"First Man" screenwriter Josh Singer spoke to Business Insider about the controversy surrounding the fact that, in the movie, there is no scene of the American flag being planted on the moon. Singer told Business Insider that "if you see the film you understand why" that kind of scene isn't in the movie. Before pretty much anyone saw “First Man,” the opinion of some was that it wasn’t patriotic. Why? Because the movie doesn’t have a scene in which Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin plant the American flag on the moon. And no one was more upset about this misconception than the person who spent four years researching and crafting the screenplay, Josh Singer. “One of the things that upset me the most about the flag conversation is this is very much a celebration of blue collar work, or patriotic sacrifice, which is what Neil embodied,” Singer told Business Insider. Singer said he and director Damien Chazelle’s main goal with the movie was to delve deep into the life of Armstrong and what he was dealing with not just technology-wise to get to the moon, but also personally. But despite that focus, the movie is still patriotic, even though we don’t see our heroes stick the flag into the moon's lunar surface. In fact, the flag is shown in all its glory on the moon in a gorgeous wide shot that’s made even more majestic and patriotic as it was part of the footage that was shot on an Imax camera. "To be perfectly honest, I can understand why people who haven't seen the film are questioning why that isn't there, but if you see the film you understand why," Singer said. "The film is so deeply patriotic to begin with it's not necessary. We also don't have the call to Nixon. We're trying to get under the myth." “First Man” opens in theaters Friday.<doc-sep>"First Man," a biopic detailing Neil Armstrong's journey to the moon, has sparked controversy by omitting a particular part of that journey — and Buzz Aldrin, who stepped foot on the moon alongside Armstrong, has voiced his opinion. The upcoming feature film won't premiere publicly until October, but its recent debut at the Venice Film Festival has already sparked discussion. Rumors are swirling on the internet suggesting that the American flag (which the Apollo astronauts famously placed on the moon) was omitted from the movie, but this isn't true. In fact, the flag is prominent in several scenes throughout "First Man" and is shown on the moon in the movie. However, the team behind "First Man" decided to not include a specific scene of Armstrong and Aldrin planting the flag on the moon in the film. Sen. Marco Rubio called the move "total lunacy" on Twitter, with support from others on the platform. [Building Apollo: Photos from Moonshot History] See more But right-wing Twitter users aren't the only ones to have issues with the decision — Aldrin himself seems to have publicly reacted to the decision to omit the flag-planting scene. While Aldrin didn't make a public statement per se, he did tweet photos of him and Armstrong planting the flag on the moon alongside "#proudtobeanAmerican #freedom #honor #onenation #Apollo11 #July1969 #roadtoApollo50." See more Aldrin published this tweet at the same time that the "First Man" controversy arose, so it has been interpreted by many to mean that Aldrin disagrees with the film's choice to leave out the flag-planting scene. But not everyone shares this opinion of the film. Ryan Gosling, who stars in the film as Neil Armstrong, said at the Venice Film Festival that the moonwalk "was widely regarded not as an American, but as a human achievement." Additionally, Armstrong's sons, Rick and Mark Armstrong, along with James R. Hansen, the author of "First Man," released a statement supporting the decision to not focus on the flag-planting in the film. "This story is human and it is universal. Of course, it celebrates an America achievement. It also celebrates an achievement 'for all mankind,' as it says on the plaque Neil and Buzz left on the moon. It is a story about an ordinary man who makes profound sacrifices and suffers through intense loss in order to achieve the impossible," the group said. To clear up any confusion about why the production decided to leave out the flag-planting scene, "First Man" director Damien Chazelle said, "To address the question of whether this was a political statement, the answer is no. My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America's mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong's personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours." By focusing on other aspects of the moon landing, Chazelle hopes to show aspects of Armstrong and the moon mission that is less frequently seen in the media. Email Chelsea Gohd at cgohd@space.com or follow her @chelsea_gohd. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on Space.com.