The Right Stuff (1983)
Anything Chimps Can Do, I Can Do Better
Capsule, these are your authors calling, how do you copy? We’ve got you 5 by 5 down here, so we’ll proceed into Step 25 of the ILTBTA procedure: The Right Stuff! Your mission is to watch an over three-hour movie about test pilots breaking all sorts of records and all the non-adrenaline-addicts who have to deal with them (or allow us to do it for you). So strap in, make sure you’ve gone to the bathroom recently, and read on!
Previews
What, if anything, did we know about this coming attraction before we watched it?
Ellen: I had heard of neither the book nor the movie until Tyler suggested it to coincide with the Artemis I launch. I am a bad NASA employee1 (but so is Tyler, so that’s good!).
Tyler: This movie was not part of the New Employee Orientation at NASA, so I had never heard of it prior to now. I have heard of the short-lived NatGeo/Disney+ show of the same name, but I didn’t realize it was an extended adaptation of this movie, so my familiarity with “The Right Stuff” ends there. But hey, we like space here at ILTBTA2, so let’s give it a shot.
Plots & Feelings
This one’s pretty self-explanatory.
Short Version (courtesy of IMDb): The U.S. space program's development from the breaking of the sound barrier to selection of the Mercury 7 astronauts, from a group of test pilots with a more seat-of-the-pants approach than the program's more cautious engineers preferred.
Long Version (modified from Wikipedia and formatted to fit your screen):
A disembodied voice opens by telling us that there’s a demon that lives in the air, and it lives behind Mach 1, aka the sound barrier. Test pilots whose names no one knows were trying after WWII to best that demon. Black-and white footage of clear skies gives way to a plane inching tenth by tenth toward Mach 1 until BOOM: a fiery explosion brings the picture into color. A somber man in a black suit and hat approaches the home of the now-deceased, still unnamed pilot to inform his sobbing wife. Later, at the desert funeral, four planes fly overhead in salute and one peels off towards the heavens. This is dangerous, folks!
Inside the esteemed pilot watering hole called Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding3 Club, pilots, various hangers-on, and military brass from the Air Field discuss whether breaking the sound barrier is even possible, and if so, who will do it. Civilian pilot Slick Goodlin says he’ll take the X-1 plane to Mach 1 for a cool $150,0004. Captain Chuck Yeager says: counterpoint, the Air Force already pays me and I’m, uh, insane? He agrees to try tomorrow morning, and follows to chase a pretty gal out of the bar on horseback. Surprise: it’s his wife Glennis! They race across the desert until he’s absolutely CLOTHESLINED and knocked the Chuck off his horse! The next morning, Chuck confides in his friend Jack Ridley that his ribs are absolutely broken. Rather than delaying the test, Jack rigs him a handle so he can close up the plane, christened the Glamorous Glennis5, and off they go! Folks on the ground, including Glennis, Pancho, and that visage of Death in the black hat, are sure something has gone terribly wrong when they hear a loud sound after Chuck passes Mach .99. But no: that’s just the fastest man alive punching the demon in the face! That night at Pancho’s, Yeager enjoys his free steak and howls at the moon in triumph.
Easily the most badass thing said in the entire movie (Source) Ellen: There is so little preamble to this whole test, it’s bananas.
Tyler: Yes! It seems bananas that he would test fly a plane he's never done anything with, with no training, and only learned about the day before. Maybe we’re more attuned to the realities of the situation than your average moviegoer, but that immediately stood out to me as wholly unbelievable.
That was 1947, and we cut to 1953, where Edwards Air Force Base still attracts the best test pilots6. Gordo Cooper cruises into town with his wife and kids in an ostentatious red convertible. It’s kind of his whole deal.7 He assures Trudy that he’ll never let her down, despite the fact that their accommodations are a rundown bungalow, and they almost immediately have to attend a funeral for another pilot. At the makeshift wake at Pancho’s, Gordo vows to have his picture memorialized on the wall. The surly Pancho informs him that the only way to earn that honor is to die in a crash, and that he, Gus Grissom, and Deke Slayton are only pudknockers who will never fly the top aircraft. Trudy frankly wishes he wouldn’t. She and other wives commiserate at a BBQ later, discussing how the government owes them for putting their husband’s lives on the line and making them live in terrible cinder block houses. Trudy tells Gordo she’s moving back to San Diego.
