Sam's flick is over the moon

I play Cliff Buxton, the director in charge of a communications relay station and its massive satellite dish in Parkes, a small town in New South Wales.

Out of the blue, the station is called upon to relay pictures of Neil Armstrong's first walk on the moon. That was in July 1969, and when I'm asked what I was doing that day, I'm appalled to say I have no recollection.

I was at university and, given that I failed everything that year, it's unlikely that I was in the library. I was probably playing cards in the cafeteria.

I liked The Castle, the previous comedy from production company Working Dog, and they also did a wonderful sitcom called Frontline. So I was disposed towards them. I thought of Cliff as a compendium of all the kind and avuncular people that have crossed my path over the years. I like that note of sadness that resonates in him, the sense of loss and the dignity with which he comports himself. His principal thing is running his team, without being a sergeant major - he's a good leader who doesn't seem to be leading.

The film is a curiosity, because it runs against type. There are two leads, but both are groups rather than a single person. One is the townsfolk, and the other is the community in the area around the dish. There's no ghastly blood-letting or hideous sexual assaults, or things that have become the vocabulary of modern film. It's a reminder of how wonderful it is to be human, what marvellous things human beings are capable of. Not just spectacular, if meaningless, things like sending a rocket to the moon, but just the commonplace achievements like, for instance, performing a kindness.