Apollo 13 - Popular Culture

Popular Culture

The 1974 movie Houston, We've Got a Problem, while set around the Apollo 13 incident, is a fictional drama about the crises faced by ground personnel, when the emergency disrupts their work schedules and places additional stress on their lives; only a couple of news clips and a narrator's solemn voice deal with the actual problems.

Apollo 13, a film based on Lost Moon, Jim Lovell's and Jeffrey Kluger's book about the event, was released in 1995. It was directed by Ron Howard and starred Tom Hanks as Jim Lovell, Bill Paxton as Fred Haise, Kevin Bacon as Jack Swigert, Ed Harris as flight director Gene Kranz, Kathleen Quinlan as Marilyn Lovell and Gary Sinise as Ken Mattingly. Jim Lovell, Gene Kranz, and other principals have stated that this film depicted the events of the mission with reasonable accuracy, though some dramatic license was taken. Technical inaccuracies have also been noted. The film also depicts Lovell misquoting Swigert's famous statement, "Houston, we've had a problem" as "Houston, we have a problem". However, the filmmakers purposely changed the line – and the character speaking it – because the original quote made it seem that the problem had already passed. The film was a critical and box office success, and was nominated for several Academy Awards including Best Picture, Best Supporting Actor (Harris) and Best Supporting Actress (Quinlan).

Portions of the events surrounding the Apollo 13 mission are dramatized in episode "We Interrupt This Program" of the 1998 miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, co-produced by Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. Because their film Apollo 13 covered the incident from the crew's perspective the story is instead presented from the perspective of earthbound television reporters competing for coverage of the mission.

In 2008, an interactive theatrical show titled APOLLO 13: Mission Control premiered at BATS Theatre in Wellington, New Zealand. The production faithfully recreated the mission control consoles and audience members became part of the storyline. The show also featured a 'guest' astronaut each night–a member of the public who suited up and amongst other duties, stirred the oxygen tanks and said the line "Houston, we've had a problem". This 'replacement' astronaut was a nod to Jack Swigert, who replaced Ken Mattingly shortly before the actual launch in 1970. The production toured to other cities extensively in New Zealand and Australia in 2010–2011. The production travels to the USA in 2012.

In November 2011, a notebook containing a checklist Lovell used to calculate a trajectory to get the damaged spacecraft, Apollo 13, back to earth and contains handwritten calculations by Lovell, was auctioned off by Heritage Auctions for $388,375. NASA made an email inquiry asking Heritage if Captain Lovell had clear title to the notebook, stating that NASA had "nothing to indicate" the agency had ever transferred ownership of the checklist to Lovell. In January 2012, Heritage stated that the sale had been placed on hold after NASA launched an investigation into whether it was the astronaut’s property to sell.