The Talkies/The Right Fluff

...While the campaign against me was going on I went to the Times for help...

...Was that 'humanitarian?' "his uncle persisted in a louder voice...

...Predictably, the critics have praised the performance of Ed Harris, the relatively unknown actor who plays Glenn, for having, as Time magazine puts it, "more charisma than the original...

...Needless to say, such a man presents even more of a challenge to Hollywood than John Glenn...

...It would be thrilling to imagine that the Aborigine elders were behind us on this thing, sending shamanistic blessings up through the ionosphere...

...For her actions Eleni was brutally tortured and finally executed...

...In one memorable passage Gage recounts the horror he felt in 1974 when he realized that the newly legalized Communists were setting in motion the machine that rewrites history in order to glamorize the terrorists in the eyes of those not old enough to remember: Once in my village I overheard a friend about my age arguing with his nephew, a 22-year-old university student...

...He almost brags about what he did to the women and children...

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...What Wolfe won't admit is that the line was already in their minds--Glenn didn't put it there...

...The men who ordered her torture and execution were higher-ups in the Communist hierarchy of Greece...

...Except for one or two occasions, Harris's Glenn is never convincingly self-righteous...

...III Yoo Can Lead a Horse to Water B u t . . . This adventure on the farm emphasizes I ~ , plus Prdtt and L•s and Enlnqmlll~Unflgp - - all in simple, clear terms...

...I n 1976 I published an article in the New York Times claiming that the Soviets were behind the Greek press campaign against the United States...

...It's just that mine aren't limited to the killers...

...Likewise the legendary Chuck Yeager, the test pilot's test pilot, who is held up in both book and movie as the avatar of aviators...

...They probably had good reason...

...The point of Wolfe's book, part of which originally appeared in the pages of Rolling Stone, is to replace this squeaky-clean image with a more accurate picture of the hard-drinking, high-flying, loose-living subculture of the military test pilot, from which the Martha Bayles is film critic for The American Spectator...

...She was dragged up a ravine on bleeding feet from thefalanga (yes, the Communists were using falanga long before Hollywood invented it as the symbol of right-wing Latin America) and shot...

...Life magazine may have hung haloes on the astronauts, but leave it to Philip Kaufman to drape sdence-fiction tinsel in their crewcuts...

...Some call this "Lemonade Stand Economics...

...Wolfe exposes this framework when he concedes that even the cynical Grissom would reply, if asked, that "yes, he was religious, and yes, he was a family man, and yes, he was a patriot...

...But when it comes to the astronauts themselves, Wolfe engages in a different sort of debunking, aimed not at the astronauts but at the press, for insisting that all seven of the first chosen were dedicated family men, ardent patriots, and devout churchgoers...

...Besides, an excellent education in itself isn't enough (just look around you...

...It wouldn't do to have John Calvin, but what about Carl Sagan...

...that after his stint at Edwards, he went on "to fly more than a hundred missions in Southeast Asia in B-57 tactical bombers...

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...The choice was clear: In order to restore a transcendent dimension to the story, Kaufman decided to bring in a band of Aborigine tribesmen near the remote Australian command center, who could then show their support for the Mercury program by chanting around a bonfire and fanning the sparks upward into the darkness...

...For patriotism he couldn't do much except show Russian scientists cackling maniacally whenever the first few American rockets go up in flames...

...But that's the way Hollywood functions nowadays...

...Wolfe even compares having the right stuff to being one of God's elect, thereby suggesting that Glenn's Calvinistic world-view was not all that out of place among his fellow test pilots...

...Among the first seven astronauts there was one who stood out as the media favorite, not only because he was handsome and articulate but also because he seemed genuinely to embody the values the press was fond of attributing to the group as a whole...

...His speeches are all too heavily laden with irony, self-parody, little winks at the camera which seem to say "Be cool, good people, I know what I'm doing...

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...Kids realize the need for and practicality of these ideas as they appear naturally in the often humorous stories and adventures of the irrepressible Montana grocer Uncle Hersh, his niece and nephew...

...Kaufman has restored him, or rather his name...

...His main target is Life magazine, which he says tailored the astronauts' reality to suit its conventional readership--which is a bit ironic, since to some extent Wolfe does the same thing for his unconventional one...

...What this means is that Harris has a glint in his eye, an offbeat way of delivering his lines, and a gaudy, grinning charm which suggests that he couldn't possibly mean all the corny things he's saying...

...This confusion comes out even more clearly in Wolfe's ambivalence toward Glenn, whose glib facility as a spokesman he admires (along with the rest of the journalists), but whose "Dudley Do-Right" values he disdains...

...They are no better or worse than some of the people Warren Beatty admires...

...On the contrary, he wants to make the press look bad, for hanging the haloes there, and to make the real astronauts look good...

...Vol...

...It isn't easy in this day and age to instill in a child those time proven principles of pride in one's work, dependability and productivity...

...A worthy enterprise, but I for one find it hard to stay upset about Life magazine's old myths, when Hollywood keeps coming up with new ones...

