The Right Stuff
May. 17th, 2009 01:07 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dangermousieMr. Mousie and I just finished watching The Right Stuff, a 1980s movie adaptation of one of my favorite books, Tom Wolfe's non-fiction account of the first Americans in space and the start of the space program.
I loved the movie, but I think it was more, much more, than because it was a well-made movie. It just touched so many very personal things for me: my love of science fiction and the way I believed when I was a kid in the 80s that when I was grown-up there would be people living in space and space travel. My childhood, childish dream to be a cosmonaut (if Valentina Tereshkova could do it, why not me?), even my near-certainty, when a child, that I would be a sicentist, or lead a life full of hair-raising adventure. But above all, of all these enormous spaceman-type possibilities out there, entirely within reach. The movie made me feel a wide-eyed kid again - it had that sense of excitement. It brought my childhood back to me.
I have no idea how well the movie would work for other people. As I said, its effect on me was tied with so many personal things. But I did love it and recommend it.
Oh, and on a more shallow note, I have such a crush on Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager - who the movie (and the book) portrayed as the truest test pilot of them all, in a sense - someone who did not go for the space program which did not involve much test piloting even if it involved a lot of glamor, but who stuck to doing what he loved and did best - flying.
And now I need to go read some scifi. Probably Stanislaw Lem.
I loved the movie, but I think it was more, much more, than because it was a well-made movie. It just touched so many very personal things for me: my love of science fiction and the way I believed when I was a kid in the 80s that when I was grown-up there would be people living in space and space travel. My childhood, childish dream to be a cosmonaut (if Valentina Tereshkova could do it, why not me?), even my near-certainty, when a child, that I would be a sicentist, or lead a life full of hair-raising adventure. But above all, of all these enormous spaceman-type possibilities out there, entirely within reach. The movie made me feel a wide-eyed kid again - it had that sense of excitement. It brought my childhood back to me.
I have no idea how well the movie would work for other people. As I said, its effect on me was tied with so many personal things. But I did love it and recommend it.
Oh, and on a more shallow note, I have such a crush on Sam Shepard's Chuck Yeager - who the movie (and the book) portrayed as the truest test pilot of them all, in a sense - someone who did not go for the space program which did not involve much test piloting even if it involved a lot of glamor, but who stuck to doing what he loved and did best - flying.
And now I need to go read some scifi. Probably Stanislaw Lem.
