This month marks the 55th anniversary of one of NASA’s most remarkable missions and thirty years since the release of the film that brought the harrowing story to the big screen.
On April 11, 1970, Apollo 13 launched with the intent of being NASA’s third mission to the Moon. Two days into the flight, an oxygen tank in the main Service Module exploded, disabling the electrical and life-support systems.
Apollo 13’s crew, commanded by Jim Lovell and Jack Swigert as Command Module pilot and Fred Haise as Lunar Module pilot, were forced to abort the Moon landing and take refuge on Apollo 13’s small Lunar Module, designed to only hold two men for four days on a lunar surface.
With survival hardships, a shortage of supplies and time running out, the three astronauts worked with Mission Control in Houston to improvise and change procedures in the hopes of making it home alive. For NASA, the whole world was watching.
Thirty years later, in 1995, director Ron Howard created an on-screen masterpiece with “Apollo 13” the movie. Based on the book by Jim Lovell, the film stars Tom Hanks (as Lovell), Kevin Bacon (as Swigert) and Bill Paxton (as Haise).
In 2023, the film was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry.
Today, we present an interview Ron Howard gave to the Library of Congress in November 2023. He recounts working with NASA and Jim Lovell, the extraordinary launch scene, and many other behind-the-scenes stories that honor the men and the mission.
Of note: While researching more about Apollo 13, I found a funny tidbit that many may relate to during this time of year. From a NASA Education Publication (EP/PDF: “Houston, we’ve got a problem,” June 1, 1970, page 8):
Another major event on Sunday threw a
usually cool and calm astronaut into a mild
panic. In the rush to substitute for Mattingly,
Swigert forgot to file his Federal Income Tax return.
"How do I apply for an extension?" he asked.
Amid laughter from Mission Control, he sought
to explain: "Things kinda happened real fast down there
and I need an extension. I'm really serious. Would you. . ."
Joe Kenvin, the capsule communicator, was unsympathetic:
"You're breaking up the room down here."
Swigert continued: ". . . turn it in?"
Later, Flight Director Glynn Lunney said that
American citizens out of the country get a 60-day
extension on filing. "I assume this applies," he added.
The Making of “Apollo 13” (1995)
with director Ron Howard
On “Apollo 13” being inducted into the National Film Registry
Thank you. This is a great thrill. This is my first directed movie to make the list, and I’m really excited about that. I think “American Graffiti” and “The Music Man” are in, and those are films I’ve acted in.
It’s an honor of course. I’m very, very proud of the Registry for what it represents, and I’m thrilled to be a part of it.
Of all the films that I’ve directed, I’m glad that the first is “Apollo 13.” I’m very proud of it as a film and proud of everyone for the work they put into it.
“Apollo 13” is a very honest, heartfelt reflection of something that was very American. Not just the space program at that time, but what it meant to the country and the world. It also reflects American culture at that time. There is historical value to the film, and one that people remember fondly and I believe they still enjoy it when they see it today.
Reflections on Jim Lovell, Dave Scott and the making of “Apollo 13.”
You know, our technical advisor on the film was not Jim Lovell. He felt too close to the story to commit himself to that. I also felt like it might be a little bit intimidating for the cast to have the actual Jim Lovell around constantly. Turns out that wouldn’t have been the case. He is an incredible guy and remained a huge asset for the film. He was so informative and very accessible.
Lovell suggested Commander Dave Scott of Apollo 15, most famous for being the first guy to drive a moon buggy on the surface of the moon. Not only was he there to help us be as authentic as we could be, given the framework of the script, but he charged us with a responsibility:
He said, “You know, Alberto Santos Dumont [aviation] documentaries are wonderful. There is a good deal of footage, that I’m sure will keep getting edited and re-edited, but you have a chance to tell people what it was like within the framework of a drama, of a narrative that is entertaining, and you have a chance to really get it right. You have to let people know what the Apollo era was all about along with telling this amazing story of what Jim and the crew did to achieve the rescue and return.”
We took that very seriously, and it was really led by Tom Hanks, first and foremost. I eagerly bought into the mindset that the facts and the details were engrossing, could be entertaining, and even suspenseful.
I’m proud of what the movie reflects and represents along with how effective it continues to be for audiences.
