The Right Stuff

I'm not an aviation fan, but damn if this film doesn't put me in the head of people who are.

This is a great film.  Funny, touching, thrilling, epic.

William Goldman and Phil Kaufman famously clashed over the script.  Goldman didn't want the Yeager stuff, Kaufman wisely did...the contrast between Yeager and the Mercury Astronauts is what makes the film so poignant.  Goldman quit and Kaufman wrote the film himself and did a damn fine job of it (only one scene from the Goldman script is in the final film).

All the performances are stellar...Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Donald Moffat, Veronica Cartwright, Barbara Hershey.  No one is scenery chewing or grandstanding, which you see in so many movies today with everybody trying to out-perform each other.

The cinematography is gorgeous.  The score by Bill Conti is iconic.  It's a long movie, but it's never boring and the running time feels earned.

They simply don't make movies like this anymore. 

Quote:

Originally Posted by yt 

They didn't make films like this then either. 

Correct.  That film was the result of Chartoff and Winkler...the film was dumped by a studio, I can't remember which and picked by the Ladd Company.  Today we live in more of a studio exec driven business than a producer driven business like in the 80s and 90s.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Richard Dickson 

This movie just looks fantastic.  So many great shots, so much great composition.  Caleb Deschanel really knocked it out of the park.

He was supposed to shoot Titanic but clashed with Cameron.  Oh what could have been.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bailey 

I love that the film straddles the line between celebrating mythmaking, and being self-aware enough to sort of wink at it. 

 

Not wanting the Yeager stuff?  Wow.  I mean, how could you be the screenwriter and not realize that going from one to the other is basically the central point of the film?

 

Is the sequence where Yeager crashes that experimental jet one of my favorite of the 80's?  You're damn right it is.

He wrote it as just a straight forward story of the mercury program, which would've been...not the same to say the least.  Goldman is a great writer, but his judgement can sometimes be that of a gnat.