The Dish
A Critical Review and Bibliography
By Erin Short
Principal Cast and Credits
Directed by: Rob Sitch
Written by: Santo Cilauro
Tom Gleisner
Jane Kennedy
Rob Sitch
Produced by: Debra Choate
Santo Cilauro
Tom Gleisner
Michael Hirsh
Jane Kennedy
Rob Sitch
Original Music by: Edmund Choi
Peter Sullivan
Cinematography by: Graeme Wood
Film Editing by: Jill Bilcock
Casting by: Jane Kennedy
Production Company: Working Dog
Cast: Sam Neill .... Cliff Buxton
Kevin Harrington .... Ross 'Mitch' Mitchell
Tom Long .... Glenn Latham
Patrick Warburton .... Al Burnett
Genevieve Mooy .... May McIntyre
Tayler Kane .... Rudi Kellerman
Bille Brown .... Prime Minister
Roy Billing .... Mayor Robert 'Bob' McIntyre
Andrew S. Gilbert .... Len Purvis
Lenka Kripac .... Marie McIntyre
Matthew Moore .... Keith Morrison
Eliza Szonert .... Janine Kellerman
John McMartin .... U.S. Ambassador Howard
Carl Snell .... Billy McIntyre
Release Dates
Canada: 15 September 2000 (Toronto Film Festival) (premiere)
Australia: 19 October 2000
USA: 14 March 2001 (limited)
USA: 27 April 2001
UK: 11 May 2001
New Zealand: 24 May 2001
Spain: 15 June 2001
Germany: 19 July 2001
Greece: 21 September 2001
Belgium: 11 October 2001 (Flanders International Film Festival)
Belgium: 14 November 2001
Taiwan: 4 January 2002
France: 1 May 2002
Japan: 6 July 2002 (Tokyo)
Italy: 7 February 2003
Philippines: 20 September 2003 (Australian Film Festival)
Denmark: 15 November 2003 (Meet Australia)
Norway: 23 December 2003 (TV premiere)
Iceland: 16 March 2004 (limited)
Box Office Figures
Opening Weekend: $70,612 (USA) (18 March 2001) (6 Screens)
£218,114 (UK) (13 May 2001) (187 Screens)
AUD 2,995,500 (Australia)
€2,676 (Italy) (9 February 2003) (5 Screens)
Gross: $2,252,970 (USA) (8 July 2001)
£1,573,131 (UK) (17 June 2001)
AUD 11,182,359 (Australia) (14 December 2000)
€2,676 (Italy) (9 February 2003)
Interviews with Filmmakers
Nguyen, Ky N. "Moment. In: Time: 'Dish' Director Rob Sitch Tries to Capture History with Apollo 11 Mission.". In: The Washington Diplomat (USA). (May 2001. Pg. B8. NP), Vol. 7, Iss. 5.
“Sitch, Rob and Cilauro, Tom: The Dish” in Urban Cinefile Features (2000) http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article_ID=4152
Reviews
CNN.com at http://archives.cnn.com/2001/SHOWBIZ/Movies/03/15/review.the.dish/index.html
E! Online at http://www.eonline.com/Reviews/Facts/Movies/Reviews/0,1052,81795,00.html
Roger Ebert at http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20010406/REVIEWS/104060304/1023
List of printed media reviews from the Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com):
Ehretsmann, Xavier. The Dish. In: L'Annuel du Cinéma 2003 (France), Les Nouvelles Fiches du Cinéma, 2003, Pg. 2-85056-637-3, (BK)
Hamacher, Rolf-Ruediger. "The Dish". In "film dienst" (Germany), Vol. 54, Iss. 15, 17 July 2001, Pg. 16
Kanthak, Dietmar. "Charmanter Rückblick auf die Frühzeit der Mondfahrt". In "epd Film" (Germany), Vol. 18, Iss. 7, 1 July 2001, Pg. 37
Nguyen, Ky N. "A Day That United the World.". In: The Washington Diplomat (USA). (NP), Vol. 7, Iss. 4, April 2001, Pg. B16
Schwarzbaum, Lisa. "Shoot The Moon (A-)". In: Entertainment Weekly (USA), Vol. 1, Iss. 588, 23 March 2001, Pg. 80, (MG)
Stevenson, William. "Video: The Dish (B+)". In: Entertainment Weekly (USA), Vol. 1, Iss. 612, 7 September 2001, Pg. 142, (MG)
Presence Online
The official website for The Dish is http://thedishmovie.warnerbros.com/index_flashmain.html
There are also other sites on the internet where information can be found about The Dish. The Internet Movie Database (www.imdb.com) is an excellent course of information about the film, as well as an excellent source for links to other sites. A Google search (www.google.com) of The Dish will also lead to several other various websites about the film.
