WINKLER: We hired Bill Goldman to write the screenplay.ĬHARTOFF: Probably the hottest writer in Hollywood.ġ Yeager was the first pilot to break the sound barrier, on October 14, 1947. WINKLER: We wanted to make a serious film.ĬHARTOFF: We bought the book for $350,000, which was a lot at the time. ROBERT CHARTOFF (PRODUCER): Like the Airplane series. They wanted it for John Belushi as a comedy.

IRWIN WINKLER (PRODUCER): There was a competition with Universal to buy Tom Wolfe's book. We were working our tails off for $250 a month. We weren't getting free houses or notoriety. Through that, he discovered the Air Force test pilots who were doing the nitty-gritty work. AIR FORCE): Tom Wolfe started writing a book about the astronauts' early days.

In 1979, Hollywood producers Irwin Winkler and Robert Chartoff (Rocky, Raging Bull) paid $350,000 to purchase the film rights to The Right Stuff, Tom Wolfe's runaway best seller about the space race.ĬHUCK YEAGER (RETIRED GENERAL, U.S. But more than three decades later, The Right Stuff still resonates, a testament to the incredible feats of bravery, sacrifice, and intelligence of which humans are capable-and to the inherent absurdity of climbing into tin cans mounted on ballistic missiles and blasting into space.Įd Harris looked so much like astronaut John Glenn that producer Robert Chartoff said, “Please, don’t let this guy get hit by a car … until after the picture is made.” Its locations were hard-earned its special-effects plan was largely reconceived during production one man lost part of an ear on the set, another lost his life. None other than Christopher Nolan has called it “an almost perfect movie.” “Phil really pulled it off,” George Lucas says. Its dialog has become a go-to signifier of human accomplishment director Rian Johnson celebrated landing his Star Wars gig by tweeting a clip from the movie. (Kaufman calls it “the longest movie ever made without a plot.”) But it introduced an entire cinematic genre, what Quentin Tarantino has called the “hip epic,” inspiring everyone from Michael Bay to James Cameron, who hired its cinematographer for Titanic. With its three-hour-plus run time and unconventional structure, the film-which tells the story of test pilots like Chuck Yeager and Gordon Cooper as they break the sound barrier and launch toward the exosphere-was almost as daring as its subject. In Kaufman's hands, however, spaceflight became a far more human pursuit-a story not of external threats but inner resolve. Before writer-director Philip Kaufman brought Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff to the big screen in 1983, onscreen astronauts were little more than alien quarry or asteroid bait.

Tom wolfe the right stuff book