner, Dean Cundy, Robert Legardo and Digital Domain all
• 1:50:39
  played their part. The teamwork does mean
• 1:50:41
  dreamwork. Dreamwork.
• 1:50:42
  I knew that was coming. That was written.
• 1:50:45
  John. Really.
• 1:50:45
  Is that predictable? Drew the.
• 1:50:54
  End. The final act of Apollo 13 sees
• 1:50:58
  things really hitting up, figuratively and literally.
• 1:51:02
  The climax where the crew reenter Earth's atmosphere is
• 1:51:04
  coming first, though there's a few more problems to solve.
• 1:51:08
  Just a few, yeah. So with the Odyssey creeping
• 1:51:11
  ever closer to Earth, the team in space and on land have some
• 1:51:14
  work to do. First Gym is tasked with keeping
• 1:51:17
  the craft on course for home while they burn the engines, and
• 1:51:20
  then in Mission Control Ken has to devise a new re entry
• 1:51:23
  sequence to find 4 arms of power.
• 1:51:27
  It's all getting a bit tense, isn't it, Westy?
• 1:51:29
  Really tense. Really, really tense.
• 1:51:31
  What do you make of these scenes?
• 1:51:33
  I'm going to go for Jim Burning the engines because again, it's
• 1:51:35
  another skill level on that computer game that I don't want
• 1:51:38
  to play. It's that incredible push at the
• 1:51:40
  speaker where Marilyn's listening and you can hear
• 1:51:42
  everything that's going on, which must have been absolutely
• 1:51:44
  hideous because this sounds like the really breaking character
• 1:51:47
  here, the break in the professionalism.
• 1:51:49
  And they're really all worried. And this is something that they
• 1:51:52
  haven't been trained for. They don't know how it's going
• 1:51:54
  to work. And every time I see this, I
• 1:51:57
  just go, God, yeah, right. This is where the real peril is,
• 1:52:00
  but dialed down by Howard because this could have been
• 1:52:02
  ramped up to be the most terrifying bit of the film.
• 1:52:05
  But it isn't. It's still within the
• 1:52:06
  boundaries. It's still within an acceptable
• 1:52:09
  the way your heart doesn't really go that far.
• 1:52:11
  You know the bit when he's like, that's mine, that's me, that's
• 1:52:14
  my fault, That would be me constantly all the way through
• 1:52:17
  the whole fucking mission. That's me, that's mine, that's
• 1:52:21
  my fault, I'm sorry about me. But the tension is excellent and
• 1:52:24
  the music here is fantastic because it is just ramped up to
• 1:52:27
  10. But then when you hear that's
• 1:52:30
  close enough, Jim, there's that relief.
• 1:52:33
  And you go, thank God he's made it.
• 1:52:35
  And then Hanks goes, oh, we don't have to do that again.
• 1:52:38
  And you go, please, I hope we don't have to do that again.
• 1:52:41
  But that's all Howard's prepared to do.
• 1:52:43
  He's prepared to give you 39 seconds of tension and then
• 1:52:45
  bring you back. We make you feel comfortable
• 1:52:47
  again until the next thing. Yeah, I remember the first time
• 1:52:51
  I watched the film. The burning was a sequence that
• 1:52:53
  I remembered more strongly, I think because it's really good
• 1:52:56
  the way they kind of dramatize it by giving us the rules.
• 1:52:58
  Jim has to keep Earth in the window while the Odyssey is
• 1:53:01
  going every which way. And then the news report where
• 1:53:03
  they explain the dangers of it all with a basketball, softball
• 1:53:06
  and a piece of paper. Thin bit of paper, yeah.
• 1:53:08
  Yeah, that works really well, and it's still probably the most
• 1:53:11
  thrilling part of the film for me.
• 1:53:13
  The miniatures of the ship are shot really well.
• 1:53:15
  It's great visuals, the way it jumps from inside the ship and
• 1:53:18
  outside the Odyssey. Yeah, and when it fires up and
• 1:53:20
  it just goes out of control and you're like, oh, God.
• 1:53:23
  Brilliant. Yeah, and the fact that Fred has
• 1:53:25
  to do everything backwards. And he's not feeling very well
• 1:53:28
  and he's. Not feeling very well.
• 1:53:29
  Very well. But when he says to Jim, like,
• 1:53:31
  I'm with you, you're totally by that.
• 1:53:33
  Yeah, definitely. I'm going to.
• 1:53:34
  I'll die here. I'll die here.
• 1:53:36
  I'm with you. And you believe him?
• 1:53:37
  But Geoffrey Kluker said that in reality, the burn wasn't as
• 1:53:40
  dramatic as it was here, and it was actually more for formality
• 1:53:43
  more than anything. And the crew didn't have to do 1
• 1:53:45
  burn, they had to do 4. But the writers condensed them
• 1:53:48
  all down into one for the film. I mentioned this in real life
• 1:53:52
  would have been bored as shit. I just feel like a massive wet
• 1:53:55
  fart. Have you done that, Jim?
• 1:53:57
  Yeah, it was fine. No problem.
• 1:53:58
  Yeah, yeah, I've just done it, mate.
• 1:53:59
  Did not feel it. No, no.
• 1:54:01
  I think there is a reference in the film to another burn being
• 1:54:04
  made at one point, but we don't actually see it.
• 1:54:06
  No. But yeah you can't have the same
• 1:54:07
  scene 4 times, that would be mental.
• 1:54:09
  Especially if it's a formality. Yeah, especially if nothing
• 1:54:12
  happens, like flushing the toilet.
• 1:54:14
  Yeah, yeah, Flush it again. Did you feel it now?
• 1:54:16
  That's fine. Yeah, because it's all coming
• 1:54:19
  together now and one of my favourite bits is seeing Ken and
• 1:54:22
  Jack working together to switch everything back.
• 1:54:24
  On the. Dream Team, The Dream Team.
• 1:54:26
  And this is a culmination of a couple of my favorite aspects of
• 1:54:29
  the film, because all those scenes of Ken working with John
• 1:54:33
  in the practice mighty old to find a way of powering
• 1:54:35
  everything up with the limited power they have.
