Ben Marley in Apollo 13

In Apollo 13, Ben Marley plays John Young, an astronaut on the alternate team for the Apollo 13 mission, with Kevin Bacon (before Bacon gets bumped up to the main team when it is feared that Sinise will get the measles).

Now the funniest thing is: and I probably won’t be believed, but whatever: I had no idea that this guy was Ben Marley, who was such a dreamboat to me as a 12 year old girl when he appeared in Skyward – but he (and his part) made an impression on me in Apollo 13. He is memorable. The movie isn’t a star vehicle, although there are stars in it, obviously. It’s an ensemble, one of the most special things about it. Ed Harris is important, but so is the little guy played by Ron Howard’s brother. Tom Hanks is important, but so are all the Mission Control guys with their slide rules. It’s a group effort to get those guys home, and it takes all hands on deck – the heroes and the geeks. The geeks ARE the heroes. What other movie has people doing arithmetic sums as a nail-biting sequence? So there’s that aspect to the movie, where even the big stars kind of blend into the ensemble (my favorite kind of movie, by the way).

I’m not a big Ron Howard fan, and Beautiful Mind made me angry. It would take a hell of a lot for me to get over it and say I was a Ron Howard fan (Skyward notwithstanding) … but Apollo 13 is a true high-point, I think, and one of my favorite all-time movies.

I remember seeing it in the theatre in Chicago with Jim, and there’s the first scene – with everyone gathered at the Lovell house to watch the moon-landing. And there was that one long panning shot of everyone gathered in the living room (and yes, Ben Marley is there!), watching Neil Armstrong step onto the moon. It’s not the footage on the television that is the moving part about that scene – it is the faces of everyone watching. Goosebumps. I heard Jim start to cry next to me. The scene then ended and Jim glanced at me and whispered, “This is going to be a long movie.” We howled. 30 seconds in and we’re weeping.

But BACK TO BEN MARLEY.

I’ve seen the movie so many times now that I admit I have it memorized and all of the bit parts are just as engrained in my memory as Ed Harris’ best lines. Everyone NAILS their roles. There are no unimportant parts.

And Ben Marley has two moments that are among my favorite in the movie – again, having no idea even who he WAS when I first saw it.

The first moment I love is after the scene where Sinise, Hanks and Paxton are all in the simulator. This is before they’ve gone into space, obviously. Their team has been bumped up and they are racing to finish preparing before launch. It’s a tense scene with Sinise as the pilot, trying to line up the whosiwhatsit with the thingamajig. He makes it without burning them all up – but as they come out, and as the alternate team (with Marley and Bacon) come up the steps for their training session, Sinise stops everything and says, “My rate of entry was still a little too steep … I really think we need to try it again.” The alternate team stops in their tracks, and kind of glance back at the head honcho, like … okay, what do we do now? Someone says, “We really don’t have time … launch is tomorrow …” Sinise is unmoved and says, “I don’t feel good about it. I think we need to try it again.” There’s a pause and then Hanks, the commander, says, “Well, let’s get it RIGHT” – and the top team goes to go back into the simulator, and the alternates (you know, Ben Marley, Kevin Bacon, et al), all suited up with nowhere to go, head back down the steps. There is a breezy macho Right Stuff exchange between the two teams – the alternates are all kind of laughing, like, “Fine, fine, we’ll go back to second place” – and in the middle of that exchange, one of the astronauts says, laughing and nodding in a macho blase way, “Yeah, baby.”

That man is Ben Marley. The scene fades out on his line.

It stuck with me.

Now I am not sure if astronauts in 1970 said “Yeah, baby”, I am not sure if that was in the vernacular at that time, so the moment always struck me as a little anachronistic, but also charming and evocative of the entire relationship here between the two teams. It adds reality to what is not expressed in the script. That NEEDS to be in place, we need to “get” how the two teams operate, and how the system works … and to me, that good-natured yet still kind of competitive, “Yeah baby” does it. I imagine that’s why Howard kept it in. It is clearly improvised. Anachronistic or no, it acts as a shorthand, letting us, the audience know, how the whole thing works.

So that moment is one I love in this movie full of great moments.

Oh, and let me backtrack a bit.

When I watched Skyward with Keith and Dan, we all were swooning over Ben Marley’s hot ass and other very important aspects of that film. Keith went to the computer afterwards and IMDB’d Ben Marley. Keith said, “Oh! He was in Apollo 13!”