Always, my dude (Source) Ellen: During the scene in Pancho’s, Deke’s wife is yelling that they’ve lost 62 men in 36 weeks! He exasperatedly replies that “averages only apply to average pilots,” which I guess is the moxie you have to have to even attempt this.
Tyler: Exactly. The (assumed) irony is that each of the test pilots who died presumably thought the same thing: “That would never happen to me.”
Meanwhile, Chuck Yeager and Scott Crossfield are trading airspeed records, but meanwhile meanwhile, the Russians have launched Sputnik! A gangly Washington aide8 bursts into a meeting including President Eisenhower, Senator Lyndon B. Johnson, and other military leaders to inform them of such. They’re all like “yeah we know, idiot, help us pick astronauts.” They propose options from demolition derby champs to trapeze artists until Eisenhower shuts down the malarkey and demands test pilots. Such pilots are assembled at Pancho’s, and they are skeptical of this whole “splashdown” situation, believing the crafts need to be piloted. Yeager isn’t eligible for lack of college degree, but a few others are interested. Marine Major John Glenn and Naval
pilotexcuse me, aviator Alan Shepard are among the 50 candidates for consideration taken to an anonymous facility for grueling mental and physical tests to see if they’ve got… the right stuff!Ellen: They come get Alan Shepard from an aircraft carrier, and I am constantly astounded by how dang long those have been around!
The inter-military-branch peacocking on display during these tests rivals even that of F Boy Island. Tests include lung capacity, exposure to extreme G forces, and the ability to call your wife in to lie for you on a personality assessment, in the case of Gordo. Finally, after enduring what a newscaster calls the “most up-to-date tests imaginable,” the very first class of astronauts is announced! The Mercury Seven are instant celebrities before they’ve ever touched a spaceship. Which may be a good thing, honestly, because the rockets keep blowing up on the pad! Tensions rise between the astronaut group regarding how they should conduct themselves as public figures, but some of that is also stress due to the chimp situation. Primates are undergoing many of the same physical training that the Mercury men are, and the question is who will launch first. The scientists are portrayed as not wanting to allow for any human interaction inside the capsule at all, whereas the astronauts band together to advocate for things like, you know, a WINDOW.
Tyler: I gotta admit, “No bucks, no Buck Rogers” is a great quippy argument in the pilot vs. scientist argument.
The chimp launches first. You know who launches next? WHOOPS it’s Yuri Gagarin! It’s time to get a human American into space, pronto, and Alan Shepard is the man for the job. He’s stuck waiting on the pad for what must seem like an eternity, but finally, it’s time! Alan becomes the first American to reach space in a 15-minute flight. All the while, a ravenous press corps has descended on the Shepard home as all of the astronaut wives are glued to the television. Shepard is welcomed home as a hero, complete with ticker tape and a visit to the White House. Not so for Gus Grissom’s flight, where an early blow of the hatch leads to the capsule sinking into the ocean. His wife is thrilled at his safe return, but disappointed that all the government could be bothered to do is a small ceremony at Kennedy and to fill the mini fridge at their hotel, feeling they are both owed much more. Back at Edwards Air Force Base, Yeager defends Gus to the other pilots, because all of the astronauts know they may die, but they do it anyway with the whole world watching.
The first time I’ve ever related to an astronaut (Source) Ellen: They do Gus dirty here. He’s made to look so incompetent. There’s one scene in particular where he unzips his flight suit and little trinkets fall out that he took to space with him, and he’s horribly embarrassed. The concept of up-down items that are given to loved ones or people who worked on the mission is SO COMMON! It bummed me out really hard, and I couldn’t stop thinking about it.
The space race continues, and someone has got to start orbiting this dang planet! John Glenn is eager to get going. The wives are assembled at the Glenn home this time, and Annie Glenn is refusing to meet with the cartoonish Lyndon B. Johnson on TV for fear of public speaking. Though the first attempt is scrubbed, Glenn eventually makes it into orbit. Gordo is in Australia to serve as CAPCOM when Glenn is over that part of the world. In a sweet moment that I hope is real, the spaceman looks down during a night pass to see that all of Perth and Rockingham turned their lights on for him. There are several less-sweet moments of exoticizing the Aboriginal people who are nearby the satellite dish. Unfortunately, we have additional concerns, because there’s a problem with the heat shield! As John reenters the atmosphere, there are a few tense minutes during a communication blackout, but he makes it! Oh, and Pancho’s burns down.
