Editing The Right Stuff (film) (section)

==Production==
===Development===
In 1979, independent producers [[Robert Chartoff]] and [[Irwin Winkler]] outbid [[Universal Pictures]] for the movie rights to [[Tom Wolfe]]'s book, paying $350,000.<ref name="Ansen">Ansen, David and Katrine Ames. "A Movie with All 'The Right Stuff'." ''[[Newsweek]]'', October 3, 1983, p. 38.</ref> They hired [[William Goldman]] to write the screenplay. Goldman wrote in his memoirs that his adaptation focused on the astronauts, and he entirely ignored Chuck Yeager.<ref>Goldman 2001, p. 254.</ref> Goldman was inspired to accept the job because he wanted to say something patriotic about America in the wake of the [[Iran hostage crisis]]. Winkler writes in his memoirs that he was disappointed that Goldman's adaptation ignored Yeager.<ref name="wink">{{cite book |first=Irwin |last=Winkler |author-link=Irwin Winkler |title=A Life in Movies: Stories from Fifty Years in Hollywood |page=1717/3917 |edition=Kindle |publisher=Abrams Press |year=2019}}</ref>

In June 1980, [[United Artists]] agreed to finance the film up to $20 million, and the producers began looking for a director. [[Michael Ritchie (film director)|Michael Ritchie]] was originally attached but fell through; so did [[John Avildsen]] who, four years prior, had won an Oscar for his work under Winkler and Chartoff on the original ''[[Rocky]]''. (''The Right Stuff'' would have reunited Avildsen with both producers and also with a fourth ''Rocky'' veteran, composer [[Bill Conti]].)<ref>Goldman 2001, p 257.</ref>

Ultimately, Chartoff and Winkler approached director [[Philip Kaufman]], who agreed to make the film but did not like Goldman's script. Kaufman disliked the emphasis on patriotism and wanted Yeager put back in the film.<ref>Goldman 2001, p. 258.</ref> Eventually, Goldman quit the project in August 1980, and United Artists pulled out.

When Wolfe showed no interest in adapting his own book, Kaufman wrote a draft in eight weeks.<ref name="Ansen" /> His draft restored Yeager to the story, because "if you're tracing how the future began, the future in space travel, it began really with Yeager and the world of the test pilots. The astronauts descended from them."<ref name="Wilford">Wilford, John Noble. [https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?_r=3&res=9C0DE5DB143BF935A25753C1A965948260&scp=73&sq=%22The+Right+Stuff%22&st=nyt "'The Right Stuff': From Space to Screen."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205722/https://www.nytimes.com/1983/10/16/movies/the-right-stuff-from-space-to-the-screen.html |date=2020-11-15 }} ''[[The New York Times]]'', October 16, 1983. Retrieved: December 29, 2008.</ref>

After the financial failure of ''[[Heaven's Gate (film)|Heaven's Gate]]'', the studio put ''The Right Stuff'' in [[Turnaround (filmmaking)|turnaround]]. Then, [[The Ladd Company]] stepped in with an estimated $17 million.

===Casting===
Actor Ed Harris auditioned twice in 1981 for the role of John Glenn. Originally, Kaufman wanted to use a troupe of contortionists to portray the press corps, but he settled on the improvisational comedy troupe [[Fratelli Bologna]], known for its sponsorship of "St. Stupid's Day" in [[San Francisco]].<ref name="Williams">Williams, Christian. "A Story that Pledges Allegiance to Drama and Entertainment."  ''[[Washington Post]]'', October 20, 1983, A18.</ref> The director created a locust-like chatter to accompany the press corps whenever they appear, which was achieved through a sound combination of (among other things) motorized Nikon cameras and clicking beetles.<ref name="Williams" />

Professional American football player [[Anthony Muñoz]] has a minor role in the film as a hospital orderly named Gonzales; the soft-spoken Muñoz was asked to [[lip sync]] his lines, and a "deeper, gruffer voice" was [[dubbing|dubbed]] over him in post-production.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1985-11-13-sp-5324-story.html|title=His Faith Produced Miracles : Munoz Needed It to Come Back and Excel in the NFL|last=Newhan|first=Ross|date=November 13, 1985|work=[[Los Angeles Times]]|access-date=September 11, 2023}}</ref>

