Trivia / The Right Stuff

• Ability over Appearance: Several of the main actors top 6 feet (183 cm) (Dennis Quaid and Scott Glenn in particular). However, none of the actual astronauts were over 5'11" (180 cm), as that was the maximum height allowed by the cramped Mercury capsu—er, spacecraft. Gus Grissom, who was 5'5" (165 cm) in real life, was portrayed by the 5'10" (178 cm) Fred Ward. The 5'10" Wally Schirra was, however, portrayed by the 5'10" Lance Henriksen.
• Acclaimed Flop: Despite being critically acclaimed and having been nominated for eight Academy Awards, the film failed to make back its budget.
• Acting for Two: Levon Helm plays Jack Ridley and provides the off-screen narration.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Like Gus Grissom, the late Fred Ward served in the U.S. Air Force.
  • Lance Henriksen and his character Walter Schirra served in the U.S. Navy.
  • Scott Glenn served in the Marines, technically part of the Department of the Navy, here playing Naval aviator Alan Shepard.
• Box Office Bomb: Budget, estimated between $19 million to $27 million. Box office, $21,192,102. The triple-hit knockout of this film, Twice Upon a Time, and Once Upon a Time in America (the third of which became the unfortunate victim of Executive Meddling) led to the film's executive producer Alan Ladd, Jr. to shut down his production company and leave Warner Bros., and while he was appointed executive of MGM/UA just a year after the third aforementioned film's release, he would not return to his own and produce another film until Braveheart.
• California Doubling: Averted. Location managers are not likely to find a place more desolate than Edwards AFB, although the "Australia" in the film looked a lot like some of the more desolate places on the base...
• Cast the Runner-Up: Scott Glenn was initially considered for the role of Chuck Yeager, but he expressed that he would rather play Alan Shepard, and was cast in that part instead.
• Channel Hop: The film was originally picked up by United Artists, who outbid Universal Pictures for the rights to the book. They eventually put the film in turnaround and it was picked up by The Ladd Company.
• Creator Killer: Along with Twice Upon a Time and Once Upon a Time in America, this film's high-profile box office failure was credited for bringing down the company of famed Hollywood executive Alan Ladd, Jr.
• Dawson Casting: A few of the principals were played by actors older than their characters.^note For the Mercury Seven, we'll use their ages at selection in January 1959.
  • Chuck Yeager was 24 when he broke the sound barrier. Sam Shepard was 40. Though the NF-104 accident at the end of the film did happen when Yeager was 40 in 1963.
  • Alan Shepard was 36 when selected for the Mercury Seven. Scott Glenn was 44.
  • Gus Grissom was 32 when selected. Fred Ward was 41.
  • Wally Schirra was also 36. Lance Henriksen was 43.
• Disowned Adaptation: Tom Wolfe was unhappy with the film, because he felt it made too many changes to the book.
• Executive Meddling: The military insisted that swearing be removed from the movie so that it would get a lower rating, becuase they wanted teens to watch it and join the army.
• Fatal Method Acting: The stuntman portraying Chuck Yeager's bailout of the crashing F-104. His helmet filled with smoke, and he didn't get his parachute deployed. Yeager himself — a technical adviser for the film as well as giving his cameo — not only refused to re-enact the flight (he did most of the flying filmed), he had warned against stunt personnel doing so, warning that it would almost certainly be a fatal mistake. The scene is also a strange bit of Truth in Television, as Yeager actually collided with his seat after ejecting, and his helmet filled with liquid explosive materials, similarly filling his helmet with smoke and burning his face to a cinder. The aftermath is portrayed in the Out of the Inferno shot listed on the main page.
• Irony as She Is Cast: Sam Shepard, who played legendary pilot Chuck Yeager, was actually afraid of flying.
• No Dub for You: The film was released in Japan in 1984. However, it wasn't until 29 years later that the film would eventually receive a dub.
• Noisy Nature: The NASA recruiters'^note Jeff Goldblum and Harry Shearer arrival at Edwards AFB is punctuated by the distinctive song of a canyon wren, which to be fair is location-accurate.
• Reality Subtext:
  • Towards the end of the movie, Alan Shepard tells his wife Louise, in a "one of these days..." manner, "I'm going to the moon...". Shepard would be the only one of the Mercury Seven who would go to the moon, on Apollo 14 ^note He was slated to be on the first Gemini mission, but got grounded due to an inner ear condition. After the docs cleared him, Shepard was initially assigned to Apollo 13, NASA execs moved him to Apollo 14 to give his crew more time to train.
  • During the astronaut tryouts in the movie, Gordon Cooper gloats about breaking the record for holding one's breath, only to realize that John Glenn and Scott Carpenter are still going after he's done. In real life, Cooper did hold his breath the longest, since he was the only non-smoker in the Mercury Seven.
  • At the movie's end, before Cooper lifts off on his mission, he's shown dozing off. Cooper was the first astronaut to sleep in outer space.
  • The real John Glenn tried to use this for a presidential run in 1984. He didn't make it out of the Democratic primaries, finishing sixth with only two delegates while his campaign was saddled with over $3 million in debt.
• Referenced by...: Apart from the countless power-walk scenes that have been inspired by this movie, the Community episode "Basic Rocket Science" borrows wholesale from it. (For example, it opens with a parody of the Everybody Knew Already scenes on the main page.)
• Underage Casting: Dennis Quaid was 28 playing 33-year-old Gordo Cooper, while Ed Harris was 33 playing 37-year-old John Glenn.
• What Could Have Been:
  • William Goldman was originally hired to write the script. This version focused on the astronauts, entirely ignoring Chuck Yeager.
  • John Barry was the original composer, but left because he found it impossible to understand what Philip Kaufman wanted from the score, citing a meeting where Kaufman described his ideal score as "sounding like you're walking in the desert and you see a cactus, and you put your foot on it, but it just starts growing up through your foot." In the end, Bill Conti wrote the music.
  • John Avildsen and Michael Ritchie were considered to direct.

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