The Right Stuff (1983)

Director:

Philip Kaufman

Writers:

Tom Wolfe (book)
Philip Kaufman (screenplay)

Release Date:

21 October 1983 (USA)

Genre:

Adventure | Drama | History

Tagline:

By flying higher and faster than any other man had ever dared before, Chuck Yeager set the pace for a new breed of hero. Those that had just one thing in common...THE RIGHT STUFF.

Plot:

The original US Mercury 7 astronauts and their macho, seat-of-the-pants approach to the space program.

Plot Keywords:

Astronaut | Space Program | Fire | U.S. Space Program | Sound Barrier

Awards:

Won 4 Oscars. Another 5 wins & 11 nominations

Cast

Sam Shepard	...	Chuck Yeager
Scott Glenn	...	Alan Shepard
Ed Harris	...	John Glenn
Dennis Quaid	...	Gordon Cooper
Fred Ward	...	Gus Grissom
Barbara Hershey	...	Glennis Yeager
Kim Stanley	...	Pancho Barnes
Veronica Cartwright	...	Betty Grissom
Pamela Reed	...	Trudy Cooper
Scott Paulin	...	Deke Slayton
Charles Frank	...	Scott Carpenter
Lance Henriksen	...	Wally Schirra
Donald Moffat	...	Lyndon B. Johnson
Levon Helm	...	Jack Ridley / Narrator
Mary Jo Deschanel	...	Annie Glenn

Runtime:

193 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English | Russian

Color:

Color (Technicolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Sound Mix:

70 mm 6-Track (70 mm prints) | Dolby (35 mm prints)

Certification:

Canada:A (Nova Scotia) | Canada:AA (Ontario) | Canada:G (Quebec) | Canada:PG (Manitoba) | Iceland:12 | Australia:PG | Finland:S | France:U | Ireland:12 | Norway:11 | Sweden:11 | UK:15 | USA:PG | West Germany:12 | Singapore:PG | Portugal:M/6 | Norway:12 (original rating)

Filming Locations:

California & Montgomery, Financial District, San Francisco, California, USA

Company:

Ladd Company, The

Trivia:

"Beeman's" is the lucky gum of pilots. See also The Rocketeer (1991).

Goofs:

Factual errors: After the first manned Mercury flight on 5 May 1961, Alan Shepard is seen stepping from an SH-3 Sea King helicopter onto the recovery aircraft carrier. The SH-3 would not become part of the Navy's operational inventory for another month (June 1961; albeit either in gloss gray or midnight blue colors) and the white over gray color scheme on the SH-3 seen in the movie would not become standard on Navy helos until approximately 1967, six years later. In reality, Shepard stepped from a UH-34 Seahorse (Marine variant of the Sikorsky S-58), number 44, painted in field green with white Marine lettering and numbers.

Quotes:

[first lines]
Narrator: There was a demon that lived in the air. They said whoever challenged him would die. Their controls would freeze up, their planes would buffet wildly, and they would disintegrate. The demon lived at Mach 1 on the meter, seven hundred and fifty miles an hour, where the air could no longer move out of the way. He lived behind a barrier through which they said no man could ever pass. They called it the sound barrier.

Movie Connections:

Spoofed in Thunderpants (2002)

Soundtrack:

Southwestern Waltz

an epic film with something for everyone

The Right Stuff is terrific: exciting, complex, funny, crammed with memorable scenes, unforgettable lines, and wonderful actors (many of whom went on to become big stars).

A classic shot shows a test pilot on horseback coming over a ridge stopping to look at a new rocket-plane, steadying his nervous horse as it edges past the flames coming out the back. The test pilot is the twentieth century's cowboy: tough, laconic, independent, fearless.

The Right Stuff tells two parallel stories: the (often fatal) exploits of the early test pilots and Mercury astronauts, with intersecting storylines. The movie never takes itself too seriously. Witness general crawling on the floor to plug in the projector, the sounds of the locusts when the press surrounds the astronauts (Yeager called them locusts initially), the Halleluiah Chorus during the press conference, the enema scene, Sheppard needing to take a leak in the suit, Johnson trying to deal with a housewife. Yet underneath all the fun that is poked at the astronauts we see respect for real men doing a scary, important job.

This film has all the excitement of Top Gun, but is longer, better, just as high-tech exciting, and much funnier. (A washroom scene rivals Meg Ryan's famous restaurant scene...the audience laughed so hard we all missed Cooper's next line!).

And some wonderful lines: Cooper's response to "Who's the best pilot you ever saw?", "O.K. You can be Gus", "The Military owes me", "Read'em and weep", "Hey Ridley, you got any Beemans?", "I go to church too.", "Everything is A-OK", "Our Germans are better than their Germans", "What are you two pudknockers going to have?", and, said with regret and frustration "test pilots!"

To those who have seen it, here's a challenge that will enable you to appreciate the excellent writing, the workmanship and planning that went into the script. View the movie again and see how many times the screenwriter and director took the trouble to set up a later event or comment with an earlier reference. Here are three examples: Cooper dropping a tiny toy space capsule into Grissum's drink (foreshadowing), Copper reading Life magazine before the publisher enters the movie (to make sure we viewers know that Life magazine exits), Yeager bumping his elbow on a limb of a cactus tree as he walks into Pancho's at the beginning of the movie (I never noticed this the first few times I watched the movie, but surely this tiny action was deliberate.) I count a dozen more examples. Send me ones you find.

If you haven't seen The Right Stuff, I strongly recommend you rent the DVD. -RS