Duncan Jones
David Bowie’s son explores his own space oddities with his first feature film ‘Moon’
When Duncan Jones set out to make ‘Moon’, his first feature film released in the summer of 2009, he was doing so in a vacuum. Science-fiction, particularly the kind that spawned ‘Blade Runner’ and ‘2001: A Space Odyssey,’ had become a second-thought compared to bombastic spectacles like ‘Avatar’ and J.J. Abram’s gritty ‘Star Trek’ reboot.
“I wanted to make a film which would be appreciated by people like myself who loved those films,” he told Wired. And so, channeling the loneliness from a recent break-up, Jones drafted the story for ‘Moon.’ He cast Sam Rockwell as the film’s protagonist: a lunar-based helium miner awaiting the end of his contract, and Kevin Spacey as Rockwell’s only point of contact: a robot-assistant named Gerty. Things, however, take a turn when Rockwell discovers a clone of himself during a routine maintenance run.
‘Moon,’ and his Alfred Hitchcock-inspired follow up ‘Source Code,’ cemented Jones as the cinephile’s filmmaker: smartly adapting and subverting what came before for modern audiences. His third film was to be a period-piece about the life of James Bond creator Ian Fleming, until 2013 when Jones was announced as the director of the ‘Warcraft’ film adaptation.
That film, the largest project Jones had taken to date, became infamous for its negative reviews and insane disparity between domestic and foreign box-office takes. To date, ‘Warcraft’ remains the highest grossing video game adaptation of all time. And yet, in late 2016, Jones announced that he would be returning to the ‘Moon’ universe with his follow-up project, ‘Mute.’ — which he mentions at the end of this interview. A welcome return to form.
I was lucky then to have stumbled onto Jones when I did. The moment the trailer for ‘Moon’ hit the internet, my interest was piqued. One Twitter D.M. later and I had booked the interview. Unsurprisingly, his responses to my questions (submitted via email) depicted a man totally in love with the medium. The exact same impression I got from that trailer.
You graduated from college with a philosophy degree. Now you’re a filmmaker. What went wrong?
The answer is in the question… Philosophy! There are basically two jobs you can get with a philosophy degree: teacher (of philosophy) or crazy, homeless person who stops you on the street to tell you how the world should work. Filmmaking seemed like the only way out.
How did the story of Moon come about? Would it be safe to say your father’s work (David Bowie) from the early 70’s had some influence?
The heart of the story is kind of personal; I was going through a heart-breaking long-distance relationship at the time of writing, and the isolation of the setting and scenario seemed an apt metaphor for how I was feeling at the time.
The other main element of the script, the clones, came out of years of trying to deal with low self-esteem. I used to give myself a pretty hard time growing up, not believing I was capable of anything of real value or merit. As a kid, I needed to give myself a break. Moon was kind of the me of now trying to tell the me of then that I was a good kid; that I was worth something. I wish Moon had been a film I had seen when I was a teenager. I think I would have connected to it.
I guess the inspiration of Moon was simply this question, “What would it be like if you met yourself in person? Would you like yourself, or would you only see the faults?”
I’m kind of proud of that. It’s a universal, human question and that makes it perfect for sci-fi.
As far as my dad goes, everyone is the sum of their experience. I’m the sum of mine and I wouldn’t try to deny that. But hopefully, you can see that there were other things at work while writing Moon.
How did you get involved with screenwriter, Nathan Parker?
My usual collaborator is a writer called Mike Johnson, who I went to film school with. We had done a few scripts together already and had a bit of a system that worked well for us. I was busy working on a commercial, hoping we could slip into our natural pattern of me handing him one of my epic 30-page treatments for him to knock into some kind of draft for us to work on together. Unfortunately for me, the boy had caught a break into the big time and was busy at Warner Brothers penning the Sherlock Holmes script that Guy Ritchie has just directed.
With a monstrous special effects beer commercial keeping me too busy to write it myself, and time pressing, I asked my agent to help me find a writer. After meeting a few, Nathan and I clicked, and the rest is history. Nathan wrote the first two drafts based on my treatment, and when the commercial was over, I took it over from there. As the whole thing revolved around Sam [Rockwell], it was really important he felt comfortable with everything. So I went to New York for a week of rehearsals with him. We broke [the script] down, improv’d and improved the script over that week, and I had to do some rewriting when I got back to London.
Would you classify Moon as hard-science fiction? Did you research the possibilities of man living on the moon?
There was a book by Robert Zubrin called Entering Space that was a great starting place for understanding some of the [scientific]and financial justifications behind proposed lunar habitation. I think that was the book that first got me interested in Helium 3 mining on the Moon. After that, I just became a bit of an academic magpie on the subject. An article here, a google there.
One of the most exciting things to happen with the film, so far, is that we were invited to do a screening of the film for members of N.A.S.A. at the N.A.S.A. Space Centre in Houston, Texas. It was an amazing experience, showing N.A.S.A. employees and an actual, active astronaut the film, and then doing a Q&A where I got to ask almost as many questions as they asked me. There were people in the audience who actually worked on the science for creating something called “mooncrete,” a concrete created using elements found on the Moon itself. The most edifying thing about the Q&A was how supportive they were of the film. We filmed the event, and it will be on the DVD. Does that qualify the film as hard science-fiction? Maybe. But I don’t think any audience would appreciate the film if that was all it is. What makes it work is it’s a strong, human story.
The robot in your film is fairly reminiscent of Hal from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Was Gerty an intentional homage to that film?
Yes. But there are many homages in the film, to many sci-fi films. Maybe more than the casual observer will pick up on!