Having seen that movie so many times, I stopped in my tracks, racking my brains to figure out which one he was – one of the mission control guys? There’s that hot redhead who has one of my favorite lines in the film, which got one of the biggest laughs in the entire picture, “Okay, Jim. Copy that.” He was hot enough that it made me wonder if THAT was Ben Marley – but then – suddenly – I knew exactly who Ben Marley was – and that HE was the one who has the “Yeah, baby” moment that I love so much. I could see his face. Mentally, I compared it with the hottie in Skyward. Of course. Same guy. And then his whole part came rushing back to me: dude is all through Apollo 13, he’s in almost every scene.

Well, naturally, I raced home from seeing Skyward and Skyward Christmas (which I’ll get to) and watched Apollo 13, ONLY looking for Ben Marley. It is quite a bizarre experience and I highly recommend it. There are huge crowd scenes in Mission Control, where normally I would be looking at Ed Harris or Gary Sinise, and this time I was scanning frantically for Ben Marley. What is he doing?? And whatever he was doing was always organic and right for the scene. This is true of the entire ensemble of that picture. Very few of them have closeups … but without them? The movie flat out would not work.

The other moment of Ben Marley’s that I love – that I loved before I knew it was Ben Marley, I really feel the need to make that clear – is after the explosion. Everyone at Mission Control is freaking out – and groups start to splinter off, to ‘work the problem’. There’s a scene in a classroom, where everyone is talking and freaking out and Ed Harris walks in and everyone kind of settles down. They begin to discuss what to do, with Ed Harris leading the conversation. Everyone has their say. I liked that aspect of the Mission Control scenes, and Gene Kranz himself has said that the movie really captured that aspect of what it was like. Yes, these guys are all (mainly) military men, used to a chain of command – but what Apollo 13 shows is that everyone has their say, authority was not just blindly followed – some ideas were taken on, others rejected – but you really get the sense that although Ed Harris is clearly in charge, this is not a top-down “do what I say” organization. He makes some comment about what they need to do, and a harassed guy explodes, “That is NOT the argument – we do a direct abort and bring them home NOW.” He is not punished for insubordination or anything like that. The entire thing is a discussion, an urgent brainstorming session.

Actually, there are two moments looped into one here – and I just love how Ben Marley plays it. Ed Harris takes charge of the room, after the big discussion, and then says, in general – to everyone – “Get everyone in here who knows anything about that ship” -and suddenly, Marley, who has been leaning over and murmuring something to someone else, straightens up – and walks out of the room. It’s like he’s doing 3 things at once. He’s involved in the problem, he’s concerned, and what he is playing in the moment of leaning over to a colleague is probably saying, “We gotta get Ken Mattingly in that simulator” and in the same moment, Harris says, “Get everyone in here you know …” A moment of synchronicity, of shared action, unspoken – that’s one of the best things about this movie. A more emotional movie you would be hard-pressed to find, but it doesn’t dwell on emotion, it is all about the DOING. Marley is leaning over, talking to his colleague, and is ALSO listening to Ed Harris. You know how you can hear two things at the same time in really stressful high-stakes moments – and so, at some unseen cue, he straightens up and walks out of the room. Having seen the movie a million times, it is so clear – he’s off to get Ken Mattingly.

I just love that moment.

As I mentioned in my post on Skyward with the dance scene, Howard adds in a couple of shots in that scene that up the ante (people looking on, Lisa Whelchel looking on, Ben Marley’s boot acting as a propeller) … these things make the scene, which is already good, even better. Howard is at his best in those moments, I think. He does not let his sentimentality get the better of him (which is not the case in other moments in his films, when he cannot leave well enough alone).

The men in Apollo 13 are not introspective men. These are men of action. These are men of initiative. They are paid and rewarded for being able to figure shit out on their own, and the brief shot of the guy getting up and leaving the room – without asking permission, without running it by Ed Harris – just leaving – tells us all we need to know. It’s why he’s an astronaut good enough to be an alternate. You don’t get to that level without showing you can do shit on your own and make on-the-spot choices.

I don’t know how many times I’ve seen the movie, but I always look forward to that moment – him bolting from the room.

This loops in to the next moment of his that I love.

Gary Sinise, as Ken Mattingly, has been wallowing in a tarpit of self-pity, drinking beer and watching television with the phone off the hook, because he’s so bummed he was bumped from the mission. So obviously Ben Marley has been trying to contact him via phone for 45 minutes, an hour – before finally Marley can’t wait, drives to the motel (it looks like) where Mattingly is staying and has the landlord let him into the room. Sinise is passed out in the bed when Marley comes busting in, turning on the lights.

Sinise is groggy, looks up blurrily at Ben Marley and Marley says (my next favorite part of his in the movie), “Good. You’re not dead.”

