‘Good Night Opy,’ with director Ryan White

ultimately explored Mars for nearly fifteen years. The film is currently in limited release, so you can catch it in select theaters, but it will hit Amazon Prime on November. This film is is a real joy. You might not think you would be into watching a film about a Mars rover, but it is richly entertaining. It's emotional. I think you're gonna dig it. I think you're gonna want to see it with your family's I'm planning to watch it again with my family when it hits Amazon Prime.

So without further ado, let's jump right into the interview. Hi, Ryan, thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having me so one question that I just had to ask, especially as the documentary was was getting into some of the backgrounds on the various individuals involved in the project. Were you yourself a space enthusiast as a child? So I grew up in Georgia, and from my very first

memories I wanted to be an astronaut um. The cabbage patch style factories in Cleveland, Georgia, where my family was frequent in a lot and I had the the cabbage Patch astronaut version that I went to bed with every night. My fifth grade social studies project was on the astronaut Alan Shepherd, because my dad had met him at a golf tournament and gotten his autograph, which I put up

on a backboard and wrote a paper about him. So my dream was to go to space as a little kid, and I was probably not surprisingly also a big film nerd, space nerd and film nerd, and so I loved movies like E T which is still my favorite film, and I love The Flight of the Navigator when I was a boy in the eighties. Uh. And it's a dream that clearly never panned out for me. I never became an astronaut um, but I did end up becoming a filmmaker, and so one of my favorite parts about my job.

I'm forty one now and I probably made thirteen or fourteen films. Uh. The amount of access that I get to these incredible journeys that people are on that I really should have no right to be alongside them for UM, to me is one of the coolest parts about my job. And so I always knew I had a rare job that could probably con my way back into that childhood dream somehow just by latching onto another story. And I was just waiting for the right story, and this one

dropped into my lap. I'll never forget the date. It was, March twelve, UM, and I had a dinner in Los Angeles with Some forty five, which is Pete Burgh's company, and Ambling Entertainment, which I think most people know is Steven Spielberg's company, and made e t which is prominently put put on my poster right now for Goodnight Oppy,

which I'm still pinching myself. And they pitched me at that dinner this idea for this film, and I've been waiting for the space story that I felt like checked all the boxes for what I love to make in documentaries, and I felt like, immediately this is this is the one. So, so what aren't those boxes that that it kind of checked off for you, Like, how do you how do you see good Night Oppy matching up with some of

the characteristics of your your previous documentaries. Yeah, it's a good question because I think people look at the subject matters of my documentaries and they are all over the place. Um. And so that is one of the things I also love about my job is I call it career a d D. We get to pivot very quickly from one subject matter to another, but you get to spend you know, two or three years doing a deep dive into something that you're you know, deeply interested in, um, which I've

done on many of my films. But all of my films have a through line in the sense that they're all very character driven UM. And I'm always interested in characters that are in a crucial place in their lives where they are going through something remarkable, and sometimes that remarkable can be something quite dark and heavy, and sometimes that remarkable can be something quite joyful. UM. And many

times I've made films that involve both. I made a film about Serena Williams where it was the highest of highs the year I was following her and then it dropped out at the lowest of lows. UM. But I like to bear witness to those types of journeys. UM. And so while APPI is my first non human star of a documentary, UM, I felt like it was character driven,

just like all of my previous films. Of course in the way that the robots are personified, but especially in the way that the robots are actually just extensions of the human characters themselves. So I feel like, you know, Opportunity is nothing but a box of wires without these human beings that are infusing this, um, this emotion and

feeling into her journey. UM. And So it might it might on face values seem a little bit more inverse um from what my other films have done, but I still approached it as a character based film and a character on a journey that will have a beginning, middle, and end. Yeah, there's such an animated cast of interviewees in this, uh, some great characters. UM. I imagine some

viewers might be surprised by. But like, when when you were going into it, did you have certain expectations about, um, about what the the human stories would be in this and how did you react to that as a as as a director, I was very guilty of preconceived notions about scientists and engineers, So I just assumed that our biggest challenge would be finding compelling human being characters. I

thought scientists and engineers might be very academic, somewhat dry. Um. I assumed that they would be unemotionally detached from their work. And what I thought was going to be our biggest challenge ended up being the complete opposite. The biggest challenge in the end was how do we limit the amount of human being characters that we include in this film?