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...I n s o f a r as the function of the press is to debunk, Tom Wolfe is a charter member of the corps...

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...The man most responsible, one Katis, turns out the most arrogant...

...but at the price of eliminating whole dimensions of the man--as he eliminates Glenn's public statements about the rewards of teaching Presbyterian Sunday school...

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...Wolfe knocks off the astronauts' haloes, but not to make the men underneath look bad...

...So instead of Chuck Yeager we get the avant-garde playwright Sam Shepard, smirking handsomely on horseback beside the experimental X-I, which somehow has stopped looking like the plane that broke the sound barrier and begun looking like the latest in men's fashion accessories...

...The heavens, and all that...

...Meanwhile, out in orbit, to the strains of The Planets by Gustav Hoist (who does not receive a credit), the bonfire sparks miraculously transform themselves into "celestial fireflies," the cloud of mysterious lights which Glenn reported swirling around the capsule, and which Scott Carpenter later decided were emanating from its surface...

...Villagers were intimidated into saying that she was pro-American (like many Greek males her husband was in the United States, working as a waiter) and that she indeed had tried to help her children escape...

...In both the films I have seen him in--this and Frances--his role is so hemmed in by countercultural strictures about acceptable m~culinity that there is a,'most nothing left for him to do except drink whiskey, breathe slowly, and look good in clothes...

...To be fair, however, his book provides such a wealth of background material, readers don't have to concur with his conclusions...

...I was pilloried by the press and given 16 months in jail for libel...

...S ! )o what did Kaufman do...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1984 35...

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...She organized their escape through Communist redoubts with a party of other women and children, but at the last moment she and her daughter Glykeria were forced by the reds to stay behind to work the fields, and so Nicholas Gage left with his two elder sisters, his aunt, and grandmother, never to see his mother again...

...I know one thing: I would not have done what Mr...

...Yet how iraportant to your child's future...and this nation's...

...this in a country where seven people out of ten lost members of their families to the red terror...

...It's about his wife, who stutters and therefore doesn't want to be interviewed on TV, or visited by a particularly repulsive rendition of Vice President Johnson...

...These are not the desired traits of a contemporary Hollywood hero-which may be why the screenwriter before Kaufman cut Yeager from the script...

...Wolfe takes this odd stance because he has got the concept of a subculture confused with a concept he is more familiar with: that of a counterculture...

...Some of them are back in the birthplace of democracy at this minute, enjoying the pardon and recognition given them by Karamanlis in 1974...

...A less contrived interpretation might be that they were simply nodding and agreeing...

...For more than 450 pages Gage describes his mother's life and the hardships she went through to ensure her children's survival...

...Whether Shepard can act or not, it's hard to say...

...Having reduced John Glenn to a grandstander, and Chuck Yeager to a wisp of pure trendiness, Kaufman must have realized that his film wasn't going to have much to affirm...

...Well, first of all, he tried to fill the gap with a slimmed-down version of family life: Glenn's and Yeager's NOW-approved, mutually respectful relationships with their wives...

...A capital offense...

...At another point, Glenn chastises some of the other men for continuing their swinging sex life while in astronaut training--a dispute which Wolfe presents as highly principled on both sides...

...Here is Wolfe's full definition of "the right stuff": _9 . . a man should have the ability to go up in a hurtling piece of machinery and put his hide on the line and then have the moxie, the reflexes, the coolness, to pull it back in the last yawning moment--and then go up again the next day, and the n e x t . . , and, ultimately, in its best expression, do so in a cause that means something to thousands, to a people, a nation, to humanity, to God...

...What about the hundreds of thousands they executed in occupied villages...

...But I also think it's quite revealing of the Hollywood mentality behind this film that this is practically the only episode in which straight-arrow John Glenn gets played straight...

...that your child will benefit from and enjoy...

...Prompt response...

...Tom Wolfe makes a big fuss over Yeager, for his bravery and for the fact that he (and others) were flying the X series of rocket planes almost as high and almost as fast as the suborbital flights of the Mercury astronauts--only the latter were more passive in their capsules, and upon splashing down after a single flight, got oodles of money and glory and fast cars and ticker-tape parades down Fifth Avenue...

...Gage wants to kill him, but in the end decides that his mother would not have wanted him to avenge her through bloodshed...

...After all, the film is dealing with space...

...Her body was thrown down a gully and left to rot, unburied...

...The trouble is, Wolfe attributes the same ambivalence to the other astronauts, when really, theirs is the 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1984 opposite...

...Such are the joys of Communist seduction of the media that their crimes are now referred to as the holy war against fascism (which makes Eleni, I guess, a fascist...

...Thus Wolfe works hard at making a contrast of style appear a contrast of substance...

...They are taken aback when Glenn opens his mouth at a press conferenceosomething test pilots don't ordinarily do...

...And when he does get impassioned, it's not about hokum like God or America...

...In the words of Pauline Kael, this version of Giem: "is perfectly capable of using patri'~tism as a put-on...

