The Right Stuff, Special Edition, on DVD

by Jim Bray

A true American masterpiece, Philip Kaufman’s The Right Stuff is on my list of “desert island discs.” The original DVD, a gift from my son, is one of my prized possessions, so I was understandably pumped when I learned about this new, two disc special edition.

The film was a financial failure on its initial release, but since then has carved out a place of honor for itself in film history. Now, 20 years after, it’s just as good as it was then, and the new DVD transfer makes getting this new version worthwhile.

Kaufman wrote the script based on Tom Wolfe’s book on NASA’s Mercury astronauts, the first Americans to strap themselves onto unstable and low technology rockets and hurtle into space. The story is compelling, the story telling is exuberant and reverently irreverent, the cast is outstanding, and the special effects are remarkably convincing almost everywhere throughout the film's 193 glorious minutes.

We begin in 1947, with the struggle to break the sound barrier, a demon in the sky that wrecked every plane that tried to exceed it. That is, however, until Air Force test pilot and WWII ace Chuck Yeager got behind the controls of the Bell X-1 and went boldly where no one had gone before. His record-setting flight should have been big news, and big history, but at the time it was classified and history has since moved on to more glamorous images from the past – including the same Mercury Seven who are the focus of The Right Stuff.

Thanks, then, to Wolfe and Kaufman for giving us the Big Picture.

Yeager and his contemporaries inhabit a rarified atmosphere, not only because they fly fast and high but because they live in the high desert of California’s Edwards Air Force Base, in primitive conditions that is hell on their wives. But even more hellish to the wives than their crummy little homes is the death rate among test pilots, men who were dropping even faster than the speed records.

The Right Stuff also gives us excellent human insight into the life of a pilot’s – and astronaut’s – wife, as personified mostly through excellent portrayals by Pamela Reed as Trudy Cooper, Veronica Cartwright (who is superb) as Betty Grissom, and Mary Jo Deschanel as Annie Glenn. The Air Force - and history - hasn’t given them a moment’s thought – undoubtedly not through malice but thanks to the blinders it wears.

Yeager (in a wonderfully low key performance by Sam Shepard), flies faster and higher than anyone, but the fact that he’s the embodiment of that intangible quality called the right stuff doesn’t impress the powers that be at NASA. When a couple of recruiters (Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer, in a very funny Mutt and Jeff routine) show up at Edwards looking for astronaut candidates, Yeager doesn’t measure up to them because he doesn’t have a university education.

How could NASA not be looking for the best pilots, period? As Shearer’s character says, they’re looking for the best pilots “they can get,” and the marvelous collection of men they do find are all deserving of the gig. And the way the movie presents it, it sounds as if Yeager would have turned down the gig anyway, since at that time being an astronaut meant more or less being more of a passenger than a pilot, but who knows? History could have been different, but as it played out the great Chuck Yeager flew grandly though obscurely (which in many ways is better!) for the rest of his long career.

He shows up in the movie, though! General Yeager plays Fred, bartender at Pancho’s Happy Bottom Riding Club, the bar where the flyboys at Edwards hang out. There’s a particularly delicious scene where Shearer is telling David Clennon that Yeager doesn’t measure up, while the real Yeager sidles up behind them, bottle in hand, looking at the government men almost as if he wonders from what planet they come.

The recruiters do find candidates at Edwards: Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid, in an excellent performance), Deke Slayton (Scott Paulin) and Gus Grissom (Fred Ward, who’s also very good). Other candidates are recruited from the other forces, including navy aviator Alan Shepard and Marine pilot John Glenn (respectively portrayed to excellence by Scott Glenn and Ed Harris).

The recruits are put through all kinds of weird and difficult tests by a NASA that doesn’t really know what it needs to find out, so throws everything it can think of at them just to make sure it doesn't miss anything. In the end, we are introduced to the Mercury Seven (rounded out by Charles Frank as Scott Carpenter and Lance Henriksen as Wally Schirra) at a bizarre press conference where they’re hailed publicly as the greatest Americans since George Washington, while their confreres remark to themselves that all the hoopla is going toward seven rookies who haven’t even done anything yet.

If these naysayers (who didn’t really mean any disrespect by it) had undergone the tests the astronauts did they might not have felt that way, however.

Anyway, we’re treated to watching the development of the Mercury program through failed rocket tests, Russian victories alongside American stumbles, media and political hype, and family matters, all underscored and held together by the story of the seven remarkable gentlemen who pushed the outside of the envelope as the U.S. took its first tentative baby steps toward the stars.

It’s at times funny, at times moving, at times exciting, at times ludicrous – and it all works, grandly. Kaufman pulled off this epic masterfully, and it’s all up there on the screen for you to see. The casting was inspired, the cinematography is gorgeous, and Bill Conti has composed the perfect, rousing score to accompany the story.

The movie itself is presented – all on one side of disc one - in a new, digital, anamorphic widescreen edition and the picture quality is appreciably better than the original DVD’s. Colors are rich and most of the shots are sharp and clean. Some of it isn’t as sharp and clean, but as with Forrest Gump there’s a lot of use of authentic (or "faked authentic") footage and this explains some of the grainier sequences.

Audio was always good, but the new transfer’s Dolby Digital 5.1 surround is also appreciably better – and boy, do the jets sound great!

Alas, while there are also plenty of extras, one extra I really missed was a running commentary to accompany the film. What with the film’s difficult shoot and disastrous financial track record in theaters, and its now-revered status, it would probably have been a doozie.

Oh, well, there’s plenty more stuff on disc two and Right Stuff fans will undoubtedly eat it up with a spoon. For instance, you get some scene specific commentary with Kaufman, producers Winkler and Chartoff, cinematographer Deschanel, and many other cast and crew members. It’s great stuff, which made me pine even more for a commentary.

There are also three documentaries of varying length and you’ll want to watch them all. One is on the production, one is on the post production and release, and the last one is a look at the real guys, through the eyes of most surviving Mercury astronauts themselves. Mr. "clean Marine" isn't there, alas.

You also get to see an extra 13 scenes, none of which would have improved what is very nearly a perfect movie, and an interactive timeline to space that features archival footage of some major events in America’s path to the stars.

And to top things off, there’s a feature on John Glenn, who as a U.S. Senator went on to become America’s oldest astronaut when he went back into space in the late 1990’s as a member of a space shuttle crew.

A soaring DVD!

The Right Stuff, from Warner Home Video
193 min. anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1, 16x9 TV compatible), Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
Starring Sam Shepard, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward, Ed Harris, Barbara Hershey, Pamela Reed, Veronica Cartwright, Kim Stanley,
Produced by Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff
Written for the screen and directed by Philip Kaufman

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