That ain’t the only reason. 
It got MISTied, and deserved it. The original Caidin book was far better than either the movie or the updated book that went with the movie.
And Ron Howard’s brother “Tranya Boy” played one of guys in mission control.
I bet he never gets sick of using that line, too!
Yup. I love Howard’s work (this and Parenthood are favorites)… I just meant it had kind of a Spielbergian feel to it in some parts. For example, Lovell’s son who is too cute to be real asking “Is it the door?”, and the part where Lovell’s wife loses her ring down the shower drain.
Except for these forgiveable indulgences, a perfect movie.
Uh, you do know that the ring incident really happened. Exactly the way they depicted in the movie, as well.
Okay, that I didn’t know. Seemed a little too “Hollywood”, but I guess life’s like that sometimes.
I haven’t read Lovell’s book, but in A Man on the Moon they go into all the weird crap which happened before the launch. If it were a work of fiction, you wouldn’t believe any of it, because it’s just too bizarre and coincidental, but evidently it all happened.
I read Lost Moon right before the movie got made and what Lovell said was, “I can see the frappin’ 8-ball!” and I believe this is indeed what Hanks says in the film. In the book Lovell remarks that to this day he’s not really sure whether ‘frappin’ counts as a curse word.
What Lovell did say on VOX that caused a major PR nightmare for NASA (and wasn’t in the film) was, “Ya know Fredo, this will probably be the last moon mission for a long time”.
Something I wished they had included more about was Swiggert’s post-it note he put over the ‘JET LM’ switch. He had in fact done this. But still, when they were preparing for re-entry Lovell, being the commander, emphasized like three times to him, “Okay, you’re jettisoning the service module, NOT the lunar module!” These mission were practiced & rehearsed so many times and jettisoning the service module before the LM was just something so fundamentally wrong that they had probably never even simulated, it made sense that Lovell would be this careful about it.
No, he says “Freddo, inform Houston that I’m well aware of the g*****n gimbals.” in the movie, as TheTyrant mentioned.
[nitpick]It’s not a post-it note! They hadn’t been invented yet![/nitpick]
The mockups for the movie were made by the Kansas Cosmosphere’s Space Works operation (the same folks who restored Liberty Bell 7 a couple of years back).
Last I heard, the Cosmosphere also has the Apollo 13 CM, among other things.