With only a meek budget, British filmmaker Duncan Jones (the son of legendary musician David Bowie) has crafted what could be the best science-fiction film of the past decade.

In Moon, acclaimed actor Sam Rockwell plays an astronaut whose nearing the end of his three-year stint on the Moon, where he, working alongside his computer, GERTY, sends back to Earth parcels of a resource that has helped diminish our planet's power problems. CLINT MORRIS talks to writer/director Jones about one of 2010's big Oscar hopefuls.

First of all, great work on getting the Chesney Hawkes film in there!

Oh, thank you! [Laughs] My producer kept reminding me ‘this is going to cost us so much money just to use this little bit of music; it's going to cost us three special-effect shots'. He ultimately said, ‘let's wait until the first test screening, and if you get a laugh, you can have the music - otherwise, you're going to have to lose it.' Thankfully, I got a decent laugh on the first test screening.

So did you have ‘The One and Only' written into the script?

Yeah, absolutely - and also, Walking on Sunshine, which is my kinda in-joke dig at Danny Boyle's Sunshine.

Were you aware that The One and Only appeared in the Michael J.Fox flick Doc Hollywood a few years back?

No, I wasn't aware of that! [Laughs] But one thing that did freak me out was, while we were shooting, TVs Big Brother here had an entire Chesney Hawkes I am the Only and Only Day! ‘Oh God', I said to myself, ‘People are going to think I'm connected to Big Brother'.

Wasn't he an actor over there? Chesney Hawkes?

Yeah, I think so - wasn't there a film he was in, released at the same time as the single?

All I remember was hearing his song in Doc Hollywood - in the first ten minutes of the film, when Fox is driving down the freeway - and then consequently ordering the single from the united states. Yes, I actually imported a Chesney Hawkes ‘tape'!

That's funny! [Laughs]

It's a great motivational song! It pumps you up!

As silly as it is, it is one of the songs that people love to sing along with when the chorus kicks in.

But yeah, it is such a great choice and it works so well in the film too.

Cheers mate. There are a lot of little different jokes in the film and what I found was that one, for instance, worked really well in the U.K but not a lot of people in the U.S got it. The ones that the U.S got were the one about him inventing the vacuum-cleaner attachment to do his hair, and the clapper to turn the lights on and off - but they got a much different response here in the U.K.

So having said that did you have to fight to keep some of these jokes in the film?

Chesney Hawkes was the main one. But the whole notion of the film was day-to-day hundreds-and-hundreds of compromises. We made the film for basically five million U.S dollars - which is a tiny amount of money for a science-fiction film. That's a good budget for a first feature film, but for a science-fiction film it really wasn't a lot.

What about Sam Rockwell. Did you have any clashes over your keenness to cast him in the lead?

Not really. My producer and I worked together on commercials for a long time before we did this, so this was kind of our baby together, so we agreed on Sam. I had actually approached Sam originally with a different script. But I wanted him to play a smaller part in that one, and he wanted to play the lead, so it didn't work out. But we got on so well that I decided that when I make my first feature film I want Sam Rockwell to be the star of it. And as a first-time director I knew I wanted an actor that I could get on with, and work with, and having met Sam in person I knew he was the guy.

And he is such a fabulous actor, too. One of the most versatile actors around.

Versatile... and underrated. And he's one of those guys that I think deserves a lot more credit than he gets.

And you're right about trying to kick up the Oscar campaign for him, because he deserves it. He's fantastic in Moon.

I really think he does, I really do - and it's not just because it's my film - because this film was designed for Sam, and I think we really did get the best out of him. The guy needs to have an Oscar nomination for his body of work, and I think this film more than any of them shows why he deserves that.

I can't believe he hasn't been nominated for anything...

I know, it really is crazy!

I mean, The Green Mile... he was fantastic in that!

Oh absolutely, absolutely.

But look, now that the best film category has been blown wide-open to include 10 nominees I wouldn't be surprised to see Moon in there.

I hope so... I think if we get nominated for anything it'll either be for Sam - which is a tough one, because I know a lot of people are up for best actor - or the score, which the legendary Clint Mansell did. He's sort of hard a rough time too, in getting nominated when he probably should. So yeah, if not Sam then maybe for the score.