• 1:54:37
  They agreed. I mean, I've never seen that
• 1:54:39
  actor in anything since up with the actor who plays John thing.
• 1:54:41
  He's got Ben Marley. He's really good in this.
• 1:54:43
  He is good. He's really good.
• 1:54:45
  Because I love that line of dialogue when someone asks John
• 1:54:47
  how much power they've got to work with.
• 1:54:49
  Barely enough to run this coffee pot for 9 hours and you just
• 1:54:51
  think, fucking how did they get home?
• 1:54:54
  I know it's crazy. That's all they've got and so
• 1:54:57
  Kens little arc, he's out in the film where you miss out in the
• 1:55:00
  mission that gets tied up so well here when he's in the
• 1:55:02
  control room and you can tell Lovell is so glad Ken is there
• 1:55:05
  to help get them home. So it's Ken.
• 1:55:07
  Are the flowers blooming in Houston?
• 1:55:09
  That's negative. Gym.
• 1:55:10
  I do not have the measles and he just shoots the fight set some
• 1:55:14
  such a hacky look, but it's that unspoken connection you get with
• 1:55:19
  Ken and Jack. You know there but for the grace
• 1:55:21
  of God go I from Ken's perspective and just that one
• 1:55:24
  exchange when everything's powered up.
• 1:55:26
  I wish you were here to see it. I bet you do.
• 1:55:30
  It's like one last minute peril like Jack's completely cracked
• 1:55:33
  those control panels and dripping in of just one of those
• 1:55:36
  switches isn't sealed completely.
• 1:55:38
  It's boom, game over. Something else is going to
• 1:55:40
  explode. Yeah, I like how to set it all
• 1:55:43
  up where Jim was talking to Mission Control saying we need
• 1:55:45
  the re entry procedure now and Jack's like they don't know how
• 1:55:48
  to do it. And then Dick says Ken's in the
• 1:55:50
  simulator and Jim goes Ken's working on it.
• 1:55:53
  Then cut the Ken, flatten his back.
• 1:55:55
  Yeah, that's really good. Yeah, brilliant.
• 1:55:57
  But again, the ejects great drama into a scene that isn't
• 1:55:59
  easy to inject drama into. And the guy sitting in a flight
• 1:56:02
  simulator talking about finding 4 arms with power.
• 1:56:04
  Yeah, flicking some switches. But when Ken finds the final
• 1:56:07
  four arms, it's such a great moment when he sees to John, how
• 1:56:11
  do we look? And then just the pause.
• 1:56:13
  Yeah, I think we've got everybody.
• 1:56:14
  That's great. Yeah, it's great.
• 1:56:16
  Yeah, really good. It would look to me Ken would
• 1:56:18
  have showed that I have the power like a man, but can't have
• 1:56:21
  everything. I have the forearm power.
• 1:56:26
  It's a great movie moment, I think.
• 1:56:28
  According to Jeffrey Kluger, Ken Matney was involved, but
• 1:56:30
  discovering the new power of procedure was very much a
• 1:56:32
  collaborative thing, rather than just being mostly about Ken like
• 1:56:35
  it is in the film. Yeah, another fair change, I
• 1:56:38
  think. Yeah.
• 1:56:39
  I mean, I like how Ken and Jack, the guy you replaced him, have
• 1:56:41
  to work together to turn the LM on.
• 1:56:43
  Yeah. And Howard goes all in on Ken's
• 1:56:45
  24 head there. Loads of shots.
• 1:56:46
  For that he does. Yeah.
• 1:56:48
  Again, it's all about the team, isn't it?
• 1:56:49
  Yeah, exactly. But the collaborations are off
• 1:56:51
  camera, which is, you know, it's not Ken by himself.
• 1:56:54
  Yeah, necessarily. But you've got to put a face to
• 1:56:57
  the success. Yeah, something that was based
• 1:56:59
  on reality though is when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin turn
• 1:57:02
  up to Gate Blanche company. According to Kluge, the Apollo
• 1:57:05
  astronauts were all really close and knew each others family, so
• 1:57:08
  Armstrong and Aldrin were drafted in at one point to look
• 1:57:11
  after Blanche in case everything did go South.
• 1:57:14
  Right. Wow, watching the film, I was
• 1:57:16
  thinking, how did these two, like NASA legends, end up
• 1:57:18
  getting tasked with looking after Crazy Blanche?
• 1:57:21
  It's true, yeah. That look that Armstrong gives
• 1:57:24
  to Blanche at the end is so powerful.
• 1:57:26
  Yeah. When she's just staring at the
• 1:57:27
  telly, just looks up. Yeah, it's, it's really good.
• 1:57:30
  She's my favorite character. Blanche, absolutely.
• 1:57:33
  It's great. Should have sent her up there.
• 1:57:35
  Paxton would be like, why can you put her in charge?
• 1:57:40
  Ripley's mom. So some big problems.
• 1:57:44
  They're all solved though, so time for the big return to
• 1:57:47
  earth, I think. Well, let's do it.
• 1:57:49
  Oh yeah. After everything we've been
• 1:57:53
  through, it all comes down to this.
• 1:57:55
  Jim, Fred and Jack re enter the Earth's atmosphere.
• 1:57:58
  You just splash down into the Pacific Ocean.
• 1:58:00
  After a tense wait, Jim's voice crackles over the radio and all
• 1:58:04
  hell breaks loose. Yeah, a pretty euphoric ending,
• 1:58:07
  Matt. How does it all play out?
• 1:58:10
  Absolutely. And I know Ron Howard said the
• 1:58:12
  launch sequence was the scene he was most proud of in his entire
• 1:58:15
  career, but he must have had the most fun on this shoot, putting
• 1:58:19
  this scene together, particularly when the atmosphere
• 1:58:22
  and the communication cuts out for three minutes, because it
• 1:58:25
  gets to the heart of why this film works so well for me.
• 1:58:27
  Because the odds are still so stacked against them.
