Hello, world!
This is my first post after I signed up a few days ago. I've read the first 140 pages of that members-only thread about that Dutch person that shall remain nameless. Asking myself whether I should laugh or cry, I went with the bright side. The hoax has its humorous side. Humor is a quite traditional way of telling someone an inconvenient truth (think King and Fool).
I'm especially amused by hoax believers claiming Kubrick was hired to film the moon landings on a sound stage. I wonder how that would have worked in practice. Since you won't get a detailed answer from a hoax believer, here is what my imagination came up with. I'm no Shakespeare (not even a native speaker), so feel free to improve and continue the play with additional lines or even whole scenes. It's pure fun to invent and read!
Dramatis Personae:
Armstrong: Astronaut
Kubrick: Movie Director
Smith: NASA Quality Control Inspector
Film Crew of Gaffers, Grips, etc.
Location: a secret sound stage in a secret place some time in the sixties
Armstrong is on the ladder of a lunar module mockup.
Kubrick: Hatch Egress, Take One (shouts) Lights! Camera! Action!
Armstrong: The Lunar soil looks sort of fine grained. Almost like a powder.
I'm stepping off the LEM now.
Smith: Cut! We no longer call it LEM, it's "LM", Ell-emm, Neil!
Armstrong: I can't pronounce that, I'm gonna say it my way and you guys can
jump up and down in 1g on your silly wires. Deal with it.
Kubrick: Can't control those egos. OK. Hatch Egress, Take Two
(shouts) Lights! Camera! Action!
Armstrong: The Lunar soil looks very fine grained. Almost like a powder.
I'm stepping off the LEM now.
It's one small step for a man, (a door slams) one giant leap for mankind.
Kubrick: Cut! Who slammed the door? Don't you guys know that the slightest wind
makes that flag move? Crikey. Another ruined sound track...
Neil, up that ladder again. Hatch Egress, Take Three. Action!
Armstrong: The Lunar soil looks very fine grained. Almost like talcum powder.
I'm stepping off the LEM now.
It's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.
Smith: Cut! Neil, I scripted the famous words as "a man". A MAN!
Didn't you learn your lines?
Kubrick: This will cost NASA an extra check, Smith.
Smith: Waste anything but time.
Kubrick: Well then. Hatch Egress, Take Four. And Action!
Armstrong: The Lunar soil looks very fine grained. Almost like a powder.
I'm stepping off the LEM now.
It's one small step for... amen. Sorry guys, forgot my line.
I can't see the teleprompter due to the gold in my visor.
That super trouper outshines everything. Can't we get rid of
at least that second light source next to the LEM mockup?
(Prop team removes second light source; places rocks A, B and C, as well as
regolith simulant grains 1 through 3.14E+12 on the coordinates specified by Smith
in NASA-LUNR-SURFC-PROP-HNDBK pages AS-11 through AS-11121314151617. The prop team
arranges the book volumes in a large ring structure, covers the result with moon
dust and calls it "West Crater". The rest, as they say, is history.)
Kubrick: (to wire guys) Pull Armstrong up on the ladder. Lets get this done
before the decade is out.
Hatch Egress, Take Five (hums famous jazz piece). And Action!
Armstrong: (quietly to himself) I can do this. I can really do this. A man. A man.
(Takes a deep breath).
The Lunar soil looks very fine grained. Almost like a powder.
I'm stepping off the LEM now.
It's one small step for a man. One giant leap for a mankind.
Smith: Holy Gilruth! Cuuuut!
Kubrick: Smith, I told you I wanted actors, not astronauts. These guys are
not working in their field of expertise! I specifically requested
Peter Sellers. How can you expect quality from trained monkeys?
Smith: We tried what we could. But the actors got suspicious and asked
how we would keep the hoax under cover. They feared we'd send
assassins in black robes with samurai swords to kill them. Can't
blame actors for all that they've made us believe in their movies,
I guess.
Gaffer: (to Smith) Uhm, sorry to interrupt you, Mr. Smith, may I point
you to some inconsistency? The art team has, I believe, screwed
up the shadows on the back projection.
Smith: Be more specific.
Gaffer: Well, our single light source super trouper, shines from the right
but the painted shadows on the back projection are in a different
direction.
Kubrick: Zounds! I got to remember this one for "2001".
Gaffer: What's more the shadows are parallel, when they should not be. It's
a simple matter of perspective.
Smith: Young man, You are one hell of a smart cookie. 400.000 brains in NASA
and we almost gave a smoking gun away if it weren't for you. Why is
this fellow not your art director, Kubrick?
Gaffer: And the painted Earth near the zenith has the continents the wrong
way. It's spinning retrogr... East to West and the weather patterns
were not updated according to the latest satellite imagery.
Then, the terminator has the wrong orientation and should move
consistent with the passage of time.
Kubrick: Whoa there! More details I better get correct for the Space Odyssey.
Terminator? What's a terminator? Sounds dangerous. I should direct
a movie with that word in the title.
Smith: Kubrick, where is the art team?
Kubrick: PTLITC directive #42. Unreliable persons who need to be in on the
hoax must be "terminated" as soon as their job is done to avoid
death-bed confessions.
(quietly to himself) Yeah. Terminator! That's it.
To be continued.