Production Notes – The Dish Official Website

http://thedishmovie.warnerbros.com/index_flashmain.html

"The Dish" is the second feature film from Working Dog, the acclaimed collective of unique and passionate filmmakers who crafted "The Castle," which earned 10 million at the box office within its first twenty weeks of release in 1997 and went on to become one of the most successful films in Australian history.

Conceived, developed, written and produced by Working Dog's creative team of Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, Jane Kennedy and Rob Sitch, "The Dish" tells the story of one of the greatest feats in scientific history as seen from the point of view of Australian scientists who made a crucial contribution to the groundbreaking NASA mission.

"'The Dish' is the story of people basically thrown into the deep end," explains director Rob Sitch. "These three scientists who spend their lives doing fairly routine, humdrum work out of an astronomical installation in the middle of New South Wales suddenly have the opportunity of greatness thrust upon them, a chance to be responsible for broadcasting pictures of the greatest television event of the 20th century."

As Tom Gleisner notes, the Working Dog team found its inspiration for "The Dish" rooted in the facts. "600 million people watched the televised images of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, perhaps the most-watched event of the 20th century," says Gleisner. "For the first time, the whole world had united around their television sets in a way that certainly had never happened before and possibly never has happened since. It really was a pure extraordinary television experience, and provided us with the genesis for 'The Dish.'"

While researching and writing the screenplay, the filmmakers discovered the sheer magnitude of the Parkes radio telescope and the challenges filming on it would present. "You climb up 200 or 300 feet onto the dish and suddenly what you thought you could do on paper disappears," explains director Rob Sitch. "I remember being pretty intimidated. How were we going to maneuver this massive telescope to suit our production needs?"

"Seeing the dish for the first time was a rush," recalls Santo Cilauro, who also served as the film's second-unit director. "Firstly, it's so bloody big. And secondly, I couldn't help but wonder how we were going to convey that 'bigness' on the screen."

Simply put, Gleisner says, "You just don't expect to see something that large sitting in the middle of a sheep paddock."

Even more daunting than the size of the dish itself was the idea of approaching the staffers of the imposing radio telescope. "We realized early on that we had to get the permission of the operators of the dish, or we could never have made the film," Gleisner says. "For awhile we considered posing as a group of Canadian astronomers. We would have gotten away with it, but we couldn't handle the accents. We had to come clean and reveal that we're making a film about this crucial piece of equipment in a pivotal moment in Australian history...and we're doing it as a comedy-drama."

Fortunately, the staff at the Parkes telescope was more than accommodating. "They literally shifted major experiments for us to shoot there," Gleisner says. "They bent over backwards to maneuver the dish to our needs. We were getting it to do things that I don't think the manuals allow."

Once the Working Dog team obtained permission to use the telescope and completed their screenplay, they approached internationally acclaimed actor Sam Neill to play the role of Cliff Buxton, the mild-mannered director of the dish operation. "We needed a thoroughbred actor for this role," notes Sitch of the actor best known for his roles in "The Piano," "Jurassic Park," "The Horse Whisperer" and the upcoming "Jurassic Park 3." "Sam Neill is not only a fine actor, he's quite a gentleman."

"It's not just the script that pulls you into a film," explains Neill of his decision to anchor the cast of "The Dish." "There are various factors that come into play. I like working in Australia and I like films of this scale. I very much admire the Working Dog ethos and the stuff they do. 'The Dish' script was wonderful, the project was compelling and it's been rewarding to work in the Working Dog milieu."

When it came time to cast the role of Al Burnett, the methodical NASA representative, the producers turned to actor Patrick Warburton, best known for his recurring role as Puddy on the hit TV series "Seinfeld." "We were looking for a very straight, intelligent, handsome big guy," says producer Jane Kennedy, who also served as the film's casting director. "We were so impressed with Patrick's performance on 'Seinfeld,' we knew anyone who could play that role must be a really good actor. He rose to the challenge of playing Al Burnett and carried it off very well."

With its cast, crew and radio telescope in place, "The Dish" began principal photography on May 25, 1999, on location at the CSIRO's Radio Telescope in Parkes, New South Wales. "The Dish" shot virtually entirely on locations at or near where the real events took place back in 1969, including the country towns of Parkes and nearby Forbes; Old Parliament House in Canberra; Melbourne and Crawford Studios.

"The logistics of getting everyone to a tiny little town in western New South Wales was quite daunting," recalls Gleisner. "Most people had to take a small plane from Sydney to Parkes Airfield, where they'd be chauffeured by sheep tray out to the location."

Another major challenge for the filmmakers was recreating the telescope control room where much of the film takes place. "The authenticity of the set for the dish control room was paramount," Gleisner emphasizes. "It couldn't look like something from the Starship Enterprise on 'Star Trek,' or a present-day control room, which is all computers and air conditioning ducts. It had to resemble scientific equipment from 1969."

With the cooperation of locals who had staffed the Dish in Parkes, production designer Carrie Kennedy and art director Ben Morieson were able to obtain archival photos of the site, source pieces of equipment from the period and construct a set that was nearly identical to the original.

"We invited some of the employees who had worked at Parkes during the moon landing," says Tom Gleisner. "You could just see on their faces as they walked in - it was like walking into a time tunnel. They couldn't believe that we recreated every door and every knob and every ashtray exactly as the photos depicted them in 1969."

The control room set turned out to be more authentic than even Sitch envisioned. "When the set was installed, Ben asked me to look at the back of a piece of equipment," Sitch recalls. "There was an original NASA registration tag for that Hewlitt Packard machine. It turns out the art department had tracked down some of the original equipment that NASA sent to Australia for the Apollo mission. After the lunar landing, the machine had been left in Australia because it was too heavy to send back to the States. That was a lovely piece of karma for the production, knowing that a piece of our set had actually carried the signals from Apollo XI."

"The most pleasurable experience for me during the production was playing cricket on the dish," Neill remembers fondly. "How often does one get the chance to play cricket in the middle of an enormous, legendary radio telescope?"

Another crucial element of the film is the music. "It wasn't until we actually started shooting the first reel of film and saw the first image of the dish that we realized the score had to be very grand and lush," notes Jane Kennedy, who in addition to her casting and producing responsibilities, also acted as the film's music supervisor. "It had to match up with the actual size of the dish."

Having collaborated successfully with American composer Edmund Choi on 'The Castle," Kennedy recruited Choi to provide the score for "The Dish." Choi traveled to Melbourne and conducted his score, performed by the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, as well as the Australian Boys Choir, for which he composed several choral pieces for the film.

"We thought a great deal about the mood we wanted to create when the characters are watching the moon landing and the moon walk," notes Kennedy. "We felt there had to be a spiritual, almost ethereal, feel to the music. We decided we needed a female vocal; no words, just the voice used as an instrument. Tina Arena's beautiful voice captured the feeling we wanted."

The members of the Working Dog collective believe they have captured the spirit, drama, humor and pathos behind the Australian contribution to NASA's revolutionary lunar landing. "The Apollo XI mission ultimately became something that was not about rockets at all," Sitch concludes. "Instead, it transcended those television pictures live from the moon. It became about the human spirit soaring. 'The Dish' celebrates achievement and striving for greatness. Those themes are universal and timeless and worth celebrating."