posted 03-04-2004 10:41 PM               

Same way with Cooper saluting Guenter as he entered the white room.

posted 03-04-2004 11:03 PM               

When I interviewed him 2000, I asked a series of questions that were submitted by readers. Among them was the following:

In "The Right Stuff," at least in the film version, you were credited with the joke about Who's the best pilot you ever saw?

You're looking at him.

In reality, was that a little joke of yours, or did it come from the imagination of Tom Wolfe?

Well, kind of both -- it was something he picked up that I hinted to him I kind of said.

posted 03-05-2004 08:15 AM               

As I said in my other post, the words flowed freely from ole Gordo, you sure didn't feel like you had to pull them from his lips. As a matter of fact, Gordo told me that he had some HARSH words with Tom Wolfe and told him that (Wolfe) had it in his power to do a historically accurate accounting, but opted for a piece of hollywood...@X%* (crap).

Gordo was particularly upset with Wolfe's portrayal of Gus Grissom. Robert, if you talk to the other Mercury astronauts "one on one," in "private," and some of the former NASA people like Sam Bettingfield, you will get your ears full, and I mean it will be unfiltered! Try Betty Grissom and Walter Cronkite while you're at it, I have and I got it all on tape!

To them the Right Stuff was an outright character assassination on Gus and overall demeaning to the Mercury astronauts, and a real piece of literary trash, with the movie being even worse. Things aren't as black and white as you THINK they are. Life and people are made up of varying shades of gray.

posted 03-06-2004 01:15 AM               

He said, "Well, thank you. Sure, I'd be glad to."

Right after, I then, graciously, had my picture taken with him and Scott Carpenter.

posted 03-06-2004 10:51 AM               

It was a Sunday morning, and it was great to see such a great turn out for one of our Original Mercury 7 astronauts.

When I finally got my turn, I told him how great it was to meet him, and asked him to sign my copy of Dick Lattimer's "All We Did Was Fly To The Moon".

posted 03-09-2004 08:05 PM               

quote:

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Originally posted by Rick Boos:
To them the Right Stuff was an outright character assassination on Gus and overall demeaning to the Mercury astros, and a real piece of literary trash, with the movie being even worse.

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He also made sure that we knew that the guy everyone thinks is von Braun in the film... isn't. He told folks that von Braun was involved in propulsion and not the design of the capsule. It wasn't that he had anything against von Braun. He was just clearing up a common misconception about the movie.

One kid asked if it was true that today's pocket calculators are more powerful than the computer that he had in his capsule. He said, "No". The kid looked a bit stunned expecting a re-affirming "Yes" answer until Carpenter explained that he didn't even have a computer in his capsule.

posted 03-15-2004 07:33 PM               

I could comment at greater length on "The Right Stuff," book and movie. Regarding Gordo's treatment in the book, Carpenter told me on the book tour for "For Spacious Skies" that the "who's the best pilot" schtick, canonized in the movie version, was Wolfe's creation. "Somebody," Carpenter explained philosophically, "had to play that role." Wolfe made it Gordo.

Second, on the matter of accuracy, we would all do well not to conflate the book with the movie. Some posters were careful in this regard. All it takes to settle the matter is a rereading of the book and a re-viewing of the movie to arrive a fresh conclusions about the stark differences between the two.

The book far surpasses all the space memoirs, most of them in the first person, across the board for accuracy, literary merit, and sheer journalistic verve. Moreover, Wolfe spent more time (five years) on research, he interviewed more people in the 1970s during their early middle age, closer to the events, he has the academic training (a doctorate from Yale), the brilliance, and (this is important) a genuine affection, and admiration, for the men.

Wolfe's ouevre, in fact, is devoted to virtuosic alpha males jockeying for status and advantage (Bonfire of the Vanities, A Man in Full, his novels, do the same thing). The "gotcha" routines were a favorite of his for this reason. With "The Right Stuff," he wrote about this little studied and little understood group of alpha males. It is an unsurpassed contribution to the literature.

As an aside, it appears Wolfe was least kind to those (like Shepard; Grissom was dead. I do not know if Betty cooperated with Wolfe) who did NOT grant him interviews. Conrad, Glenn, Carpenter, Cooper all tended to be open and even expansive with Wolfe. Only Carpenter, when first approached by Wolfe, had actually READ Wolfe's earlier books. Always guaranteed to please an author and affect his views about a subject.

On the road, Carpenter is always careful to distinguish between book and movie. He admires the book and regards it as accurate, which as it happens offers a particularly sympathetic portrait of Carpenter. But he describes the movie as a "docudrama." As one poster notes, he objects especially to the liberties taken by Kaufmann in his treatment of the von Braun character. Von Braun, of course, was in propulsion; capsule design came out of NASA and McDonnell. This error is not traceable to Wolfe, I believe. Kaufmann was merely attempting to telegraph Astropower as it coalesced around vital design issues. The facts were wrong in a number of ways. Gilruth handed the men veto power their first day at Langley, where they were princes of the realm, not sniveling insecure pilots forever in Yeager's shadow.

Recall too that Yeager acted as the movie's sole technical consultant. His involvement shows in the lovingly correct details about Edwards. By way of contrast, for the Langley/Cape/Johnsville/Houston scenes, without a Mercury astronaut acting as a corrective, Kaufmann simply concocted elements, historical and otherwise, to suit his movie-making sensibilities. I think he was preoccupied with showcasing the tragic figure, Yeager, the test pilot of the century, considered unqualified to take rockets into space.

Gus is a sore point, clearly, for all of us who love space history. Did Gus panic? (No.) Blow the hatch? (No.) Look ridiculous in the movie. Absolutely.

But is Wolfe's book partly to blame. Kind of. Let me explain:

Wolfe had a story-telling strategy, at the end, to describe these alpha males on a unique frontier at the close of their great adventures. Note his poignant tone. Yeager is a tragic figure, trying to fly jet aircraft into space because he didn't have the credentials to take a rocket there. You have the alphaest male Shepard winning the first ride (and the popularity contest among his peers) yet losing out in the end to the more charismatic Glenn and the epochal first orbital mission. And then being felled by a mysterious inner-ear disorder.

Note Wolfe's other tragic figures, Grissom and Carpenter. The former dead, killed, in a stupid 1967 fire traceable to mismanagement, the latter drummed out by a nasty whisper campaign when the man saved the day (and his capsule) on manual override.

Yes, Wolfe compared Grissom and Carpenter reentries. He did compare Grissom and Carpenter telemetered heart and respiration data. Grissom's data, while not suggesting panic, did reveal excitement commensurate with his life-threatening situation upon splashdown. Carpenter's data were more restrained throughout MA-7.

But ALL the medics knew that Grissom's wiring was different. He was smaller than the other guys. His heart and respiration rates were always higher.

But these are obviously not the same thing as panic. And this is Kaufmann's gravest sin--suggesting that Grissom panicked.

Wolfe's point was more subtle, and tragic. Look what the Fates do to our iron men? Our heroes: Grissom loses his capsule through no fault of his own; afterward, at NASA, he plays the game stoically and gets the missions — even unto his death. Likewise, Carpenter saves his capsule, ignores the game (and the nasty whisper campaign) with the same stoicism and goes exploring somewhere else dangerous. Like Gus, Scott never gets to walk on the moon.