AAE alumnus 'ecstatic' about role in Armstrong biopic
The inexperience in itself wasn’t new for Bill Tomek.
He’d been an extra on several movies and a handful of TV shows, including “Homeland” and “House of Cards,” since 2015.
But when Tomek heard about a movie focusing on Neil Armstrong, he was quick to apply, because the opportunity almost was too good to be true. Tomek didn’t only identify Armstrong as the first human to walk on the Moon — there was a much deeper familiarity.
Like Armstrong, Tomek graduated from Purdue and was an aerospace engineer. Tomek even was blessed with an opportunity to meet Armstrong and shake his hand after a Purdue football game in the mid-1980s.
That wasn’t a small moment.
“It was the highlight of my life at that time, to meet your hero,” says Tomek (BSAAE ’90).
So, naturally, when Tomek received a call from a casting agent last year offering him a speaking role —not an extra, as he’d been accustomed — in “First Man,” it was special.
“I about fell out of my chair when I heard the news,” Tomek says. “It was a thrill to contribute in a small way to this Neil Armstrong biopic. It is a wonderful movie that captures Neil, both the hero and the softer side of him as well. It also demonstrates the utter sacrifices that Neil and his family had to endure as well as the astronauts in the Apollo era to get a man on the Moon.”
Tomek plays Pad Leader Donald Babbitt in the film, which opened nationwide Friday. Babbitt was the lead test conductor for the Apollo 1 “plugs out” test that preceded the fire at Launch Complex 34 that killed Ed White and Purdue alumni Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee.
Tomek was in the Atlanta area Dec. 22-23, 2017, to film his scene in the White Room, the small area used by astronauts to access the spacecraft. In the script, Tomek had four lines: “Powering up the internal batteries for plugs out testing. Closing hatches now. Ablative hatch closed. Closing the boost protective cover.” But when Tomek got on set and started filming, Oscar-winning director Damien Chazelle added another, “All right, plugs out.”
His lines made the film, Tomek says. And so did he, shown hanging up his headset as the pad technicians leave the White Room.
“I was ecstatic when I heard when they were making the movie. I was doubly ecstatic to find out I could participate. And to get an actual speaking role, it was overwhelming,” Tomek says. “I was real happy. It was an amazing experience.”
Tomek’s experience in the movie wasn’t only colored by his familiarity with Armstrong.
While at Purdue, Tomek was part of the co-op program with NASA and spent four semesters working at Langley Research Center. After graduation, he was hired full-time at Langley and has been there since. Tomek made sure to mention his employer on the application for “First Man” extra work, and when he was asked by a casting agent in an early interview to provide examples of communication between a spacecraft and Mission Control, Tomek wasn’t just making things up: He actually had working knowledge of scenarios.
He also shared his background with the casting agent, mentioning his work on launch vehicle development for the Constellation program with the Ares 1 launch vehicle and the Ares V launch vehicle, as well as his work on the Space Launch System.
Currently, Tomek is an aerospace technologist working on supersonic technology to make overland supersonic flight feasible by reducing sonic boom.
Ultimately, to be able to pair, in a sense, Tomek’s everyday work with his hobby made for a unique experience.
“I love the whole process of filmmaking, the way they make movie, plotlines, it’s fascinating to me,” Tomek says. “When you see the final product, it’s like, ‘Wow, I was part of that.’ It’s pretty neat.”