• 1:58:30
  The parachutes might be frozen, the heat shield might be
• 1:58:33
  fractured. They might land in the middle of
• 1:58:34
  a typhoon which just gets thrown in there.
• 1:58:38
  Yeah. It's ridiculous.
• 1:58:41
  One. Shall we tell them?
• 1:58:43
  No, listen, don't tell them a thing.
• 1:58:46
  And the way that Howard draws out this tension of that 3
• 1:58:48
  minutes plus where there's no reply for them, it is a properly
• 1:58:51
  agonizing wait. What makes me laugh, though?
• 1:58:54
  Lovell's elder son has still been sent to school, and he's
• 1:58:57
  watching it unfold in the middle of a lesson.
• 1:58:59
  Yeah, like they've not even given him his own room.
• 1:59:01
  It's. Like military school though,
• 1:59:03
  isn't it? So, you know, get a haircut.
• 1:59:05
  Get a haircut. Crack onto the algebra.
• 1:59:08
  But yeah, when they do breakthrough and they hate him,
• 1:59:10
  so I say it is proper euphoria. But my favorite moment is when
• 1:59:13
  everyone's celebrating. Everyone's on their feet apart
• 1:59:17
  from Jean. He's just been kicking.
• 1:59:19
  Everyone's asked to find solutions.
• 1:59:21
  And here, this moment of celebration, he just collapses
• 1:59:24
  into his chair and he has a little cry to himself.
• 1:59:26
  Yeah, it's amazing. I love that bit, always gets me
• 1:59:29
  in that bit. Yeah, I like it when the NASA
• 1:59:31
  director says this could be the worst disaster NASA's ever
• 1:59:34
  experienced in Gene's furious. He's like, with all due respect,
• 1:59:37
  Sir, I think this is going to be our finest hour.
• 1:59:39
  And just stares him out. Terrifying.
• 1:59:42
  Yeah, his boss as well. He'll be great.
• 1:59:45
  I mean, the landing is all very bombastic, very jingoistic.
• 1:59:48
  The only surprise is that when the parachutes open, it's not
• 1:59:51
  the Stars and the Stripes on there, but the way the map it
• 1:59:54
  all out. The four minutes of radio
• 1:59:56
  silence and then Jim's voice. Good to see you, Houston.
• 1:59:58
  And then everyone goes up. It is great.
• 2:00:01
  Yeah. And, yeah.
• 2:00:02
  Gene clapping into his seat and that crane shot pushing to Ken.
• 2:00:05
  Love it. It's awesome.
• 2:00:07
  Yeah, well, I like as well. Kenley waltz into Mission
• 2:00:09
  Control and just commandeers the mic takes over.
• 2:00:13
  And then within seconds, cigars all around.
• 2:00:18
  Brilliant. Again, it's all very on the
• 2:00:20
  nose, but you know, that's exactly what I was going for, I
• 2:00:23
  think. Yeah, of course.
• 2:00:24
  It is one of the best punch the end moments in any film for me,
• 2:00:27
  I think. Yeah, definitely is.
• 2:00:29
  With all due respect, guys, this is going to be my finest hour.
• 2:00:34
  You know, gentlemen, it's been a pleasure flying with you.
• 2:00:35
  That's great. That's exactly what you need.
• 2:00:37
  It's the longest 3 minutes in cinema history, which ends in
• 2:00:40
  the longest 4 minutes in cinema history and it's drawn out like
• 2:00:43
  an absolute blade. And like Matt said, he's having
• 2:00:45
  so much fun with us because there is so much tension here.
• 2:00:48
  It's backwards and forwards. It's to the family.
• 2:00:51
  This seems like there's just a zoom in and the zoom seems to
• 2:00:54
  match every single cut and it's just these one thing after the
• 2:00:57
  other and you decide, will you please, for fuck's sake, just
• 2:00:59
  tell us what's going on, please. It's like waiting for a take
• 2:01:03
  away. You know, you've ordered it, you
• 2:01:06
  know it's coming, but you're still look out the window and
• 2:01:09
  you're like, is it coming now? Is it coming now?
• 2:01:10
  When I'm fucking starving? When is it gonna?
• 2:01:12
  And then that doorbell rings, and it's just, yes, that's how
• 2:01:17
  it feels. And he just really plays with
• 2:01:19
  it. Howard, really.
• 2:01:20
  It's just like he's made the whole film just so we can pull
• 2:01:22
  this out like an absolute blade. And he does.
• 2:01:24
  And it's wonderful to sit through because you get such a
• 2:01:27
  payoff with that wide shot. Houston, this is Odyssey.
• 2:01:30
  It's good to see you again. And then immediately, everyone's
• 2:01:33
  just fucking boom, which wouldn't happen because you want
• 2:01:36
  to know if they're all right. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:01:38
  Odyssey is the season. I say, right, OK, Everyone come.
• 2:01:40
  That right. Is everything OK?
• 2:01:41
  It's not. It's not.
• 2:01:41
  It's done. You are fucking done.
• 2:01:44
  It's not based in fact anymore, but wouldn't it be great if the
• 2:01:48
  landed there and then the Hatch opens and there's just Somali
• 2:01:51
  pirates and they're just like, this is my Odyssey now and I'm
• 2:01:57
  just like oh for fuck's sake. They should do that typhoon
• 2:02:01
  idea. That would have been great.
• 2:02:02
  Typhoon idea would have been great.
• 2:02:03
  He was a typhoon would have. Turned into Twister.
• 2:02:06
  That's great. It should have just done all of
• 2:02:07
  the different films, but no, it is a wonderful end of the film
• 2:02:10
  and it is one of the most satisfying endings once you've
• 2:02:13
  gone through the whole thing. You can always just watch this
• 2:02:16
  from the right. It's 3 minutes to the end and
• 2:02:19
  you'll feel euphoric without having seen the rest of the
• 2:02:22
  film. It's that good.