On creating the anti-gravity weightlessness scenes
I had a similar challenge with the fire explosion scenes in “Backdraft” four or five years before, and we didn’t quite know how we were going to achieve it. It became a huge challenge beyond just analog real fire. I was equally interested in trying to get something that connected the actors in a more authentic way with the experience of being weightless and that allowed the audience to sort of understand what that environment might actually look like, feel like.
For “Apollo 13,” initially we began experimenting with wires. As an actor, even I joined the cast in experimenting with this. We filmed some tests, but it was incredibly limiting and uncomfortable, and at that time there was no digital wire removal. If light happened to catch a wire there was very little you could do about it. So, with the volume of work that we were supposed to do in that state of weightlessness, I was very concerned.
This is when it’s nice to have smart friends. I was over at Universal walking along with Steven Spielberg discussing this challenge, and how Stanley Kubrick and others had faced this trying to replicate weightlessness. Sorry to namedrop, but I also want to give him credit. He said, you know, I once saw some NASA footage of capsules locked down in this airplane that was flying in these sorts of loops and the astronauts were opening the hatch and getting out.
I called up Jim Lovell and he said, you mean “the Vomit Comet?” He said, “It’s called that because it’s really uncomfortable.” And he explained to me that the Vomit Comet, a KC 135, flies parabola, and it goes up 10,000 feet to 30,000 feet to 40,000 feet. Then it’s like a roller coaster. It goes over then just dives and everything inside the aircraft is basically freefalling, but there’s no wind. So, it very much replicates weightlessness, including liquids forming into a globule.
The way things reacted made it very, very authentic. You could get 23 seconds of weightlessness in that 10,000-foot dive, and that’s how astronauts practiced Extravehicular Activities (EVAs), which was opening the hatch and getting out of the Gemini capsules.
Jim said they used it for all kinds of experiments, but it was called the “Vomit Comet” because it didn’t make you feel very good.
So, I thought we could bolt our SAT cameras down the way they did the Gemini capsule, and that started a process of trying to determine whether this was at all feasible.
On working with NASA to make the shoot happen
At first, NASA wasn’t very open to the idea. Jim Lovell pulled a few strings to get us a test run. The cast, our line producer and second unit director Todd Hollowell, and I went to Houston to do three days of Air Force flight training. We had to pass a written test and a physical. They let us go out for one flight to see how we would do.
Alongside were scientists who were doing some experiments, one astronaut in training, and us. It was remarkable. We were dedicated, we were organized, and none of us got sick. Well, we all got queasy but none of us threw up.
Regardless, we got the clearance to “go,” and ultimately wound up doing 13 days of often two flights on a day, which would be between 80 and 100 parabolas in one day, each one with 23 seconds of weightlessness.
We were able to get every master shot for the entire film in weightlessness with proper interaction with props and so forth. Then we went back and shot the coverage. So not only did the actors have an orientation that was connected to the state of weightlessness but it felt like the greatest rehearsal ever. Only we were shooting it and shooting it in weightlessness.
Scenes on the ground
The scenes that we had to do in gravity, included putting them on a teeter totter and belly pans to get the floating feeling. We also turned the capsule upside down or sideways to replicate that feeling, and to disorient audiences.
The cast were so good on the really tight shots, because they knew how to move in a way that was very consistent with all the wide shots that we already shot.
Anyway, on film, it was incredibly successful, and I was very, very proud of the outcome. The experience remains an absolute highlight.
Reflections on the film legacy of “Apollo 13”
Where does ‘Apollo 13’ live on the list of movies that I’m most proud of and experiences I cherish the most?
It’s right at the top when you combine both the opportunity to understand what that era was like, to meeting so many of the men who went to the Moon and many of the individuals who factored into that process. They understood the spirit of problem solving and the national effort supported by policymakers and government leaders. That was thrilling. The experience of shooting weightlessness. It was just one of those experiences that none of us will ever, ever forget.
Then the movie was so well-received, embraced, nominated and won awards in various categories at various awards programs. It’s endured in a way that continues to make us all feel great about it.
A life-changing experience
My whole perspective on the film changed when I went to Houston and sat with 13 of the mission controllers who had been involved in Apollo 13. It’s where I first heard lines like “failure is not an option.”
Somebody described to me that Houston wasn’t just an industry, it was a small enterprise of adventure, exploration and discovery. But there was also an urgency because there was a military and political aspect to it. It was the middle of the Cold War, and they were in a space race with the then Soviet Union. There was a lot at stake and there was a tremendous urgency behind the problem solving. They carried that over into Apollo 13.
