Painting Our Way Into Space By Douglass M. Stewart, Jr. Producer/Writer/Director of Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future
Painting Our Way Into Space
By Douglass M. Stewart, Jr. Producer/Writer/Director of Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future
Art can make science both understandable and inspirational, as is demonstrated in a documentary film made here in Palos Verdes about an artist and architect named Chesley Bonestell (1888 – 1986).
Chesley Bonestell in his studio
Photo by Robert E. David
The name may not be familiar, but you will know some of the amazing projects he was involved with. During his lifetime of 98 years, Bonestell worked on the Chrysler Building, the Golden Gate Bridge and legendary Hollywood movies like Citizen Kane (1941) and The War of The Worlds (1953). But he is probably best known for his space art, which uses brushes and paints instead of spacesuits and rockets to take people to distant worlds. You might recognize his extraordinary paintings, like this one called “Saturn as seen from Titan” (1944).
“Saturn as seen from Titan” (1944)
Courtesy Bonestell LLC
This rendering played a key role in the history of our aerospace industry. It’s often referred to as “The painting that launched a thousand careers.” First published in Life magazine in 1944 and later in a book called “The Conquest of Space” (1949),
Bonestell’s imagery caught the attention of the American public, now weary of fighting World War II. His work portrayed space as “The Final Frontier,” just waiting to be explored and settled, like the Old West was. Many veteran aerospace engineers living in the South Bay grew up with Bonestell’s images igniting their imaginations and giving them a dream to follow. His dazzling visions of planets in our solar system are credited with the creation of America’s Space Program.
For many years, I carried around a question about Chesley Bonestell. As a filmmaker myself, I had always thought someone must surely have made a film about this fascinating man. In 2014, I began to do some research on the subject which led me to contact space artist Ron Miller, who had co-authored a beautiful coffee table book titled “The Art of Chesley Bonestell.” He told me that no one had made a film on Chesley and that he would help me make it. Ron also introduced me to another Bonestell expert, Melvin Schuetz, who had compiled the authoritative “A Chesley Bonestell Space Art Chronology.” Both gentlemen became Co-Producers of my film, which I now called Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future. This documentary would take three and half years to make and it was certainly one of the most challenging missions I have ever undertaken. I wound up going all over the country interviewing people who either knew Bonestell or were profoundly influenced by his work. It turned out that one of the people I really needed for the film lived just around the corner from my home here in Palos Verdes.
I was looking for someone in the space industry whose career was launched by a Bonestell painting. I mentioned the project to Rocco Lardiere, an aerospace engineer whose son had gone to school with my own twin sons here in Palos Verdes. Upon hearing what I had in mind to do as a film, he said, “That’s my story!” and indeed, in the film you will hear how much of an influence Chesley Bonestell was on his career. Rocco is a rocket engineer who has been a part of over 200 rocket launches, many of them to Mars.
Rocco Lardiere and Douglass M. Stewart, Jr. during filming.
Making a film is one thing—getting it into film festivals and finding a distributor is quite another. Fortunately, this film has had an amazing life. It premiered at the 2018 Newport Beach Film Festival, where it won an Audience Award. It took Best Documentary Awards at Comic-Con (San Diego) and the Boston Science Fiction Film Festival. It’s screened at the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C., the Griffith Observatory here in Los Angeles, and at many wonderful film festivals, both in this country and in Europe. It was even shown in New Zealand on board a cruise ship as part of last year’s Newport Beach Film Festival at Sea. In a fitting tribute to a documentary about the “Father of Space Art,” on March 12th of this year, the film was sent up to the International Space Station for the crew to watch and enjoy.
As a result of the COVID-19 pandemic public screenings of this film with live audiences in theaters is not possible at this time. Thanks to the last-minute arrival of a distribution company called Indie Rights, there are now other ways to see the film. Streaming, VOD, Blu-ray and DVD versions can be found here: https://bit.ly/2JlkrIf
I invite you to enjoy this award-winning documentary about a man who helped get us to the moon, the planets and the stars— not with technology but with a paintbrush!
For more information, please visit the film’s website at www.chesleybonestell.com
Screening the film at the 2019 Sonoma Film Festival
Bio-
Producer/Writer/Director Douglass M. Stewart, Jr. has lived in Rancho Palos Verdes for over 20 years. He began his career in the Entertainment Industry after graduating from the USC School of Cinema with a degree in Cinematography. Since then,, he’s received eight Emmy Nominations for his work on numerous television specials including The Academy Awards. He produced documentaries on the history of the Directors Guild of America (50 Years of Action! ) and the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers (The ASCAP Story). In addition, he chronicled the life of President William Jefferson Clinton for a celebration of the President’s 50th birthday. Douglass’s latest film is the award-winning Chesley Bonestell: A Brush With The Future, the first-ever documentary on the life and works of artist Chesley Bonestell.