The Right Stuff is a 1983 American epic historical drama film written and directed by Philip Kaufman and based on the 1979 book of the same name by Tom Wolfe.

The film stars Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Scott Glenn, Fred Ward, Dennis Quaid, and Barbara Hershey; Levon Helm narrates and plays Air Force test pilot Jack Ridley.

After another pilot, Slick Goodlin, demands $150,000 (equivalent to $2,047,000 in 2023) to attempt to break the sound barrier, war hero Captain Chuck Yeager receives the chance to fly the X-1.

They often visit the Happy Bottom Riding Club run by Pancho Barnes, who classifies the pilots at Edwards as either "prime" (such as Yeager and Crossfield) that fly the best equipment or newer "pudknockers" who only dream about it.

Gordon "Gordo" Cooper, Virgil "Gus" Grissom and Donald "Deke" Slayton, captains of the United States Air Force, are among the "pudknockers" who hope to also prove that they have "the Right Stuff".

Although engineers see the men as passengers, the pilots insist that the Mercury spacecraft have a window, a hatch with explosive bolts, and pitch-yaw-roll controls.

Although test pilots at Edwards mock the Mercury program for sending "spam in a can" into space, they recognize that they are no longer the fastest men on Earth, and Yeager states that "it takes a special kind of man to volunteer for a suicide mission, especially when it's on national TV."

While testing the new Lockheed NF-104A, Yeager attempts to set a new altitude record at the edge of space but is nearly killed in a high-speed ejection when his engine fails.

In 1979, independent producers Robert Chartoff and Irwin Winkler outbid Universal Pictures for the movie rights to Tom Wolfe's book, paying $350,000.

[10] 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.

[4][Note 1] 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.

During the filming of a sequence portraying Chuck Yeager's ejection from an NF-104,[14] stuntman Joseph Svec, a former Green Beret, was killed when he failed to open his parachute because he may have been unconscious from smoke.

[9] Kaufman gave his five editors a list of documentary images he needed, sending them off to search for film from NASA, the Air Force and Bell Aircraft vaults.

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.

[17][18][19] Jack Ridley had actually died in 1957,[20] even though his character appears in several key scenes taking place after that, most notably including Yeager's 1963 flight of the NF-104A.

By the time 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 previously and was happy with his new assignment there.

Grissom did not even know 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.

[25] Many astronauts, including Schirra, Cooper and Shepard, were critical of The Right Stuff for its treatment of Grissom,[26][27][28] who was killed in the Apollo 1 launch pad fire in January 1967 and thus unable to defend himself when the film was being made.

[29] 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 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.

[29] 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.

As part of the promotion for the film, Veronica Cartwright, Chuck Yeager, Gordon Cooper, Scott Glenn and Dennis Quaid appeared in 1983 at ConStellation, the 41st World Science Fiction Convention in Baltimore.

The website's critical consensus reads: "The Right Stuff packs a lot of movie into its hefty running time, spinning a colorful, fact-based story out of consistently engaging characters in the midst of epochal events.

[42] In his review for Newsweek, David Ansen wrote: "When The Right Stuff takes to the skies, it can't be compared with any other movie, old or new: it's simply the most thrilling flight footage ever put on film".

[4] Gary Arnold in his review for the Washington Post, wrote: "The movie is obviously so solid and appealing that it's bound to go through the roof commercially and keep on soaring for the next year or so".

[47] Wally Schirra liked the book a lot, but expressed disappointment and dislike for the movie, and he never forgave the producers for portraying Gus Grissom as a "bungling sort of coward", which was totally untrue.

[46] Alan Shepard harshly criticized both the movie and the book: "Neither Tom Wolfe nor [Philip Kaufman] had talked to any of the original seven guys, at any time...

The recounting of many of the legendary aspects of Yeager's life was left in place, including the naming of the X-1, "Glamorous Glennis" after his wife and his superstitious preflight ritual of asking for a stick of Beemans chewing gum from his best friend, Jack Ridley.

[Note 3] American Film Institute On June 23, 2003, Warner Bros. Pictures released a two-disc DVD Special Edition that featured scene-specific commentaries with key cast and crew members, deleted scenes, three documentaries on the making of The Right Stuff including interviews with Mercury astronauts and Chuck Yeager, and a feature-length PBS documentary, John Glenn: American Hero.

In addition, the British Film Institute published a book on The Right Stuff by Tom Charity in October 1997 that offered a detailed analysis and behind-the-scenes anecdotes.