When did you write the script for Moon ... did it come together pretty quickly?

Particularly quickly. I met up with Sam Rockwell about three and a half years ago. And it was at that meeting, where we were discussing what will hopefully be our next film together, that that project wasn't going to work at the time. We started discussing what kind of roles as an actor he would be interested in playing. We realized we both had a love of science-fiction films from the 70s and 80s - films like Outland, Silent Running, and Ridley Scott's Alien. What we both liked about those films is that they featured believable characters - blue-collar workers in space. So we wanted to make a film like those films - that we liked so much growing up. That's where the inspiration for Moon came from. Nine months after that meeting, I delivered Sam the first draft of the script. And three months after that we were shooting it. So... a year from not having a project at all to actually shooting a film with Sam Rockwell.

Was it hard to get a studio onboard?

There's a British tax incentive called the EIS, where you can get private investors to invest in a film and they get a tax write-off. We were able to waive about half of our budget from that. And then having Sam Rockwell onboard, having this beautiful concept work and animatics, and being able to show people some of the sets - that we were already building from some of the investor's money - got us Sony. They bought all of the English-language territories - including Australia. That deal basically gave us the rest of the budget we needed to make the film.

You'd have to be pretty psyched about the reviews, wouldn't you?

It's been really good. There are some people who don't get the homages, there are some people who think there are parts that are too derivative, but it really is a different creature, ya know? It's a character-driven science-fiction film - that hopefully it has enough comedy and beats of action in it to keep the audience engaged. But it's not Transformers 2 - we're not trying to be Transformers 2.

We were talking about Twitter before the interview... now how handy a tool has that been for marketing reasons?

I think it's been more important than anyone really realizes. I've been on it and working it for about a year now. One of the great things about it is I can get a call out to the various territories where the film is opening up.  If I can get people to see it, then they'll hopefully spread the word to others. We don't have the marketing budget to spend on posters and TV trailers and so forth, so there are two things I can do - I can talk to good people like yourself, and try and get the message out that way, and then I can get the message to the audience to spread the word to their friends, families and work colleagues. So that's what we've been trying to do with Twitter, and it seems to be working pretty well for us.

I was reading last week that Twitter is basically dictating what movies people are seeing

[Laughs] Well that's good. I have to admit, I haven't seen Paranormal Activity is, so I have no idea how good this film is but...

But haven't Paramount done an amazing job of marketing that through Twitter!?

Phenomenal! Phenomenal! I mean, that whole PR Stunt they did to get a million people to demand that the film got a release - because it wasn't going to get a release - was just great. They did a great job. The power of the studio combined with the internet... it's very clever.

And are you working on the DVD for Moon yet?

Yeah, in fact it's coming out in the DVD next month. So the commentaries are all recorded, and there's quite a lot of nice content on there - we've got two making-ofs, one on the production side, and one on how some of the special effects were done; we've got a short film I did years ago called Whistle - which is a neo-future science-fiction film... so there's quite a lot of stuff on there.

Are you working on your next film yet?

I'm trying to. The script is good - and it's gone out to some actors, and if we get the actors we want hopefully that will help us get the finance. That's really the problem right now because, as I said, we made Moon for about 5 million U.S dollars and the next film we want to make for a slightly bigger budget - you know, around fifteen to twenty million dollars. We're going to have to get a studio involved or, if we go the independent route, we're going to have to get a hot lead through one of the actors that we've got attached. That's really the tricky bit - financing it.

You said Sam was onboard this one?

He is. He's going to be coming back and doing a little cameo; it's just a small part. He'll be coming back and playing the character that he plays in Moon. It's just a little epilogue moment that'll be in the background action of the film. It's science-fiction as well this one - it takes place in the same timeline, but it actually takes place in a future Berlin, so it's a city film and it's very much like Blade Runner. Technically, there is no Blade Runner sequel but technically, spiritually and aesthetically anyone who loves Blade Runner is going to really enjoy Mute.

MOON is now showing