Breaking Barriers: Krissy and Nathan Strap In for The Right Stuff
Welcome to this episode of The Most Excellent 80s Movies Show. Hosts Krissy Lenz and Nathan Blackwell strap in for Philip Kaufman’s sweeping 1983 epic The Right Stuff — a film so genuinely, stubbornly good that it nearly breaks their ability to snark about it.
The central tension here isn’t between astronauts and gravity — it’s between Krissy and Nathan and a movie that refuses to be easily summed up. With an extraordinary ensemble (Ed Harris, Dennis Quaid, Sam Shepard, Fred Ward, Jeff Goldblum, and at least ten more “wait, is that—?” faces), The Right Stuff sprawls across three hours and twelve minutes like a prestige mini-series that never quite got the memo it was a movie. The hosts dig into what makes it so entertaining moment to moment — the absurdist testing sequences, Goldblum perpetually racing in with news everyone already has, and the quiet, earned power of Ed Harris telling the Vice President to back off his wife.
What you get here is two people genuinely wrestling with a film they admire deeply, laughing at the bits that deserve laughs and getting a little misty at the bits that earn it. The conversation is premise-level — no endings spoiled, no surprises given away — just an honest, warmhearted debate about what holds this sprawling, magnificent beast together.
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If you could only keep one scene from The Right Stuff, what would it be — and why?
