Santa Cruz Sentinel from Santa Cruz, California • Page 26

C-6 Sunday, April 5, 1998 Sentinel Entertainment Tom Hanks flies us to the moon via HBO space, it also explores less'-Ta-mmliar sides of the space program. "The Original Wives Club," a segment directed by Sally Fields, focuses on the strains the wives of the astronauts endured while being told they had to present a happy face to the world for the sake of the mission. In "We Interrupt This Program," the Apollo 13 disaster is viewed through the eyes of the journalists covering it. Nevertheless, the i overall tone is one of triumph, of skill and hard work overcoming adversity. H' storing trust in government." Grazer, 46, seconded that view.

"The space program for me at the time, I wasn't even aware of it," he said. "I really couldn't relate to the space program and what it meant in the great scheme of things." That has been reversed in the miniseries. "We're trying to use the space program to say there was something good at that time," Grazer said. "Subconsciously, I admit it, we were mythologizing the space program. We were very excited about that idea." At the least, the excitement led to a production of enormous scale, involving some 500 speaking parts and filming at more than 100 locations.

NASA provided extensive cooperation with the miniseries, which presents the government agency in a generally positive light. The segments go beyond the traditional cliches of the space program, however. While the series includes plenty of impressive shots of rockets blasting off, astronauts enjoying weightlessness and gawky capsules hurtling through ture a sense of America, what we want it to be, the people's wisdom, that sort of thing," he added. "It's as if to say there was a happy story there after all. We're sorry we had all these bad images, but we can change that." i Tom Hayden, a leader of the demonstrations in Chicago in 1968 (he is shown briefly in some historical clips in the series), and now a California state senator, shared that view.

"Those who were really engaged with the struggle against ancient injustices and war didn't have a lot of time to think about space, and probably had a jaundiced view of this as a kind of escapism," he said. "I felt it had some merit to it but that it was a public-works program." Hanks, too, conceded that at the time, he was less impressed by the space program than he was by the general sense of chaos that characterized parts of the late 1960s and early '70s. "I remember those as some of the worst years of my life," Hanks said. "It was hell, and I wanted to get some of that acrossi in He added: "But I think the sheen we were trying to place on the Apollo program is that it was altruistic. This is part of a slow-moving wheel and absolutely it is about re- Tom Hanks starred in 'Apollo 13' and now directs 'From the Earth to the Moon' on HBO.

By JAMES STERNGOLD The New York Times TOM HANKS WAS just 12 years old in the crucial, difficult year of 1968, but at least one portion of his memories of those times is crystal clear. "Our world was very, very polarized," Hanks said in a recent interview. "If you had long hair, you were a good guy; if you had short hair, you were a bad guy. We mistrusted just about anything that had to do with the government." Thirty years later, something in-, teresting has happened in the way Hanks has chosen to depict those memories in "From the Earth to the Moon," a 12-part television miniseries about the Apollo space program for which Hanks was the executive producer and guiding force. In a telling shift in perspective, the guys with the brush cuts the astronauts, all military men and NASA specialists have become the heroes in what is characterized as a defining event for the era: the moon mission.

The longhairs and social activists who usually play a central role in documentary portraits have receded into distant, blurred images on the fringes of a period here imagined largely as a golden moment when the space program was a beacon of clarity and hope in a world losing its bearings. One powerful segment of the se- ries, which was produced for HBO by some of the same people who made "Apollo 13," the 1995 movie starring Hanks, brings this transformation into particularly sharp focus. Called "1968," the episode recalls the assassinations of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

and Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War protests, the Tet offensive and the riots at the Democratic convention in Chicago, to the rhythms of the Allman Brothers Band playing heavy blues. But the space program and the heroic race to beat the Russians to the moon are presented as more central to the spirit of the times. Indeed, the feeling is captured poetically in the closing moments of the episode. It is Christmas, and the astronauts of Apollo 8 American military men have just become the first humans to witness the wonder of the earth rising from behind the stark landscape of the moon.

It is portrayed as a moment not just of achievement but also of redemption, evident when mission control reads the astronauts a telegram from an ordinary citizen named Valerie Pringle. "You saved 1968," she wrote. The series, which will have its premiere tonight, cost HBO $68 million to make and about $10 million to promote. It is not only one of the most ambitious television productions ever undertaken; it is also, by the admission of Hanks and others involved, an ambitious rewrite of contemporary American history, an attempt, in effect, to save the 1960s for Hanks' generation. In no segment is that perspective clearer than in "1968," which was screened last month at the White "Forget The Full Monty; this is British comedy at its best.

John Hurt gives this year's most charming performance!" TIME MAGAZINE "Delightfully droll. John Hurt is simply wonderful!" Janet Maslin, THE NEW YORK VMES 1 Santa CrUZ Daily: 1:45, 4:45) 7:35, 10:10 Early Show Fri-Sun: (11:15) 1406 Pacific Ave 457-3500 THE HEARTTHROB IN THE IRON MASK: DAVID ANStN. NEWSWltK SANTA CRUZ CINEMA SKYVIEW Dl Santa Cruz457-3500 Santa pruz475-3405 SCOTTS VALLEY CINEMA CHECK TrlEATRE DIRECTORIES Santa Cruz438-3260 OR CALL FOR SHOWTIMES House with President Clinton in attendance. This is not the first indication of a popular desire to see the space program as a redeeming symbol of American resilience. The great success of "Apollo 13" was also a sign, somewhat to the surprise of some of those involved in creating the movie.

"I never dreamed it would do that well," said Brian Grazer, the producer of "Apollo 13," and a producer now of "From the Earth to the Moon." "That's what made me start to think about this project." But the paradox, Hanks and Grazer said, was that no matter how thrilling the space program seemed at certain moments, it felt at the time almost like a footnote in the face of the great social and political events of the era. That seems to be true for many baby boomers. For instance, the weighty 1987 book on the era, "The '60s: Years of Hope, Days of Rage" (Bantam), by the sociologist Todd Gitlin, includes not a single entry in its index on the space program. "The world that I was writing about was either oblivious to or scornful of the space program," said Gitlin, a professor at New York University. "You could say that America was divided between SHOWTIMES FOR THE WEEK OF 4396-4996 "LOST IN SPACE' V13, WINNER 11 OSCARS INCLUDING BEST PICTURE STARRING LEONARDO DECAPRIO AND KATE W1NSLETT MOriFRI: 4:00, 7:45 SAT-SUN: 12:00.

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