The Right Stuff
Short description
The Right Stuff follows the early years of American spaceflight, beginning with test pilot Chuck Yeager breaking the sound barrier and continuing through the selection and training of the seven men chosen for the Mercury program. When the Soviet Union launches Sputnik, the United States scrambles to catch up, and a group of military test pilots is put through demanding physical and psychological tests to find out who can handle the pressure. The film traces their public triumphs and private strains as they compete to become the first Americans in space, while Yeager, the pilot who came before them, remains on the outside looking in.
Philip Kaufman directed and wrote the screenplay, working from Tom Wolfe's book about the Mercury astronauts. It was the fourth film Kaufman directed, following The Great Northfield Minnesota Raid, Invasion of the Body Snatchers and The Wanderers, and it preceded The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Henry & June and later films. Sam Shepard plays Chuck Yeager, with Scott Glenn as Alan Shepard, Ed Harris as John Glenn, Dennis Quaid as Gordon Cooper, Fred Ward as Gus Grissom and Barbara Hershey as Glennis Yeager. Supporting roles bring the credited cast to 67 people, with 43 credited crew members.
The film runs 193 minutes and cost about 27 million dollars to make, earning roughly 22 million worldwide. On IMDb it holds a 7.8 rating from more than 64,000 votes, while on TMDB it has a 7.4 from around 1,000 votes. A critics' rating of 8.9 from 53 reviews places it well above both audience scores.
What's left behind the scenes
- The majority of the film was shot at Hamilton Air Force Base north of San Francisco.
- The film is based on the novel of the same name by Tom Wolfe (1979).
- Actor Ed Harris auditioned for the role of Glenn twice: the first time, producers felt the actor's work in front of the camera was unremarkable.
- When working on the astronauts' spacesuits, the costume designers used silver fabric and other materials left over from making clothes for the singer and actress Cher.
- Dennis Quaid replaced Ken Wahl.
- Kaufmann provided the actors playing the seven astronauts with an extensive collection of videotapes for study and role preparation.
- Stuntman-parachutist Joseph Swack died on set while performing a stunt. His helmet filled with smoke, causing him to suffocate and fail to deploy his parachute.
- Chuck Yeager was hired as a technical consultant during filming. He taught the actors how to fly, reviewed storyboards and special effects, and pointed out mistakes.
- Numerous scaled and full-size aircraft models were used during filming. The first special effects shot were too realistic, and the footage had to be artificially degraded to resemble the actual footage from NASA's early reports. Nevertheless, Kaufmann was dissatisfied with the result and dismissed almost the entire special effects team. In the end, special effects were almost restarted from scratch, using unconventional methods such as launching a model on a cord from a hill, or using smoke machines to simulate clouds, or launching an F-104 model from a large slingshot and filming the flight from 4 cameras simultaneously.
- Ellen Barkin was considered for one of the roles.
Auditions in India
Casting calls in USA
Castingi w Polsce
Кастинги в Україні
