Script review – “The Right Stuff” by William Goldman

In Adventures of the Screen Trade, Goldman says the hardest chapter to write in the book was the one on The Right Stuff. He was hired to adapt Tom Wolfe’s classic non-fiction tale by the producers Chartoff and Winkler; Goldman’s version was well-received and the film was green-lit, but then the producers hired director Phil Kaufman, who disagreed with Goldman’s interpretation, and subsequently made his own. Kaufman’s film was a highly-regarded box office disappointment, particularly notable for a sensational cast – early-in-their-careers Sam Shepherd, Scott Glenn, Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward (it was like The Godfather or The Outsiders).

As Goldman told it, the main difference between his and Kaufman’s version was that Goldman disposed of Chuck Yaegar and concentrated on the astronauts – in particular, Shepherd, Grissom and Glenn. Kaufman included Yaegar – and also went right up until Gordo Cooper’s flight. It’s always been a great Hollywood “what if” of mine about this film – what if they’d gone with Goldman’s version? Would it have been a hit? Yeah, yeah, I know – nobody knows anything. Still it’s interesting to wonder and great to read the copy of Goldman’s script that is floating out there on the internet.

Like all Goldman scripts, this reads very well – it’s done in that compulsive Goldman style, full of hype (“the biggest shot in the movie”, “the most glorious day you ever saw”) and asides. He’s hamstrung by the fact most of the characters were real people, and still alive at the time – but Grissom and Glenn are a bit different at least. I wasn’t wild about the device of the wise-cracking seen-it-all journo; this Greek chorus device had been used too many times.

It’s got one of those tricky beginnings Goldman likes – we meet a dog astronaut, then there’s a disastrous lift off from an American rocket. The first three characters we meet are Grissom, Schirra and Shepherd - none of them are really the hero, or is Glenn, but he’s the most vivid character (all-American, ambitious, stuttering wife). The structure really works with it going intro-selection-training-Shepherd-Grissom-Glenn (these “acts” get shorter and shorter as the script goes on). Sometimes characters seemed to come in just to make a speech (eg the colonel who accuses them of not having the right stuff). Lots of exposition and description of technical stuff.