The thing is, people who haven’t seen the film, but viewed the trailer, pick up on the 2001 vibe much more than people who have seen it. Mainly because Gerty, our robot, has a single lens eye, and a soothing voice. When you see the film though, you understand that this is a very different story, and Gerty is a very different robot than Hal. The aesthetic similarities are purely a loving homage.
What was your approach to this film from a directorial standpoint?
Terror, followed by extreme stress and finally exhaustion. Actually, I felt a bit like a goalie at an ice hockey practice. It was my job to try and stop as many of the problems shooting at us from getting into the net. And they were flying thick and fast. There is a reason there are so few independent science fiction movies made. Science fiction is hard to pull off at an indie budget. And we had time against us too. We shot the film in 33 days, which is absurd, considering how technical it was.
Danny Boyle’s film Sunshine is considered an indie science fiction film. It was done for $50 million. Moon came in at under 10 percent of that budget, so you can imagine the strain we were under.
“Never again!” is what I told myself… until I was happy with the script for the next film! Now I’m raring to get back in there and battle with the beast for a second time!
One striking visual from the trailer is the moonscapes. They look as if they were ripped straight out of N.A.S.A.’s photography archive. Was it difficult to replicate that look?
The visuals of the Moon’s surface were very much inspired by the lunar photography of Michael Light’s photo-book, Full Moon. He took the 70mm images the Apollo astronauts had taken, cleaned them up and presented them in such a beautiful way. That became our visual bible for the exteriors, so you are bang on.
Basically, for budget reasons, we knew early on we wanted to try and use model miniatures to shoot the exteriors, but a lot of the techniques used by the guys in the ’70s and early ’80s were becoming a bit of a dying art. We were incredibly fortunate to dig up a couple of old timers in model maker Bill Pearson and miniatures cinematographer Peter Talbot.
Let me give you some pedigree here; Bill built the Nostromo model. For Alien. The first Alien. So he knows his shit. Peter did visual effects and miniatures photography on Batman Begins and Casino Royale. Enough said. Without these two guys, I would have been a quivering wreck. With all the good work they did, the post production house Cinesite was just as important. Our visual effects supervisor Simon Stanley-Clamp was the guy who brought Oliver Reed back to life in Gladiator. Between these three guys, and my incredibly talented buddy and concept artist Gavin Rothery, who designed the rovers and the harvester itself, the only person left who could have fucked the pooch was me. Fortunately, I must have been having a good day!
Our fascination with space travel has subsided over the years, although projects such as Moon and Star Trek serve as a reminder. Why do you think we’re less gung-ho about exploring the stars?
I think as the world has gotten smaller. Our need for grand gestures of national superiority has diminished. During the Cold War, that was a good enough motivator for the huge expense of space exploration. But it’s not any more. Certainly not in this economy.
There is a ray of hope though: Money! There is money to be made in space. Tourism and our insatiable appetite for energy will, in my humble opinion, reignite the space race as its realized just how much potential wealth (power) is out there. Tourism will start it. Virgin Galactic will be taking off in the next couple of years. Bigger, industrial space exploitation for energy use will happen within a decade or two, and yes, the Moon will be a major part of that plan.
I’m always surprised how underused Sam Rockwell is as a leading man. How did he get involved with the project?
Me too! The man is America’s most undervalued, underused lead actor. If Moon does nothing else, I hope it makes people take note of how amazing Sam is. More than that, I believe Moon could be Sam’s greatest acting performance yet. I hope award givers don’t stick their collective noses in the air because its sci-fi. Sam deserves an award for what he does in Moon. I hope he gets it. I certainly feel no shame in asking people to recognize how good he is in it.
Moon was written for him. We had met to discuss another script I had written with Mike Johnson. Sam loved the script, but wanted to play the lead, and I was looking for him to play a different part. We couldn’t convince each other to change our respective minds, but got on really well, and talked a little about the kind of films we loved growing up. Outland, Silent Running, and Ridley Scott’s Alien all came up. I wanted to know the kind of roles Sam was looking for; something challenging, something blue collar. I told Sam I would write something just for him if he promised to read it. I don’t even know if Sam believed I would at that stage. About nine months later, we delivered the script to his agent.
It took about 3 months for him to read it, because he had his head full of Frost/Nixon at the time. Even after he did read it, I think he was really nervous. A lot rested on his shoulders. Fuck, the whole thing rested on his shoulders! But between my stalking, his agent’s support and his acting buddies telling him he would be crazy to pass up on such a meaty part, he agreed to do it. All I can say is, thank God.
My backup was Gilbert Gottfried. (Joke.)
Have you already started thinking about your next project?
Oh yes. Thought, wrote, polished, sent out to actors. I mentioned at the Sundance Q&A that it was my spiritual sequel to Blade Runner. It’s not got anything to do with Blade Runner. But after you see Moon, and get how I feel about homages, you’ll know what I mean.
It’s a small, intimate thriller based in a big, future Berlin. If Blade Runner is what’s going on in L.A., this next film is what’s going on in Berlin at the same time. And Sammy is going to do a lovely little cameo.
Finally, you’re an avid Twitter user, does its direct line of communication to your fans offer any benefits to you as a filmmaker — or is it simply something to do during your downtime?
Fucking thing is ruining my social life! Who am I kidding, fucking thing is my social life!
To be honest, I started Twittering because Moon is a tiny little indie film and I want it to do well. I am doing everything I can to spread the word. It just so happens, by using Twitter, I have started to meet some cool people. So maybe my mercenary approach has softened a little. Still, I have a love/hate relationship with the thing. It makes me think of the line from the Dread pirate Roberts, “Good night, Twitter. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”
What makes you feel sexy?
I’m sorry, Paul. I don’t think that kind of question is appropriate.
(Editor’s Note: Pretty sure he added that last question in… I think.)
This interview was originally published in 2009. It has been edited and condensed
