Post by ronnierocketago on May 25, 2006 15:57:13 GMT
THE RIGHT STUFF
United States, 1983
U.S. Release Date: 10/21/1983
Running Length: 193 minutes
MPAA Classification: PG
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Starring: Sam Shepard, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey, Kim Stanley, Veronica Cartwright, Pamela Reed, Scott Paulin, Charles Frank, Lance Henriksen
Directed by – Philip Kaufman
Written by – Tom Wolfe (Novel) and Philip Kaufman (Screenplay)
Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel
Original Score: Bill Conti
Studio: The Ladd Company
Of the greatest movies to have emerged from the 1980s, which included Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” Sir Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran,” the career masterpiece of writer/director Philip Kaufman is worthy of our inspection today.
In 1979, novelist Tom Wolfe unleashed “The Right Stuff,” an immediate best-selling and critical work about the daring and gutsy test pilots which will lead up to the very successful public relations coup that was the Mercury 7 space program of America’s own NASA. Four years later, respected filmmaker Kaufman, after successes with “White Dawn” and his remarkable remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” was hired to translate Wolfe’s non-fictional drama to the big screen.
Somehow, despite almost universal critical raves and many Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, “The Right Stuff” was a financial dud. Roger Ebert believes its because the film cynically examines the heroes themselves, which the Reagan-American people of the time wanted nothing to do with. I disagree with that assertion. If anything, the reason why this movie failed to attract audiences initially is probably the same reason why I was wary of checking the movie out for several years. On the surface, this movie reeks really of pure Oscar-bait. That is in terms of a historical drama that glamorized or captured some moment of America’s past, and of course flag waving all-around. I mean it’s the 1980s after all.
However, Kaufman went far beyond making a simple patriotic movie. Instead he crafted an intimate epic about the very nature of exploration and of courage. Truly Kaufman made for a film that celebrated the guts of men, with some who died and lived in obscurity while others being immortal national heroes.
Kaufman broke screenplay tradition by starting the film with a lengthy “prologue” sequence in 1947, where Air Force test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager (Sam Shepard) prepares to try to defeat the feared “Demon in the Sky” that is the Sound Barrier. Kaufman gives us the Old World before “the future began,” where the skies of our world was our limits for aspirations, but which slowly in subtle details transform to the world that we recognize. Through Shepard’s performance, with his natural charisma speaking for itself more so than the dialogue, we see Kaufman’s idealized vision of what truly constitutes for having “the right stuff,” as in Yeager deciding to risk his life not only for no financial bonuses, but as well with a problematic broken rib. We reveal in pure organic joy and awe as Yeager breaks the Sound Barrier, and for a moment he catches a glimpse of something over the mountain, something that now gives man a new point of destination to conquer: space.
The film then proceeds to follow the entry of men who would become linked to pop culture of space exploration. We see Gordo “Hot Dog” Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Virgil “Gus” Grissom (Fred Ward) arrive years later at the same airbase of Yeager’s triumph, with the domesticator of the Sound Barrier still “the man” for all pilots to measure from. While Cooper is amusing as a cocky and self-assuring pilot jock, there are times in the movie where he is simply in awe, if unwilling to admit it, of Yeager. If anything, perhaps Cooper tries to be the “hot dog pilot” because he wants to be like Yeager, but can never be to his own mind. Is Cooper the men in the audience who watch this movie?
Exploration for the “New World” is given a major inertia when the Russians launch Sputnik into space, and the Americans seek to catch-up in this newly ushered Space Race. The newly formed NASA division proceeds to pick not necessarily the best pilots, but “the best pilots available”. Because Yeager never attended college, he was automatically ruled out. However, Cooper, Grissom, the arrogant Navy pilot Alan Sheppard (Scott Glenn), hokey dory but honestly well virtued Marine hero John Glenn (Ed Harris), and others are picked to be America’s first astronauts in space.