Because this is a team of thousands of people that work on these robots in some way throughout their lifetimes, and we only have eleven human beings in our film.

And that's because we found that everyone that we talked to had some sort of emotional bond with these rovers or some sort of emotional anecdote or the way that they related to these rovers, or they related them to people or pets in their lives, and everyone had an incredible backstory, which I truly believe, like everybody has a backstory.

That's sort of always my entry point into documentaries, and this just was an embarrassment of riches when it came to backstories that that we're compelling, and so you know, we'll never be able to do this full team justice. I have to be okay with that. Um. And you know, you could have made Goodnight OPI with eleven other human characters and it probably would have been a great film as well. And then you could make it with another eleven characters and it would be great. They would all

be different permutations, I think. Um. We were very conscious of finding not only great storytellers with great backstories, but also finding people where audiences because we really want this to be a broad audience. We want families to be able to watch this film together and worldwide. Uh. We were very conscious of finding people where a young person out there somewhere in the world might see themselves represented

on screen. So if you are a boy in Africa or a young woman in India and you might think planetary exploration is not a career for you, and then you see, you know, two engineers from one from Ghana and one from India who are rover drivers, Um, you might think, why can't that be me? Awesome? Yeah, yeah, I thought it was a very relatable film. I'm looking forward to to watching it again with my family when it when it comes out on Prime. Thank you. Yeah, I hope, I hope a lot of families will do that.

And it's coming out, you know, the day before Thanksgiving, and I think that's not just a random date pick. That's in hopes that people will be home and watching things on Prime and might do you know, co viewing with their familes. Now, the opportunity Rover is of course very relatable and and this is this is laid out

perfectly and in the documentary. You know, it has eyes, it's roughly human high, it has a face, and all of the individuals who talked to or many of them, have formed these connections with it and end up anthropomorphizing it to some extent. Um I wondered too, is when you first went into the project, did you have sort of expectations about to what level you would the film would anthropomorphize OPPI And then did that change during the

course of the production we went through. So we, like I said, the first dinner about this film was March twelve.

So the next morning is when we got an email in Los Angeles at least saying you can't leave your homes Um and so this film all booted up in the summer spring and summer of and so the process begin in with dozens of pre interviews, and my producing partners Jessica Hargrave and Grace oath Out did those because I don't like to interview people twice, right, Like you don't want someone coming on camera and then feeling like they already told you the story and they're repeating themselves.

So jess and Grace would have these three or four hour long conversations with these people who played some role in the rovers lives, and every time they would send me an email with the Zoom file, and Zoom was brand new at that time, saying like, oh my god, this person was so emotional or so incredibly connected with the robots. So once we started watching these people tell these stories, uh, I knew that we had something special and something different than what than what I had um expected.

And I think one of the really fascinating parts is this was a mission that was supposed to last for ninety days, so you are prepared for a very short life in and yes, you know they will speak about being bonded to the Rovers by the time they left Earth and it's like seeing a kid off to college. And I think that's one of the more emotional scenes

in my film is watching them and both launch. But when you think your creature is going to survive ninety days, Max, I think you, uh, you limit the amount that you're willing to fall for that creature. You know that the warranty is going to expire soon. But when that creature exponentially outlast the odds and opportunities case that was sixty times the lifespan that was expected. So instead of ninety days,

they reach year one, year two, year three. Both of them reach that long, that emotional broun grows even more and more and more, and you start wondering, which we go into the film like whether that lifespan could be an could be infinity because the the death of these rovers everyone thought would be because of the sun, because their solar powered and there's so much dust on ours that a built up of dust would prevent the solar panels from reaching the Sun at some point, and then

they had this phenomenon of dust devils would pass by which they were terrified of, which ended up acting as like like car washes for the rovers. And so then these people started wondering if these rovers could live forever, and then of course that emotional bond grows even more.

