Duncan Jones interview: The moon, son and star

Published on Thursday 11 June 2009 15:03

AFTER THREE YEARS ON THE MOON ALL BY his lonesome, Sam Bell is marking time, eager to sail through the final fortnight of his contract and return home to wife Tess and daughter Eve. When he's not monitoring the gigantic machinery harvesting clean energy from the planet's surface, Bell, played by Sam Rockwell, exercises, builds a complicated replica of his hometown, and chats amiably with his computer helpmeet, Gerty, voiced by Kevin Spacey.

Everything's going swimmingly until the hallucinations start. One particularly vivid vision causes him to wreck his lunar rover, nearly killing him. Awakening in the sick bay, he discovers that after years of solitude he's got company: himself.

"To me what was really interesting was being face-to-face with yourself," says director Duncan Jones. "I know for me, I was angry and frustrated when I was younger and didn't know my place in the world. The me now is very different, and I can't help but think, what if I could go back and say, 'Everything is going to be OK – you just need to chill out a little bit'?'"

Jones, 38, has a wide grin embedded in a scraggly beard. He's earnest but not po-faced, and quick to laugh. The son of David Bowie with former wife Angela, he lived with his dad after the couple split, and so has lived a fairly peripatetic life, including stints in Switzerland and Berlin, and an unhappy few years at Gordonstoun in Elgin.

"It was at a time when my dad was travelling (a lot]. He was kind of over Switzerland by then, which was where I'd gone to school when I was younger. I think boarding school seemed like a smart choice from his point of view, and he was asking friends for recommendations and they were suggesting that might be a good place.

"I got very stressed out by exams and was asked to leave school, and so I took a year off. I spent some time working at the Jim Henson creature workshop and at a school for children with learning disabilities in the Swiss Alps. I took the American SAT exams for university entrance and got offered an academic and soccer scholarship to the College of Worcester, just south of Cleveland, Ohio. So, I've done the Midwest," he laughs.

"Then I followed a girl … bit of a romantic … who went off to grad school in Nashville. I was also able to get into graduate school, where I studied philosophy. When we broke up, I had no reason to be there. I did not love Nashville. It wasn't the place I wanted to be."

His father was providing voiceover narration on a television show called The Hunger – not to be confused with the film of that name in which he starred – which was produced and occasionally directed by Tony Scott. Jones wanted to make films, so he leapt at the offer of two weeks' work and found Scott incredibly supportive. "He gave me lots of good advice and told me, 'Work in commercials for a few years and then get into feature films'.

"A lot of commercial directors who say they want to make films don't," Jones says. "The lure of staying in commercials is strong because you get paid so much more than on feature films, and it's constantly new and keeps your mind working. But I was very sure what I wanted.

"I went to the London Film School right out of graduate school, then did low-budget music videos and little tiny commercials, slowly working my way up. I did my first big-budget commercial for Trevor Beattie, and when he started BMB, joined as a creative there."

He made a 26-minute film, Whistle, as a practice run. "I've always been quite prepared for whatever I'd be working on next. On Whistle, though it was a short film, I had written the script in order to make sure that it required me to work in a studio and shoot on location and abroad, all on 35mm film, in order to make it feel as much like making a feature length film as possible."

Three years ago, Jones met Rockwell to discuss a different script. The actor loved it, but they couldn't agree about which role he should take. Ultimately the film foundered but friendship blossomed, along with talk of future collaborations. Thus Moon, with its story by Jones and screenplay by Nathan Parker, was specifically written for Rockwell.

"We both had a love of science fiction. Also, I was going through a very painful long-distance relationship with a girl on the other side of the world, so that was something I wrote into the film as well – the whole loneliness thing. The other part was because of my philosophy background, that whole idea of getting to know yourself better and what would it be like if you met yourself in person? Would you like yourself or would you only see the faults?"

It's not spoiling anything to say that the two Sams are clones. With great clumsiness, however, I ask why Jones bothered filling each new Sam's head with memories. From a corporate standpoint, wouldn't they have been better, more efficient workers if they were more like blank slates? He is horrified by this suggestion and vehemently argues against it.

"He isn't a robot, that's the whole point. A clone is exactly the same as an identical twin. They're both human beings, just that a clone is scientifically manufactured and a twin biologically manufactured. They still need to know who they are and to think that they know why they're there, or they couldn't do their job properly."

It's an important issue for Jones, as I discover when I refer to the "clone". "Sam. Call him Sam. Different people react to the idea of clones in very different ways. I find them absolutely the same as a human being. They have the same genetic material as the original source.

"I have no problem with the morality of cloning. The only real drawback is that it limits the genetic variation, so you wouldn't want to do it too much, or it'll have a negative impact on our health. But as far as what the rights are and the ability of a clone to think and be and enjoy life, they are human beings."

Later, I discover that his graduate work focused on the philosophy of Daniel Dennett, whose theory, Functional Equivalence, states that "if something behaves and acts like a thing, you are required to deal with it as if it was that thing". A clone, therefore, is human because, Jones explains, "it does everything a human being does. It's your moral responsibility to treat it like a human being until it proves itself not to be."

On that basis, Moon, with its complicated, haunting themes – and stellar pair of performances by Rockwell, offering distinct perspectives on the same character – is angling to be treated like a big-budget film from an accomplished director, not a low-budget, "calling card" first feature.

"We had five million dollars for everything – salaries, effects, everything. It was a 33-day shoot. Spacey had read and loved the script and was a huge fan of Sam's, but was very concerned that we might not be able to achieve (our goals] on the budget. He said, 'Why don't you come back when you've finished and I can make sure you haven't built the sets out of shoe boxes or anything!'"

They didn't, but did use traditional techniques such as model miniatures. "The rovers driving around the moon are little toy cars being pulled by fishing line. We had two sets and there were over 450 effects shots. I was incredibly blessed to work with Sam, who's so professional and so prepared."

In closing, Jones and I touch on the problems of being the son of a famous, accomplished man. He reiterates what I've heard from others in his shoes – that doors open quickly, but expectations are higher.

He admits it took him a while to find his direction, but the payoff of that journey is here for all to see. Besides, everyone knows it's the tortoise who won in the end.

• Moon is screening on 20 and 23 June at the Cameo, as part of the Edinburgh International Film Festival.