Sony Pictures Classics
Duncan Jones’s 2009 mind-bending sci-fi, “Moon,” almost didn’t turn out to be the star vehicle for Sam Rockwell as it’s known it today. Initially, Jones (who’s the son of the late David Bowie) met the “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” actor to cast him in an entirely different movie for a villainous role, as Rockwell recalled in an interview for Backstage. He wasn’t interested in playing a typical baddie, and turned down the offer. But the two bonded over their huge love for classic sci-fi like Ridley Scott’s “Alien” (in which the director used a smart trick to solve a visual challenge) and Douglas Trumbull’s “Silent Running,” and Jones came up with an idea.
A man on the Moon, all by himself, doing a three-year contract for a company to mine precious resources and send them back to Earth. With the help of the English screenwriter Nathan Parker, Jones quickly turned his concept into a fully-fledged script titled “Moon” and sent it to Rockwell, adding that he wrote it specifically with him in mind to play the protagonist.
However, Rockwell’s shooting schedule was full at the time, and he didn’t get a chance to dive into the story until Jones called him up and urged him to do so. If Rockwell was going to pass, the director already had Paddy Considine lined up as a backup choice. Eventually, Rockwell finally read the thing and instantly signed on to play the film’s hero, which ended up becoming one of his most beloved, critically heralded, and often-cited performances in his filmography. No wonder: Jones’s directorial feature debut is an absolutely stellar movie.
From low-budget hidden gem to widely celebrated cult-classic
Sony Pictures Classics
“Moon” follows Sam Bell (Rockwell), a middle-aged blue-collar astronaut working for Lunar Industries, mining helium-3 on the far side of the Moon. His sole companion is GERTY (voiced by Kevin Spacey), an AI robot assisting him in his work operations and basic needs. Bell’s been up there for nearly three years, resigned to limited communication via video messages with his wife (and anyone else) on Earth due to a long-standing technical problem. But his assignment is nearing its end with two weeks left.
The trouble is, he’s been isolated for so long that he starts to hallucinate, causing him to crash his lunar rover and blacking out. Regaining consciousness, Sam can’t remember what happened but overhears GERTY’s live conversation with his employer, which makes him suspicious and prompts him to investigate what is actually happening. What he finds will change everything he believed to be true. Made on a mere $5 million budget, “Moon” only garnered $9.7 million worldwide at the box office during its limited theatrical release.
However, being screened at several festivals, it quickly became a darling among critics, receiving tons of praise for its sharp writing, excellent direction, and first and foremost, Rockwell’s riveting one-man-show performance as the core of the picture. As Sam, he delivers an endearing, complex, and deeply personal portrayal of a man who discovers dark existential secrets about the corporation he’s employed by and about who or what he really is. Since its release, “Moon” has turned from a low-key gem into a widely celebrated cult classic among sci-fi fans all over the world. As he said to Business Insider, “It’s one of the more popular movies I’ve done. It’s brought up more than I thought it would ever be.”
