“It is my pleasure to introduce to you … seven Americans, gentlemen all!” – John P. Ryan as the head of the Manned Space Program, bringing out the Project Mercury astronauts in one of the greatest press conference scenes in movie history in “The Right Stuff.”
Given the sprawling nature of “The Right Stuff,” Tom Wolfe’s brilliant 1979 “non-fiction novel” about the first 15 years of America’s space program, and the adaptation challenges baked into the source material, it’s something of a miracle it took just four years for Philip Kaufman’s 192-minute epic to make it to the big screen, where it was greeted with nearly universal critical acclaim, went on to garner eight Oscar nominations and four wins, essentially created the genre Quentin Tarantino labeled “the hip epic” …