<doc-sep>Long before almost anyone had seen First Man, which focuses on Neil Armstrong and the moon landing, the film had been drafted into the culture wars. Based on the film’s trailer, politicians and pundits began expressing outrage over the fact that the film doesn’t show the Apollo 11 astronauts planting the flag on the moon. And as things do in the cable news and internet outrage machine, that dramatic choice quickly morphed into the plainly false assertion that the flag doesn’t appear on the moon in the film (it does, twice) or in the film at all (it definitely does), and that the flag was omitted (it wasn’t) to either to appease Chinese audiences or as another anti-American ploy by liberal Hollywood. All of those ideas fall apart once you see the movie, and thus they’re somewhat mystifying to those who saw the film during its September festival runs in Venice, Telluride, and Toronto. And on October 12, when the film hits theaters, audiences will be able to see for themselves. Directed by Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle (La La Land, Whiplash), the movie stars Ryan Gosling and Claire Foy as Neil and Janet Armstrong, and is as much an examination of grief, loss, and ordinary heroism as it is about the moon landing and the space program. Screenwriter Josh Singer is used to writing these sorts of movies. He co-wrote Steven Spielberg’s The Post, which came out last year, and won an Oscar for co-writing the screenplay for 2015’s Spotlight. He was nominated for Golden Globes for both of those films as well, after making his big-screen debut with 2013’s The Fifth Estate. So Singer, who cut his writing teeth on The West Wing, is no stranger to telling complex American stories grounded in real situations and figures. First Man is a special challenge, not just because of its iconic images but because of the vast quantity of highly technical details and historical characters that he and Chazelle felt needed to be as accurately represented as possible. To pull this off, Singer worked closely with a host of advisers and former astronauts, as well as James Hansen, author of the only authorized biography of Armstrong. Hansen spent 50 hours interviewing Armstrong for the book, and thus was familiar with not just the details of his story but his reserved temperament as well. I talked to Singer by phone a few weeks after the controversy broke about the challenges of writing First Man, what it was like to work with Hansen and many other advisers, and why he thinks Neil Armstrong would have been disappointed by the controversy around the film. This interview has been edited and condensed. Most people don’t know much about Neil Armstrong Alissa Wilkinson How much did you know about Neil Armstrong before you started writing this screenplay? Josh Singer Very little. You don’t grow up as a kid in the 1980s without knowing about the space program, and a little bit about Apollo, and I played a lot of Space Hop. While I wasn’t a full-on space geek, I was definitely interested. But I didn’t know a ton. In fact, I didn’t know much about the Gemini program at all, and when I started digging in, it turned out that, like most people, I knew almost nothing about Neil. Most of the people who know the program well — people who have studied the program for ages — don’t know things about Neil, like the fact his supervisor at the FRC [Flight Research Center] didn’t recommend him for Gemini. We talked to experts who were like, “Where’d you get that?” I said, “Well, it’s in Jim [Hansen]’s book.” There are all sorts of details which people don’t really know. So that was what I was most struck by. Damien [Chazelle] reached out to me in 2014 with this idea of showing the visceral nature of spaceflight, showing how challenging it was. I had seen some of Whiplash because it had just been at Sundance, but it hadn’t really been out in theaters yet. I was just blown away by Whiplash, so I was very interested in Damien. But I have to say, I was like, “Yeah, but isn’t Neil Armstrong sort of a bland guy?” Then I started reading Jim’s biography, and I couldn’t believe how much loss and tragedy and failure there was in this seven-year period. I also had no idea about the X-15 program, which I thought was just extraordinary, and I had no idea about the fact that Neil almost died in the LLRV [Lunar Landing Research Vehicle]. You can watch that footage online, and it blows you away. There was just so much here. It was so powerful that I got very taken with the subject matter and with what Damien wanted to do with it. Alissa Wilkinson I think some people expected this movie to just be “the story of the moon landing.” But instead, it’s really Armstrong’s story, isn’t it? Josh Singer Yeah. It’s funny — we don’t like to call it a biopic, because we don’t think it’s traditional by any means. But it is really a personal story about his journey and about his mission. We think of it as a “mission” movie, but it’s really from a very personal point of view. And again, there’s so much that I don’t think is well-known about him. One of our great consultants, this guy Robert Pearlman, runs a space website [collectSPACE]. He knows everything there is to know about Apollo and Gemini. He saw the film, because we had all of our tech advisers come and see the film and give us notes, in addition to Rick and Mark [Armstrong, Neil’s sons]. Rob said, “When I first saw Neil crying [in the movie], I realized I had to rethink everything I knew about Neil Armstrong,” because you never thought of that guy crying. He also said this punctures the myth of what the program was. That was always our intent: to really change how people see the space program. The astronauts weren’t superheroes — and that’s important to realize Alissa Wilkinson<doc-sep>“It’s almost like they’re embarrassed at the achievement coming from America,” President Donald Trump said. “I think it’s a terrible thing.” “This is total lunacy,” tweeted Senator Marco Rubio of Florida. “The American people paid for that mission, on rockets built by Americans, with American technology & carrying American astronauts. It wasn’t a UN mission.” “History sure can be inconvenient when patriotism makes you queasy,” wrote a critic at the National Review. A tweet from Buzz Aldrin, who joined Armstrong on the Apollo mission to the moon, that included the hashtags “#proudtobeanAmerican #freedom #honor #onenation” further fanned the flames. (A producer on the film later told me that Aldrin