 French lunar landing mockumentary is a feast for cinephiles
Who doesn’t love a good conspiracy theory? Americans are particularly susceptible to them, and, why not? We seem to have been the victims of so many conspiracies – Pearl Harbor, JFK, RFK, MLK, Watergate, IranContra, the Bush Jr. elections, 9/11, Wall Street, entrenched bureaucracy, to mention just a few.
But to doubt that American astronauts in the Apollo program landed on the Moon seems downright un-American. To not believe in the lunar landings is a slap in the face to science and the American space program, and to the thousands of people who assisted in the lunar landings.
You don’t have to search long online to find the lunar landing conspiracy theory kooks. All of them share most of the same theories, the main one being that American astronauts were never sent to the Moon, and that the images we saw of them on the lunar surface were shot in a studio.
In its typically Murdochian fashion, the Fox Network presented an hour-long program in 2001 on the lunar landing hoax theories, hosted by X-Files actor Mitch Pileggi. Fox presented the hoax theories in great detail, with the only rebuttal coming from a NASA representative who had a snide attitude that might cause some to think he had something to hide.
A year later, French documentary filmmaker William Karel was presented with the challenge of making a mockumentary that gave credence to the hoax theories for the Franco-German TV network ARTE.
The result is the hilarious Operation Lune, or as it is known in this country, Dark Side of the Moon.
The premise is that the lunar landing was shot by Stanley Kubrick on his 2001 sets in a suburban London studio. In exchange for his work, Kubrick received a high-tech NASA movie camera that used for the candle-lit shots in Barry Lyndon.
Any film fan would realize immediately that his or her leg is being pulled – characters interviewed in the film are named after Kubrick and Hitchcock characters. But there are real characters playing along with the hoax hoax, including Kubrick’s widow Christiane and Astronaut Buzz Aldrin. National policy players also appear, including Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger.
Perhaps the funniest moment comes when the faked lunar landing producer, Jack Torrance, describes Astronaut Neil Armstrong’s reaction to reading his iconic famous “One small step…” line from the script for the first time. “Who writes this shit?” Armstrong supposedly said. Now that’s funny!
I got in touch with William Karel and Luc Martin-Gousset, president of Point du Jour, the Parisian company that produced Dark Side of the Moon. Mr. Karel’s answers did not arrive in time (we will post them online when they do arrive), but here is what Martin-Gousset had to say.
SCENE: How did Operation Lune/Dark Side of the Moon come to Point du Jour? Was it proposed to you by William Karel or vice versa, or something else altogether?
LUC MARTIN-GOUSSET: The idea was raised by Pierrette Ominetti, commissionning editor of ARTE, following the screening of Hollywood, a 45-minute documentary made by William and produced by PDJ. This film was a sort of a personal journey by William within Hollywood, mixing fantasy and reality, truth and lies, real Hollywood professionals telling false stories and outsiders (often some of William’s friends) sharing real gossip.
Pierrette was challenging William: “Why don’t you do a documentary mixing the real and the fantasy, the truth and the lie but dealing with an historical event.” William was looking for an event he could play with, without embarrassing some people or exposing himself to claims. He came back with this idea of the moon landing and the several conspiracy theories that were going around. We were in 2002 and PBS had just released a film about it.
At that time I had worked with a French historian on the history of the race to the moon. He told me about the fact NASA contacted Arthur C. Clarke, the screenwriter of 2001: A Space Odyssey, to ask him about “selling the moon.” He told me about the flying suit which were designed to give a smart look to the astronauts, the gold leaf at the back of the LEM which had only an aesthetic purpose as well, etc.
In 2000 William had realized Secret of State, a three-part series on the history of the American diplomacy from Truman to Clinton. PDJ was producer. William had access to the key players who shaped the American diplomacy for decades, from Mc Bundy, Rostow, Nitze, Schlesinger, Sorensen, MacNamara, Kissinger, Eagleburger, to Scowcroft, Baker, Schultze, through even Rumsfeld, Ford, etc. So the idea was to re-use these interviews in this new context and again as for Hollywood to mix true stories voiced by actors and false stories voiced by key players of the conquest (we interviewed Buzz Aldrin). You know the result.
SCENE: I believe it first aired on French television? How was it received? Did people get the jokes – the cinematic references, the astronaut spoofs, the idea that America just couldn’t get it up in the space race? I ask because I fear some of the things would fly right over the heads of the average American.
LM-G: A few people mentioned Capricorn One, for instance (Capricon One is a 1978 movie about a Mars landing hoax). More mentioned 2001. But I was surprised how little these references were mentioned in the press coverage. I also was amazed that people were focusing on the debate about how it is easy to delude people through editing, but few mentioned the fact that the film was possible, first of all, because the space race was a race for the production of one image, “the moon landing.” In the film the debate between Nixon and his advisers is not about will they land, but will we – on earth – get the photos, “live”?
SCENE: Did you ever imagine that Dark Side would be embraced by clueless (and apparently humorless) lunar landing conspiracy theorists?
LM-G: The good bad surprise is that the people who did not get the joke come from any social background. I may tell you about TV profesionnals who ask me, “So CIA faked the photos?” Ian Buruma in his book Murder in Amsterdam mentions that Dark Side of the Moon is used in some fundamentalist website as an example of conspiracy theory to give ground and credit to the one about the twin tower 9/11 plot.
People who like to believe to conspiracy theories would tend to take this film at face value. This was a surprise, how much people are fond of conspiracy theory whatever their social background (but generally because they have an agenda – personal, ideological – in mind.
SCENE: Your website points out that your company was awarded the first TV France International Export Award for sales of Dark Side. Did this film raise your company profile? Any other repercussions from the film?
LM-G: Yes I feel PDJ is credited for having been the producer of this trilogy Secret of State, Hollywood and Dark Side of the Moon. I like to think that this film has been produced because William and I had at this time a real productive professional relationship.
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