This guy is a real buff. He has transcripts and an annotated script that shows where the script differs from reality.
The thing that I like about the movie is that you can watch it without ever caring that you don’t understand what a lot of the dialogue means. I find I just absorb it as though by osmosis.
I just checked the DVD and, although it’s very brief, you can see that it is the Let It Be album.
Here’s a screen capture.
“Let it Be” was released AFTER the Beatles broke up - about a month later, IIRC. They did in fact break up when Apollo 13 was in space, so they got that part right. It’s an understandable error.
As others have said the book about the mission is much more detailed than the movie, which barely scratches the surface. A humorous anecdote in the book Lost Moon (AKA) Apollo 13 by Jim Lovell & Jeff Kluger.
Grumman the manufacturer of the LEM sent a “bill” to North American Rockwell maker of the CSM.
Description of services provided.
Total Charge $401,000. Towing, $4.00 first mile, $1.00 for each additional mile $400,001. Battery charge, road call. Customer’s jumper cables. Total $4.05. Oxygen @ $10.00 pound total $500.00. Sleeping accommodations for two, no TV, air conditioned, with radio. Prepaid. Additional guest $8.00 night. 20% government discount leaves $312,421.24.
Lunar Module checkout no later than noon Friday. Accommodations not guaranteed beyond that time.
In response, Rockwell sent a pointed note to Grumman which mentioned that Rockwell hadn’t charged Grumman a tow fee for the previous Apollo missions, and that if they were to do so, the total bill would exceed that of the current “bill.” Things might have continued back and forth like this for a while, but the higher ups at both companies got wind of it, and were not amused, and put a stop to things.
I’ve read and seen Moon Shot, and it is probably my least favorite of the Apollo books. It plays them up as the stars (Amazon wasn’t kidding) and the saviors of the space program way too much. But, back to the topic, Apollo 13 is awesome. To achieve suspense on re-entry, when we know how it is going to come out, is fine filmmaking.
I’ve always wondered how they faked the zero G. And now I find out that it wasn’t faked. So, second question, how did they create zero G for filming?
Thanks to anyone who knows.
I believe it was done on a series (as in hundreds of runs) of flights where the plane did a steep climb and then a sudden dive…at the apex of the climb/dive switchover, there are a few seconds of weightlessness.
They utilized NASA’s “Vomit Comet,” a plane that flies in parabolic arcs to achieve zero-g for a few seconds at a time.
http://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/ask_astro/answers/970325a.html
I believe they filmed the real zero G scenes on the “vomit comet”.
You do know that it was directed by Ron Howard.
I watched the DVD once in French. It was pretty strange. I really got a laugh out of the scene where Ed Harris is yelling that he wants the re-entry proceedures and he wants them RIGHT NOW!
In French he yells at the guy and finishes it off with TOOT SWEET! (probably not spelled right)
One of my Top 10 favorite movies. It is also scheduled to be re-released in IMAX Format.
Pass the popcorn!
That was my only sticking point to the movie. It made Swigert look like some greenhorn, when he was probably the guy who knew the most about the CSM.
I don’t think it was that many. Only about 2-3 minutes of actual zero-g footage made it into the movie. The rest was camera tricks, see-saws, and CGA.
The filmmakers only had a four-color graphics adapter? Wow, it still looks amazing! 
One of my favorite movies as well. The first time I saw it, I took my then-girlfriend, also an engineer in college. Afterwards, when she said she didn’t like it because there was “too much engineering,” I knew she wasn’t the one for me. That’s like the emperor telling the composer, “Too noisy, my dear Mozart. Far too many notes.”
Per the IMDB trivia page for Apolla 13:
The IMDB trivia site says:
“Though not noted on screen, Marilyn Lovell’s “premonition” of an accident on her husband’s flight was triggered by her seeing the movie Marooned (1969)”
I believe if I had a relative in that line of work I might have given that movie a miss.
Me, too. I also love his mother–“If someone got a washing machine to fly, my Jimmy could figure out how to land it.”
Has anyone heard The Ballad of Apollo XIII? It’s a filk to the tune of Gordon Lightfoot’s Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald, and amazingly detailed. The lyricist, William Warren Jr., manages to work in the exact mission times for events. The whole cassette [Minus Ten and Counting, by Off-Centaur Publications] it was on was great (the song is performed by Julia Ecklar), but it is impossible to get copies of it nowadays. I could only find the last verse anywhere on the net:
“At Tee plus one hundred forty-three, fifty four
Apollo Thirteen hit the waters
Three men returned home, shaken up, but alive,
To their wives and their sons and their daughters.”
Maybe it was that many, after all.
I got to see Apollo 13 at the campus movie theater when I was in college, with
Jim Lovell speaking before the movie was shown. He joked that his being there to speak to us was a bit of a spoiler, so I have put it in a spoiler box.
I’m on the edge of my seat during the re-entry part every time I watch the movie (which has been many times, it’s one of my favorite movies).
Lovell’s mother was played by *Ron Howard’s * mother - and yes, he made his own Mom audition for the role.
Lovell himself played the carrier captain in the final scene.
