NEW ULM — The New Ulm Film Society has got “The Right Stuff” for the next installment in its NASA Space series.

The 1983 movie, “The Right Stuff” will be screened at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 11 at the New Ulm Public Library.

The film is based on a non-fiction book written by Tom Wolfe. The film follows the exploits of Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), John Glenn (Ed Harris), Gus Grissom (Fred Ward) and Gordon Cooper (Dennis Quaid) as they compete to break the sound barrier, and later join NASA’s Mercury program.

“The Right Stuff” was a pioneering film that explored a new frontier in historical dramas. It was the first major Hollywood film to tell the story of the American space program.

Many of the events depicted were recent enough for audiences to remember them. Since many of NASA Mercury missions were heavily publicized by the media, some audiences had likely seen the original news footage of the events.

The early test pilots were already household names. This puts the film in the difficult position of re-telling a story audiences already know.

“The Right Stuff” gets around the problem by making the media coverage of the NASA missions part of the plot. At the beginning of the film, the test flights conducted by Yeager and others were classified. The public was largely unaware of the test flights. The decision to make the tests public was a public relations effort to raise support for the space program and secure better funding.

Determining which pilot has “the right stuff” involves more than courage and pilot skills, but the ability to be media savvy.

Even as the media begins promoting the Mercury test pilots as heroes, some of the engineers on the space program view the pilots as simple passengers. The Mercury tests pilots struggle to be seen as an intricate part of the man space flight.

Nearly 40 years after the film’s release, “The Right Stuff” continues to be a reference point for other films about the space program. The 2016 film “Hidden Figures” covers some of the same historical events as “The Right Stuff”, but that film also borrows some dialogue and shot composition.

“The Right Stuff” was the first film to show an audience what a spaceflight looks like from the pilot’s perspective. The film has influenced how our culture imagines space exploration.

Cinematographer Caleb Deschanel would receive his first Oscar nomination for his work on “The Right Stuff.” The film is considered one of the best-looking films from the era.

One of the most famous images from “The Right Stuff” is a scene of the Mercury astronauts walking down a hallway toward the camera in their spacesuits. This scene has been recreated in countless other films. The variation astronaut training programs would be recreated in other films.

When first released, “The Right Stuff” was considered a financial failure, with low tickets sales, but the film received significant critical praise.

Film critic Roger Ebert praised the film as an experimental epic with adventure, special effects and social commentary some might not have been ready for in 1983. Ebert cited the film as his favorite of 1983 and later call it the second-best film of the 1980s.

The New Ulm Film Society will start the screening at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 11 in the public library basement. Film Society members will provide additional information on the movie before and after the screening.