• 2:02:23
  Yeah, it is very good. So while it is true that the
• 2:02:25
  astronauts made voice communication with Mission
• 2:02:28
  Control a lot later than they were expecting, it wasn't as
• 2:02:31
  dramatic as the film though, because in real life they picked
• 2:02:34
  the command module up on raid offer, so they hadn't knew
• 2:02:36
  they'd made it back. Yeah, the heart that changed
• 2:02:38
  that door, surely. That eerie tense silence cutting
• 2:02:42
  across all the different groups. It's great.
• 2:02:44
  It is great. You couldn't have done it any
• 2:02:45
  other way. Imagine it just picked up on
• 2:02:47
  radar. It's their way.
• 2:02:49
  That can't be right. It's in the room.
• 2:02:50
  You're not reading it right, but it's in the sea.
• 2:02:56
  We should rewrite Apollo 13 with all these different movie
• 2:02:59
  references and it will be wonderful.
• 2:03:01
  Yeah, yeah. You listen to Hollywood.
• 2:03:02
  Sign us up. And the scene that Matt loves so
• 2:03:05
  much and John loves so much and I love so much that when Ed
• 2:03:08
  Harris falls back into that chair and just has a little bit
• 2:03:10
  of a moment to himself, he completely ad libbed that.
• 2:03:13
  And he said that he came up with this after watching the footage
• 2:03:16
  from the time of the event. In one interview, the real Gene
• 2:03:18
  Kranz got emotional talking about his feelings when the
• 2:03:21
  astronauts made it back. So Harris got emotional in the
• 2:03:23
  scene and just totally added to it, which is great because when
• 2:03:26
  he falls into that seat, you can see they think it might be an
• 2:03:28
  extra behind him. I haven't seen any other scenes,
• 2:03:30
  but he stands up and gets out of the frame just to give Harris
• 2:03:34
  the frame right. I don't know if you've noticed
• 2:03:36
  that, which I think is a really good move, but you can tell
• 2:03:38
  that's that's ad libbed. It's got that little bit of
• 2:03:40
  looseness to it, which is fantastic it.
• 2:03:42
  Is really good at the moment of like it's finally over.
• 2:03:45
  Yeah, it's great. Yeah, I've got to loosen me
• 2:03:47
  waistcoat. It's the first thing that you're
• 2:03:51
  not furious, I think as. Well, yeah.
• 2:03:53
  It just shows his absolute sensibility, though, that at the
• 2:03:56
  bottom of all of this, he's a heart and he cares.
• 2:03:58
  Yeah, it's a wonderful thing. And the real gene crunch is in
• 2:04:01
  that scene as well. He's standing in the back of
• 2:04:03
  machine control just before the RE entry.
• 2:04:05
  He's wearing a blue Air Force uniform if anyone wants to spot
• 2:04:08
  him. Right.
• 2:04:08
  Nice. All right, OK.
• 2:04:10
  And originally the idea was to create the module splashing down
• 2:04:13
  into the Pacific. He was in CGI.
• 2:04:16
  But according to Robert Lagardo, he said no, we're not doing
• 2:04:18
  that, we're going to thought out of a helicopter and film it.
• 2:04:21
  So a three quarter size scale model of the module was built
• 2:04:24
  and that's what they did. Wonderful.
• 2:04:27
  Calling all the shutter Lagardo was he?
• 2:04:29
  It's tripping out of a copper. You can't tell though.
• 2:04:31
  Oh. Definitely not.
• 2:04:32
  Definitely can't. Normally you can with water
• 2:04:35
  because the splashes become massive and it doesn't work, but
• 2:04:38
  this totally works. Yeah, it does.
• 2:04:39
  Yeah. And the actual real life module,
• 2:04:41
  they recovered it and it's now one display at the Cosmosphere
• 2:04:44
  Museum we talked about, right? He's got jeans waistcoat around
• 2:04:48
  it. Hopefully.
• 2:04:51
  Hopefully. You know so.
• 2:04:52
  That's the parachute. I would have loved that three
• 2:04:57
  ways goes as a parachute, but that would be a man.
• 2:05:00
  And then it just wraps up beautifully with James monologue
• 2:05:03
  over the end, but it's tensed with real sadness as well
• 2:05:06
  because we find our Fred Hayes never flew in space again
• 2:05:09
  because his mission got cancelled.
• 2:05:10
  Yeah, really sad to hear. You know, Jack Swanker died of
• 2:05:13
  cancer when he was still pretty young as well.
• 2:05:15
  So it's that mixture of hope and optimism with Lovell, Ron and
• 2:05:18
  who's going to be Next up there, but with the melancholy of for
• 2:05:22
  all three of them, that was their last mission.
• 2:05:24
  Yeah, I think Tom Hanks took massive influence from that when
• 2:05:27
  he did the end of Band of Brothers as well.
• 2:05:28
  It feels very similar. Yeah, and.
• 2:05:30
  Then the end credits, after all the kind of aliens and odds in
• 2:05:33
  the score horn suddenly turns into Braveheart.
• 2:05:36
  It's all like strings and a female vocals.
• 2:05:38
  And that is Lennox like you mentioned.
• 2:05:40
  Matt. Yeah, no.
• 2:05:41
  Dave Stewart, though, I don't think no.
• 2:05:43
  Hang on, I was so bizarre, just ripping himself off.
• 2:05:46
  You know, constantly so. Weird.
• 2:05:48
  And the ship that picked up the module from the Pacific was the
• 2:05:50
  iword Dreamer, but it had been decommissioned by the time they
• 2:05:53
  made the film. So instead, they used the USS
• 2:05:56
  New Orleans, which had recovered Apollo 14 when that one
• 2:05:59
  returned. Right, close enough I think,
• 2:06:01
  isn't it? Let them off with that.
• 2:06:04
  Yes, that'll do. And.
• 2:06:05
  When Jim boards the Iwo Jima, he shakes the captain's hand.
• 2:06:08
  The captain was played by the real Jim Lavelle and Howard
• 2:06:11
  asked if he wanted to play an Admiral and Lavelle said I
• 2:06:14
  retired a captain. So a captain I am like you,
• 2:06:17
  woulda. Oh yeah, after every person born
• 2:06:21
  Howard knows getting a cameo, it would have been a disgrace if
• 2:06:24
  the real gem hadn't turned up. Imagine.