It's like your children that you hope out last to you. Uh. And so when the time comes that Mars finally delivers its final blow to both spirit and opportunity, it's it's like a grief process that these people had to go through, and they don't get the time at Nassas to grief the way you do the death of a human or maybe even a pet. Here you move on to the next mission the next day. You don't take days off, and so they didn't get the time um to grieve.

And suddenly they have a documentary filmmaker knocking on their door saying, I want to know all about two daughters that went to Mars. And so I think in a lot of ways it was cathartic for them to get to talk about this mission, and that's where a lot of that emotion comes from in my film. I'm very surprised I didn't. It's not like I intended to make a huge tear jerker. We never had those conversations in the edit room, I guarantee you, of like, when can

we make people cry? I'm very surprised with audiences right now how many tears there are. But I think there's there's something about these rovers that just does something to people's hearts. Um and seeing the emotional journey that the human beings were on as well through them. Now. Blake Neely's score is really great in this and uh and I also really loved the way the film ultimately takes the wake up song tradition and and weave that into

the soundtrack. How did all of this come together? Well, Blake is my longtime collaborator, ten years every film he's worked on with me, and I feel very lucky because until recently I was only his only documentary filmmaker. He's mostly done scripted television and film, and just this past year he cheated on me with another documentary filmmaker, but she's a good friend of mine, so I've forgiven them both.

But I feel very lucky that he has my My projects are kind of his side passion projects, and he's very protective of them, and he writes them all himself, and he works on them from the moment i'm pitching him an idea, you know, we don't wait until the

edit or picture lock especially until finishing. To start writing music, we start at the beginning, especially on this film, because Blake is very similar to me, and that he grew up as a kid in Texas wanting to be an astronaut and loves space films, and so I knew that this would be appealing to him. But good Night at Being, more than any of my films that I've ever made, really is a tapestry of sounds. So blake score is

very um cinemat Dick. It's a bigger score than what we normally right had a sixty something person orchestra, which you don't typically have on a documentary. We had the wake up song, so every every morning, the rovers woken

up with a song that Mission Control on Earth plays. Um. It's sort of like a fun tradition that derived from human space flight when astronauts would be open up, that would be woken up that way, And so we were able to we have seven songs in the film that we're played during certain critical moments in the robots lives to wake them up or to try to save their lives. And then the third component of that tapestry is the sound design throughout our film, where we had Mark Mangini,

who is a legendary sound designer. He won Oscars for mad Max, Fury Road and for Done, and he was doing the sound on this film in a way that was like completely rooted in authenticity, Like he was recording the real replicas of these robots at the Jet propulsion and laboratory, and he was using real recordings that the current Rover perseverance was audio recordings that she was sending down from Mars of what Mars sounds like. It was the first time we were hearing. And so it was

a real dance between those three things. Blake scored these super famous wake up songs and then Mark Manginie's really authentic sound design and I've never worked this long on sound in one of my films. And the other big component of that is Angela Bassett. So she she ends up reading what are called the Rover Diaries, which are a daily account that a human being would write that are written, you know, in present tense, first person, as

a crisis or major discovery is going down. And so we were incorporating her voice as well as part of that tapestry. And Mark Mangini actually recorded angela different than how we recorded everyone else in the documentary. So Angela when she recorded her her voiceover, had microphones all around her from three sixty degrees. So when you watch our film in a theater, Angela's coming from everywhere. She's like the voice inside of us. That's always what I wanted

her role to be. She was this maternal figure that cared deeply for the robots and collectively was playing the voice of Nasa. So for as far as my previous films, this was by far the biggest sound design. But I have to say one of the most fun parts of making this film was getting to spend so much time trying to nail down the perfect sound tapestry. Wow and uh.

