CBS’ ‘SPACE’ DRAMATIZES HISTORY OF U.S. PROGRAM

Will CBS’ “Space” have the Right Stuff?

No, says executive producer and co-writer Dick Berg--at least not in terms of the movie “The Right Stuff.”

“We’re dealing with two very different breeds of cat here,” he says. “ ‘The Right Stuff’ was a biography of a group of astronauts within a specific span of time. ‘Space,’ thanks to James Michener, is a panoramic view of the American space program over a period of four decades.”

“The Right Stuff,” released in 1983, was based on Tom Wolfe’s journalistic account of the experiences of the first group of U.S. astronauts.

“Space,” a 13-hour dramatization of Michener’s 1982 novel, is a fictionalized account of the history of the space program, beginning at the close of World War II and involving not only astronauts but also scientists, engineers, administrators and politicans.

The emphasis of the CBS miniseries, which will begin Sunday at 8 p.m. and continue nightly through Thursday, is less on the wild black yonder than it is on the earthly--and earthy--pursuits of its characters. “We’re involved in deeply emotional relationship stories,” says Joseph Sargent, who directed the first and last of the five episodes.

In other words, spicing up the footage of actual rocket launches, space flights and a re-created walk on the moon are stories of romance, adultery and chicanery. The drama stars James Garner, Bruce Dern, Beau Bridges, Susan Anspach, Blair Brown, David Dukes, Melinda Dillon, Harry Hamlin and Michael York.

Put another way, “it’s a movie about a novel, not a documentary,” says Richard Gordon, the former Apollo astronaut who served as technical adviser.

Gordon’s was not the only professional help sought in this non-documentary undertaking. Berg says the National Aeronautics and Space Administration provided full cooperation to the film makers, allowing them to shoot at the U.S. space facilities in Houston and Cape Canaveral and opening their own film files for authentic footage that could be intercut with Hollywood’s make-believe scenes.

NASA did not, however, have script or casting approval, and Berg denies suggestions that the $33-million miniseries is a glorification of the space program. “They never asked us to do a celebration of their activities, and what comes out is, I think, a fair portrayal,” he maintains.

Still, Michener makes no bones about being a longtime space exploration enthusiast and an advocate of the U.S. space program.

“I certainly hope that America’s interest in it does not diminish,” the 77-year-old novelist recently told reporters, “and if anything I have done contributes to that, I would be very happy.”

Michener did not take an active role in the production process, however--a policy he has followed throughout his career, during which time more than a dozen of his books have been adapted to the movie and TV screens. They include “Hawaii,” “Tales of the South Pacific,” “Sayonara,” “The Bridges at Toko-Ri,” “Caravans” and “Centennial.” His recent novel “Poland” is being developed as a TV movie for ABC.

He says he keeps his distance because writing novels and writing films are different crafts and Michener doesn’t feel he has the necessary scriptwriter’s skills for conciseness, good dialogue and telling the story with pictures as well as words.

Sargent, who shared the directing duties with Lee Phillips, says Michener told the two of them before production began: “Please feel free to change anything you want. . . . You can do more in one pan shot than I can in two paragraphs.”

One change in the adaptation of “Space” to TV was the story’s time span. Berg says that he and co-writer Stirling Silliphant, who originally conceived the project as an eight-hour miniseries, still found it necessary at 13 hours to lop off the last 10 years of the novel, so that the TV drama ends in the early 1970s.

Michener isn’t worried. “By and large the Hollywood people have improved on what I’ve written,” he says in explaining his attitude about screen translations. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author cites with particular fondness the films of “Sayonara,” “South Pacific” and “The Bridges at Toko-Ri”: “Hollywood added new dimension to each one of those three.”

The explanation for his infatuation with the space program is equally simple, Michener says. The exploration of outer space “seems to me the great adventure of the latter part of my life. . . .,” he says. “Space in our generation has been the metaphor for the frontier, for the cutting edge. It is something that encompasses all of us.”

Bruce Dern, who as one of the stars in the large cast is doing his first acting for TV in 17 years, says he too was struck by America’s deep-seated interest in outer space. He cites as evidence the huge numbers of people who turn up to see a rocket launch or a space shuttle landing--even though they must remain many miles from the site.

“There are still dreamers here,” Dern says. “There are still pioneers here. There are still people looking for the frontier.”