was consulted frequently during filming, and liked the completed movie.) The controversy was quite short-lived, and may even have boosted interest in the film. It also could have been completely avoided if the critics had actually, you know, seen it. First Man is a 141-minute commercial for a uniquely American brand of determination and achievement. It provides a tour of increasingly advanced engineering: We join Armstrong in nerve-wracking, claustrophobic rides aboard an X-15 plane, a Gemini capsule, a lunar-landing simulator, and then, finally, the Apollo spacecraft. It depicts years of extensive training: We see astronauts braving the physical rigors of spaceflight firsthand, their bodies bruised, bloodied, singed, and burned. And it shows the intense resolve to continue in the face of loss: We grieve with Armstrong at the funerals of astronauts whose missions ended in tragedy. Such moments clearly illustrate the stakes of what the United States was trying to do and the sacrifices it had to endure, which makes its ultimate success that much more triumphant. If critics want explicitly American symbols, there are plenty. The flag appears on space suits and in archival news footage of elated crowds, and on the surface of the moon as the Apollo spacecraft departs after a successful mission. A creatively shot scene takes the viewer up a tall elevator on the launchpad, revealing each letter emblazoned on the side of a rocket as it goes: U-N-I-T-E-D-S-T-A-T-E-S. John F. Kennedy makes an appearance on a television screen. The camera lingers on the quiet moments in which Armstrong gingerly climbs down the ladder of the lunar module, presses his boot into the soil, and tells mission control about his one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind, with such similar tone and inflection as the real Armstrong did that the sound of the transmission gives you chills. First Man does take a subtler approach compared to other films about significant achievements in the American space program, like in Apollo 13, the harrowing tale of an in-flight malfunction and the effort to return astronauts safely to Earth. The flight controllers, the heroic protagonists of that film, are minor supporting characters in First Man. But that’s the point. First Man is based on a biography of Armstrong, and the story of the moon landing is told in the confines of his life—the death of his young daughter Karen eight years before the moon landing, the trauma of losing his friends, and the constant current of fear that he may not come home to his wife Janet (Claire Foy) and their two sons. Viewers spend more time in Armstrong’s kitchen than they do in the spacecraft that takes him to the moon.<doc-sep>
The new Neil Armstrong biopic First Man received sky-high ratings after its late-August premiere at the Venice Film Festival, but the critical response to the film was quickly overshadowed by something you can always count on drawing more attention: controversy. A handful of public figures derided the film after the revelation that, in documenting the historic Apollo 11 mission that landed Armstrong (played by Ryan Gosling) on the moon, director Damien Chazelle omitted the iconic moment when the astronaut plants the American flag. Florida Sen. Marco Rubio called it “total lunacy,” and conservative columnist Bill Kristol labeled it “a foolish and pernicious falsification of history,” while President Trump said he “wouldn’t even want to watch the movie.” First Man defenders who have actually seen the film, however, have pointed out that the American flag is ubiquitous in it, and while we don’t see the actual planting, the flag is indeed shown planted on the moon. Josh Singer, the film’s Oscar-winning screenwriter (Spotlight, The Post), took a diplomatic approach to the situation in a recent interview with Yahoo Entertainment (watch above). “In some ways, I was surprised; in other ways, I wasn’t,” said Singer of the uproar. “Neil’s an icon, he’s an American hero, and he means a lot to a lot of people. I knew there was going to be a lot of scrutiny on the film because of that. And this is a real piece of Americana. “So I understand [if] you hear the flag’s not in the movie, I understand how’d you get upset about that. Now, it is also true that most of these folks who commented didn’t see the movie. The flag is all over the movie. And I think it’s quite patriotic. Obviously we’re fully aware it’s an amazing American achievement as well as an amazing human achievement.” Chazelle responded to the criticism by insisting that the creative decision was not any kind of political statement. “My goal with this movie was to share with audiences the unseen, unknown aspects of America’s mission to the moon — particularly Neil Armstrong’s personal saga and what he may have been thinking and feeling during those famous few hours,” he said. Armstrong’s sons have also countered the criticism by doubling down in their support of the film. “We do not feel this movie is anti-American in the slightest,” they said in a statement. “Quite the opposite.” Story continues Explained Singer, “It’s put the burden on us a little bit to educate the public and to bring them up to speed and say, ‘Hey, actually, the flag’s all over this film.’ And when we got to the moon, we really were focused on Neil and his personal experience up there, and what it might have meant to him… This movie is focused on what you didn’t know and have never seen, as opposed to things you’ve seen a lot of. That’s what we think makes it interesting and worth going to the theater for.” First Man is now in theaters. Watch the trailer: Read more on Yahoo Entertainment: