It’s one thing to participate in, arguably, a tongue-in-cheek protest in defense of Pluto’s planetary status; it’s another to adopt this story as your film’s premise. Why has this story endured in you for this long?
I think the thing that kind of glued this to me in the first place is that it was a weird split: There was the pageantry of protesting something that is utterly inconsequential, but also there was this emotional knee jerk reaction that I related to—this feeling of, “Aw, Pluto, the little guy, he got a bad deal there.” There’s an innate feeling that it was the little kid on the playground that didn’t get picked for kickball. So the thing that struck me from the very beginning is that those two things exist simultaneously. The knowledge that this doesn’t impact you in any way...but there’s still a residual emotional connection that everyone kind of feels.
The thing that makes us feel not alone in space is the naming of things. We think of Jupiter as the big mighty planet out there, and Mars is like our brother—all those sort of things create this idea of a bountiful neighborhood that we’re a part of. When you take something out of that it reveals how much we rely on that to get the sense that we’re not alone. That’s what the script is about at the end of the day.
What were some of the more memorable aspects of the research process that helped shape the story for The Plutonians?
It was really fun to read the many reactions and takes people had. It's an important moment and there are a lot of factors that go into it, but there isn’t a definitive history of what went down in real life.
In real life Pluto is not a lot like the other planets, but it’s unique, so it is named a planet when it is discovered. We then discover a ton of other things that are like it, specifically Eris, which is roughly the same size, farther away, but kind of forces the issue: If Pluto is a planet, what about all these other things? The IAU, which is like the UN for astronomy, are the people responsible for deciding what is a planet. There was no definition for what a planet is, so they form this committee that debates for two years, back and forth, and cannot land on a definition. Finally they hit on something. There is then a conference—which is where my film takes place—in Prague and occurs every three years over two weeks. This committee brings their definition there, and it’s a surprise announcement. They announce the definition, and people just hate it. It was supposed to be, here is what we came up with, there you go. And instead, a bunch of different scientists were saying, “This is terrible, I’m writing my own.” So the two-week conference becomes this pitching battle with all these different factions trying to get their definition through.
Now, there’s another interesting angle, which is that six months before this conference, NASA spent $750 million dollars to launch a probe to Pluto that was going to take nine years to get there. It’s six months into a very expensive, very long journey. Ultimately there are just so many fun facts that informed my script.
Especially for non-scientific onlookers, it can be difficult to discern how serious the debate around Pluto is. Your film is farcical in nature, but is the script a bending of the real-life events or a reflection of it?
The characters themselves are inventions; there are no real scientists that I’m using here. The genesis of this story was that a Pluto expert wakes up one morning and his planet’s not a planet. It becomes clear to him how much that makes people not care about the thing he’s spent his entire life studying. But when I did research into how Pluto got disbarred and how the actual scientists reacted to it and how bitterly contentious it was… Well, there was this one guy who was heavily influential for my main character. He’s heavily involved with the probe that they launched to Pluto, and you can look at the statements that he put out where he says, “This is a disgrace; it’s a humiliation. History is going to laugh at you.” It is vehement, venomous, personal [commentary].
Through the Sundance Institute Sloan Commissioning Grant I was able to reach out to a variety of science advisors, and one in particular who is a Pluto expert. When I showed him the script I didn’t tell him that’s who I modeled this character on, but he said, “Oh, you nailed this guy. This is him to a tee.” I’m avoiding mentioning names here, but it was such a divisive issue within a usually insular community.
This film, and the Pluto debate at large, could easily be interpreted as a kind of existential metaphor. Is this debate ultimately about our own desperate search for meaning as much as it is about Pluto’s planetary status?
Strip away all the science and there’s still an emotional, true thing that I can hold onto. The hook that is pulling me through this long journey to make this film is in thinking about the dedication of the people who spend their entire lives studying something that does not know about them, and cannot care about them. Pluto is one object in an infinite sea of objects. While there is an almost limitless amount of information to study in our environment—for example if you’re a geologist, or if you study plant life—ultimately there is a finite amount of things to catalogue on Earth. That is not true of space—the universe is infinite. It is a choice to say, “I will study this one thing.” Ultimately you could have studied anything and it all kind of would be the same. You might draw grander conclusions that have value, but the choice to study one pixel on an infinite screen is fascinating.
I relate to this immensely as a writer, because there’s a similar [act of] planting a flag in an arbitrary location that you believe is meaningful. The uncertainty of it: Is what I’m doing meaningful? Will anyone care about this? That is very much part of the creative process of making this film and it’s what the film is about. I think a lot of people can relate to that.