• 2:06:26
  Yeah, it's all families in there.
• 2:06:29
  And with that, the film is over. A Neil Whiting finale, A joyous
• 2:06:33
  return to Earth. All in all, a pretty satisfying
• 2:06:36
  ending. Has to be.
• 2:06:38
  Better than the trip to Pittsburgh.
• 2:06:43
  Reception and awards. So that is the story of the
• 2:06:48
  movie of Apollo 13 and it opened cinemas on June the 30th, 1995.
• 2:06:53
  Yep, failure was not an option. But was that the reality?
• 2:06:57
  Well, Fred, you got his numbers wrong, but I'll tell you who
• 2:07:00
  doesn't. Matt, you have the Apollo 13
• 2:07:04
  figures for us, I believe. Course he does.
• 2:07:06
  Matt Rostato? Yeah.
• 2:07:07
  Certainly do. So total production budget was
• 2:07:10
  $52,000,000 and Apollo 13 ended up crossing $355.2 million
• 2:07:16
  worldwide. So huge hit.
• 2:07:19
  And then at the Oscars, it won two Best Sound, Best Film
• 2:07:22
  Editing and was nominated for a further 7 which included Best
• 2:07:25
  Picture, Best Score, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best
• 2:07:28
  Supporting Actor Ed Harris and Best Supporting Actress for
• 2:07:31
  Kathleen Quinlan. Right.
• 2:07:34
  Yeah, It did very well in the more technical categories, which
• 2:07:36
  isn't a massive surprise, I don't think, no.
• 2:07:38
  Yeah, that didn't was great. Yeah, it is.
• 2:07:41
  This is amazing, right? So from the test screen it did
• 2:07:44
  really well. From the audience reviews they
• 2:07:46
  said it was absolutely fantastic.
• 2:07:48
  How it said it was one of the common cards you saw from a 23
• 2:07:50
  year old who marked the film down and said typical Hollywood
• 2:07:53
  ending. In reality the crew would never
• 2:07:55
  have survived. I fucking love that crap.
• 2:08:02
  Probably would be, yes, he wrote in it, apparently under the
• 2:08:05
  critics and up first. It's all man, Rog.
• 2:08:08
  So Roger Ebert, what did he think of Apollo 13?
• 2:08:10
  Do we think? He would have loved him.
• 2:08:12
  I'm going to go full marks. Yeah, I reckon for for him.
• 2:08:16
  Of course, four stars out of fall from the big man, and he
• 2:08:19
  said this is a powerful story, one of the year's best films,
• 2:08:23
  told with great clarity and remarkable technical detail, and
• 2:08:26
  acted without pumped up histrionics.
• 2:08:28
  Yep, there you go. Accurate from Roger, you think?
• 2:08:31
  I think so. I think so, yeah.
• 2:08:32
  Yeah, he doesn't like anything intricate, does he?
• 2:08:35
  He wants to be entertained and he wants to film.
• 2:08:36
  That's entertained. And then that's exactly what
• 2:08:38
  this is, Yeah. Janet Madeline was similarly
• 2:08:40
  emphatic in her praise and said absolutely thrilling unfold with
• 2:08:45
  perfect immediacy, drawing viewers into the nail biting
• 2:08:48
  suspense of a spellbinding true story.
• 2:08:50
  Apollo 13 beautifully evoked recent history in Wales that
• 2:08:53
  resonates strongly today. Yeah.
• 2:08:56
  She loved it. Not always the case with Janet.
• 2:08:59
  Not always, no. And completing the hat trick,
• 2:09:01
  Empire magazine gave the film five stars out of five and said
• 2:09:05
  it may not be the best film of the year, but it's certainly
• 2:09:08
  made of the right stuff. See what they did there?
• 2:09:10
  Very nice I. See what they did Well worth
• 2:09:12
  doing. This is an exhilarating and
• 2:09:15
  believable journey to the dark side of the moon and thankfully,
• 2:09:18
  back again. A blast.
• 2:09:20
  Wow, yeah, pull them all out here.
• 2:09:22
  Yeah, all the references. All the really old references to
• 2:09:25
  pink floyds. Yeah.
• 2:09:27
  And today in Rotten Tomorrow's Paulo 13 has an 87% audience
• 2:09:32
  approval rating and a massive 96% from the critics.
• 2:09:35
  Wow. And then on IMDb, very, very
• 2:09:38
  respectable. 7.7 out of 10. Yeah.
• 2:09:41
  Yeah, the critics were loving it.
• 2:09:43
  Critics loved me. Yeah.
• 2:09:44
  Yeah. So huge success for Ron Howard
• 2:09:46
  and Apollo 13, a worldwide smash hit recognition at the Oscars,
• 2:09:50
  critically acclaimed and still popular today.
• 2:09:53
  So failure. Not even close to reality in the
• 2:09:56
  end, no. Not even close to being an
• 2:09:58
  option. Sequels and influence.
• 2:10:05
  After Apollo 13, NASA followed up with Apollo 141516 and 17.
• 2:10:11
  They all successfully landed on the moon, though, and then
• 2:10:13
  returned. So Hollywood wasn't interested
• 2:10:15
  in making a sequel. Like going to pitch play with
• 2:10:17
  that, Yes. So no sequels.
• 2:10:21
  But in terms of the legacy and influence of Apollo 13, what do
• 2:10:24
  we think, Matt? I think in terms of legacy, it's
• 2:10:29
  one way you hold it up as an example of this is how you tell
• 2:10:32
  a true story when everyone knows how it ends.
• 2:10:34
  And, you know, they've been plenty of films since this that
• 2:10:36
  tried to do that, but I don't think they pull it off as well
• 2:10:39
  as the way that run how it did here.
• 2:10:41
  And I think the legacy from his perspective is, I mean, it's
• 2:10:45
  definitely in the conversation for his best film, number one
• 2:10:48
  for me personally. And then the other influence, I
• 2:10:50
  think it has to be the effects work to achieve the zero gravity
• 2:10:53
  sequences in a way we'd never seen so realistically before.
