GREAT RECEPTION ADHERENCE TO REAL EVENTS HAS MADE 'THE DISH' A FILM-FESTIVAL DARLING.

Byline: Evan Henerson Staff Writer

So here's the dirt on ``The Dish'' ...

Yes, it's based on real people and real events. A 1,000-ton radio telescope outside the tiny town of Parkes, Australia, was responsible for relaying the first TV broadcast and photographs of the 1969 moon walk.

Yes, there were actual mishaps at the dish, enough that the creators of the film, the quartet that make up the company Working Dog Productions, discovered that the real life was often funnier than fiction.

And yes, that humongous structure you see up on screen is the actual Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization Radio Telescope in Parkes - the dish that broadcasted the moon walk and is still used 24 hours a day, seven days a week to this day. Working Dog rented the dish for two weeks during a 28-day shooting schedule.

``The biggest thing that cracks me up here in America is that people keep saying, 'Is that the real dish?' '' says director Rob Sitch. ``At first, it was like something out of 'Forrest Gump': 'What are you, stupid, boy?' Then I realized that CGI (computer generated imagery) is getting so good that it's conceivable that you could do everything we did without ever having had the dish.''

An audience favorite both at the Toronto International Film Festival and Sundance, ``The Dish'' opens Wednesday in limited release. The film, which stars Sam Neill (``The Piano,'' ``Jurassic Park'') and Patrick Warburton (``The Emperor's New Groove,'' ``Seinfeld'') chronicles moon-walk mania and the significant but hardly well-known part Parkes played in the drama.

Under the supervision of a NASA representative, the three-person crew at the telescope is on constant moon duty, while the foibles of small-town life play out in the background. Between the visits of the U.S. ambassador and the Australian prime minister, life isn't entirely topsy-turvy, but it's close.

Fans of Working Dog's first film, 1997's ``The Castle'' (1997), about a tow-truck driver trying to save his house from an airport takeover, may recognize some of the gentle humor born of people in a small town getting involved in events that turn out to be significantly bigger than they realize.

The film's humor isn't condescending, and, according to Sitch, it's kind of an Aussie thing.

``I don't particularly applaud sophistication,'' says Sitch, who attended the University of Melbourne with his Working Dog partners, Santo Cilauro, Tom Gleisner and Jane Kennedy. ``Australians are good at poking fun at themselves, laughing about times they've made idiots of themselves.

``So it's sort of, almost a rule of nature: The minute you think you're being the smartest person in the world, you're probably being the dumbest and vice versa.''

Currently the fifth-highest-grossing film in Australia, ``The Dish'' also has historical events as both guidelines and the source of inspiration. Filmmakers laid their hands on a ton of archival material, from NASA and in newspapers and accounts. They researched historical data and also found toys from the period.

Sitch, who was 7 at the time, remembers Australia being on ``moon watch'' on July 19, 1969 (in Australia, the walk occurred at 1 p.m.). With school activities halted throughout the country, Sitch watched Neil Armstrong's historic walk on television.

Warburton, who plays straight-laced NASA operative Al Burnett, was 5 in 1969. He's not certain whether his memories are of watching the actual event or whether he saw images replayed later.

Either way, he says, moon mania was huge, and the connection to an event so historic is still significant, he said.

``You did get a sense of being attached like an umbilical cord to this event in the past,'' said Warburton, best-known for playing Elaine's dim-witted boyfriend Puddy on ``Seinfeld.'' ``When you think of how instrumental the dish was in the Apollo 11 mission, and here we are 30 years later telling the story.

``I was not familiar with the (Parkes) story, which is why it was so intriguing to me, to be able to revisit the past and this great moment in history and see it from a whole different perspective.''

The filmmakers took some historical liberties with the script for comic effect. In many instances, however, they didn't have to. Real events were plenty quirky for dramatic purposes.

The Parkes scientific team really did play cricket and golf on the dish - a fact they denied for years until they could be certain that the fun and games wouldn't cost them their jobs, said Sitch.

In real life, the director of the Parkes Observatory (played in the film by Neill) had a confidential meeting with a NASA representative before the contractual negotiations where he promised he would cut to the chase if negotiations bogged down.

They did, and he did.

``The meeting went on for hours, '' Sitch said, ``and (the director) gave a wink to the NASA guy and said, 'Excuse me gentleman. I've just decided the contract: We agree to support the Apollo 11 mission' and that was the contract they operated under. And how smart was that?''

Even now, Sitch says, Parkes residents downplay their contribution to the moon walk and are bemused at the idea that anyone would want to make a movie about it. Sentimentality? Reverence? Pshaw. Crew members took a chain saw to the telescope's control panel used in 1969 when it became outdated so the equipment could be easily removed.

``They sort of drifted back into obscurity. I don't think they wanted even 15 minutes,'' Sitch said. ``You know how when you go to Africa and see a rhinoceros and there's a little bird on its back? That's what they felt like.''

CAPTION(S):

2 photos

Photo:

(1) Director Rob Sitch keeps the action moving on the set of ``The Dish.''

(2) Tom Long, left, Patrick Warburton, Sam Neill and Kevin Harrington star in - and stand beside - ``The Dish.''