The rest of the film proceeds with the training and eventual launch of the Mercury 7 astronauts into space, along with there squabbles with NASA scientists and bureaucracy figures. We witness the domestic problems between the would-be astronauts and their wives, along with the increasing change that this new wave of exploration brings about in society. However, lurking in the background with the occasional back cut is Yeager, a man of the Old World now a relic in the world that he helped usher in. However, as we see in the climatic sequence of the movie, while Kaufman intercuts between the Mercury 7 astronauts celebrating at a Texas BBQ and Yeager attempting to break a Russian-held flight height distance record, Yeager proved that though unsuccessfully, he still has the right stuff, as much as the astronauts who braved their lives not on giant explosive rockets, but on TV as well.
A less matured filmmaker would try to make Yeager be “The Man” while the astronauts being the rat scumbags who take all the glory for going up in space and splashing down in a capsule. Instead, Kaufman does examine the unfairness of it, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Yeager won the blue skies, but he lost the black spectrum of space, as much as the astronauts cannot be the cavalier maverick pilots of old. There is always a balance in the universe that each individual is allowed to accomplish. Why do you think you’ve never heard of a man that truly has it all?
In retrospect, Kaufman did make a flag-waving film that in spirit celebrates the exploration trail-blazing tradition of Americans. However, it isn’t the flag-waving of sorts that we expect now from the Bush White House, where we stomp everyone in the face with the fact that we are not only Americans, but also “free”, and expect everyone to respect us in natural process. No, Kaufman made for a flag-waving movie that earns respect for the best of the American national spirit from the world.
It is quite ironic that on the same year of 2004 that the real-life Gordo Copper, the last American to venture into space as a solo pilot, passed away onto the great horizon from our mortal universe, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie made national headlines when they became the first private civilians to fly into space with the privately-funded SpaceShipOne vehicle in separate solo flights. Much like Yeager representing mankind in 1947, we see the vastness of the unexplored territory that is outer space and we still apparently have the primal desire to explore it, and tackle the new Demon in the Sky.
Film Rating - *****/5 – MASTERPIECE
United States, 1983
U.S. Release Date: 10/21/1983
Running Length: 193 minutes
MPAA Classification: PG
Theatrical Aspect Ratio: 1.85:1
Starring: Sam Shepard, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Barbara Hershey, Kim Stanley, Veronica Cartwright, Pamela Reed, Scott Paulin, Charles Frank, Lance Henriksen
Directed by – Philip Kaufman
Written by – Tom Wolfe (Novel) and Philip Kaufman (Screenplay)
Cinematography: Caleb Deschanel
Original Score: Bill Conti
Studio: The Ladd Company
Of the greatest movies to have emerged from the 1980s, which included Martin Scorsese’s “Raging Bull,” Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon a Time in America,” Sir Ridley Scott’s “Blade Runner,” Akira Kurosawa’s “Ran,” the career masterpiece of writer/director Philip Kaufman is worthy of our inspection today.
In 1979, novelist Tom Wolfe unleashed “The Right Stuff,” an immediate best-selling and critical work about the daring and gutsy test pilots which will lead up to the very successful public relations coup that was the Mercury 7 space program of America’s own NASA. Four years later, respected filmmaker Kaufman, after successes with “White Dawn” and his remarkable remake of “Invasion of the Body Snatchers,” was hired to translate Wolfe’s non-fictional drama to the big screen.
Somehow, despite almost universal critical raves and many Oscar nominations, including Best Picture, “The Right Stuff” was a financial dud. Roger Ebert believes its because the film cynically examines the heroes themselves, which the Reagan-American people of the time wanted nothing to do with. I disagree with that assertion. If anything, the reason why this movie failed to attract audiences initially is probably the same reason why I was wary of checking the movie out for several years. On the surface, this movie reeks really of pure Oscar-bait. That is in terms of a historical drama that glamorized or captured some moment of America’s past, and of course flag waving all-around. I mean it’s the 1980s after all.
However, Kaufman went far beyond making a simple patriotic movie. Instead he crafted an intimate epic about the very nature of exploration and of courage. Truly Kaufman made for a film that celebrated the guts of men, with some who died and lived in obscurity while others being immortal national heroes.
