The final frontier. ..
No doubt
"The Right
Stuff'' is
mythic stuff.
It's the story
of America's
last jockless
(male) heroes,
the seven married Mercury
astronauts who grabbed for the
cosmic brass ring, rocketing
America into an exciting, giddy
space race.
The film's advertisement tells us
it's the story of "when the future
began," sounding strangely like
"I've seen the future and it
works" — which if you remember
Warren Beatty's "Reds," was John
Reed's reference to the
Bolsheviks. And like the first reds,
the Mercury astronauts were the
vanguard of a revolution, taking
manned flight and language from
"the outside of the envelope" to
"the final frontier."
But — the question begs (or
rather nags) — is "The Right Stuff"
presidential stuff?
Much has been made of the fact
that one of the astronauts por
trayed in the film is presidential
candidate John Glenn, that the
^ movie Glenn, played by Ed Harris,
p is better looking and five going on
10 years younger than the real
Glenn was at the time, and that
the movie Glenn is much less up
tight and thus more appealing (if
no less sanctimonious) than at
least the John Glenn we see in
Tom Wolfe's book.
Could it be that a younger, now
of-voting-age generation will
^ discover and fall in awe with a
W glamourized Glenn? And that the
older generations will rediscover a
man who, despite all the hype
(which is one of the movie's main
themes), was truly heroic, one of
the most worthy knights of Ken
nedy's "Camelot"?
By the way, the first American
sent into space in reality and in
"The Right Stuff" was a chim
panzee. Now what does that mean
if a potential president is upstaged
by a monkey?
But back to "The Right Stuff."
This is a big movie (over three
hours long) made from a big book
(nearly 500 pages long) that is well
worth seeing merely for what may
be the best and most smoothly
coordinated flight sequences in
film: a combination of documen
tary footage, studio shots, visual
effects by Gary Gutierrez, and
breathtaking space vistas of
Mother Earth so effective that
each part is indistinguishable
from the whole.
In "The Right Stuff," director
and screenwriter Philip Kaufman
has synthesized a rambling,
raucous epic, distilling and retain
ing its major ingredient — that is,
the right stuff itself.
And the guy with the Tightest
stuff of all is Chuck Yeager —
played Gary Cooperishly by
playwright Sam Sheppard — the
"fighter jock" who broke the
sound barrier in the late 40's, and
whom the original screenplay left
out altogether.
After Kaufman shows Yeager to
have been the apotheosis of the
right stuff, he deflates the
astronauts, showing them to be
squeaky clean, virtuous media im
ages on one level, and on the
other to be boozers making the
most of astro-groupies, and the
"The Right Stuff," a movie about
the seven Mercury astronauts, is
advertised as being the story of
"when the future began."
least of already failing marriages.
(Glenn is the conspicuous excep
tion here.)
The independent "fighter jock"
personalities of these astronauts
are brought together and sub
jected to the sterile "team-player"
world of the NASA laboratory.
There they live like lab rats, under
the yoke of prodding-and-testing,
humorless scientists. Yeager
himself ridicules the astronauts
and the capsules, calling them
"spam in a can."
One viewer who weathered the
long lines of the film's premiere
summed up the triumph of the
astronauts and of the film itself:
"They were a lot more human
than I thought they would be."
"The Right Stuff" is not all grim,
grueling struggle, not at all. When
Kaufman leaves the slow, old
west, John Ford landscape of
Yeager's wild blue yonder for the
stainless steel of Cape Canavarel,
he faithfully retains the book's
slapstick, wacky, irreverent, jazzy
verve. There are, in short, a lot of
scenes that will make you laugh in
"The Right Stuff," and John Glenn
is in one of them.
Brooks Dareff
Current presidential hopeful /ohn Glenn, played by Ed Harris, is portrayed in the movie as the astronaut who
actually fit his squeaky-clean image.
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It's Almost Halloween
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ANGUS 2123 Franklin Btvd. 686-2020
EUGENE’S 7th ANNUAL
HALLOWEEN BALL
STARRING
CURTIS SALGADO
FACE
& IN
OCTOBER 31. 1983
HIITON BALLROOM
*4.96 ADVANCE *5.96 DAY OF THE SHOW
TICKETS AVAILABLE AT: EVERYBODY'S RECORDS
Stephen Schaefer. US MAGAZINE
"STUNNING...AN EXCITING
EXCEPTIONAL WORK OF ART!
Judy Stone, SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE
ONE OF THE YEAR S MOST
REWARDING FILMS:’
SAN FRANCISCO EXAMINER
A movie I admire more
deeply than any other
American film I have
seen this year
Ginger Varney
LOS ANGELES WEEklx