Premiere: 'Moon'

As he introduced Friday night's world premiere screening of his debut feature "Moon," Duncan Jones announced that it would be distributed by Sony Pictures Classics. Sure enough, the film was preceded by the distributor's blue-and-white logo, just as it did at Thursday night's screening of "An Education," which was acquired by SPC earlier in the week.

Jones is the 37-year-old son of David Bowie -- and onetime holder of the original crazy celebrity baby name, Zowie Bowie. The apparently proud father was in attendance at the screening, sitting right next to fellow music superstar Sting, whose wife, Trudie Styler, is a producer on the film. (She would later thank Sting for both his financial and emotional support.)

The film opens with a rather spooky commercial, advertising that the majority of the Earth's energy now comes through harvesting helium from the far side of the moon. Sam Rockwell plays the lone worker at a remote facility, with only a few weeks left on a three-year contract. He may be cracking from the fatigue of such crushing long-term isolation, or there may be something more sinister afoot.

The film is at once surprisingly straightforward, while Jones is able to ratchet up an increasing level of emotional complexity as it unfolds. (The screenplay is by Nathan Parker, from a story by Jones.) Rockwell, a frequent fixture at Sundance, turns in another brilliantly modulated performance, as he surveys the emotional slippage that may be tearing a man's identity to shreds. The special effects, a mix of miniatures and CGI, have a pleasantly anachronistic handmade feel to them.

After the screening, Jones took the stage wearing a puffy, bright-yellow spacesuit featured in the film. Rockwell, Styler and members of the production team soon followed him onstage.

The film does feature a rather significant twist that comes fairly early on -- "I don't mind giving it away," Jones would say -- and it isn't a spoiler, we hope, to reveal that Rockwell at times shares the screen with himself. "How hard was it to work with myself?" he responded to the first question. "I tell you, that guy is such a diva. What a pain in the ass, me, me, me." As the audience's laughter subsided, he added, "Cheap joke."

Kevin Spacey voices a robot named Gerty, who is the only constant counterpoint to the character(s) played by Rockwell. The most obvious antecedent to Gerty is the HAL-9000 from "2001: A Space Odyssey."

"A couple people have obviously asked what the references were," said Jones, "and whether '2001' was. I would suggest that we were referencing the films that were themselves referencing '2001.' So, 'Outland,' 'Silent Running' and the original 'Alien.' Those were the films that we had been watching when we were growing up."

And then, straight from the son of Mr. "Space Oddity" himself, "Dare I say it, '2001' maybe was the influence of our parents' generation."

Lest it seem that Jones has some generational chip against his lineage, he wound up the Q&A by saying, "I want to thank my dad, who was a huge influence on me growing up and had the patience to allow me to take the time to find out what I wanted to do even though it took a hell of a long time."

-- Mark Olsen