• 2:10:57
  So this is very much layers, the groundwork, for example, what
• 2:11:01
  Alfonso Cron would do with gravity years later.
• 2:11:03
  You know this one walked so that film could run.
• 2:11:07
  Definitely. And like we just mentioned, in
• 2:11:08
  terms of the box office in Critical Reception, the film was
• 2:11:11
  really big on its release and like all massive hits, it did
• 2:11:14
  have a short but pretty big impact on Hollywood.
• 2:11:17
  For a time there was space based blockbusters in the years after
• 2:11:21
  Apollo 13, Event Horizon, Contact, Armageddon, Lost in
• 2:11:25
  Space, Space Jam. There's more as well.
• 2:11:28
  And even a good two decades later, Gravity, Interstellar,
• 2:11:31
  The Martian, I think they all take influence from Apollo 13.
• 2:11:34
  Yeah. Yeah.
• 2:11:35
  And I think Apollo 13 stands up today is one of the best
• 2:11:38
  examples of a 1990s epic blockbuster And as we've talked
• 2:11:41
  about, one of the more accurate real life stories as well, which
• 2:11:44
  it should be commended for. Yeah.
• 2:11:46
  And there wasn't a sequel to the film, but in 1998, there was a
• 2:11:49
  12 part HBO series called From the Earth to the Moon about the
• 2:11:53
  whole Apollo program. It was produced by Ron Howard,
• 2:11:56
  Brian Grazer, Tom Hanks and Michael Bostic.
• 2:11:59
  And that is really good. And that still holds up.
• 2:12:01
  It's. Great.
• 2:12:02
  It's really good, yeah. And every.
• 2:12:04
  So it has a nice little intro from Tom Hanks at the start,
• 2:12:06
  which is a treat, obviously. Yeah.
• 2:12:08
  So yeah. I mean, we surely haven't seen
• 2:12:10
  the last Hollywood film based on the Apollo missions or that E
• 2:12:13
  Ryan's face travel. But any film that does it in the
• 2:12:15
  future, we'll surely be looking at Apollo 13 as one of the
• 2:12:18
  benchmarks, I would think, Yeah. Yeah, it's set up a lot of
• 2:12:23
  ability to create this grandeur on the screen.
• 2:12:27
  I think it's the ability to push the IMAX medium that people
• 2:12:31
  don't talk about as much. I think it's one of the first
• 2:12:34
  films to push that. And then Nolan saw it and
• 2:12:36
  thought, well, I think you do something similar to this and
• 2:12:38
  everyone goes straight over this and goes back to 2001.
• 2:12:42
  It's like the ultimate space influence.
• 2:12:44
  But I think you watch this and it is a massive influence on
• 2:12:47
  everything that come out. There's no without this is no
• 2:12:49
  Armageddon without it's for a start, and there's no
• 2:12:52
  Interstellar without that. They'd all just kind of ramps on
• 2:12:55
  each other. But then this borrows from 2001,
• 2:12:58
  but I think it tries to do its own thing.
• 2:13:00
  It doesn't try to be as theatrical or as operatic.
• 2:13:04
  This is seems to me like it's very much a whole movie in space
• 2:13:08
  and it's very grounded and realistic and it works.
• 2:13:10
  But I think what it also did was open the doors for the Ducky
• 2:13:13
  drama, especially for Ron Howard.
• 2:13:16
  And from this you get the likes of A Beautiful Mind, which is an
• 2:13:19
  incredible film which is based in reality, and Frost Nixon as
• 2:13:22
  well. I don't think without this film
• 2:13:24
  you wouldn't get things like that.
• 2:13:25
  So that was one of the major influences of Apollo 13 is
• 2:13:29
  something complicated and scary can actually come into your home
• 2:13:32
  and be satisfying and understandable and not
• 2:13:35
  terrifying. And I think that's the legacy of
• 2:13:37
  this film, really. And one last fact, because it
• 2:13:40
  featured so heavily in the film Jim Lovell's Real Checklist book
• 2:13:44
  from the 1970 Mission that went up for auction in 2011 and sold
• 2:13:48
  for almost $400,000. Wow, was that wow.
• 2:13:51
  But unbelievably, NASA got involved and tried to say that
• 2:13:54
  the list belonged to them, not Jim Lovell, until Barack Obama
• 2:13:58
  stepped in, who was president at the time, and he created a
• 2:14:01
  loyalty. An astronaut had ownership over
• 2:14:03
  materials like that. Very good, as it should be.
• 2:14:07
  Yeah. 2 right? Went for nearly some, which is
• 2:14:09
  the rights of the book. He could have made about 6 or 7
• 2:14:11
  space suits out of that. Yeah.
• 2:14:16
  In 1996, a group of astronomers in Arizona called Space Watch,
• 2:14:20
  probably an offshoot from Space Works, discovered a new asteroid
• 2:14:25
  and have an all loved Apollo 13. The name of the asteroid 12818
• 2:14:30
  Tom Hanks. Nice lovely Howard splitting
• 2:14:33
  feathers, one of our mate. Yeah, Tom Howard, that would
• 2:14:37
  have been better. So no sequels to Apollo 13,
• 2:14:41
  though that docu series is a good substitute for one.
• 2:14:43
  And in terms of its legacy, I think Apollo 13 had and still
• 2:14:47
  has a one to be proud of. Oh, definitely.
• 2:14:50
  I think so, yeah. All the right movies ranking.
• 2:14:57
  And there you have it, we've slingshot around the moon and
• 2:15:00
  back again to make it all the way through Apollo 13.
• 2:15:03
  Now is the time where the three of us each rate the film out of
• 2:15:06
  10. OK.
• 2:15:07
  So, Wesley, what do you think your summary and score for
• 2:15:10
  Apollo 13? I mean, it's a tough one, isn't
• 2:15:13
  it? To kind of put into any kind of
• 2:15:16
  discernible, tasteful ranking without being like, I feel kind
• 2:15:22
  of sorry for it because it's Ron Howard and it is what it is.
