A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 1994 Houghton Mifflin/© 2006 Mariner Books. Cover design by Clifford Stoltze Design, Cover image: Photodisc In October of 1994, New York-based Houghton Mifflin published the first edition of Lost Moon: The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13. Written by retired Navy Captain Jim Lovell and science beat journalist Jeffrey Kluger, the book tells the story of Lovell's final - and star-crossed - space flight in April 1970: Apollo 13. Shortly after its publication, Imagine Entertainment founders Brian Grazer and Ron Howard bought the film rights and adapted the book as the 1995 movie Apollo 13.  As a result of the film's success, Houghton Mifflin changed the title from Lost Moon to Apollo 13 when it released the paperback edition to coincide with the film's theatrical premiere. Lovell, a Naval Aviator and test pilot before joining NASA as a member of the agency's Astronaut Group II - "the New Nine" - in 1962. As a result, Lovell and his eight colleagues (which i

© 2009 Discovery Networks. “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth."  –  President John F. Kennedy's Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs,  May 25, 1961 July 20, 2019 marks the 50th Anniversary of Apollo 11's successful mission to fulfill the late President John F. Kennedy's famous commitment of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" before 1970. Half a century after astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin became the first humans to walk on the surface of Earth's nearest celestial neighbor, two generations have grown up with no direct experience of Projects Mercury, Gemini, or Apollo and have lived only peripherally aware of the now-defunct Space Shuttle and the still-active International Space Station.  And even for millions of people in the U.S. and other parts of the

(c) 1983 Warner Bros.  Writer-director Philip Kaufman’s “The Right Stuff” is a rousing adaptation of author Tom Wolfe’s eponymous non-fiction bestseller about the beginning of America’s space program. Starring Sam Shepard, Ed Harris, Barbara Hershey, Fred Ward, Scott Glenn, Veronica Cartwright, Dennis Quaid, Pamela Reed, Mary Jo Deschanel, and Lance Henriksen, “The Right Stuff” dramatizes how a top secret military aircraft evaluation project evolved into the highly publicized manned space endeavor named Project Mercury. Set between Air Force Capt. Chuck Yeager’s (Shepard) “breaking of the sound barrier” in October 1947 and astronaut Gordon Cooper’s (Quaid) “Faith 7” Mercury mission in May 1963, “The Right Stuff” is an epic film that successfully blends historical drama, fantastic special effects, and great performances. And although “The Right Stuff” wasn’t a box office success – it only earned $21.1 million, which was less than its $27 million budget – it was widely h