Don't Make a Scene: The Right Stuff

The Set Up:  Tom Wolfe's book of the fraternity of test-pilots and astronauts, "The Right Stuff," was immediately bought for the movies, and stayed on "the shelf" for years. Like the sound barrier, it resisted all attempts to translate it into a movie. No one could crack it. A lot of people tried. William Goldman, a veteran screen-scribe, thought he had the answer. In his book "Adventures in the Screen Trade," he wrote about the long struggle to put "The Right Stuff" on the screen, and his own solution to wrestle this behemoth ("Too many characters," "Not enough romance," "Too unwieldy a time-line!") between cover-sheets. His idea? Just tell a patriotic movie about the Mercury astronauts--you didn't need The Sound Barrier, and Chuck Yeager, and the story of the X-1! Just start the story with the selection of the Mercury Astronauts and their story and be done with it. American heroes! The crowds will love it!

Yeah, maybe. But it wasn't "The Right Stuff." Without Yeager and Breaking the Sound Barrier (everybody thought a British guy did it, anyway, thanks David Lean!), "The Right Stuff" had no "right stuff." It didn't set up the brotherhood of airmen or the laconic, gum-chewing "this-is-yer-captain-speakin'" just-another-day-in-the-upper-atmosphere-breeziness that runs like ice-water through the veins of pilots...and astronauts. Try to explain it, to set it up—that's tough. Until Phil Kaufman rode into town. Kaufman's solution was even more elegant—keep Yeager in. Use him. And off-set the Astronauts' "spam-in-a-can" existence in a television-lit fishbowl, with Yeager and his fellow test-pilots "pushing the envelope" in obscurity...and finding the honor in both.

Kaufman starts the movie with the failed attempts at Breaking the Sound Barrier, and turns it into almost a fairy tale* of knights on fiery steeds doing battle with "The Demon." And he shows us the consequences of falling in battle and the stakes that all who attempt it are up against. Then he brings in a new knight on horse-back—but it's staged more like an American Western: tall lanky, Gary Cooper-ish Chuck Yeager (playwright Sam Shepard) rides over the hill to meet the challenge--and come to grips with The Quest. Though Goldman disparages Kaufman's movie because it failed at the box-office (then it's gotta be bad, right, Bill?), this movie is more steeped in the Americana of movies than Goldman, with all his flag-waving, could ever have achieved. And it's an eyes-wide-open patriotism that exposes the foibles and the chicanery and the flummery and still acknowledges the heroism...and celebrates it. Is there a story there?

Yeah, you bet there is!

The Story: It's the start of the movie, there is no story yet. Action!

VO: THERE WAS A DEMON THAT LIVED IN THE AIR.
VO: THEY SAID WHOEVER CHALLENGED HIM WOULD DIE.
VO: THEIR CONTROLS WOULD FREEZE UP.
VO: THEIR PLANES WOULD BUFFET WILDLY,
VO: AND THEY WOULD DISINTEGRATE.
VO: THE DEMON LIVED AT MACH 1 ON THE METER...
VO: ...750 MILES AN HOUR, WHERE THE AIR COULD NO LONGER MOVE OUT OF THE WAY.
VO: HE LIVED BEHIND A BARRIER THROUGH WHICH THEY SAID NO MAN COULD EVER PASS.
VO: THEY CALLED IT "THE SOUND BARRIER."
VO: THEN THEY BUILT A SMALL PLANE,
VO: THE X-1, TO TRY AND BREAK THE SOUND BARRIER.
VO: MEN CAME TO THE HIGH DESERT OF CALIFORNIA TO RIDE IT.
VO.: THEY WERE CALLED "TEST PILOTS."
VO: AND NO ONE KNEW THEIR NAMES.
Ground Control (over radio): WHISKEY KILO 28, PREPARE TO DROP.
X-1 Pilot(over radio):ROGER, GROUND CONTROL. THIS IS WHISKEY KILO 28,
GC: LOWERING AND LAUNCHING NOW.
Pilot: MACH .92....93....94...
Pilot: HIT A MILD BUFFET THERE.
Pilot: MACH .95... .96...
Pilot: .97...
Pilot: .98!
Pilot: .99!
GC: DO YOU WANT TO DECLARE AN EMERGENCY?
Pilot: NEGATIVE. WHISKEY KILO 28 ISN'T DECLAR--
(The pilot's wife is startled awake by the crash): Wha...!
(Cut to the Edwards Air Force Base Chaplain slowly walking, as he has so many times before to the new widow's door, to inform her of her test-pilot-husband's death. She stands in the doorway, dreading his arrival)
Pilot's Wife (sobbing): NO. GO AWAY. NO!
Pilot's Wife: NO-OOO!
(Chaplain sings):"LORD, GUARD AND GUIDE THE MEN WHO FLY"
"THROUGH THE GREAT SPACES..."
"...IN THE SKY"
"BE WITH THEM ALWAYS IN THE AIR"
"IN DARKENING STORMS OR SUNLIGHT FAIR"
"LORD, HEAR US WHEN WE LIFT OUR PRAYER"
"FOR THOSE IN PERIL"
"IN THE AIR"
"A-MEN"
(It is after the funeral, and a lone horse rider (Chuck Yeager) crosses the desert, and confront the plane that killed his fellow pilot. The horse is spooked, but is led past the plane, its engines firing in a test. Then horse and rider continue their ride.)

The Right Stuff

Words by Philip Kaufman

Pictures by Caleb Deschanel and Philip Kaufman

The Right Stuff is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

 

* Read with an all-American twang by The Band's drummer Levon Helm, who plays Yeager's "Yessir-can-do" wingman, Ridley.