• 2:15:25
  Do you know what? I mean, oh, bless.
• 2:15:27
  Him, it doesn't mean anything bad, but he said, yeah, just
• 2:15:29
  read it what you want. It's absolutely fine.
• 2:15:31
  But it's it's fantastic. It's a fantastic film.
• 2:15:33
  There's fantastic performances. Ed Harris for me, absolutely
• 2:15:36
  shines in it. Tom Hanks is wonderful in it as
• 2:15:38
  always, but he's at his peak here.
• 2:15:40
  It really works, but it's not something I'm going to come back
• 2:15:42
  to again and again. I will always probably skip past
• 2:15:46
  it. I think once you've seen it and
• 2:15:48
  once you've felt this film, it's not something you want to go
• 2:15:50
  back to because you know how you're going to feel.
• 2:15:52
  It's a fairly predictable film and emotion and a fairly
• 2:15:55
  predictable film and intellect and a fairly predictable film
• 2:15:58
  that doesn't really challenge you as a viewer.
• 2:16:00
  It just kind of plays out in front of you.
• 2:16:03
  And for me, I need a little bit more of a challenge.
• 2:16:06
  I need to be a little bit more enthralled and I need to go
• 2:16:08
  through a little bit more of a process as a viewing experience.
• 2:16:11
  It's two hours and nearly two hours, 20 minutes long, but
• 2:16:14
  every single one of them, two hours, 20 minutes feels safe,
• 2:16:17
  feels easy. Having said that, Dean Conde's
• 2:16:20
  work is absolutely groundbreaking.
• 2:16:22
  He should have got more recognition for the visual
• 2:16:24
  effects, still stand up. So for that reason, it's up
• 2:16:28
  there. It's an 8 out of 10 for me.
• 2:16:30
  It's not one that I'm going to revisit, but it's one that I'll
• 2:16:32
  always recommend if people haven't seen it.
• 2:16:34
  But it's always just A1 watch and done.
• 2:16:37
  Yeah, it was a nice one to revisit this for me, one that I
• 2:16:40
  remembered quite strongly for my kind of formative movie fan
• 2:16:43
  years, which hadn't seen for quite a while.
• 2:16:45
  So I did enjoy coming back to it, and it was largely how I
• 2:16:48
  remembered it as well. A very good example of a
• 2:16:51
  blockbuster movie, specifically a 90s blockbuster movie.
• 2:16:54
  Yeah. I mean, it's got a great
• 2:16:55
  starting point. One of the most extraordinary
• 2:16:58
  real life stories of the 20th century for me.
• 2:17:00
  Yeah. I'm actually surprised it took
• 2:17:01
  Hollywood 25 years to get wrong to doing it.
• 2:17:04
  And then when they did, I'm glad they did our writing and Bill
• 2:17:07
  Broyles had no screen writing experience, but I don't think
• 2:17:10
  that's yours. The cast are all top notch.
• 2:17:12
  Missing Goblum but apart from that really good.
• 2:17:16
  Every film's missing goblum. I do wish it was totally a bit
• 2:17:21
  more hard hitting and gave us a bit more technical, non lame
• 2:17:23
  info about the Apollo missions which are an astonishing part of
• 2:17:27
  human history. But the film they made, it's
• 2:17:29
  accurate, it's well researched, the drama is dramatic, the
• 2:17:32
  spectacle is spectacular, and this is Ron Howard's best work
• 2:17:35
  for me. So All in all, I'm matching the
• 2:17:38
  number of Jim Novel's first Apollo mission and West score
• 2:17:42
  and giving Apollo 13 eight out of 10.
• 2:17:46
  And Matt, to finish us off your summary and score for Apollo 13,
• 2:17:49
  please? Yeah, this one goes down really,
• 2:17:53
  really easily, I think, as a good watch.
• 2:17:55
  And it's it's a real crowd. Please.
• 2:17:56
  It's hard to imagine anyone watching this not being
• 2:17:59
  satisfied at the end. And it is a film I get a real
• 2:18:02
  sense of nostalgic comfort from. There's something inspiring
• 2:18:04
  about a true story where everyone is focused on saving
• 2:18:08
  three of the people from a terrible fate.
• 2:18:10
  And there's no bad guy, there's no selfishness here.
• 2:18:12
  And it celebrates bravery and it celebrates being able to thrive
• 2:18:15
  under extraordinary pressure, and it celebrates intelligence.
• 2:18:19
  And that's actually something that I don't think you get much
• 2:18:21
  of these days. Nothing.
• 2:18:22
  That's something to be valued so.
• 2:18:24
  Absolutely. It celebrates the nerd, doesn't
• 2:18:26
  it? And that's a wonderful thing.
• 2:18:27
  Tony celebrates, you know, are you good at maths?
• 2:18:30
  Good for you. You should be good at maths too.
• 2:18:32
  That's going to come a useful. One saves lives.
• 2:18:34
  It seems, yeah. Exactly.
• 2:18:35
  Not enough films saying that. So yeah, the story is fantastic.
• 2:18:39
  Obviously everyone from the cast and the crew is totally plugged
• 2:18:42
  into it. And again, I think the best
• 2:18:44
  thing you can say about it is for two hours and 20 minutes,
• 2:18:46
  you kind of forget this will be OK at the end because you're
• 2:18:49
  that caught up in it. But as much as I have a
• 2:18:52
  nostalgic love for it, it's a nostalgia I can step back from a
• 2:18:56
  little bit. So everyone is great in this.
• 2:18:58
  But is it anyone's best work? Probably not.
• 2:19:01
  Maybe Harris or the push. Has Ron Howard done anything
• 2:19:04
  truly extraordinary here? I mean, yes, he's pushed the
• 2:19:07
  technological boundaries, and he's told a gripping story very
• 2:19:10
  effectively, but he hasn't, you know, reshaped cinema in the
• 2:19:14
  process of doing so. So it's a great film, but it is
• 2:19:18
  safe. It's not incredible.