And on the visual end of the spectrum, Uh, the effects are are wonderful in this their atmospheric but also thrilling and educational, uh, you know, showing up, especially when we're dealing with like the different phases of of reaching Mars, deploying to the surface, etcetera. And this was industrial light and magic. Yes, what was that like? Working with with I L. M oh Man, it was a dream come true.

I was not only working with Ambulance and Mark Manginie and Angela Bassett, but I was working with the best in the business when it comes to visual effects, and of course very few documentaries need visual effects of that caliber. But the vision for this film from the beginning was to swing big. So the motto for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is the hub of NASA's Mars mission program, is

dare Mighty Things UM. And I always love that motto from the very beginning, because these are people that aren't taking their swinging for the bleachers with these missions, and when they fail, they failed publicly, they fail hard, which the two missions right before this one had done UM and so they were sort of a laughing stock, and they're told that these things that they want to achieve are impossible, and then they figure out a way to

prove that wrong. And I felt like, if we're going to make a film about these incredible innovators, that we need to be innovative our ourselves in the film and

not make such a traditional educational doc. You know, we have amazing archival from NASA in the film, but I wanted to weave that together with the journey of the robots, and my vision from the very beginning was saying, can we take the audience to Mars, and not in a cartoon way, in a photo real way, like can we feel like I was there with my camera crew shooting on Mars because we know exactly what Mars looks like, that it is not a mystery anymore. Because of opportunity

and spirit. They both had nine cameras on them, they took hundreds of thousands of photographs. We know what every hour of their journey looked like around them. So we gave those hundreds of thousands of photographs and a ton of data that NASA supplied to US um to Industrial Light Magic and you know, normally people are going to Industrial Light and magic and saying we're hiring you for

your imagination, like what's what's your creation gonna be? And I was coming to them from the complete opposite direction, saying, please, don't use your imagination at all, Please use all your technical skills and are you capable of this? Because I remember saying to them like, if this is going to look like a cartoon, we should not go down this path. And they said, we've never done it before, but we would love to try building Mars from the ground up,

and that is an incredibly laborious process. Creating those types of visual effects. It took years. Um, but I have to say the biggest compliments visually to our film have been having theatrical screenings with the scientists and engineers who spend every day on Mars through their avatars, these robots, saying, we never thought this could look that real in video, like it feels like we're there. So they really knocked

it out of the park. And I'm so grateful for them because I know I drove them insane as a documentary filmmaker. They are not used to working with people like me who are such sticklers for accuracy, but they really rose to the challenge and then some wow, yeah, well the results are amazing. So a couple of couple of final questions here. Um. First of all, you mentioned earlier growing up in some of the sort of space

and sci fi films that that inspired you. But as as your career took you into the realm of documentaries, were there particular documentaries or particular documentary directors that inspired you or continue to inspire you the most? Oh man, I could go on all day long about this, um, but absolutely, and you know there are filmmakers that inspire me, that make completely different types of films than me. You know, we we go on this Fall Fest Civil tour and

I'm with. What I love about the doc community is like your heroes are right there. It's not that hard to meet your heroes once you're in that world. And your heroes are kind, generous people who are excited if you're excited about their films. Because we've never been the most popular kid in the class from um, you know, documentaries have always been relegated to a sideline, and so you know, I've I've gotten to meet my heroes repeatedly. I was on a panel the other day next to

Laura Poittress. I think she's one of the best documentary filmmakers ever. Steve James, Frederick Wiseman, Da Penna Baker I got to know before he passed away. Agnes Varda is the reason I'm a documentary filmmaker because I saw her movie. I didn't even know what a documentary was when I was entering college and I saw one of her movies in a movie theater for extra credit in a class and thought, like, what is she doing? But I want to find out what that format is. And I, you know,

