Movie review - "The Right Stuff" (1983) ***1/2

It takes the piss but also doesn't, which is what happened in Tom Wolfe's masterful book. This does feel like two movies though - one about Chuck Yeager, a gum chewing laconic modern day cowboy with his fellow gum chewing laconic modern day cowboy friends (seriously they're always chewing) strutting around being cool and manly with big dick energy breaking speed records. This is short like a John Ford film (elegiac funeral scenes) with a dash of Howard Hawks in Barbara Hersey's feisty hard galloping wife and Kim Stanley's hard drinking bar owner.

The other film is more Frank Capra/Preston Sturges, with wacky NASA ops (Harry Shearer and Jeff Goldblum are genuinely funny), swarms of journalists, bombastic politicians (notably LBJ), lots (and lots) of jokes about urine.

I wonder if Kaufman bit off more than he could chew - another writer may have helped. William Goldman's original script was discarded - he wanted to just focus on the astronauts which I think was the correct idea, the two films here co-exist uneasily. I mean who gives a shit if the astronauts earn Yeager's respect?

Dennis Quaid is full of charismatic swagger and makes you wonder why he never became a big star - I'm sure he wonders that too - but then you realise he doesn't have the  vulnerability of Tom cruise. If Quaid had played the lead in Top Gun it wouldn't have been as big a hit - Cruise looked as though he needed to be mothered but Quaid looked as though he could handle himself.

There's a few har-har-har military-style jokes about urination, Scott Glenn imitates a hispanic (apparently Alan Shepherd did a lot of this), they don't have Deke Slayton being turned down for some reason, Scott Carpenter is hardly in it. Weird final scene with the astronauts smiling at each other intercut with a fan dance.

Movie review - "The Outlaw Josey Wales" (1976) ***1/2

A Western with many things going for it - the period detail, basic story, some fine performances. I did feel it had been overpraised. Maybe I'm being nitpicky.

It starts off as one film and ends with another. The first part is more straight up Death Wish style revenge - Eastwood is a Southern farmer whose wife and kids are killed by red legs, so he joins raiders and kills people. The war ends, and his squadron are treacherously killed. He kills them back, heads out West... and the piece changes into Wales/Eastwood collecting a bunch of misfits  -Sondra Locke, Chief Dan George, Paula Trueman, Geraldine Kearns. It's all about communal living... then the baddies turn up again and there's a big battle where Wales/Eastwood gets to kick some ass.

So an interesting collection of scenes. It looks fantastic. Southerners will enjoy it. Bill McKinney is a worthy villain and John Vernon an interesting antagonist (he's not a baddy, though Clint thinks he is). Actually the whole cast is fairly strong. The take on war makes you think - it's so traumatic for everyone, yet it also unites people.

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.

Movie review - "The Wanderers" (1979) ***

It's been years since I saw this but I was surprised how much of it I remembered: the opening chase scene to the tune of "Wipe Out", the "leave the kid alone" section, the Wanderers trying to cop "accidental" feels along the street, Ken Wahl and John Friedrich playing strip poker with girls who realise they're cheating, the spooky Ducky Boys, the brawling finale where Friedrich finally thinks he's going to bond with his dad - and his dad thumps him, everyone in tears because JFK has been shot, the wonderful bittersweet finale where two of the gang head off to California (presumably where one of them will become Richard Price, who wrote the book) while Wahl literally gives up his chance at a different future (Karen Allen going off the see Bob Dylan, which is a bit hokey now but wasn't then and still works) then going back to his mates at a buck's party where he sings "The Wanderer" while being surrounded by them - literally trapped in a certain way of life.
Maybe that's the thing with cult films - while they have flaws you remember moments and scenes so well.
 Wahl gives a real star debut - good looking, sensitive, charismatic, etc - it's a shame he became such a big head. Karen Allen is ideal as the beautiful-but-not-untouchably-beautiful girl who comes into Wahl's life, and there are some memorable supporting actors, such as the huge baldy and the young girl who is his girlfriend (both of whom often appear on posters - they're quite creepy, actually). I note while by the end of the film the Italians, Asians and blacks are all getting along - it's only because they united to fight off the Irish.