A chronicle of the original Mercury astronauts in the formation of America's space program: Alan Shepherd, the first American in space; Gus Grissom, the benighted astronaut for whom nothing works out as planned; John Glenn, the straight-arrow 'boy scout' of the bunch who was the first American to orbit the earth; and the remaining pilots: Deke Slayton, Scott Carpenter, Wally Schirra, and Gordon Cooper.
The main character of The Right Stuff is something called The Right Stuff.
— Philip Kaufman (Vulture)
Forty years on, how's that sense of American exceptionalism workin' out for you?
Also from the same article:
For the scene where Yeager breaks the sound barrier, Jordan asked me what I wanted, and I said, “A memory of birth. Like the sky is opening up as man is first born. You can sort of see that there’s a kind of labia opening up in the sky, and man is going beyond where the demon is, to birth.” And that’s what Jordan gave us.
