Richard Linklaterused to think his childhood experiences didn’t deserve the movie treatment.
The challenge was how to pull it off.
What the director ended up creating was “an animated universe,” he says.
Stanley, voiced by Milo Coy, heads to the moon in ‘Apollo 10 1/2’.Netflix
“That’s my default mode.
Linklater tapped a 2D look for the animation to capture the textures of the time’s analog world.
“Once you make that decision, you never question it,” the filmmaker notes.
‘Apollo 10 1/2’ takes place in Houston, TX in the 1969, the year of the Apollo moon landing.Netflix
“That was a breakthrough,” he says.
Both storylines helped each other.
Linklater feels the Apollo moon landing has taken on even more cultural significance over time.
Richard Linklater’s ‘Apollo 10 1/2’ takes a ’60s kid to the moon.Netflix
“It’s like when your team wins the championship.
“And again, you go, ‘That was a great year.’
We all thought we were gonna be on Mars by the end of the century.
Stanley’s family gathers for movie night in ‘Apollo 10 1/2.'.Netflix
I don’t think anyone realized at the time that it was fleeting.”
“We tend to focus on our failures and things like that,” he says.
“That was a human accomplishment that we all went, ‘Geez!
People are walking on the moon.’
It’s hard to think of something that the whole world pays attention to that’s so positive.”
