Product Details

• Actors: Ham, Enos, Jane Goodall, Carole Noon
• Directors: David Cassidy & Kristin Davy
• Format: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Independent
• DVD Release Date: April 1, 2008
• Run Time: 60 minutes
• Average Customer Review: No customer reviews yet. Be the first.
• ASIN: B0017HVNEM
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #66,374 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review

'Story of the Space Chimps' reveals what two unsung American heroes went through for the glory of the U.S. space program
By Sarah Phelan
So, chimps are more closely related to people than gorillas and should be included in the human branch family tree, eh? Such news will come as no surprise to David Cassidy (no, not that David Cassidy) and Kristin Davy, the producers/directors of One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps, a Santa Cruz Film Festival entry which reconstructs the huge and hitherto unsung role these hairy heroes played in making manned space travel a reality for the United States.
Using original photos and footage of the chimps and JFK--which proves that presidents were monkeying around with the facts long before Bush Jr. hit the scene--One Small Step focuses on Ham, who rocketed into outer space in 1961, and Enos, who followed 10 months later.
But while these chimps' strong personalities--Ham is the ham, Enos the grouch--will soon have you reaching for the Kleenex, the film is a lot more than one long blubberfest. It also leaves you flabbergasted at the terrible things we've done to these animals, and itching to see someone finally stand up for them.
In One Small Step, that someone turns out to be the ultratough Dr. Carol Noon, who sued the U.S. Air Force when they retired the surviving astrochimps to a biomedical research facility in the 1990s--more than four decades after Ham and Enos began their space training.
Much like a chimp playing with a banana, this heartfelt documentary turns all the usual space rhetoric neatly on its head, beginning with the title, which plays with the flubbed words of astronaut Neil Armstrong, who many people still don't realize was supposed to say, 'That's one small step for a man; one giant leap for mankind' during the epoch-making Apollo 11 mission.
The film's monkey business continues with excerpts of JFK's definitive space speech--'If this capsule history of our progress teaches us anything, it is that man, in his quest for knowledge and progress, is determined and cannot be deterred'-- cleverly matched with the small steps that chimps, not people, were making at the time.
Cassidy and Davy say that they set out to give chimps their proper place in space history, and reveal the many mistakes that were made along the way. And though they clearly have succeeded on the silver screen, inconsistencies remain in the real world. For instance, when Cassidy visited the Smithsonian, he discovered that Ham's name was on the space timeline, but Enos' wasn't, even though in many ways Enos' role was more important. And it was only after he visited Ham's grave that he realized that Ham's skeleton was still at the Smithsonian.
'It was Dr. Carol Noon who said Ham deserves a proper burial. And she was right, which just goes to show that even my thinking was a little behind, until she pointed that out,' Cassidy says.
And while he and Davy say that in making the film they came to understand how all of this happened 40 years ago, when no one knew much about chimps (Jane Goodall's research was only just coming out), they both found it inexcusable that the Air Force could remain blind to the chimps' suffering, when it had the opportunity to repay them by giving them a proper retirement 40 years later.
And to prove there is still such a thing as a happy ending, Cassidy says that since the film was wrapped, Noon has gained custody of all the surviving chimps. --Santa Cruz Metro

Product Description

Told through archival photos and footage, space historians, testimony from the chimps trainers, and through the people who fought for the space chimps peaceful retirement, One Small Step, The Story of the Space Chimps explores the compelling journey of the brave United States Air Force chimponauts from their primate predecessors and early rocket tests to Ham and Enos as they made their ground breaking missions into space.
The story reveals the space chimps triumphs and tragedies and brings to light the virtually unknown account of how the colony was rewarded for their long and challenging service to NASA, the Air Force, and the United States.
A story of triumph and tragedy, heroism and redemption, One Small Step: The Story of the Space Chimps is a testament to an unlikely moment in history.

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