The Right Stuff - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[bryan]

At the end of the film, Chuck Yeager bails out of an experimental Air Force plane. This was the F-104 "Starfighter", which held the altitude and speed records for a jet until the SR-71 "Blackbird", a spy plane developed by Lockheed's "Skunk Works" under the command of Kelly Johnson. The Blackbird's speed record of Mach 3+ has never been beaten.

[linda]

Although Bill Conti's score won the Academy Award for "Best Music, Original Score" and suites based on the score were issued, no complete soundtrack album was released until 2009. That album was made from master tapes kept all that time by Conti, and unfortunately some suffered damage in the interim.

[stephanie]

A running joke in the film is Gordon Cooper's ability to fall asleep during stressful events. During the training montage, Cooper is shown sleeping in the simulated capsule, as loud noises and flickering lights are going off all around him. At the end of the film, Cooper falls asleep in his space capsule on the launch pad. This is a nod to the fact that Cooper was the first American to sleep in orbit.

[kristen]

Actress Mimi Sarkisian only appeared in two films, The Right Stuff and One Flew over the Cuckoos Nest, both times playing a nurse.

[michele]

Bill Conti was appointed so late in the production, he was scoring to the final cut of the film instead of a first cut with which composers are usually given to work.

[maureen]

Although the producers discouraged the cast from contacting the real people they were portraying, Dennis Quaid reached out to Gordo Cooper after learning they lived just a few miles from each other. The two became friends, and Cooper encouraged Quaid to get his pilot's license.

[willard]

While Fred Ward is more than eleven years older than Dennis Quaid, their characters Gus Grissom and Gordon Cooper were less than a year apart in age, the two youngest of the Mercury 7.

[violet]

The scene where Lyndon Baines Johnson said, "The Russians want our pecker in their pocket" was a variation of his oft-quoted statement, "I never trust a man till I have his pecker in my pocket."

[cameron]

Pancho's was nicknamed "The Happy Bottom Riding Club". The real name was "Pancho's Fly Inn". Pancho had put in a dirt landing strip, with the intention that the place would serve as a motel for pilots who, on cross-country trips could fuel up, have a meal, and spend the night.

[miriam]

One whimsical aspect of the film is that whenever members of the press appear in a scene, an audio track of the sound of locusts appears in the background, indicative of the "feeding frenzy" of the reporters chasing the most popular source of news stories of the day.

[ken]

First theatrical film of Kathy Baker.

[frances]

In the late 1940s, Pancho's became a moderately popular tourist location for families from Los Angeles and the surrounding area. As an attraction, rodeos would be held on weekends. Another big draw was the motion-picture star Lassie, whose trainer regularly brought her there on a weekly basis for over a year to perform tricks for the kids.

[carl]

Ken Wahl, who previously starred in Writer and Director Philip Kaufman's The Wanderers (1979), was initially cast as Gordon Cooper. Dennis Quaid replaced Wahl, giving up an undisclosed role in The Outsiders (1983), which was being produced simultaneously.

[amber]

To create the space uniforms for the Mercury astronauts, the costume designers used silver fabrics and other materials left over from costumes for singer and actress Cher.

[veronica]

During the weekend of April 4, 1999, Gus Grissom's lost Liberty Bell 7 capsule was located and recovered on the ocean floor ninety miles northeast of the Great Abaco Island in the Bahamas. It underwent a restoration and went on a national tour before being placed in a permanent exhibit at the Cosmosphere, a space museum in Hutchinson, Kansas. The hatch, which many thought would have proved or disproved Grissom's contention that it blew open on its own, has not been recovered. Inside the capsule the restorers found a large number of Mercury dimes that Grissom had brought along as souvenirs. During the bar scene before Grissom's flight, two rolls of dimes can be seen on the bar.

[morris]

While they didn't play their namesakes, two of the actors playing astronauts share the same last name with two actual astronauts. They are Scott Glenn and John Glenn and Sam Shepard and Alan Shepard.

[cassandra]

The only Best Picture Oscar nominee that year to be also nominated for Best Sound Effects Editing and Best Cinematography.

[carl]

The failure montage ends with a rocket that goes nowhere and just lets out a humorous "pop". That is the Mercury-Redstone 1 launch failure, also known as "The four-inch flight". Due to a cabling error, the umbilicals separated in the wrong order, leading to an electrical fault that shut down the engine. The rocket then - dutifully - followed the correct procedure for a premature engine shutdown. 1) It released the escape tower, that took off. 2) It deployed the drogue chute for the recovery parachute (that is the "pop" seen in the film) 3) When not sensing any load on the main parachute, the rocket assumed the main parachute had failed and deployed the reserve. This left the rocket in a precarious condition: unanchored, fueled, with armed pyrotechnics, and with a parachute hanging down the side that - if the wind caught it - could have toppled the rocket. Flight director Chris Kraft made the call to just let the rocket sit until next the day when the batteries had drained and the liquid oxygen had boiled off. The rocket was recovered and although it was in good condition it never flew again. MR-1 was eventually put on display at the Space Orientation Center of Marshall Space Flight Center.

[eli]

At 50m 54s the guy behind the bar wearing a hat is Chuck Yeager himself.