maybe ten years later, fifteen years later. Got to tell Agnes Varda that at a brunch. Um, And so I'm continually inspired by you know, and we're friends, so we we all go off on these crazy ventures. You know, Margaret Brown, who made Descendant this year, is a very good friend. Matthew Hyneman, who made Retrograde, is a very good friend. I didn't even know Matthew was making a film in Afghanistan. Um. You know, we're friends, but we

don't get to see each other all the time. So it's this fun community where you you you're all off on these separate adventures and you're so funneled into your work. And then just by coincidence, if if timing works out where your films are coming out the same year, you're around each other a lot, and you get to celebrate each other's films. And I think it's a remarkably uncompetitive community. I know it seems competitive when you get to awards time and all of that, but you don't feel that

when you're with these people. You feel an excitement about the diversity of filmmaking that's happening within this quite small community. So, in closing, what do you think was the most important thing you wanted the documentary to get across. Regarding the Mars Exploration rover mission, I don't spend a lot of my time while I'm making films like thinking a lot about takeaways of what I want the audience to take away,

Like what I'm always wanting the audience. It's not what they take away, it's what they feel, which is always more important to me. And so I'm always just conscious of trying to create something that takes someone on an emotionally transformative journey. But that being said, this film had layers that not some of my other films have not had. And one of those layers, which is inevitable, is that

we made it during some very dark years in our culture. Um. You know, the film began during the height of COVID. We partnered with Amazon. We were taking this film out to the distributors during November, so the height of the American election. And one of the things I hope for this film is that it is a relief for people. It is a story people from all over the world coming together on a common project that is for the better of mankind. It is a very hopeful story. It

is a mostly a political story. Um, there are definitely important scientific and environmental conclusions that Opportunity and Spirit had while they were on Mars, namely that our sister planet did once have water and possibly life on it and

what happened to that atmosphere. But Goodnight APPI is an emotional character journey, and so I hope, mostly especially coming out of some very dark years, that people will just enjoy the fun adventure and families will enjoy that together and take some inspiration from watching, you know, this unlikely group of human beings who came together to do something incredible.

And I know that sounds a little cheesy, but I know I was completely inspired every day watching it while I was making it, and it was a lifesaver um and so I'm just really grateful that it happened to fall in my lap on March twelve. Well excellent. I encourage all of our listeners to go out and and check it out. Ryan, thanks for taking time out of your day and chatting with me. Thank you so much

for having me. Thanks again to Ryan White for taking time out of his day to chat with us Before we close up the episode, though, I'd love to listen to some trailer audio for Goodnight Appy. This has build a launch control three three two to one mag and start and look draw. Yeah, but she becomes a family member. Our whole objective was to build two solar powered rovers that could survive three months on Mars, and the pressure on the team is really phenomenal. Was Mars went to

green world with living things and blue oceans. This is the very first time we breathe life into the rover. It's just a box of wires, right, but you end up with this cuteish looking roball that has a face. Oh, it's a lot's fly. Ladies and gentlemen are privileged to be in one of the monkey setting rooms on Earth. At the moment Rover diary, the signal from the vehicle is solid and strong. Opportunity is on Mars. What do we do next. Let's hit the road, pedal to the

metal and go see Lars. We see these dust devils and we were concerned that would be the way that she died. Ours was a spacecraft graveyard when we flew h. I don't think anyone expects it's the robots to survive all these disasters. You get this feeding of but basically invincible through this robot. We are on this incredible adventure together, humans are capable of forming a connection in a barn to a robot. She rewrote the history books good Night Opportunity.

Well done again. The film is good Night Appy. It is out in limited release, but it will also hit Amazon Prime on November. Thanks as always to Seth Nickel Johnson for producing Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Just a reminder that we have core science episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind on Tuesdays and Thursdays and Stuff to Blow your Mind podcast feed. On Monday's, we do listener mail. On Wednesday's, we do a short form artifact or monster

fact episode. On Fridays, we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious concerns and just talk about a weird film. If you want to reach out to us, if you have thoughts, if you have comments, if you have suggestions for the future, you can email us at contact. It's Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind's production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your

favorite shows. Way Way Way to People, proper