From 1983: Chuck Yeager on "The Right Stuff"

the right stuff that's what you had to have to fly the modern equivalent of buckets of bolts that were the experimental aircraft and space capsules that launched this country into the cosmos david dao on the movie of the same name and the man who was singularly well stuffed with what it took test pilot chuck yeager all right here we go quiet leave it to hollywood to choose a dank old hangar to make a movie about the race for space director philip kaufman and his crew spent weeks here filming some crucial scenes for the right stuff based on the best-selling book by social observer tom wolf i just thought that tom had gone out and found a part of america that i'd never really known anything about before that he had as he often does found an area where men were going out and performing miraculous feats not really expecting any rewards from it i just immediately said i think we can make a movie out of this [Music] ostensibly it is a movie about america's seven original astronauts the silver knights of the cold war [Applause] but behind the blast-offs is the book and movies real story the unquestioning ability to press man and machine to the limits sam shepard plays the role model a test pilot named chuck yeager 60 years old now and still flying the world's hottest airplanes [Music] to kauffman he is the film's central figure i just felt that the book and the right stuff essentially traced their origins from a man who had what tom called the right stuff that was chuck yeager he was a man who not only did it but talked about it in his own way in his own style and you know live dangerously and with a sense of humor they talk about the right stuff well you know it really don't mean a lot to guys like us because flight testing or research flying is it's a way of life with you and that's your job and you do it a lot there's a lot of luck involved and if you survive you survive if you don't you don't with this flight jager celebrated the 35th anniversary of a feat that is central to aviation to spaceflight and to the story of the right stuff the breaking of the sound barrier in an x1 rocket ship when chuck yeager went through the sound barrier people thought the their your ears would fall off they did not know if there was a beyond beyond the sound barrier whole sequence having to do with your breaking the sound barrier is that what was that very well done yeah was that nostalgic to you yeah you don't look at it that way guys like us you do you know you always look ahead you don't look back on something like that unless you're learning something you mean for this space race you don't want our best pilots i didn't say that look carefully in the film and there's jaeger lurking around as fred the bartender hey y'all wanna drink whiskey no thanks for that it's just a little coffee but his most important role was as chief technical consultant to the movie i just want to make sure that we're done accurately and documented in the same way with the the book and the whole movie with a sense of humor like it has and i think it'd be uh it's pretty educational really it tells it the way it was chuck spent long hours with myself and with the artists who were drawing the storyboard going over every panel and saying this happened this is the way it would have been done sometimes looking over at us and saying you you know you guys you make movies you know and you're just fooling around here this is how it really was oh gus they owe you but they owe me too they owe me they owe me they owe me so much americans didn't want to hear how it really was says kaufman oh no they wanted heroes not humans and the press corps obliged them relentlessly [Music] the producers deliberately avoided big name stars that doesn't mean however they weren't going for a big box office most of their 27 million dollars went for effects and detail you look around at all these cockpits so the b-29 that's sitting over there and uh months and months were spent uh you know refurbishing uh old bodies of planes that we found in some cases the planes didn't exist at all going over south base probably and look at the old pit where we load the x1 and a lot of the shooting in the old hangars down there brought back memories to tom wolfsbuck and to history uh hopefully we've tried to be faithful to both uh you can't recreate history exactly but we have utilized a certain amount of the actual documentary footage and been able to we feel blend our own footage into that in and out of history and they tell me that it was nothing like this from the files came the mercury astronauts first press conference the public debut of a future presidential candidate my wife's attitude toward this has been the same as it has been all along through all my flying that uh if it's what i want to do and she's behind it the kids are too 100 here's the same event hollywood version my wife's attitude towards this has been the same as it's been all along through my flying if it's what i want to do she's behind it by golly my kids are too 100 actor ed harris had spoken his last line before the real john glenn announced his candidacy yet some wonder if the film might be subtitled the making of a president the straight arrow presbyterian pilot of wolf's book seems more endearing in the movie do you think i'm a dudley do right hmm do you yeah well that's me i guess lonely beacon of restraint self-sacrifice in the squall of car craziest at last weekend's washington premiere of the right stuff astronauts and actors shared the flesh bulbs it is after all a movie a blending of reality and fantasy but it's a movie about real stuff courage heroism talent and understatement i give more credit to being at the right place the right time and a lot of people do because that that either either are you aren't and the same thing with the kind of research you do you don't have to be good to be a legend all you gotta do is live that's about the way it stacks up

Channel: CBS Sunday Morning

Views: 87,945

Keywords: CBS Sunday Morning, CBS News, news, Test pilot, Chuck Yeager, Philip Kaufman, film, The Right Stuff, space

Id: 0zBbnCsn6hY

Length: 8min 46sec (526 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 08 2020