...And what American film director can forget all those popular Australian movies in which the Aborigines cast spells on the white folks...

...Professionally produced with top acting talent, music and sound effects...

...Wolfe's half-serious speculation~that Glenn's clean living and fastidious morality were part of a cunning plot to beat out the other astronauts--becomes, in Kaufman's film, a certainty...

...murderers like Fidel Castro, or Pol Pot...

...The boy's eyes narrowed...

...U n f o r t u n a t e l y , this depth of background does not make it into Philip Kaufman's recent movie...

...Religion, now, that must have been a toughie...

...Yet Wolfe gets trapped in his own logic, because no matter how much license it may take, the test-pilot subculture is like any other subculture: ultimately dependent on, and defined by, the larger culture of which it is a part...

...I-the dramatized cassette Be Your Best with accompanying book, does that and inspires diligence and helpfulness at school, home, and out in the world What a step ahead for your child...

...Well, that's a relief...

...Gage did when he finally found his mother's killer (but then neither would I have been able to track him down...

...For example, although he speculates that Glenn's "little moral lecture" was meant to impress the higher-ups and get him picked for the first flight, Wolfe also reminds us that a strict Ohio Presbyterian like Glenn does not view ambition as incompatible with virtue...

...Take away the context of traditional American values within which these people really functioned, and you have precious little left except ambition and jingoism trying to punch a hole in an empty sky...

...This standout, of course, was John Glenn--whose sincerity Wolfe acknowledges, if only to say that the other six found it laughably absurd...

...I think it's nice that Glenn sticks up for his speechimpaired wife's right to privacy...

...Gage was in the room, and the only thing he asked me was, "How is your karate going...

...and "How is your yacht...

...seven astronauts were recruited...

...Yet when the others end up going along with Glenn, Wolfe admits that they realized they were in the public eye and ought to toe the line...

...The uncle was saying to the boy, "Didn't they break up our family, drag your grandmother, your mother and me out of our village and put us in camps in Hungary for six years...

...Productivity, built around the key words - - Oo Your ~ t - - must be taught on a child's level of understanding in a positive, encouraging, appealing manner that convinces - - and early enough...

...Six years later the Times stringer in Athens conf'trmed my story: The Soviets do subsidize many (3reek newspapers...

...that as a commandant at Edwards Air Force Base in the early sixties he resisted pressure from the Kennedy Administration to promote a black astronaut ahead of better-qualified whites...

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...II, Where's the Wall mt Wal Street?, which emphasizes Investment, as the gang goes to New York to visit the Stock Exchange (accuracy okayed by AMEX)...learning the simple basics of its operation as well as how capital is raised to finance the nation's businesses...

...He also provides background: the fact that Yeager hails from Hamlin, West Virginia and never lost his Appalachian twang...

...Wolfe feels strongly that Yeager's heroism is unsung, so quite rightly sets out to sing it...

...In The Right Stuff, his 1979 book about the Mercury space program, he gleefully goes after everyone--from politicians to NASA bureaucrats, engineers, and medical researchers--whose official dignity can he satirically contrasted with his morals, motives, or table manners...

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...The mixed message of Wolfe's book has become neatly clarified...

...They did it for humanitarian reasons," the boy replied levelly, "to save you from fascist bombs...

...You are apt to enjoy these as much as the kids...

...Shepard's entire performance, in fact, seems inspired by Ralph Lauren--I kept looking for the " P o l o " trademark...

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...But to judge by their actions as recorded by Wolfe, they don't necessarily spurn what Glenn affirms...

...Pretty noncommittal, considering that presumably the cause must mean something to the test pilot, too...

...High school is too late...

...A cracker who was against affirmative action, and dropped bombs on the Vietnamese...

...I should have answered which of my three yachts did he mean, but finding myself inside the Times building I was feeling a bit nervous, like an honest man among moneylenders, and so I said nothing...

...Habits and attitudes are formed in childhood...

...The salient fact about test-pilot craziness is that it exists within the most rigid of frameworks: military orders to show up at dawn ready to risk one's life...

...Gage seems to bear no grudges, but I do...

...They start nodding and agreeing, which Wolfe interprets as jumping on the public-relations bandwagon, learning to manipulate the media, and so forth...

...His Javert-like pursuit of the men who murdered her comes to fruition when he finally locates those still living and confronts them one by one...

...A test pilot may feel justified in lapsing from these standards, but that doesn't mean he rejects them philosophically...

...Using the late Gus Grissom as a mouthpiece, Wolfe scorns the ethic of "God, country, home, and hearth" in favor of the astronauts' true code, "Flying & Drinking & Drinking & Driving"--the unbuttoned life-style that was a necessary corollary to the icy, taciturn courage required of fliers whose daily chance of coming down in flames was one in four...

...But apart from enjoying the music and the visual effects, I couldn't help thinking that this sequence was a pretty contrived substitute for honest reference to the actual beliefs, transcendent and otherwise, that buoyed aloft this most fervent phase of the American space effort...

...Wolfe's book tries to retrieve reality from pious, manufactured myth...