===Filming===
Most of the film was shot in and around San Francisco between March and October 1982, with additional filming continuing into January 1983. A waterfront warehouse there was transformed into a studio.<ref name="Ansen" />{{refn|Downtown San Francisco doubled for [[Lower Manhattan]] in the [[ticker-tape parade]] scene after John Glenn's return to Earth. The scene was shot at the intersection of California and Montgomery Streets, in the [[Financial District, San Francisco|District]], and the [[Pacific Stock Exchange]], on the corner of Sansome and Pine Streets can be spotted doubling for the [[New York Stock Exchange]] in the final part of the scene.<ref name= "Ansen"/>|group = Note}} Location shooting took place primarily at the abandoned [[Hamilton Air Force Base]], north of San Francisco, which was converted into a sound stage for the numerous interior sets.<ref>Farmer 1984, p. 34.</ref> No location could substitute for the distinctive [[Edwards Air Force Base]] landscape and so the entire production crew moved to the [[Mojave Desert]] to shoot the opening sequences that framed the story of the test pilots at Muroc Army Air Field, later Edwards AFB.<ref>Farmer 1984, p. 41.</ref> Additional shooting took place in [[California City, California|California City]] in early 1983. During the filming of a sequence portraying Chuck Yeager's ejection from an NF-104,<ref>Note that Yeager's ejection was from the highly-specialized [[NF-104]] rocket jet, but the movie used a common unmodified F-104.</ref> stuntman Joseph Svec, a former [[Special Forces (United States Army)|Green Beret]], was killed when he failed to open his parachute because he may have been unconscious from smoke.<ref>{{Cite web |url=http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/TheRightStuff-Svec.htm |title=Svec's Freefall, Check-Six.com |access-date=2016-08-14 |archive-date=2016-08-18 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160818000901/http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/TheRightStuff-Svec.htm |url-status=live }}</ref>

In 1982, the scene of the wives of the astronauts watching the television broadcast was filmed on military housing in [[Novato, California]].

Yeager was hired as a technical consultant on the film. He took the actors flying, studied the storyboards and special effects, and pointed out the errors. To prepare for their roles, Kaufman gave the actors playing the seven astronauts an extensive videotape collection to study.<ref name="Ansen" />

The effort to make an authentic feature led to the use of many full-size aircraft, scale models and special effects to replicate the scenes at Edwards Air Force Base and [[Cape Canaveral Air Force Station]].<ref>Farmer 1983, p. 47.</ref> Special visual effects supervisor Gary Gutierrez said the first special effects were too clean for the desired "dirty, funky, early NASA look."<ref name="Ansen" /> That amde Gutierrez and his team start from scratch and employ unconventional techniques like going up a hill with model airplanes on wires and fog machines to create clouds or shooting model F-104s from a crossbow device and capturing their flight with up to four cameras.<ref name="Ansen" /> Avant-garde filmmaker [[Jordan Belson]] created the background of the Earth as seen from high-flying planes and from orbiting spacecraft.<ref name="Wilford" />

Kaufman gave his five editors a list of documentary images that he needed, and he sent them off to search for film from [[NASA]], the [[Air force|Air Force]] and [[Bell Aircraft]] vaults.<ref name="Ansen" /> They also discovered Russian stock footage not viewed in 30 years. During production, Kaufman met with resistance from the Ladd Company and threatened to quit several times. In December 1982, one reel of cut workprint of the film that included portions of John Glenn's flight disappeared from Kaufman's editing facility in San Francisco's Dogpatch neighborhood. The missing reel of cut workprint was never found but was reconstructed by using a black-and-white duplicate copy of the reel as a guide and by reprinting new workprint from the original negative, which was always safely in storage at the film lab.

===Historical accuracy===
Although ''The Right Stuff'' was based on historic events and real people, as previously interpreted by Tom Wolfe in his book, some substantial dramatic liberties were taken. Neither Yeager's flight in the X-1 to break the sound barrier early in the film or his later nearly-fatal flight in the NF-104A was spur-of-moment capriciously decided event, as the film seems to imply. Both were actually were part of the routine testing program for both aircraft. Yeager had already test-flown both aircraft a number of times and was very familiar with them.<ref>Young, Dr. James.. [http://www.chuckyeager.com/1945-1947-mach-buster "Mach Buster."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205711/http://www.chuckyeager.com/1945-1947-mach-buster |date=2020-11-15 }} ''Air Force Flight Test Center History Office'', 2014. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref><ref>[http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/NF104-YeagerInterview.htm "Chuck Yeager, in his our words, regarding his experience with the NF-104."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205704/http://www.check-six.com/Crash_Sites/NF104-YeagerInterview.htm |date=2020-11-15 }} ''Check-six.com'',  April 23, 2014. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref><ref>[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e32CPRXEZ7s Complete Video: Then Col. Chuck Yeager Crash In NF-104A Dec 10, 1963 At Edwards Air Force Base], Photography Branch Edwards Air Force Base, December 10, 1963, uploaded to YouTube by Edwards Air Force Base December 10, 2019.</ref>
Jack Ridley had actually died in 1957,<ref>[https://history.nasa.gov/x1/ridley.html "Jack Ridley."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205827/https://history.nasa.gov/x1/ridley.html |date=2020-11-15 }} ''Nasa'' September 18, 1997. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref> even though his character appears in several key scenes taking place after that, most notably including Yeager's 1963 flight of the NF-104A.

