The Right Stuff ( 1983) Tape A

About

The spectacular story of America's first astronauts.

Project Mercury: the catch-up crash program to put an American into space. The technology was in its infancy. The rockets were unproven. The gamble was enormous. And the pressure was on, because the Russians were already up there. To man Project Mercury, to ride a primitive spacecraft into the unknown, America needed a pilot with "the right stuff" - in other words, a hero.

America found seven of them.

The Right Stuff tells the epic true story of Alan Shepard, Gus Grissom, John Glenn, Scott Carpenter, Walter Schirra, Gordon Cooper and Deke Slayton - the seven men chosen to launch the U.S. into space. It's a spectacular journey, one which earned four 1983 Academy Awards for Best Music Score, Best Film Editing, Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing. Even if you remember the headlines and watched the TV coverage, you don't know the half of what really happened.

Working from the best-selling book by Tom Wolfe, writer/director Philip Kaufman does a brilliant job of bringing the astronauts and their adventures to three-dimensional life. From high-tech hardware to the high-stress performance of individual hearts and minds, Kaufman's superb film leaves nothing out.

Dennis Quaid, Ed Harris and Scott Glenn lead a striking septet of actors in roles which combine credibility, depth and unpredictably irreverent humor. Their characterizations deliver the astronauts from the whitewash of official history to the startling colors of real life, where they belong.

Behind their key dramatic roles, in an understated personification of the right stuff at its essence, is legendary test pilot Chuck Yeager, played by actor/playwright Sam Shepard. Yeager is the mysterious center of Kaufman's movie, the core of its style - and the root of its heroic images.

Sure to be a classic, The Right Stuff is one film that truly measures up to the size, complexity and excitement of its subject.

Human-made No record of this work says a model made it. What this means.

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