The Mercury Seven are welcomed to Houston with a huge party and Texas barbecue for the opening of the Manned Space Center in Houston. Scenes from this event are intercut with Yeager attempting to break the Russian’s altitude record, despite his friend Ridley saying that no one cares about these types of records anymore. Yeager shoots upward anyway and sees literal stars at the edge of space before dropping from the sky. The med truck rushes toward the fiery crash to find Chuck slowly walking toward them, terribly burned but okay! We close on Gordo finally completing the last launch of the Mercury program, completing 22 orbits as the last American to go into space alone. The film closes by telling us that he "went higher, farther, and faster than any other American ... for a brief moment, Gordo Cooper became the greatest pilot anyone had ever seen."
Intermission
Even though ILTBTA is free, please indulge us further and enjoy this quick “advertisement.”
This installment of ILTBTA is brought to you by … Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club!
If you ever find yourself wandering through the southern California desert, make sure to stop into Pancho’s for a cold drink, some lively music, and wildly overconfident babble from flight-proven pilots and pudknockers alike. Toast to the fallen pilots on the walls with a glass of the best most available alcohol for miles.
Tell Pancho that ILTBTA sent you and she’ll give you a clean glass to drink from. Light your candle of excitement at Pancho’s! Just not literally, though, this place is all wood and extremely flammable.
Wiki-Wiki-Whaaat?
Love a good Wikipedia rabbit hole in search of some fun facts? Us too.
The Right Stuff’s Wikipedia page has some interesting facts and anecdotes that we recommend you read through, but here are a few of our favorites:
As always, we start with the source material. The Right Stuff is based on the 1979 book of the same name by Tom Wolfe. Amongst what are surely many other fun facts and anecdotes (it is 436 pages after all), Wolfe wrote about how the Mercury astronauts were a burden to the program and were there purely for promotional purposes as the Space Race heated up. Along with a chimpanzee (which in fact was sent up first), athletes like trapeze artists were also considered to go in the spacecraft since they were more accustomed to the physical stresses, but President Eisenhower insisted on using pilots.
In the original screenplay, William Goldman (writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, All The President’s Men, and The Princess Bride, among others) focused entirely on the Mercury Seven and ignored Chuck Yeager. Director Philip Kaufman disagreed with Yeager’s exclusion, so he wrote the script himself in two months, later saying: “If you're tracing how the future began, the future in space travel, it began really with Yeager and the world of the test pilots. The astronauts descended from them.”
Ellen: All I’m saying is … William Goldman’s version would not have been 3 hours and 13 minutes.
Tyler: #ReleaseTheGoldmanCut
Kaufman initially wanted to use a troupe of contortionists to play the press corps, but settled for an improv comedy troupe from San Francisco. Accompanying the press was a “locust-like chatter” that was created using combining sounds like Nikon cameras and clicking beetles.
Character name is probably Skip Flashpot or some nonsense (Source) While the film took liberties with several historical facts, the one deemed most egregious by most was the depiction of Gus Grissom and his actions after the splashdown of his Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft. Despite some initial controversy immediately after the events, an independent review team in 1961 doubted that Grissom opened the hatch himself. Grissom maintained a prime position in the astronaut rotation, leading the first Gemini mission and, tragically, what would have been the first Apollo mission. A 2021 analysis of the splashdown video suggested that static electricity caused by the recovery helicopters may have caused the premature detonation of the hatch bolts.
The actual Mercury 7 astronauts largely disliked the film adaptation of their exploits: Deke Slayton called it “as bad as the book was good, just a joke”; Wally Schirra said it was “distorted and warped”; Alan Shepard called both the book and film “fiction.”
Want to watch another Hollywood dramatization of space-related events? Might we suggest …
Honorable Mentions
What other movies should you be watching?
Apollo 13 is a 1995 movie directed by Rob Howard that depicts the events of the aborted lunar mission of the same name. Starring Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, Bill Paxton, Gary Sinise, and Ed Harris (he must love space movies), the film follows the unlucky astronauts, their families, and those in Mission Control who worked tirelessly to keep them alive.
