The Right Stuff (BFI Modern Classics) Book

Illustrated The Right Stuff, released in 1983, is the story of America's first attempts at the conquest of space. It's a film with the scope and scale of an epic, but filtered through the idiosyncratic, sceptical intelligence of maverick writer-director Philip Kaufman. Based on Tom Wolfe's bestselling novel, it contrasts the private code of the test pilots who broke the sound barrier with the manufactured celebrity of the astronauts who came from their midst. A film too close to satire to be in tune with the jingoism of 1980s America, its complexity and accomplishment have not been properly recognized. Tom Charity places The Right Stuff in its historical perspective, outlining the political context of the Space Race, Wolfe's original take on the material, and the fiercely conflicting ambitions for the film of director Philip Kaufman and original screenwriter William Goldman. Charity's lucid reading explores Kaufman's subversive adventurism, his mastery of the cinematic form and the way in which The Right Stuff combines the mythology of the Western with counter-cultural concerns to arrive at a richly nuanced account of both the folly and the heroism of post-war America.