These guys knew each other. For some, Apollo 13 was their second or third mission. They equated it to being medic doctors behind front lines and their best buddy from basic training just landed on their operating table with a potentially fatal wound. They felt that kind of urgency, but it wasn’t one or two people feeling that, it was everyone.
And that changed my perspective on the movie because at that point the screenplay, written by Bill Broyles and Allen Reiner, was great and it was strong, but it was primarily a survival story for our guys in space with an acknowledgment of Mission Control.
Not just a space movie
I realized it was a rescue and survival story. Houston and Mission Control became vitally important to me. Mission Controllers came to the set. We had a week of rehearsal where all our Mission Control actors were able to interface with real flight directors. On the first day of rehearsal at the Universal lot is Jerry Griffin, one of the original Apollo 13 flight directors.
A funny story while we were on set, I was looking for Jerry because he had wandered off. He came back and said, ‘I had to go to the bathroom. I thought I knew where I was, but I forgot we’re not in Houston, we’re in Hollywood.” The set looked so real to him.
Having spent time at NASA, we had so much to draw upon. There’s a scene that came out of that research. It was the scene where NASA scientists drop a lot of parts on the table and say, “Well, this is all they have up there to try to make a scrubber and solve their hydrogen poisoning problem, and we need this filtration system. We don’t know how to do it, but here it is.”
My actor and writer friend, Jim Ritz, improvised that based on our notes that we collected from one of those meetings. It wound up being a very memorable scene.
It’s also about family
When we actually got to know these guys, the point of domesticity was so apparent. You may have heard stories about the Mercury astronauts being kind of swingers or rocket jockeys, but by the Apollo era, these were family guys with engineering backgrounds. They were very grounded people.
Jim Lovell would talk about his family constantly and his worries during the mission about how the family would be, especially responding to the crisis.
As a director, I felt right in the middle of all of those years. I was about the same age as Jim Lovell and our kids were about the same age. So, specific lines of dialog were lifted from my home life with Cheryl and my kids at that time.
On his favorite scene from “Apollo 13”
Do I have a favorite scene from the movie? There were a lot of moments that I’m really proud of. Some of them led the way. Others were discovered by the actors, sometimes through research, sometimes just their own innate understanding of what this story meant on a human level. Tom Hanks had a strong interest in authenticity. There are so many contributors, especially the screenwriters who did a great job top to bottom.
There is one sequence that I’m incredibly proud of. It’s the launch sequence, and it’s very long. I’m not sure how many minutes, maybe eight or nine minutes. We built this sequence in such a fragmented way. Film editors Mike Hill and Dan Hanley, who won the Oscar that year for their work on “Apollo 13,” did a great job of putting it all together.
Hearing the orchestra, with James Horner conducting, building the tension, the emotion around this sequence, making it cohesive, and making it build. It was just an amazing moment. I’ve always been very, very proud of that sequence.
James Horner did the musical score. He was nominated that year for both “Apollo 13” and “Braveheart,” and therefore didn’t win because I’m sure he was canceling out votes. But, you know, the late, great James Horner is somebody that I really miss. He contributed so much to that film.
Making the launch happen
The launch sequence involved every filmmaking tool at our disposal in 1994. We even went back to the silent era stuff and a tiny little bit of digital technology, but not a whole lot. Almost all the special effects, led by Rob Legato at Digital Domain, were models. Jim Cameron owns part of Digital Domain.
Jim and Rob spent a day or so with me talking about shots, things we could do, ways that we could be ambitious about bringing space to life in an authentic way. So, our launch footage was laid out by Dan Hanley, who went to the archives and pulled out everything that they had to offer and then cut that together.
Although, we weren’t going to use archival footage. We were going to replicate everything so that it matched the rest of the movie. The only digital component was the ice coming off the vehicle as it launched.
What I love about the launch sequence is that it builds on earth, it involves the family, it uses the models, and it uses digital technology. It’s masterful editing. It’s a great score. It connects Mission Control with the family and the guys in the capsule in a way that would continue through the back half of the movie. It was almost triangulated communication, and it all laid out very well.
It ended with our KC 135 actual zero-G footage with the guys taking off their helmets and experiencing weightlessness and being playful with it. And so, to me, that sequence sort of encapsulated everything that we had to do to make the movie, and the great work that was done to get us there.