Other notable inaccuracies include the early termination of Glenn's flight after three orbits, instead of seven, when the flight was scheduled for at most three orbits, and the engineers who built the Mercury craft portrayed as Germans though they were mostly Americans.<ref name="Wilford"/>

''The Right Stuff'' depicts Cooper arriving at Edwards in 1953, reminiscing with Grissom there about the two of them having supposedly flown together at the [[Langley Field|Langley Air Force Base]], and then hanging out with Grissom and Slayton, including all three supposedly being present at Edwards when [[Scott Crossfield]] flew at [[Supersonic speed|Mach 2]] in November 1953.<ref>[http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Famed-aviator-Scott-Crossfield-dies-in-plane-crash-1201589.php "Famed aviator Scott Crossfield dies in plane crash."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714122154/http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Famed-aviator-Scott-Crossfield-dies-in-plane-crash-1201589.php |date=2014-07-14 }} ''The Seattle Times,'' April 19, 2006.</ref> The film shows the three of them being recruited together there for the astronaut program in late 1957, with Grissom supposedly expressing keen interest in becoming a "star-voyager". According to their respective NASA biographies, none of the three was posted to Edwards before 1955 (Slayton in 1955<ref>Gray, Tara. [https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/slayton.htm "Donald K. 'Deke' Slayton".] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205713/https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/slayton.htm |date=2020-11-15 }} ''NASA''. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref> and Grissom and Cooper in 1956,<ref name="Grissom">Zornio, Mary C. [https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/grissom.htm Virgil Ivan 'Gus' Grissom."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205718/https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/grissom.htm |date=2020-11-15 }} ''NASA''. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref><ref>Gray, Tara. [https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/cooper.htm "L. Gordon Cooper, Jr."] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115205707/https://history.nasa.gov/40thmerc7/cooper.htm |date=2020-11-15 }} ''NASA''. Retrieved: July 14, 2014.</ref>) and neither of the last two had trained at Langley. When astronaut recruitment began in late 1957, after the Soviets had orbited [[Sputnik]], Grissom had already left Edwards and returned to [[Wright-Patterson Air Force Base]], where he had served and was happy with his new assignment there. Grissom did not even know that he was under consideration for the astronaut program until he received mysterious orders "out of the blue" to report to Washington in civilian clothing for what turned out to be a recruitment session for NASA.<ref name="Grissom"/> <!--There has also been criticism from his fellow astronauts of the way the film portrayed Grissom’s loss of his capsule, feeling it unfairly cast him in an unfavorable light.---See much more detailed explanation of the Liberty 7 incident in the 'Reviews' section of the "Reception"---->

The film drew heaviest criticism for its portrayal of [[Gus Grissom]] during the splashdown of ''[[Liberty Bell 7]]'', which left readers and viewers with the impression that Grissom panicked and blew the hatch bolts, whereas the book stated that only some people considered that he may have done so. Most historians, as well as engineers working for or with [[NASA]] and many of the related contractor agencies within the aerospace industry, are now convinced that the premature detonation of the spacecraft hatch's explosive bolts was caused by mechanical failure that was not associated with direct human error or deliberate detonation by Grissom.{{refn|Schirra proved that activating the hatch explosives would have left a large welt on any part of the body that came in contact with the trigger. He proved that on his Mercury flight when he intentionally blew the hatch on October 3, 1962 when his spacecraft was on the deck of the recovery carrier.<ref name ="Buckbee">Buckbee and Schirra 2005, pp. 72–73.</ref>|group = Note}} That determination had been made long before the film was completed.<ref name="Buckbee" /> Many astronauts, including Schirra, Cooper and Shepard, were critical of ''The Right Stuff'' for its treatment of Grissom,<ref>Buckbee and Schirra 2005, p. 72.</ref><ref>Cooper 2000, p. 33.</ref><ref name="ShepardRose" /> who had been killed in the [[Apollo 1]] launch pad fire in January 1967 and thus unable to defend himself when the film was being made.