It’s a very funny moment, because it’s not played sentimentally, or with any emotion. Marley is more pissed than anything. He has needed to find Mattingly, he has been ringing the room nonstop, but the phone is off the hook. Mattingly has made all of this WAY more difficult than it needs to be, and Marley has had to waste the time to DRIVE to the motel in this high-pressure situation and get someone to let him in.

“Good. You’re not dead,” he says flatly to Sinise, and then barges through the room, turning on all the lights, going into the bathroom to get Sinise’s stuff ready for him, clothes, razor, whatever he needs.

Sinise is coming out of sleep, and groggy, he has no idea what has happened … and so it is up to Ben Marley to fill Sinise in, but also to re-cap for us, the audience, what is going on. He’s got a big monologue. Some of it is said as we see him rustling through the bathroom – but most of it is heard in voiceover, with a big ol’ closeup on Sinise’s face, as he begins to realize what has happened.

Ben Marley as John Young, the astronaut:

“We gotta get you into the simulator. We’ve got a ship to land. There’s been an explosion. Oxygen tanks are gone, two fuel cells gone, command module’s shut down. The crew’s fine so far. Trying to keep them alive in the lem. We’re going to have to shut that down too. We got a lot of people working the numbers on this one, Ken. Nobody’s too sure how much power we’re gonna have when we hit re-entry. The command module’s gonna be frozen up pretty good by then.”

Again, this is not a flashy part. There are no flashy parts in a movie such as this one. You just show up, embody your character, and do your best to fit in to the whole. You can’t outshine the others, because that would tip the balance of the film, but when it is your moment to, you know, shine – that’s what you do. Nail it. That’s why you’re cast. Like the pudgy little guy who has one big scene, building the filter for the CO2 cartridges, making a square peg fit into a round hole. That guy maybe has three lines, but my God, who doesn’t remember him? His look of dismay when Paxton tears the bag, and then he says, harassed, “They should have one more up there …” He’s MARVELOUS – but does anyone know his name? It doesn’t matter. Whoever he is, he shows up, does his part, and is an integral part of the whole.

Ben Marley, with his scene here in the motel room with Sinise, is an integral part of the whole. He re-caps the crisis for us, but he does it in a way that does not feel like boring exposition. He has made it seem organic.

Then comes the whole Loren Dean section of the film. He doesn’t make his entrance until more than halfway through. He is the one who suggests to Ed Harris that the issue is really POWER, not time or the engine or oxygen, only power. Everything hinges on the power in that lem, and it needs to be maximized for re-entry. This is why Gary Sinise needs to get into the simulator and work the sequencing, to try to save as much power as they can.

It’s almost like there are two movies here: Pre-Loren Dean, During-Loren Dean. Once he takes over, his plot-line becomes the secondary path of the film, NOT the ones with the dudes in Mission Control. In the second half of the film, we have the three guys up in the lem, and Loren Dean, Gary Sinise and Ben Marley trying to figure out the power issue in the simulator.

Ben Marley fans (all of you new fans out there) won’t want to miss it!

Gary Sinise and Ben Marley enter the simulator area, and Loren Dean breathes a sigh of relief that Sinise is finally there. “We gotta get you in there,” he says to Sinise. Marley is the third person in the scene. He is not peripheral. He is essential. Part of the team. As Sinise goes to get into the simulator, it’s like Roy Scheider saying, “Show time!” in All That Jazz. Loren Dean has already rushed off to the office, and Ben Marley calls out to the crowd of technicians:

“Let’s get this show on the road. Put ‘im in space, fellas.”

Yes, SIR.

Frankly, you can put ME in space any time you like.

I remember Skyward. I was THERE, my friend.

Then comes the tense ongoing sequence of trying to get the order right of powering down so that they don’t over-amp-age, watt-age, whatever. Gary Sinise is in the simulator, Loren Dean and Ben Marley are in the office, with little headsets on, and with each mistake, things get tenser. Time is running out. There isn’t time to dick around – they MUST figure it out. Now Loren Dean is obviously running these scenes, but Ben Marley’s quiet presence, beside him, full of thought and urgency and support, is essential to the sequence working, for an audience. If it had just been Loren Dean and Sinise in the simulator- it wouldn’t have worked as well. Ron Howard has an uncanny sense of things like that. It has to be THREE in those scenes, not just TWO. Because THREE brings in the waiting outer world, THREE adds to the sense of urgency. If it was just two, then the audience might be lulled into the sense that working out the power sequence is just an intellectual exercise. But no, having the third there – Marley – another astronaut – reminds us of the stakes. Loren Dean is the brainiac. He lives in isolation, going over his numbers by himself. Sinise is the rejected astronaut, not at all involved (except peripherally) in the mission. But having Marley in those scenes, hovering, concerned, quiet – brings all of those waiting guys in Mission Control, brings Ed Harris into those scenes.