Screening the film for NASA
When we screened the movie in Houston for all of NASA, including Buzz Aldrin, I was so nervous and so was Tom Hanks. I’m proud to say that it played beautifully.
Another one of the highlights of my life was the way they responded to this film. Buzz Aldrin came up to me and said, “I used to lead the committee that collected and refurbished the footage from that era, and you had some shots that I’ve never seen before.”
I said, “Well, none of that was archive, Buzz. We did all of it.” And he paused just a beat, then said, “Well, can we have those new shots?”
It certainly was a huge validation.
“Houston, we have a problem”
You always hear people say, ‘Houston, we have a problem,’ but in reality, it was slightly different. Jim Lovell talked about it in the book that he and Jeffrey Kluger wrote, and I’m forgetting the actual exact wording, but it’s something like “Houston, we’ve had a problem here.”
I remember John Ford saying, “If you have to decide between the truth and legend, print the legend.” So, we decided to stick with the commonly expected and known phrase, even though it was a little bit off. “Houston, we have a problem” had already become a part of contemporary language and lexicon.
We had the actual transcripts and this fantastic intern, Ed Yoon, from Stanford. He was a Stanford medical student, but he loved movies. He was in the middle of med school and research was just no problem for him. He and Dave Scott would dive into this together and come back to us with some really dramatic key moments of transcript.
Sometimes we could hear the audio, and in many instances, the actors were able to hear the tones of the way the astronauts had actually communicated in the midst of the real crisis. They are taught from day one of flight school that when there’s a crisis, you simply work at it until you can’t anymore.
I love history. In fact, “Apollo 13” was the first movie that I ever made based on real events. I’d never had the courage to go there. I’ve made a couple of movies where I really tried to achieve authenticity; “The Paper,” “Backdraft,” and “Parenthood,” and I really wanted them to ring true to contemporary audiences.
But this was the first time I sort of dared to actually take on a story based on real events. I’ve since done many and now documentaries as well, but back then I felt like it might hamper my creativity. I found that my interest in people, the way things work, what can be observed and shared with audiences to be incredibly stimulating.
Screening for an audience
We had our very first test screening and it was a blind screening, so people didn’t know anything about the movie. It was a pretty large audience with 300 or 400 people. The film was very rough, unfinished, and still had some storyboards in it, but the movie played really, really well and got very high test scores. They rate movies; Excellent, Very Good, Good, Fair, Poor. From this audience, there was only one poor. That’s amazing in an audience of 400 or so.
But of course, even though I already had achieved final cut status as a director, I still had to look at that one test card and find out what the problem was with this audience member. They never use names, but it was a Caucasian Asian male, 23 years old who rated it poor and said he wouldn’t recommend it. He didn’t really comment much in the way of words, but on the back, he did answer one question. It said, please comment on the ending or the resolution. He wrote:
“It’s terrible,” with an exclamation mark.
“More Hollywood bullshit,” two exclamation marks.
“They would never survive,” with three exclamation marks.
I realized nobody had told the audience about this movie and this kid didn’t know that this story had really happened.
It was then I realized that this is a reason to take on true stories, because you choose these extreme events, these unlikely outcomes, these outlier moments and characters, and it’s a way of understanding people coping with extreme pressures and being tested in ways that are very dramatic.
Final Thoughts:
I was born in 1954. The late 1960’s and ‘70’s are really when I’m becoming the adult version of me. Social scientists say that we tend to connect to a certain genre style and set of songs that will resonate with us forever from the time we are 13 into our early twenties. I think we feel that way about TV shows, movies and culture.
If Apollo 13 happened in 1955 instead of 1970, I think I would have still done the story. When I’m reading, I’m looking for stories that I can connect with personally. I’m interested in lots and lots of different kinds of movies, but I don’t think you can do your best work unless you feel like you have some sort of intuitive link and a fascination for understanding the story.
The views expressed in this interview belong to Ron Howard and may not necessarily reflect those of the Library of Congress. This interview was conducted in November 2023 for the Library of Congress and prepared by Stacie Seifrit-Griffin.
“Apollo 13” (1995) was added to the National Film Registry in 2023. To learn more about the National Film Registry, visit www.loc.gov/film.
To learn more about the Library’s collection featuring books and other materials related to the 1970 Apollo 13 mission visit www.loc.gov.
The referenced NASA EP “Apollo 13: Houston, we’ve got a problem” can be found here.