===Film models===
[[File:Kansas Cosmosphere Right Stuff Glamorous Glennis Replica 2013.JPG|thumb|A replica of the ''Glamorous Glennis'' which was used in filming ''The Right Stuff''. Now on display at the [[Cosmosphere]] in Hutchinson, Kansas. The same museum has the flown Liberty Bell 7 spacecraft on display.]]

A large number of film models were assembled for the production; for the more than 80 aircraft appearing in the film, static [[mock-up|mock-ups]] and models were used as well as authentic aircraft of the period.<ref name="Farmer p.49">Farmer 1983, p. 49.</ref> Lieutenant Colonel Duncan Wilmore, USAF (Ret) acted as the [[United States Air Force]] liaison to the production, beginning his role as a technical consultant in 1980 when the pre-production planning had begun. The first draft of the script in 1980 had concentrated only on the Mercury 7, but as subsequent revisions developed to the treatment into more of the original story that Wolfe had envisioned, the aircraft of the late-1940s that would have been seen at Edwards AFB were required. Wilmore gathered World War II era "prop" aircraft such as the following:
* [[Douglas A-26 Invader]]
* [[North American P-51 Mustang]]
* [[North American T-6 Texan]] and
* [[Boeing B-29 Superfortress]]

The first group were mainly "set dressing" on the ramp while the Confederate Air Force (now renamed to the [[Commemorative Air Force]]) B-29 [[FIFI (aircraft)|"Fifi"]] was modified to act as the B-29 "mothership" to carry the [[Bell X-1]] and [[Bell X-1#X-1A|X-1A]] rocket-powered record-breakers.<ref name="Farmer p. 50–51">Farmer 1983, pp. 50–51.</ref>

Other "real" aircraft included the early jet fighters and trainers as well as current USAF and [[United States Navy]] examples. These flying aircraft and helicopters included:
* [[Douglas A-4 Skyhawk]]
* [[LTV A-7 Corsair II]]
* [[North American F-86 Sabre]]
* [[Convair F-106 Delta Dart]]
* [[McDonnell Douglas F-4 Phantom II]]
* [[Sikorsky H-34|Sikorsky H-34 Choctaw]]
* [[Sikorsky SH-3 Sea King]]
* [[Lockheed T-33 Shooting Star]]
* [[Northrop T-38 Talon]]<ref>Farmer 1983, p. 51.</ref>

A number of aircraft significant to the story had to be recreated. The first was an essentially static X-1 that had to at least roll along the ground and realistically "belch flame" by a simulated rocket blast from the exhaust pipes.<ref name="Farmer p.49" /> A series of wooden mock-up X-1s were used to depict interior shots of the cockpit, the mating up of the X-1 to a modified B-29 fuselage and bomb bay and ultimately to recreate flight in a combination of model work and live-action photography. The "follow-up" X-1A was also an all-wooden model.<ref name="Farmer p. 50–51" />

The U.S. Navy's [[Douglas D-558-2 Skyrocket]] that Crossfield duelled with Yeager's X-1 and X-1A was recreated from a modified [[Hawker Hunter]] jet fighter. The climactic flight of Yeager in a [[Lockheed NF-104A]] was originally to be made with a modified [[Lockheed F-104 Starfighter]] but ultimately, Wilmore decided that the production had to make do with a repainted Luftwaffe F-104G, which lacks the rocket engine of the NF-104.<ref name="Farmer p. 50–51" />

Wooden mock-ups of the Mercury space capsules also realistically depicted the NASA spacecraft and were built from the original mold.<ref name="Wilford" />

For many of the flying sequences, scale models were produced by USFX Studios and filmed outdoors in natural sunlight against the sky. Even off-the-shelf plastic scale models were used for aerial scenes. The X-1, F-104 and B-29 models were built in large numbers as a number of the more than 40 scale models were destroyed in the process of  filming.<ref>Farmer 1984, pp. 72–73.</ref> The blending together of miniatures, full-scale mock-ups, and actual aircraft was seamlessly integrated into the live-action footage. The addition of original newsreel footage was used sparingly but to effect and provided another layer of authenticity.<ref>Farmer 1984, p. 66.</ref>