Essential.

A couple moments I noticed in my last viewing that I adore beyond measure:

They finally get the sequencing right. It’s incredibly tense. Loren Dean and Marley glance at each other, almost afraid to move, then Dean says, “I think we got it …” and CUT.

Next we see a car screaming up to the Mission Control building door, and out of the car jump Loren Dean, Gary Sinise and Ben Marley. Gary Sinise is busy putting on his jacket, he’s got on Ray Banz, he’s basically hot as shit … he’s clutching papers in his hand, with the sequence on it … Ben Marley jumps out of the car and the three men dash to the door. A security guard kind of steps forward, about to ask them, “Who are you guys?” and Marley – firmly, yet somehow gently – moves the man out of the way – so they can blow by. GREAT MOMENT. I had never noticed it before, but this last time of course I had to watch it five times. Loren Dean and Sinise are charging forward – the security guard makes a move – and suddenly Marley is there, moving the dude physically out of the way. HAWT! The camera follows the three men as they barrel into the building, with people hustling to get out of the way, knowing that these three are IT … get out of the damn way, these are the men we have been waiting for …

The three men burst into the Mission Control main room, and you can hear someone say, “Ken’s here …” and Sinise is there, in all his star power as an actor, moving into the room, grabbing a headset – but Loren Dean and Ben Marley are right at his side. The team who have, after all this time, “figured it out”.

The rest of the film has Gary Sinise gently talking the exhausted and sick crew up in space through the sequence. Throughout, you can see Ben Marley in the background, deep in thought – almost willing himself up into the wounded ship, to try to MAKE these guys get home safe. Isn’t that just what you would do if you were him? Wouldn’t you just want to be up there with them? That’s what he’s playing, all by himself, in the background. The other guys in the scene are the engineers and technicians … but he is actually an astronaut, and he has the quiet crazy energy of a guy who knows what it’s like, and is trying to keep CALM, like he would do if he were in the pilot seat.

Seriously, Ben Marley fans – you want to have some fun? Watch the final 25 minutes of Apollo 13 and just focus on Ben Marley, and what he is doing during those huge crowd scenes. You want to see why I love actors so much? Watch HIM during Apollo 13, not the stars. Movies like Apollo 13 would not be possible without actors like him in the smaller parts. Everything he does adds to the general vibe Howard needs in every moment, everything he does is part of the STORY. It has no SELF in it. Of course there are stars, and they deserve their big fat closeups, they’re stars after all – but none of it would be possible without everyone AROUND them, doing their jobs, with no glory, and setting up the star to be, well, a star. It’s why I count Thomas Mitchell as one of my favorite actors of all time. Or Claude Rains. These people were not leading men, they did not carry pictures – but imagine Notorious without the Claude Rains character. Imagine It’s a Wonderful Life or Only Angels Have Wings without Thomas Mitchell. NOT. POSSIBLE. It is those actors, the second-tier actors, who REALLY make the movies we love possible. Stars are awesome, I love me some stars, but they do not act in a vacuum. They need their support players to be as committed, as IN the world they are trying to create, as they are.

That’s what’s going on with Ben Marley in those last scenes. And not just him – but all the Mission Control guys. Yes, when Ed Harris breaks down at the very end, it’s an amazing moment – one of my favorites in a career of great moments. But without all those little guys – Ron Howard’s brother, the pudgy dude who made the filter, and Ben Marley – he would be acting in a vacuum.

So kudos, Mr. Marley. I know actors like you are never congratulated for the work you do in movies like Apollo 13. You are not nominated for Oscars. You are not remembered by name. But believe me, you are noticed. You are valued. None of it would be possible if people like you were not AS committed to your job as the stars of the film.

Great job.

CREDITS

“What network do we want?” calls out Ben Marley to the group in the first scene

Ben Marley is leaning over the television, his body in the foreground.

Hmmm. That shot reminds me a little bit of something … I can’t quite place it … where have I seen it before …. let me think …

A reference thrown to the Skyward fans? A closeup blurry shot of Ben Marley’s body? A message from Ron Howard to us, his fans from 1980? Why not?

What I call the “Yeah Baby” moment

“Yeah, baby …”

Mission Control Pow-wow

Ben Marley here is sprung tight as a coil, ready to leap into action .. he needs to do SOMEthing …

Leaning over to chat … when Ed Harris says his line about “Get everyone you know in here …”

Ben Marley is OUTTA there, like a bullet from a gun. Great moment.

