The Right Stuff

Tom Wolfe is easily shocked.  He's the kind of person who learns about the moral bankruptcy of the ruling classes, or the casual sex of certain college students, and thinks it's worthy of a 600-page tome.  His breakthrough work, "The Right Stuff," profiled Air Force test pilots and the Mercury Program.  It was nonfiction, and therefore more nuanced.  But it was still far too surprised that astronauts used their celebrity for sex, or that the space program was politicized.

By his own admission, writer-director Phillip Kaufman took his cues from Wolfe in adapting the book.  Kaufman doesn't know how to be subtle.  At times he lionizes his astronauts in scenes that would practically be at home in "Top Gun."  At other times he ridicules the vultures of the press corps.  (And, since this movie is north of three hours, he does both of these things many, many times.)

In keeping with the film's self-satisfied tone, there's a lot of humor, or at least attempts at it.  In one sequence, Alan Shepherd struggles to hold his bladder while waiting on the launch pad.  The film cuts to suggestive images: a teacup overflowing, a water jug sloshing, and so on.  Of course, Shepherd can't see these things.  But it's funny, you see, because he's an astronaut, and he needs to pee.

There's one moment in the film where Kaufman finds some ambiguity.  Astronaut Gus Grissom has the door blown off his capsule.  It's implied that he had debris in the capsule that he was planning to sell.  Grissom gets less glory because of his gaffe, and his wife is upset that she isn't feted at the White House.  But she knows he's still accomplished something tremendous, and she tries to put a brave face on for the press.  It's the one time where Kaufman doesn't think he has all the answers.