NO DREAM, THIS FILM SHOWS REAL THING

Astronaut David Leestma actually looks like a movie star, an impish boy-next-door type, thrust into a weightless world inside the space shuttle.

In “The Dream Is Alive,” which opens today at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Theater, Leestma comes closest to stealing the show. Except that nobody can really steal a scene from the film’s gorgeous photography, the views of Earth from 280 miles up and the glimpses of life in the weightless, cramped interior of the space shuttle Challenger.

“Dream” takes off where “Hail Columbia” ended. It allows us inside the shuttle with Leestma, mission commander Robert Crippen, pilot Jon McBride and fellow astronauts Sally Ride, Kathy Sullivan, Marc Garneau and Paul Scully-Power.

The unique thing about this 37-minute film is that one-quarter of the final product was shot by the astronauts themselves with Omnimax/Imax cameras, giving a very strong you-are-there feeling. The making of the movie was a coup for Graeme Ferguson, president of Imax Systems Corp., and Walter Boyne, director of the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum.

After “Hail Columbia,” which was made by Ferguson, Boyne approached the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which agreed to the in-flight footage once Lockheed Corp. agreed to co-sponsor the $3.5-million movie with the museum.

NASA, which liked the publicity “Dream” would garner (Ferguson estimates 10 million will see it), treated the filming as another payload and included it in the down-to-the-second scheduling for the astronauts.

Ferguson, as producer-director, spent nine months training three shuttle crews in Houston. Footage from three missions is used. “We wanted to give everyone a minimum of 25 hours’ training,” Ferguson said. He had to attempt to train the crews to think like film makers.

At a press preview Wednesday, Leestma, 36, who graduated from Tustin High School and whose parents live in Southern California, called the view from the shuttle incredible and said that the film comes as close to the real thing as anyone will see from Earth.

“No matter how much training you get, you’re not prepared for that view,” Leestma said. “It brings tears to your eyes. Looking down at this beautiful planet, you want to take care of it. You realize there is a need to take care of it.”

On Oct. 5, 1984, Leestma and his crew blasted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard the Challenger. In March he will fly his second mission, this one to observe Halley’s Comet.

We more down-to-Earth types must be content with “The Dream Is Alive” and its majestic score by Micky Erbe and Maribeth Solomon. At the Fleet Space Theater it is paired with “Halley Watch III,” a multimedia show focusing on the return of Halley’s Comet and the five satellites that will be launched to observe it. Together, they take us out to the future.

“The Dream Is Alive” runs through mid-March.