Bursting into Ken Mattingley’s motel room

“Good. You’re not dead.”

Re-cap delivered by Ben Marley. Hot, on every level.

A flurry of motion. Gary Sinise and Ben Marley burst into the simulator area, to be met by Loren Dean … conversation, quick and macho

Gary Sinise has been in the simulator for hours. Time is running out. Ben Marley opens the curtain and peeks in. “You need a break, Ken?” (I love the wrinkles in his forehead. Hot.)

Tension growing. A fight between Loren Dean and Gary Sinise, with Ben Marley looking on … quiet, coiled, attentive.

At one point, Loren Dean covers his mike and says to Ben Marley, “I don’t know where we’re gonna find it” … A private moment of tension between them on their side of things

Closer … closer … to a solution … things get very still in the office … the men afraid to move, afraid their success in the moment will unravel at closer examination …

They’ve got it. The three men run towards the Mission Control building, and Ben Marley gently but firmly bodily moves a security guard out of the way. It’s so alpha. I love it.

Connecting with the astronauts, in the Mission Control main room

Let me just say this: Look at Ben Marley here. The focus of the scene here is, rightly, on Gary Sinise. It is HIS scene. So look at where Ben Marley is looking. That is smart, selfless acting, in touch with STORY as opposed to SELF

If you look at everyone in this shot, everyone is IN IT … not one false note. This is acting 101, I realize … this is what you EXPECT of your cast, but it so often doesn’t happen that I want to point it out. Look at the involvement of everyone, and Ben Marley quietly just ENDURING the tension of the moment.

The wide shot

Waiting … waiting …

The astronauts have re-entered the earth’s atmosphere. A sigh of relief. Ben Marley can’t quite “let go” yet … he’s still “in it” … which makes sense …

This is Gary Sinise’s big closeup, but look at Ben Marley in the background. It’s stuff like that that makes this a good movie.

Celebration

Excuse me, but you also get to see Ben Marley blow a smoke ring after taking a big puff on a huge macho cigar. I have died and gone to heaven.

ONE LAST THING I NOTICED:

This is the kind of thing you would only notice if you were tracking one minor character through a major movie. In the final scene of celebration, as everyone is freaking out, and Ed Harris slowly sits down, choked up … there are a couple of shots of Gary Sinise, closeups, saying into the mike, “Welcome home”, etc. – and behind him, you can see all the Mission Control guys shaking hands, breaking out cigars. Now there is one big closeup of Sinise – the focus is only on Sinise, although there are all of these other guys (including Ben Marley) in the shot. I noticed Ben Marley in the background hold out his hand to one of the other guys to shake it -but the actor didn’t notice it, was already shaking hands with someone else. An awkward moment, right? But Marley rightly understood that nobody on earth (except for Sheila O’Malley years later) would be looking at HIM in that moment, so he almost acts AS IF his hand had been shaken, and goes back to puffing on his cigar, proud and puffed up, undeterred by the slightly awkward moment that just went down. He acts AS IF it had never happened … Now, if he had been the star of the film, that moment would have had to be done over. If it had been Gary Sinise having an awkward moment in the crucial moment of celebration, Howard would have called for another take. But Ben Marley understands that in that moment the focus is not on him – NOBODY is looking at him … it is enough that the impression is given that hands are being shaken … so he doesn’t stop, he moves on … realizing that the focus is not on him, and it is more important that the STAR is set up properly, rather than him having a gratifying moment with another actor. It’s not easy to ignore an awkward moment like that. A lesser actor would have called attention, subtly or not so subtly, to the weird moment he had just had – and Howard would have been required to call for another take, because the action in the background had pulled focus from the main scene. Marley, in the graceful way he handles another actor basically blowing him off, never pulls focus, allowing the moment, Gary Sinise’s moment, to happen.

And that, my friends, is why I love actors, and why I think (at its best) it is a noble profession. My deepest admiration, Ben Marley, for how you fit yourself into the story, and did what the story required you to do: create your own character and motivation (“Yeah, baby”) – but more important than that: your JOB is to set up Gary Sinise for his big moments at the end. That is your job.

I remember Tommy Lee Jones came and spoke at my school, and someone asked a question about The Fugitive, and his acting job in that, what he “worked on”. Jones said, and I love this, “I felt like my main job in that picture was just to pay attention to Harrison Ford.”

That’s what Ben Marley does in that moment in Apollo 13.

Just pay attention to the star, and model yourself on a basketball player … where the assist is sometimes more important than the play itself.