Lance desperately wanted a part in The Right Stuff. Having become a pilot during the filming of Close Encounters he wanted to be involved in a story about pilots - even if this meant being the janitor! Actually, he was determined to land a spot as one of the astronaunts. So when director Phil Kaufman invited him to make a videotape, in a burst of inspiration he walked over to a window, gazed up at the sky and sighed, "Look at that damn Moon!" The spontaneous gesture so impressed Kaufman that Lance got the part of Wally Schirra.
Wally Schirra was an engineer by training. In order to prepare for the part Lance turned his mother's garage in San Francisco into a kind of barracks where he holed up and read Tom Wolfe's novel three times over. He also embarked on a personal project which would require him to become an engineer. He transformed a 1980 four wheel drive truck frame, engine and transmission, coupled with a 1936 Chevy pickup body, into a machine like nothing else on the road. It was later used in Tracer Pierce. "I haunted every military surplus base in the Bay Area!"
"Dennis
Quaid was out learning to fly, Scott Glen was running around town in a vintage
Corvette picking up speeding tickets, one of the other guys was playing his
golf game like his astronaut had played golf. Me? I was hanging around at military
garage sales!" Lance says this was a demanding role because he had to play
a REAL person. "To get that right", he said, "you must get to
the essence, the mystique of this man, and then play that with your own integrity".
"My Mom really
liked Wally", he remembers laughing. "Here she had this son who was
really attentive to her, didn't swear around her, took her out to dinner, expressed
concern about his wife, career and all. I think she wishes Wally would have
stayed around!"
Interview by
Thomas Mckelvey Cleaver from "Starlog Magazine No. 78, 1984 Book",
Copyright Starlog Press 1986