MUSE recently had a chance to sit down with “The Dish” director Rob Sitch in his hotel room at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston and discuss both his new film and the real-life inspiration for the story.
MUSE: How old were you when the moon landing actually happened?
Rob Sitch: Seven …
MUSE: And you remember watching it?
RS: Oh yeah, I do. Films are good at recreating history so that people who weren’t alive then can live through it. There was so much press and so much talk and so much interest about it for years. Imagine the build up. And then everyone was sitting down and it hit everyone that pictures were coming from the moon; and Neil Armstrong was climbing down the ladder and he just started walking and talking. No one could believe that civilization had gotten to that level. And I say to people, you’d stand next to a car that was built in the `60s and you wouldn’t drive in it. We saw some footage of Mike Collins doing a broadcast back to earth on the way back and he talked about the computer. His computer has got a vocabulary of over 50,000 words. Now a Palm Pilot has 3 billion or something.
MUSE: Did you know, when you were watching the space walk, the part that the Australian dish had?
RS: No. We went back to the newspapers of the time and there were articles on it. Film crews turned up and people were aware of it, but not many. It’s astonishing to think that something like that went through. When we found out the story, we kept asking people “did you know?” And they said “no.” Australia doesn’t even have a space program. It’s funny now the role a small country would play.
MUSE: Did any of the (real-life dish operators) come to the set?
RS: Yes they did. We had to get them to verify the control panels and all the equipment. It’s funny — for a film like this you still have to do a lot of technical research.
MUSE: Did these people have any idea that they’d ever in a million years have a film made about them?
RS: No. I think they’re still a little surprised. You know, it’s not the sort of thing that you usually make a film about.
MUSE: That’s one of the things I liked so much — usually when a film is “based on a true story, ” it is about these astronauts, or the people who were on this boat or …
RS: In a lot of ways, I find it more realistic and interesting. I’m a little tired of seeing films about U.S. Navy Seals machine-gunning their way to victory. I think it’s kind of cool to have a comedy that has the heroes as technicians or radio astronomers. I don’t think that radio astronomers have been heroes in many films.
MUSE: How close were the characters to their real life counterparts?
RS: We decided early on that we wouldn’t use real names and we wouldn’t be really specific. One reason is that we amalgamated characters. We looked at the people in the room at the time and said, “What’s essential about them?” It was funny, when the real radio astronomers watched the film, they’d all go “that’s me” even though that character may have actually been three people.
MUSE: How do you feel about the film being compared to “The Full Monty” or “Waking Ned Devine?”
RS: I think I know what people mean by it. I don’t mind because I loved “The Full Monty.” But I think what they’re saying is, “it’s from somewhere else, but it’s funny and it’s got a good story. It’s not about some angsty French chick getting depressed and committing suicide.”
MUSE: There’s also the whole small-town feeling, which is something you really don’t get with American films.
RS: What someone said the other day, and I realize that was really accurate, was: “the bigger the budget, the more people are afraid to deal with people that aren’t instantly important.” As the budget goes up they go, “Why don’t you make this person the president of the United States” or “Let’s make this cop the head of the Pentagon.” So, suddenly it’s not about anyone you know. People around the world understand these characters; it’s all the tiny stuff that everybody knows.
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