• 2:19:20
  So it's 8.5 for me. And if it was animated. 9.5.
• 2:19:28
  Well, we also put this out there to our Twitter or X followers to
• 2:19:31
  get their opinions on Apollo 13 though some of their comments.
• 2:19:35
  OK, Liam Davis at Liam is now said.
• 2:19:38
  Fantastic cast. Sinise, Harris, Paxton and Bacon
• 2:19:42
  are all perfect. No, Hanks left about.
• 2:19:46
  He's not perfect. He's always just need mention,
• 2:19:48
  he's that good. Tension building is excellent
• 2:19:51
  central level relationship and much of the non NASA home scenes
• 2:19:54
  are lacking thriller with heart only somewhat less than the some
• 2:19:57
  of its parts 8.5 out of 10 yeah yeah Jason lukhart at Jason
• 2:20:02
  lukhart said. Well written, well shot, well
• 2:20:05
  acted. So many movies try to create
• 2:20:07
  tension by having smart characters do dumb things.
• 2:20:10
  In Apollo 13, intelligent people solve complex problems and
• 2:20:14
  there's never any cheating. Yes, one of the best films from
• 2:20:16
  an outstanding year for the medium.
• 2:20:18
  Nice. Yeah, if problem solving is your
• 2:20:20
  thing, you will bloody love Apollo 13.
• 2:20:22
  Yep, that's what it's about. And one of our patrons, Tim
• 2:20:26
  Gussiola, said this movie was so good, I almost died.
• 2:20:36
  Tim, what happened? Well there's a story so I'll
• 2:20:39
  tell you. OK Right.
• 2:20:40
  While dropping my daughter off at school this movie was on the
• 2:20:43
  hotel TVI started having an allergic reaction making it hard
• 2:20:47
  to swallow and breathe but kept telling my wife I was fine.
• 2:20:50
  I had to see the ending for the 20th time.
• 2:20:52
  The doctor at the hospital said I got there with about 15
• 2:20:55
  minutes to spare. Any movie worth dying over is a
• 2:20:58
  10. I was after a story.
• 2:21:00
  Wow. There's your sequel.
• 2:21:02
  Get Ron Howard making that Tim watching Apollo 13 for the 20th
• 2:21:05
  time. It's not a very long film.
• 2:21:08
  It's a short. It's a short, yeah.
• 2:21:11
  Just pick it on the DVD extras. So generally very positive from
• 2:21:16
  our patrons and followers. So what score do you think they
• 2:21:18
  gave Apollo 13 out of 10? I think it's going to be like an
• 2:21:22
  88.5. Yeah, I don't think there'll be
• 2:21:24
  enough people love it that much. Well, I'll back my score and go
• 2:21:28
  8.5. It was 8.5 out of 10.
• 2:21:31
  Nice. A good score and in total that
• 2:21:34
  gives Apollo 1333 out of 40. That .5 is because I feel sorry
• 2:21:39
  for it, that's why. Because Ron Howard's nice.
• 2:21:42
  Everyone listening to this, if you're honest, it's an 8.
• 2:21:45
  That .5 is for Ron Howard. Give it the proper score.
• 2:21:49
  And that was finishing Apollo 13.
• 2:21:51
  Hopefully it hasn't made you want to cut us.
• 2:21:52
  Loosen the slingshot around the moon.
• 2:21:54
  No. No big sign saying no instead.
• 2:21:59
  Next episode is 1 not to miss Luke.
• 2:22:02
  Wesley and Matt are heading to World War 2 era Germany and the
• 2:22:05
  Stalag loved three POW camp to talk The Great Escape.
• 2:22:10
  Oh yes, yeah, can't see a bloody thing.
• 2:22:13
  A huge classic. This huge classic, Yeah.
• 2:22:15
  Don't wish us good luck though. No, not in English anyway.
• 2:22:18
  Oh. God, have we got to get into all
• 2:22:21
  that? Jesus Christ that's going to be
• 2:22:22
  harrowing, this shit. So come back for that 10.
• 2:22:26
  Please. It's going to be wonderful.
• 2:22:28
  Yeah, if Ron Howard have directed that.
• 2:22:32
  Well, in the meantime, to find out more about becoming an HRM
• 2:22:35
  Patron, supporting what we do, and accessing our archive and
• 2:22:38
  bonus episodes, please visit patreon.com/all the Right Movies
• 2:22:43
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• 2:22:47
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• 2:22:50
  massively appreciated. It really, really does help us
• 2:22:52
  out. So thank you for having even
• 2:22:53
  just having a look and subscribe and that's that's massive.
• 2:22:56
  Thank you. Yeah, absolutely.
• 2:22:58
  Socially and keep up with all the right movies on Twitter or X
• 2:23:00
  wherever you're at 80 right movies.
• 2:23:02
  We post threads on there that tell the stories behind classic
• 2:23:05
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• 2:23:08
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• 2:23:12
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• 2:23:14
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• 2:23:29
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• 2:23:31
  So you should join that get involved.
• 2:23:33
  And our website, which is full of great features, can be found
• 2:23:36
  at all the Right movies.com you. Can't get rid of it.
• 2:23:40
  You can't. Well, we're all off now to see
• 2:23:43
  if we can squeeze four more amps out with this damned equipment.
• 2:23:48
  I'll try my very best. I'm not going to make that into
• 2:23:51
  like a sexual thing. Like I'm not going to be Jack.
• 2:23:53
  Can you squeeze four more amps out of this baby?
• 2:23:57
  Well, yeah, thanks for listening.
• 2:23:58
  Come back again for the great Escape.
• 2:24:00
  Yes, and we'll catch you on the flip side.
• 2:24:02
  Yes. Thanks guys.
• 2:24:03
  Yes. Thanks very much for listening
• 2:24:04
  guys. Massively appreciate it.
• 2:24:06
  Thank you. Ken, go ahead.
• 2:24:30
  Is your computer on now? Up and running.
• 2:24:34
  How do we look, John? I think we got it buddy.