Kaufman broke screenplay tradition by starting the film with a lengthy “prologue” sequence in 1947, where Air Force test pilot Charles “Chuck” Yeager (Sam Shepard) prepares to try to defeat the feared “Demon in the Sky” that is the Sound Barrier. Kaufman gives us the Old World before “the future began,” where the skies of our world was our limits for aspirations, but which slowly in subtle details transform to the world that we recognize. Through Shepard’s performance, with his natural charisma speaking for itself more so than the dialogue, we see Kaufman’s idealized vision of what truly constitutes for having “the right stuff,” as in Yeager deciding to risk his life not only for no financial bonuses, but as well with a problematic broken rib. We reveal in pure organic joy and awe as Yeager breaks the Sound Barrier, and for a moment he catches a glimpse of something over the mountain, something that now gives man a new point of destination to conquer: space.
The film then proceeds to follow the entry of men who would become linked to pop culture of space exploration. We see Gordo “Hot Dog” Cooper (Dennis Quaid) and Virgil “Gus” Grissom (Fred Ward) arrive years later at the same airbase of Yeager’s triumph, with the domesticator of the Sound Barrier still “the man” for all pilots to measure from. While Cooper is amusing as a cocky and self-assuring pilot jock, there are times in the movie where he is simply in awe, if unwilling to admit it, of Yeager. If anything, perhaps Cooper tries to be the “hot dog pilot” because he wants to be like Yeager, but can never be to his own mind. Is Cooper the men in the audience who watch this movie?
Exploration for the “New World” is given a major inertia when the Russians launch Sputnik into space, and the Americans seek to catch-up in this newly ushered Space Race. The newly formed NASA division proceeds to pick not necessarily the best pilots, but “the best pilots available”. Because Yeager never attended college, he was automatically ruled out. However, Cooper, Grissom, the arrogant Navy pilot Alan Sheppard (Scott Glenn), hokey dory but honestly well virtued Marine hero John Glenn (Ed Harris), and others are picked to be America’s first astronauts in space.
The rest of the film proceeds with the training and eventual launch of the Mercury 7 astronauts into space, along with there squabbles with NASA scientists and bureaucracy figures. We witness the domestic problems between the would-be astronauts and their wives, along with the increasing change that this new wave of exploration brings about in society. However, lurking in the background with the occasional back cut is Yeager, a man of the Old World now a relic in the world that he helped usher in. However, as we see in the climatic sequence of the movie, while Kaufman intercuts between the Mercury 7 astronauts celebrating at a Texas BBQ and Yeager attempting to break a Russian-held flight height distance record, Yeager proved that though unsuccessfully, he still has the right stuff, as much as the astronauts who braved their lives not on giant explosive rockets, but on TV as well.
A less matured filmmaker would try to make Yeager be “The Man” while the astronauts being the rat scumbags who take all the glory for going up in space and splashing down in a capsule. Instead, Kaufman does examine the unfairness of it, but he doesn’t dwell on it. Yeager won the blue skies, but he lost the black spectrum of space, as much as the astronauts cannot be the cavalier maverick pilots of old. There is always a balance in the universe that each individual is allowed to accomplish. Why do you think you’ve never heard of a man that truly has it all?
In retrospect, Kaufman did make a flag-waving film that in spirit celebrates the exploration trail-blazing tradition of Americans. However, it isn’t the flag-waving of sorts that we expect now from the Bush White House, where we stomp everyone in the face with the fact that we are not only Americans, but also “free”, and expect everyone to respect us in natural process. No, Kaufman made for a flag-waving movie that earns respect for the best of the American national spirit from the world.
It is quite ironic that on the same year of 2004 that the real-life Gordo Copper, the last American to venture into space as a solo pilot, passed away onto the great horizon from our mortal universe, Mike Melvill and Brian Binnie made national headlines when they became the first private civilians to fly into space with the privately-funded SpaceShipOne vehicle in separate solo flights. Much like Yeager representing mankind in 1947, we see the vastness of the unexplored territory that is outer space and we still apparently have the primal desire to explore it, and tackle the new Demon in the Sky.
Film Rating - *****/5 – MASTERPIECE