Damien Chazelle and Mark Armstrong sit in a room at the Great Lakes Science Center that's filled with NASA artifacts. A moon rock sits in one corner, and an Apollo command module is an imposing figure. Chazelle is director of the new movie First Man, which stars Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy as Neil and Janet Armstrong. The film, which officially opens Oct. 12, follows the Armstrong family during the eight years leading up to the moon landing. Chazelle, who also directed La La Land and Whiplash, worked closely with Mark Armstrong, Neil's son, to tell the true story. The result is an action-packed, emotional film that shows the journey of space travel and the toll it takes on the astronaut's family. We sat down with the duo next to the Apollo module to discuss the movie, the portrayal of the Armstrong family and more.
Damien Chazelle also directed La La Land and Whiplash.
Damien Chazelle: It’s a story that we think we know. But we don’t. I wanted to tell the untold story of the human beings on the ground who made this possible — the Armstrong family at the core of it. I wanted to find out what it must have been like and what it must have felt like, looked like, smelled like to be Neil and Janet during those eight years that led up to the moon landing. Hopefully through that very specific perspective, help people maybe revise and reframe their vision of that history.
CM: How much did you two work together on the film?
Mark Armstrong: It’s been Damien’s project from the beginning, but early on we saw a version of the script – over two years ago. We did three major reviews of the script to just provide feedback. It was clear early on that they wanted to tell a story that was accurate and that was really important to them. So as soon as we learned that, we were OK. We knew we had a lot that we could contribute and were happy to do it because that’s the story we wanted told.
CM: You frequently used miniatures, or small scale models, to recreate the moon and the space shuttles instead of CGI. What did that add to the film?
DC: I wanted everything in the movie to be practical. In some ways, it was trying to adopt the NASA mentality of not trying to rely on digital recreations and computer-generated imagery. We tried to go analog and handmade. So shooting the whole thing on film, doing some things in camera, doing projection outside of the capsule windows instead of green screen and then using miniatures wherever possible instead of CG creations. I just think it helps remind you of the humanity of those machines. Those machines in real life were built by humans. If our little mockups of them were built by human hands, I thought it might help show those little imperfections that the computer might not think of. It’s those little shades of humanity. There are a lot of machines in this movie, and I think each one I find very beautiful and emotional to look at because they each represent the work of so many human beings.
CM: What was it like working with Ryan Gosling again? Was it different than in La La Land?
DC: It was a harder project. I think in some ways, even though we didn’t think about it this way at the time, La La Land was good preparation for this because we learned how to flex certain muscles that we would need on this movie. But one thing that differentiated it for sure was the deep dives. At the end of the day, Ryan spent maybe half a year making La La Land. This is was almost a four-year process from when I first talked to him about this. It was actually before we even started shooting La La Land. He just really took the research really seriously. He wanted to spend as much time with Mark and Mark’s brother, Rick, and the real family. Ryan spent a lot of time here in Ohio in Wapakoneta, where Neil grew up, and in Cincinnati. Just trying to get down to the real man, not the myth.
CM: What did it mean to you for these people to come and spend time with you and your family to make this movie as accurately as they did?
MA: The most important thing to us was figuring out what story they wanted to tell. As soon as we learned how accurately they wanted to tell it, we really went in. Damien was probably thinking stop sending me stuff because we were really giving him everything we had. We did that because we knew they were going to handle that responsibly and use that to tell it the way it really happened.
Neil Armstrong's son, Mark, consulted on the film.
CM: Did they tell it the way it really happened?
MA: Yes, absolutely. When dad told us he was going to the moon, it really did happen at the dining room table just like it’s show. And honestly, we didn’t meet at the dining room table that much so when we were called there for a family meeting, we thought we were in trouble. But that’s how it happened and we left that meeting not being worried. Dad was clearly confident. He did say there was some risk, but he did it in a way where we were confident he’d be back.
CM: Why did you decide to make Karen, Neil Armstrong’s two-year-old daughter who passed away in 1962, such a big part of the movie?
DC: I think it was the first thing that I learned when starting to work on this movie that I hadn’t known about before. Suddenly that alone shifted my entire perspective of Neil on the moon when I started thinking of it as someone who had, had to bury a child then eights years later setting foot on this other planet essentially. This place that has this almost deathly tone itself. It just was kind of a way in for me, Ryan and Josh, the screenwriter. Neil wasn’t someone who liked to speak about that loss. One kind of hypothesis that I had — we’ll never know for sure — but I thought that in some way the emotions conjured by that loss might have propelled Neil to keep searching for answers, to keep pushing the boundaries of human knowledge and to go further from earth than any other human being had ever gone. Neil faced so many loses on the way to what he did including Karen and so many of his colleagues. So I think he, more than anyone, would be the most conscious while walking on the moon of how many losses it actually took to get there.
CM: What did it mean to you to see Karen honored like that on screen?
MA: I think it was a big unspoken issue between my mom and my dad. Dad didn’t talk about it. My parents never talked about it. Karen passed away on their wedding anniversary, so they never even celebrated their anniversary because it was too hard for them to deal with. I’m told that the loss of a child is the hardest thing a couple can go through, and I believe it. In some sense, I can’t speak for Damien, but to me it seems that maybe that glass between them at the end of the movie is Karen.
CM: What is one of your favorite memories with your dad?
MA: My favorite moments with my dad are the ones where it was just him and I. At times it felt like he was a shared commodity. But my favorite times were when we were just together with no outside influences and just being father and son. We played a lot of golf together. My dad loved to play golf. But my favorite has to be when we went on a fishing trip to Iceland in about 1977 or so. We were just out in the Icelandic wilderness just us and our guide. Just dad and I fishing for salmon with a fly rod. I think very fondly on those times because he could just relax and enjoy the moment.
