Rob Sitch Dishes on the moon, fame and sheep

Rob Sitch began his career on Melbourne’s “Graham & the Colonel” radio program before graduating to Frontline, the award-winning Australian television show which Sitch performed in, as well as wrote, directed, produced. In 1997, his first feature film, The Castle, played to packed theatres Down Under, but grossed under $1 million in this country despite strong word-of-mouth and even stronger critical praise.

Sitch’s second film, The Dish, is a comedy about a tiny Australian town’s involvement with NASA’s Apollo 11 mission in 1969. The film tells the largely unknown, but completely true story of a group of scientists who ran the radio telescope that beamed the moon landing images to televisions all over the world…after temporarily losing contact with Apollo for several hours.

Planet Sick-Boy: Tell me about this story. How much of it is real?

Sitch: The story wasn’t known in Australia before the film. We tripped over it one day. A guy I’ve worked with said, “Do you know anything about Australia’s involvement in the Apollo 11 mission, and my answer was, “We had none.” It was like searching for buried treasure. We started going to the library, and found a book on radio astronomy, and in it was a chapter on the Parkes radio telescope and the Apollo 11 mission. It was really amazing reading, and we found the facts were more interesting than what we were making up. It was a really interesting research job.

 PSB: Any good practical joking on the set?

Sitch: (laughs) Only due to one person, and that’s Patrick Warburton. Patrick, I don’t know…I think he’s got a personality defect or something. He brought the world’s largest slingshot. I walked out one day and he and Sam Neill were doing there best to get themselves thrown in a lockup. They were putting water balloons on the slingshot being held by two of the crew, and firing it 400 feet at the guard house of the studio complex. It was basically a mortar attack on the guards. But then when we walked up to (the guard house), everyone stopped smiling because no one had done the physics. A water balloon traveling at that speed actually breaks through walls. (laughs) I thought we were in trouble then because the guard was not amused, and he was armed. Then he saw Sam Neill, and got a photo with Sam and Patrick, and we smoothed things over.

PSB: Are you aware that 34% of all Americans think the moon landing was a hoax?

Sitch: You know, I would love a conspiracy theory to be true. I would love to find out that Elvis is still alive, but I cannot --- and I’m fascinated by them --- but I just can’t even get interested in the moon one. Having researched it for a good two or three years before we did this film, I just don’t believe a word of it.

PSB: You’ve worked on Australian television for years. What’s your take on this “reality” TV craze?

Sitch: The funny thing was that, when it started, everyone said, “Oh, there will be one show, and then it’ll be over.” But I just think voyeurism is probably one of the most seductive things in our lives and, suddenly, we’ve got a legitimate way of watching other people and spying on other people, so I think it’s going to go on forever.

PSB: But being a writer and director, doesn’t the idea bother you?

Sitch: (laughs) I still think people need stories, and for people to think up stories. Harry Potter is the number one book in the world. A reality book is not. In a sense, though, I think television’s needed a little bit of reality for a while, of that style. We sort of had an expression that television had gotten a little too suited up, and people were afraid to just talk, and in some ways, that’s the other side of the reality. When you watch Survivor, there’s very little survival going on. It’s office politics.

PSB: What do you think of this year’s show?

Sitch: I think they’ve picked one of the most boring parts of Australia. Unfortunately, I guess they already did the beach thing, but Australia has about 11,000 miles of beach, and they had to pick a crappy river with alligators in it.

PSB: Are you a big, super-duper star in Australia?

Sitch: No, I’m reasonably well-known. If you’ve been on the top ten most wanted list, gradually people get used to knowing your face. We’ve done a lot of television, and television sort of has that ability.

PSB: But you have Internet fan sites.

Sitch: Oh, really? That sounds terrifying.

PSB: So you’ve never seen “The I Love Rob Sitch Page?”

Sitch: (laughs) No, I never have. I think that’s a little too much reality.  That’s too much.

PSB: Yeah, your attorney’s keep telling me to take that site down.

Sitch: Right. Uh-oh. (laughs)

PSB: Somebody even has robsitch.com.

Sitch: Oh, you’re kidding. Well, I remember when we went through that phase of being afraid that people would own your domain name, but I guess we’re having our revenge now because the only thing you can do with robsitch.com is lose money.

PSB: How is the impending strike going to effect you?

Sitch: I don’t think the Australians are going to go on strike in sympathy. I think people are looking to kind of make films in Australia as much as anything.

PSB: So as an outsider to the Hollywood system, it doesn’t have any effect on you?

Sitch: No, not really. I do think that writing it the least appreciated part of Hollywood movie making. They’ve got to sit down and talk about a few things. The Screen Actors Guild is obviously very powerful, but when I think a person sits down and writes an entire story in a screenplay, and then looks up on the screen and sees, “A film by,” --- that’s completely different.

PSB: Right, like some director you’ve never heard of before.

Sitch: Yeah, I think that’s a little tough. The famous North by Northwest scene with the crop duster --- the entire scene was storyboarded by (recent winner of an honorary Oscar) the writer, Ernest Lehman. Everybody, including me, uses this as an example of Hitchcock’s genius. That’s just a classic example of the way writers get stood up.

PSB: What’s the deal with the Crocodile Dundee guy? Is he the laughingstock of Australia or what?

Sitch: Well, (laughs) I still think he’s got a lot of good will to him because Crocodile Dundee’s (box office) record in Australia will never ever be broken. I think you cannot get Australian citizenship unless you’ve seen it. And when it came out, he was a major television star before he did that, and everything he touched turned to gold. He did TV and ads for beer and smokes --- all the bad things in life. And he came out with such a delightful movie. If he could do another one like that, I think we’d all be pretty happy.

PSB: Are you worried the sheep on the poster will attract an undesirable crowd?

Sitch: No, I don’t. (laughs) The poster has really grown on me. I think it’s the expression of the one sheep.