Critical review and Plot Synopsis
The Dish is a humorous account of the four men working at the satellite dish in Parkes, New South Wales in the summer of 1969 during the Apollo 11 moon mission. Parkes is a small town in Australia, but it happens to have the largest satellite dish in the southern hemisphere. Not only is this massive dish in a tiny town, but it is also in the middle of a sheep paddock, which is a running joke throughout the film.
At the beginning of The Dish, we see an older man (played by San Neill) visiting the satellite dish in Parkes, New South Wales, Australia. Almost immediately, a guard tells him that he has come in the old entrance, and must go out to the visitor’s center. Even though it is the first scene in the film, most audience members would know that San Neill’s character was a part of the team that worked there, and would see the irony and humor in this.
After this scene, the movie goes back to 1969, when this same man was years younger and was working as the Director of the satellite dish in Parkes. The dish and the men that work there have been chosen to be a part of the team that will track the Apollo 11 moon mission, the one where Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are going to land and walk on the moon. The team consists of four men—three Australians and one American NASA employee who has been sent down to work with them for the Apollo 11 effort. Cliff Buxton (Sam Neill) is the director, Ross “Mitch” Mitchell (Kevin Harrington) is the technician who is constantly cracking jokes, Glenn Latham (Tom Long) is a shy engineer and math whiz who spends his free time trying to gather enough courage to ask out Janine, a local girl, and finally Al Burnett (Patrick Warburton) is the American NASA employee who insists on doing everything strictly by NASA regulations.
The pressure is on for this humorous team of four as the Apollo 11 mission makes its way into space. Both the Prime Minister of Australia and an American Ambassador decide to visit Parkes during the mission, and the team finds out that they will be solely responsible for the broadcast of the actual moonwalk itself, to the entire world.
The first “incident” that the team encounters occurs when Mitch forgets to do his duties correctly, and all the computers and satellite controls go dead. This makes them “lose” Apollo 11. The men have to work hard and work together to get everything back up and running, all the while with NASA in Houston wondering what is going on. This is a turning point in the film, because Al, who has not really been accepted by the others because of his strictness, buys them time by telling NASA in Houston that everything is fine at Parkes and that the problem must be elsewhere. He “bullshitted NASA,” as Mitch put it. The four men come together to solve the problem and find Apollo 11 before Houston figures out the real problem, without putting Parkes in danger of losing responsibilities.
The climax of the movie comes on the day of Armstrong and Aldrin’s moonwalk. It is a terribly windy day, so windy that they are not sure if they will be able to even move the dish at all. When the team finds out that the astronauts are going to take their moonwalk several hours earlier than planned, and that Parkes is still expected to receive the video footage, they are not sure exactly what they are going to do. Because it is so early in the day, they can not even see the moon yet, and on top of that, they know it is not completely safe to move the dish. But as a team, they decide to take the risk, and go for it. Earlier in the film, Cliff had quoted his late wife as saying, “Failure is never quite so frightening as regret.” With that in mind, all four of them were ready to take the chance, so that the rest of the world could enjoy watching the lunar landing and moonwalk. Of course, fate was on their side, and at the time of the moonwalk, the moon had risen just high enough so that they were successful in their jobs.
