Interview:
Bill Wise,
"Apollo 10 1/2:
A Space Age Childhood"
All things come to those who wait, as Bill Wise now knows firsthand. After making appearances in Richard Linklater’s SubUrbia, Waking Life, Boyhood, and his unsold TV pilot $5.15/hr, the longtime staple of Austin’s acting community enjoys his first major role in a film directed by the acclaimed and influential writer/director. In Linklater’s 1969-set family film Apollo 10 ½: A Space Age Childhood, Bill Wise plays the father of Stan (newcomer Milo Coy), a preteen Houstonian obsessed with the impending Apollo 11 Moon landing. Linklater’s latest walk down memory lane focuses on a Houston family of eight led by Wise’s NASA shipping and receiving manager and Lee Eddy’s stay-at-home mom and grad school student. This family friendly space race drama is energized by the imagination of Stan, who longs to be an astronaut. (Linklater regular Jack Black narrates Apollo 10 ½ as the voice of the adult Stan.) Linklater shot his live-action footage at Robert Rodriguez’s Troublemaker Studios with an Austin-centric cast that includes Wise, Eddy, Coy, Glen Powell, and Zachary Levi. Linklater then sent the Sandra Adair-edited live-action version of the film to the Austin-based Minnow Mountain to digitally hand-paint the characters using the process known as rotoscoping. Submarine in the Netherlands completed the rest of the computer-animated imagery. Apollo 10 ½, which received its world premiere during this year’s SXSW Film Festival, is now streaming on Netflix and will screen April 9, 10, and 12 at the AFS Cinema. Bill Wise, a former Austinite now residing in San Antonio, is known for his roles in Andrew Bujalski’s Support the Girls, Results, and Computer Chess; Bob Byington’s France Ferguson, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Harmony and Me, RSO: Registered Sex Offender; Trey Edward Shults’ Waves and Krisha; and Jim Cummings’ Thunder Road. Wise has also acted in the recent films The Get Together, Sister Aimee, The Golden Rut, Austin High, Ultimate Guide to Flight, and the Kim Henkel-written Butcher Boys. He even appeared in the Kim Henkel-directed Texas Chainsaw: The Next Generation, which also starred Linklater fixture Matthew McConaughey. Wise also worked on several Rooster Teeth projects, including the feature film Lazer Team, the live-action series Crunch Time, and the animated series Red vs. Blue. Aired: April 7, 2022. Web sites: https://www.netflix.com/ |
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