The movie does a fantastic job of capturing how freakin’ stressful the situation was for everyone involved. As Ellen put it in The Spreadsheet: “It’s a testament to the filmmaking that I was so stressed and invested, despite knowing how it turns out.” The film also popularized the phrases “Houston, we have a problem” (a slight modification of the actual “Houston, we’ve had a problem” quote) and “Failure is not an option.” Apollo 13 is available to stream for free with a Hulu subscription, and can be rented for a fee pretty much everywhere else.
Oscar NomNomNomz
Since we all know a movie is nothing without the food and drink it incorporates.
It’s now time to award the Oscar for Best Snacktor in a Supporting Role9. And the nomnomnominees are:
A free steak with all the trimmings for breaking the sound barrier
A stick of Beemans gum
Coca-Cola in a clean glass
And the Oscar goes to … a stick of Beemans gum! Unfortunately, the gum was swallowed after breaking the sound barrier, so we will accept this award on its behalf.
Fill In The Blank
How did we really feel about The Academy nominating this?
Ellen: I’d like to shoehorn the Academy into that tiny Mercury capsule, but hey: they get to go to space! Look, it’s a tall order to cover the dawn of human spaceflight from breaking the sound barrier through the end of the Mercury program, but you’re out of your mind if you think we couldn’t have trimmed this down a bit. And yes, I recognize that being the one who writes the plot summaries, I have very little room to talk about editing lol. I think that the Apollo missions generally get a lot of the shine in the public consciousness, so I like that this tells the stories of the first American astronauts, even if they’re pretty heavily dramatized. You can absolutely see how movies farther down the line borrowed from The Right Stuff, be it in vibes or shot-for-shot cribbing (looking at you, Monster’s Inc!). I’m glad to have seen it, but I don’t need to come back.
Tyler: I’d like to tell the Academy to mandate intermissions in movies that are longer than three hours. I totally agree with you Ellen: this movie was not only long, but longer than it needed to be. Within the first hour I already thought of several scenes I would’ve preferred to be shortened or cut altogether, which wasn’t a good sign. And later on, we spent … how long talking about how Alan Shepard had to pee? I get that the movie wants to remind us that astronauts are real people too and NASA hadn’t thought of everything yet, but c'mon now. A more streamlined script would’ve allowed for a better balance and blending of the Yeager and Mercury storylines, whereas what we got was a bit of a bloated, over-dramatized movie trying to tell too many stories and not particularly succeeding well at either.
Let The Credits Roll
Thanks for reading! Some quick housekeeping as you exit the theatre:
If you have plots and feelings of your own (on the movie or ILTBTA in general), feel free to comment on the post or simply reply to the email. If you liked reading this: tell your friends! If you hated reading this: tell your friends how much you hated it by forwarding it to them!
If you’re a weirdo like Tyler and use Twitter, feel free to follow us there @BlankTheAcademy for ILTBTA updates, rejected jokes, and other random movie-related musings. Once we reach a million followers, we’ll offer to purchase the @ILTBTA handle from the butthead who snagged it before us.
If you’d like to start a wild Best Picture journey of your own, feel free to download a copy of The Spreadsheet. Bonus: checking off the boxes is oddly satisfying.
Post-Credits Scene
Get a sneak peek at the next ILTBTA installment.
Make sure your ears have repressurized properly from the change in altitude, because you’ll need to listen closely for our next ILTBTA post, 1974’s The Conversation. Starring Gene Hackman and Harrison Ford, among others, this Francis Ford Coppola classic explores a moral dilemma faced by a surveillance expert. The Conversation is available with an Amazon Prime subscription or available to rent.
Until then, GO ARTEMIS I!
Okay fine, I’m a contractor. WHATEVER.
Understatement of the post
Tyler: The red-band version of this post includes a very inappropriate joke here.
Over $2 million in today’s dollars!
Guess they cut the scene of smashing champagne over the wing for time?
Sounds like my ex-wife!
It’s like Tom Cruise studied this pompous douche vibe in preparation for Top Gun.
Tyler: That gangly aide being cinema’s own Jeff Goldblum, clearly before he became an unexpected sex symbol. I found his and his partner’s comedic duo routine outlandish and entirely unfunny.
Results tabulated and certified by the accountants at Ernst & Yum™.