Damien Chazelle stood face to face with a chunk of the moon.
The triangular moon rock was held in a vise, under glass: chicken-nugget-size and light gray, with glimmering specks of crystal. "That's really cool, Chazelle said, leaning in.
He was in town to talk about his new film, "First Man," about Neil Armstrong's voyage to the moon.
He scanned an informational placard, which said that the rock was basalt, formed by cooling lava more than three billion years ago, and that it had been retrieved on August 1, 1971, by the Apollo 15 astronauts James Irwin and David Scott. "Dave Scott--he flew with Neil Armstrong on Gemini 8," Chazelle said.
Chazelle went with an ashy monochrome, shooting his moon landing at a quarry outside Atlanta. Astronaut Charles Duke's voice can be heard in "First Man"--in 1969, he was the guy communicating with the Apollo 11 astronauts from Mission Control.
The night was overcast, the half-moon hidden: "I just find myself looking at it more", Chazelle said, on the sidewalk. "Or looking for it more. It's so beautiful. Speaking of things we take for granted. It's not just the fact that people walked on the moon--it's the moon itself."
Written by Michael Schulman of THE NEW YORKER, October 22, 2018