American Experience

KENNEDY

We choose to go to the moon!

VO

It was a monumental challenge in a divided nation, and an incredible triumph.

ARMSTRONG

That's one small step for man.

VO

On the 50th anniversary explore unknown stories.

BLUFORD

I was really convinced I was in the club.

VO

With never before seen footage.

BORMAN

The fire shattered my wife's confidence in NASA.

VO

Go behind the scenes with the production team and get a sneak peek at this major television event when PBS and American Experience preview Chasing the Moon.

ARMSTRONG

Eagle, Huston, it's descent to fuel monitor over.

ALEXANDER

They were running low on propellant and they had overshot the landing site.

REYNOLDS

They have 70 seconds in which to re-designate the landing site.

MISSION

Okay, all flight controllers, go now go for landing.

Retro. RETRO

Go.

Fido. FIDO

Go.

Guidance. GUIDANCE

Go.

Control. CONTROL

Go.

COMMANDS CONTINUE

MAN

Capcom, we're go for landing.

ALEXANDER

It was tense. There were all all these problems.

BUCKBEE

First the computer was overloading.

ASTRONAUT

I'll do anything. Go for landing, 3,000 feet.

CONTROL

Copy.

1201. RETRO

1201.

CONTROL

Roger, 1201 alarm.

MISSION

Spring Tide, we're go.

CONTROL

Okay, we're go.

MISSION

We're go, Spring Tide, we're go.

JOURNALIST

Good heavens.

BUCKBEE

The landing site that he was supposed to land was a big crater and Neil, he saw this giant crater bout 60 feet deep, 100 yards wide, and he put that thing in hover position with 30 seconds of fuel left in the tank.

ALEXANDER

All we knew was the Armstrong was manually steering the Lunar Module looking for a safe place to land, and the fuel kept running lower, and lower, and lower. It was touch and go.

ARMSTRONG

40 feet down, 2 and 1/2. Breakin' up some dust. Great shadow. Four forward, four forward. Drifting to the right a little. Down to half.

30. CONTROL

30 seconds.

ARMSTRONG

Contact light. Okay engine stop. ACA out of defense. Hold Control, both auto he's in attack. 40 base here, the Eagle has landed.

MISSION

Rocket crank, 1218, with copy on the ground.

SAMELS

There's a big anniversary coming in 2019. The 50th anniversary of the moon landing. In July 20, 1969, as the spacecraft was settling down on the moon, there was this sense of a whole nation, and indeed a whole world, looking on at this first global event, really, that everyone shared. It was one of those moments in human history that are just singular and momentous and I think this'll be a moment to look back and say, you know, it wasn't a different country back then. We weren't different people back then. We actually had as many problems, in some ways even greater problems than we have now. And yet, we came together at this moment.

STONE

I really wanted this story to really take the audience into the moment and have it be timeless. By doing with audio only interviews, one of the advantages is that everybody's young. Making it a completely immersive experience without the mediation of a narrator, or the interruption of a talking head, seemed to me, the best way to do that.

ANDERSON

We just go to what historically was happening. We just go to the footage that was shot at the time. It blows me away.

BUCKBEE

I was on the newspaper desk. The flash came across. Russia has launched Sputnik. And we couldn't figure out the spelling of Sputnik, we couldn't figure out what Sputnik meant.

LAUNIUS

It's hard to appreciate how truly desperate this rivalry was with competing economic and political systems. Each out to destroy the other.

SAMELS

I think one of the strengths of the series is that it shows both sides of the superpower space race.

JOHNSON

Well, I think the Russians are ahead of us in some respects and I think their achievements are rather remarkable.

SAMELS

There's a lot of material in Chasing the Moon that's either never before been seen, or rarely, rarely seen. And that's really a testament to Robert Stone's approach to filmmaking, which is he goes in search of material that's the in-between material. The outtakes. There're human moments that are not just the packaged cliche thing that we see so often. To give a new perspective on. He spent two years looking for material in both the United States and abroad.

BELL TOLLING

SAMELS

The material that we've gotten out of the Soviet Union is truly extraordinary and our guide into it is actually the son of the leader of the Soviet Union at the time, Nikita Khrushchev, his son Sergei Khrushchev.

KHRUSHCEV

Before the launch, my father didn't show too big interest to the Sputnik, but next day when my father realized American reaction, the shock and the fear, next day was all headlines in the Soviet newspapers, "We are the first."

DOG BARKING

JOURNALIST

Mrs. Borman, what did your husband have to say when you last saw him?

STONE

I think one of the most wonderful finds in the film was when I interviewed Frank Borman. He was the Commander of Apollo Eight. We spent a wonderful day with him, did a great interview, and he was driving us to the airport and he mentioned sort of off hand, he said, "You know, Robert, I got a whole box of rolls of 35 millimeter film from the 1960's. Do you want it?"

LAUGHS

STONE

Turn the car around, let's get this stuff. So we raced back to his house, we got this box out, barely made our plane, brought it back, we put it up and it's 35 millimeter camera original film shot inside his house on the day that his rocket launched to the moon. These were the first astronauts to ever leave the orbit of the earth and go to the moon. It was absolutely the riskiest space mission ever in history.

MAN

Well, it all seems to be going very well at Cape Kennedy. We are 12 minutes and 48 seconds away from launch time.

STONE

Film crews were never allowed in the homes of the astronauts. It looks like a fiction film.

REPORTER

Man is about to leave this planet for the first time. Odds are against a major systems failure, but if one occurred the men could be lost.

STONE

But this is actually real folks. These are not actors. It's extraordinary. And his wife, Frank Borman's wife, Suzy, you can see her practically having a nervous breakdown as she's just absolutely terrified watching this launch. Say I got him in a capsule He can't get away He's locked up in that capsule He can't get away

SAMELS

I think the film has so many things to offer the viewer. I think they can just revel in the personal stories, and the incredible footage, and the time and place, and the fashions that people are wearing.

BUCKBEE

The Cape, it was a dead little town until NASA showed up.

KING

It was wild, it was no question about it.

BUCKBEE

You know, they were young fighter pilots. There were things that were taken care of behind the scenes that would be embarrassing to the agency.

LOGSDON

The Kennedy administration was very media conscious, so the plans all along had been to do things on live television.

STONE

President Kennedy really had it right. He understood what this was about ultimately. The Russians would only report on their successes and Kennedy thought by being open, by showing the good, bad, and the ugly that even in failure we would be seen as a success because we were open about it. And that was quite a revolutionary idea, particularly for a government agency.

BUCKBEE

The President wanted to do something that was astounding to the world.

KENNEDY

This will be the greatest and most complex exploration in man's history.

CHEERING

LOGSDON

Well I think Kennedy had second thoughts about the money the day after he announced we were gonna do this.

LAUNIUS

By the end of May, he's already having second thoughts. His Budget Director's telling him, NASA's gonna break the bank. We've gotta figure out a way out of this. What do we do?

JANKURA

I really love tracking JFK's journey. From disinterest to excitement. The moment where Von Braun is showcasing the rocket to him. That's the pivotal moment for JFK. His interest is ignited. That's rare footage, never seen before.

BRAUN

Sir on this table you'll see an array of rockets that we are dealing with. We will very shortly begin assembly of the first stages of the large, or advanced, Saturn C-5, which is a vehicle designed to put an American on the moon in this decade and by God we'll do it.

BUCKBEE

We get over to the test site and they fire up the booster.

BOOSTER BLASTING

BUCKBEE

32 billion horse power. We hold it down for 2 and 1/2 minutes. It never leaves the pad.

BOOSTERS ROARING

BUCKBEE

And I was standing with the Secret Service people and President. He was so excited about it. He said, "I felt the heat come up my pant's leg. And it felt like a hammer beating against my chest. That's the most impressive thing I've ever seen." You know, they had a long, long conversation. How's the rocket gonna work? How many times can we go to the moon? Is it really gonna look like that when you fly it? And he said, "Yes sir, it's gonna fly just like that."

MYSTICAL MUSIC

REPORTER

A 29 year old negro says he's anxious to go into space. He's Captain Edward Dwight of the Air Force selected to be an Astronaut. The first of his race to be so designated.

SAMELS

One of the great unknown stories that's brought to life in Chasing the Moon is the story of the first presumed black Astronaut, Ed Dwight.

STONE

We found this guy. He went out and he trained with Chuck Yeager, at Edwards Air Force, they just went through the whole training that was made famous in the movie "The Right Stuff." We found footage of him. He was a huge celebrity in the black press, but he's got an amazing story. One of the things I'm most proud of in this film is that we tell the story of Mission Control, which is the most famously sort of macho environment.

LAUGHS

STONE

You know, you can imagine from the perspective of the one woman in Mission Control, Poppy Northcutt. She was a pioneering Computer Scientist who worked on calculating the return to earth trajectory.

NORTHCUTT

I have a degree in Mathematics, and I just remember looking around at these guys thinking, "I think I might be able to do what these guys are doing. They're making a whole lot more money than I am, and their job seems more interesting."

SAMELS

She had the sort of daily misogyny in the workplace and in the media coverage of her that she had to work through.

JANKURA

I was editing the Poppy Northcutt scene right at the dawn of the Me Too movement and the parallels to today are uncanny.

INTERVIEWER

But how did a girl of only 25 get into this job at such an early age?

NORTHCUTT

Well I studied mathematics in college and I came to work here right out of school. I've been working on this particular project ever since I came to work here.

INTERVIEWER

Aren't the men jealous of you?

NORTHCUTT

No, I don't think so. It was a very sexist society at that time. Which informed my becoming a feminist. I started off working as a Computress. I don't know why they called them Computresses. We weren't necessarily doing computer work, it was sort of like "Mad Men." That is a fairly accurate depiction of the world for women.

GARBLED INTERCOM

BOOSTERS BLAST

ANDERSON

I totally--

STONE

I can see you're having fun.

ANDERSON

Yeah, of course I'm having fun.

STONE

Coll is a complete sound freak, and one of the things he's doing is not trying to make absolutely everything sound like it would today, but keeping some sense of the moment, of the time. 'Cause most of this footage, he has to recreate everything.

ANDERSON

My job as Sound Designer, Supervising Sound Editor is to tell the story at a deeper lever.

WHIRRING SOUND

STONE

Sometimes you don't want everything to be absolutely as perfect as you can at every moment because it'll stand out as being artificial. Well, Coll has a way of doing things where it sounds like it was recorded in the moment.

THUMPY ROLL NOISE

ANDERSON

Love that sound. I'm a huge fan of distortion.

CHUCKLES

ANDERSON

Especially with this footage. This is the dawn of video, 16 millimeter film, some 35 millimeter film and they all have a texture that's really tangible, that's really visually feelable. We want a sound that sort of reflects that. It might not sound perfect, it might not sound great, but it does sound sort of real. And there's a process when you're working with it, where it all of a sudden gets focus, and it all of a sudden, magically, and you can feel it on the-- you know, your hair stands up, and you're like, "That's what I'm looking for." That feeling of sort of, 'wow' Wow!

COMMAND

We have lift off. We have lift off at 7 a.m.

BOOSTERS ROARING

ANDERSON

Yeah! Yeah! That's totally gonna work. Totally gonna work.

HOUSTON

Apollo Eight, this is Houston, over.

APOLLO

Go ahead Houston, do ya read?

HOUSTON

Roger, we're readin' you loud and clear.

STONE

Well the Earth Rise photo, which is probably one the iconic photos of the 20th century of the earth rising over the surface of the moon, had an incredible impact on everyone on earth.

ASTRONAUT

Oh my God, look at that picture over there. It is the earth coming up.

ASTRONAUT 2

Wow, that's pretty.

SAMELS

And as you'll see in the film, it was totally haphazard.

ASTRONAUT

Hand me a roll of color quick, will you?

ASTRONAUT 2

Oh man, there's the bruises.

ASTRONAUT

Hurry, quick. Just grab me a color.

ANDERS

Here was something that was different, absolutely not briefed on. Nobody had told us on the ground that the earth was gonna come up. We had no photographic instructions, no light meter.

SAMELS

They were struggling with the sunlight coming in, and the angle that they were shooting at.

ASTRONAUT

Take several. There's several up here. Then you have to get the right setting. Calm down, MoMo. Oh, I got it right-- Oh, that's a beautiful shot. You sure we got it now?

STONE

I think that image still resonates to this day. I don't think anybody who was involved in the Space Program ever imagined that the greatest thing that would come out of it would be an image of the earth.

CHEERING

BORMAN

We had thousands of letters, and telegrams, and so on after we got back from Apollo Eight, but the one that really caught my attention was a lady that said, "Thank you, you saved 1968."

STONE

We've had the Astronaut experience with Apollo Eight. Apollo 11 is treated very differently, it's really an earth bound experience of what it was like to watch these guys do it.

CONTROL

The Swing Arm now coming back to its fully retracted position as our countdown continues. T minus four minutes 50 seconds and counting. Skip Showman informing the Astronauts that the Swing Arm now coming back.

KAMECKE

I think there were 500 people in the Launch Control Center. Just rows and rows of consoles, technicians sitting, looking at their own particular gauge that they were monitoring. I was the only civilian in there, because that's where I was supervising the filming of the launch. That's the first time I understood what it meant to smell fear. I've heard that expression ever since I was a kid. And it was a distinctive smell. It wasn't body odor. It was the smell of fear. Every single one of those 500 people was afraid that it would be their little gauge, their little valve that would go wrong.

CURIOUS PIANO MUSIC

LIONELLI

Here is the main title for Chasing the Moon. I wrote this early on, and I think it represents almost everything I'm trying to do with the score. I'm trying to not be traditional, trying not to be too heroic.

STONE

That's awesome. I've been working with Gary for 15 years. I like him to come completely fresh to the film and just come up with something that I hadn't even thought of before.

LIONELLI

Let's start with the piano. Here we go.

MYSTERIOUS MUSIC

LIONELLI

The strings.

UPBEAT STRING MUSIC

LIONELLI

Then we're got over here some brass comes in.

TRIUMPHANT MUSIC

LIONELLI

And so on, and I'll play you the whole track now.

MUSIC SWELLS

LIONELLI

Like any score, you want to realize the director's vision for the film. I act like it of course, but I have to keep my eye on the ball in terms of the style of the score, and the orchestration, and a mood, and all those types of things. They have to be sort of in line with the thrust of the picture. So here's the cue where Borman reads from the book of Genesis, I think.

STONE

Right.

BORMAN

And from the crew of Apollo Eight, we close with goodnight, good luck, a merry Christmas, and God bless all of you. All of you on that good earth.

STONE

That's awesome I really like it.

LIONELLI

Good.

STONE

I think that's gonna be a really good piece with real instruments.

LIONELLI

Good. So did you get that tension in my face? Like he hasn't heard this before, so.

LAUGHTER

SAMELS

It's a universal story about humans wanting to reach just beyond their grasp and to achieve something that really is in the realm of the extraordinary and the timeless.

STONE

We can accomplish anything technologically. We can't fix all social problems, or economic problems, but we can do anything we wanna do technologically. And many of the problems that we face right now, the solutions are technological. And if we fix the technological problems, that may help us focus on some of the social and economic problems that we face.

JANKURA

Here is a story that took place in the 60's one of the most contentious decades with war, and economic inequality, and racism, and assassinations. I think it's a good reminder, when we think things are really terrible now, you know, we've been through it before and we can draw lessons from that era.

NORTHCUTT

It was a very challenging time, and yet the Space Program really illustrate how people if they come together and focus on a single goal, they can really make a great achievement. And so I think it offers hope and shows that we need to recapture our ability to work together.

CONTROL

All indications coming into the Control Center at this time indicate we are go. One minute 25 seconds and counting.

REPORTER

We're getting close. we're getting close.

CONTROL

All the second stage tanks now pressurized. 35 seconds and counting. We are still go with Apollo 11. 30 seconds and counting. Astronauts reported fuel's good. T minus 25 seconds.

SAMELS

The whole world stopped for a moment and looked at this event and I think it was like a moment for the species, really, to kind of say, "This is what we're capable of. We have a limitless potential." And I think that moment is really important for us to remember that it happened and that it can happen again.

CONTROL

Ten, nine, ignition sequence start, six, five, four, three, two, one, zero.

KAMECKE

I was thinking, "What a wonderful animal we are that we could dream up this and get ourselves off this planet that we were born on and off to another world."

CONTROL

Apollo, I think you're good in one minute.

NORTHCUTT

One of the joys about the Space Program, everybody felt they had a piece of it and they did.

CONTROL

Velocity 2,195 at 8%.

MAN

We're through the reached the maximum dynamic pressure now.

KING

The circumstances were such that we had the nation behind us, everybody was sitting on the edge of their seat, and the awe of the first time we did it, something you never forget.