The film ends where it began, with the same scene of an older Cliff Buxton visiting the dish many years later. The guard ironically tells Cliff that people “get a buzz from going up there,” and that he really should check it out. There is irony throughout the film, and more and more irony and foreshadowing can be seen upon multiple viewings of the film.
Critical Uptake
The Dish was received generally well, as is clear from the reviews it was given from various critics and newspapers. Most did not gush praise, but admitted that the film was good-natured, funny, and worth-watching. Another indication that the film was well received is the number of awards it won and was nominated for.
ARIA Music Awards
2001- Won ARIA Music Award for Best Original Soundtrack Album
Australian Film Institute
2001- Nominated for AFI Awards for Best Film and Best Original Music Score
Film Critics Circle of Australia Awards
2001- Won FCCA Awards for Best Music Score and Best Screenplay- Original
2001- Nominated for FCCA Awards for Best Actor- Male (Sam Neill), Best Cinematography (Graeme Wood), Best Director (Rob Sitch), Best Editing (Jill Bilcock), Best Film, Best Supporting Actor- Female (Genevieve Mooy), and Best Supporting Actor- Male (Roy Billing)
Toronto International Film Festival
2000- 2nd place People's Choice Award (Rob Sitch)
Production
The Working Dog team, which produced The Dish, decided to make the movie based on the fact that the television broadcast of man walking on the moon was one of the biggest events in television history. Tom Gleisner shares one of the reasons for making the film,
600 million people watched the televised images of Neil Armstrong's moonwalk, perhaps the most-watched event of the 20th century. 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. (www.thedishmovie.warnerbrothers.com)
One of the main issues the Working Dog team had to deal with when making the film was the sheer magnitude of the dish itself—how to film it, how to portray its size, and how to handle it. According to Gleisner, filming on location at the dish was not a problem at all; the staff was more than happy to let them film and to help them with whatever they needed.
Filming for The Dish began on May 25, 1999, and in almost all circumstances scenes were shot on location where they would have occurred in 1969.
(www.thedishmovie.warnerbrothers.com)
Other Works of the Filmmakers
The Working Dog Production team, which consists of Rob Sitch, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner, and Jane Kennedy, is most well known for also producing The Castle in 1997. This film is about a working class Australian family fighting to keep their house and land from being turned into an airport extension.
The actors in the film are not new to the game either. Sam Neill is famous for his roles in The Piano (1993), Jurassic Park (1993), and The Horse Whisperer (1998), along with many, many more. Kevin Harrington can also be seen in Australian Rules (2002), and Patrick Warburton be found in the hit comedy series, Seinfield (1995-1998) and in Scream 3 (2000).
Australian Cinema
This film is an example of classic Australian Cinema. It is well known within Australia, has done relatively well for itself, and is liked by many people who see it. However it does not seem to be well known outside of Australia. Unfortunately, this is the case with a lot of Australian cinema.
The Dish can be described as a comedy-drama, having some elements of both. It can be described as a comedy simply for the fact that it makes the viewer laugh throughout the film. There are also a lot of incongruities in the film, which are the root of comedy. An example of this is when the crew of the Parkes dish is playing cricket inside the huge satellite dish. The film is partly a drama because it is not all fun and laughs. There are some serious parts to the film as well.
References
Internet Movie Database www.imdb.com
Nguyen, Ky N. "Moment. In: Time: 'Dish' Director Rob Sitch Tries to Capture History with Apollo 11 Mission.". In: The Washington Diplomat (USA). (May 2001. Pg. B8. NP), Vol. 7, Iss. 5.
The Dish Official Site www.thedishmovie.warnerbrothers.com
The Dish, dir. Rob Sitch (2000)
Yahoo! Movies: The Dish http://movies.yahoo.com/shop?d=hv&cf=info&id=1804383664
UrbanCinefile http://www.urbancinefile.com.au/home/view.asp?Article_ID=4152