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When Josh Singer started looking for Neil Armstrong for the project that was going to become First man, on Friday he found himself using an investigative storytelling strategy learned about movies Projector and The post office.
"Your first job in journalism is to find your most important source, to marry and empty your pockets," Singer told the phone this week. He based his First man scenario on James Hansen 2005, biography of Armstrong, and Hansen, who interviewed at length the astronaut, his wife Janet, and other members of the Armstrong family ended up being Singer's most important source.
"I quickly married her and did my best to empty her pockets over the past four years," Singer said. It took him a long time to really understand Neil, as well as the jargon of aerospace engineering and NASA that he had to understand in order to write the script. "Jim would patiently answer all my questions and I still would not understand. He would have patiently answered my supplementary questions. I still would not understand, so he sent me back to Joe Engle, who is the last living driver of the X-15, where he sends me Frank Hughes, who is retired NASA astronaut training officer and who knows the Gemini and Apollo crafts back and forth. Fortunately, Singer can now decipher all this "stultifying" technical jargon to explain his most startling discoveries about Neil, Janet and the tragic death of their two-year-old daughter Karen – an event that dominates the film and inspires its scene the more heartbreaking.
Spoilers to come for those who have not seen it yet First man.
Neil's emotional makeup: Singer's main priority was to represent Neil and Janet in the most authentic way possible. For Neil, this involved exploring the emotional makeup of a man who was willing to risk his life for the pursuit of science even after the deaths of so many of his colleagues. "Conventional astronaut portraits are strange," said Singer. "They show that astronauts are not baffled by death, yet they are warm and happy." This contradiction was not realistic for Singer, especially when it came to Neil. "If you're not baffled by death, I do not know how warm and cheerful you are," he said.
After talking to Janet and Neil's sons millstone and Mark, he learned that the astronaut's reaction to the traumatic deaths around him was to retreat.
"It was difficult for his family," Singer said. "Rick would say that you often ask him questions and he just does not answer, Janet would say a" no "is a long fight on his part," No "was a long and forceful answer, and as Jim describes it, he was incredibly emotionally packed.
This makeup made it difficult for Singer and First man director Damien Chazelle to telegraph Neil's mood – even if they had an advantage in the hole. "What was difficult for us was, how can we get his humanity? No. 1, you hire an actor like Ryan Gosling, who can do this amazing thing where his eyes go dead without moving a muscle when he's on the phone hear Apollo 1"-A failed mission in which three astronauts died as a result of a fire in the cabin. "Secondly, you are looking for ways to make him show that emotion without showing it. Therefore the Apollo 1 phone call is another good example of this. In my first version, I had basically asked Neil to do this with his eyes, then hang up and start pounding the phone on the receiver until he broke him and he slapped him the hand.
Hansen rejected that moment and told Singer: "This is not Neil – no way, not how."
Singer's revised draft made him squeeze a glass so hard that he broke. "He does not really react, but at least you know what's going on below the surface," he said.
The friendship of Janet and Pat White: The women of the astronauts have relied on each other in real life as in the film, as evidenced by the photographs shown to Singer in which Pat and Janet held hands while listening tenderly to the stunned words box of Ed White Gemini 4 space flight. "They were very close," Singer said. "We took [creative] license at times, but wanted to be very transparent about why we did it. "
Janet's request to Neil to tell their sons that he might not come back from his Apollo mission: "Janet told Jim that she had to push Neil to talk to the kids and tell him in particular that he might not come back," Singer said. "This scene after" (where Neil is sitting at the dining room table with his sons and answering their questions about his mission in space) "is close enough to the memories of the children of that moment."
"Neil's lines are almost identical to what [his son] Rick remembers telling him, "said Singer, revealing that Rick's only complaint about the dialogue in the script was that he did not think his mother would have profaned by blame for confronting Neil, but after Mark and Rick have seen Claire Foy's powerful performance in the scene – in which she drops a single word F – Mark turns to Singer, smiles and says, "How can we argue with that?
"I think one of the things that all families have noticed is Claire's wonderful capture of Janet," Singer said. "Claire had private recordings of Jim's conversations with Janet, as well as recordings of Janet's conversations with me, Damien and Ryan. She listened to these tapes again and again to get Janet's American accent and an idea of her character. "
Karen: Janet and Neil's daughter, Karen, died at the age of two in 1962 – the same year, Neil was accepted into the space program.
"Most of Neil's close friends did not know he had a daughter, let alone that he had a girl he had lost at this young age," Singer said. "In a way, I always knew this story was going to be a key story, just because I did not know anything about it." First man scenario, Singer himself became a father, which helped him understand the pain felt by Neil. "The more I am a father, the more I am stunned by the fact that he buried [his pain]. And the way he buried it and the way he rushed back to work. I must think that something has never disappeared and, as I understand it, it has never disappeared for Janet. "
The bracelet: First man reached its climax when Armstrong de Gosling left on the moon a bracelet that had belonged to his late daughter. It is a heartbreaking moment and rooted in the conjecture of biographer Jim Hansen. "I would not have used this creative license without any foundation," said Singer, explaining that Hansen had spent many hours interviewing Neil, Neil's sister Neil. June, and other members of the Armstrong family. "At one point, he had the idea that Neil might have left something of Karen on the moon.
"After all, it's not uncommon for astronauts to leave memories like that. Charlie Duke left a picture of his family. the Apollo 11 astronauts, Neil and buzz [Aldrin], left a Apollo 1 mission patch in tribute to Ed White, Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee – and two medallions to the two deceased cosmonauts. The idea of leaving a memory to a loved one or a lost person is not unknown, so Jim began to wonder if Neil had left something of Karen. "
In seeking the answer, Hansen asked Neil if he could see the manifest of his personal property kit, which listed everything that the astronaut had brought with him during the 1969 mission. "Neil has claimed to have lost, "Singer said. "We now know that Neil did not lose him. It's actually in the Purdue Archives under seal, until 2022, I believe. I do not know why, but Neil did not lose it. He may have lost it, but it is also possible that he does not want to show it to Jim. Jim suspected him.
So Hansen went back and talked to Neil's sister June, asking him to point blank: "Do you think Neil might have left something of Karen on the moon?"
"Neil's sister, June, who knew him as well as anyone, said," Oh, I hope so. "
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