MovieChat Forums > From the Earth to the Moon (1998) Discussion > Deke Slayton's autobiography

Deke Slayton's autobiography

posted 15 years ago by rhyeking
3 replies | jump to latest

I just picked up, but haven't started yet, Deke Slayton's self-titled autobiography ("Deke"). Written just before he died, I'm really looking forward to reading it.

I'm curious if Nick Searcy, who played him in FTETTM, read it when he took the role. I think Searcy's performance is so solid, like so many other performances in this series, that I can't wait to see how close to Deke's personality Nick got.

The King Of Rhye

"My first thought was he lied in every word."

[–] NineEighteen 15 years ago

"Deke!" is a great book; I loved it. I almost felt like I knew Deke by the end of it. I loved his matter of fact approach to everything, that came through loud and clear and having read other astronaut biographies and their opinions on Slayton I'm fairly sure his personality and selflessness were very well represented.

Enjoy the book, I look forward to hearing your opinion. For me it's one of the very best.

0918

-- EDIT --

Oops, I forgot to say that I was actually quite disappointed in Deke's representation in the series...anyways, see what you think.

[–] hankmcn 15 years ago

Deke was a unique member of the original astronauts in that he never flew in the Mercury program due to his medical condition but he stayed with the program and made many contributions to it's success before finally going back on flight status and flying on the Apollo/Soyas project which I was glad to see in regard to his career. It makes me wonder how difficult it must have been for him to keep the proper attitude seeing everyone else getting their chance to go into space.

[–] t_smitts 15 years ago

I'm curious if Nick Searcy, who played him in FTETTM, read it when he took the role.

He did. The FTETTM section regretably no longer exists on the HBO website, but you can find traces of it if you go to http://www.archive.org and enter http://hbo.com/apollo

Among the things you can find is an interview with Nick Searcy, where he specifically mentions the book:

What kind of research did you do to prepare for your role? What is like for you to recreate history?

Searcy: It's difficult. Deke is one of the only characters who's not still alive. But Deke had written quite an extensive autobiography. And he wrote a book with Alan Shepard. There's videotape of him. I don't look at it really as recreating history. Recreating history is more the art department, I think. I'm just trying to capture what the essence of Deke is. It's not as difficult as it might seem. The autobiography is written in his voice. It's not really as difficult as I thought it was going to be. The hardest part is talking like him! I'm from North Carolina, and he's from [switches accents] Sparta, Wisconsin, so it's a little bit different, the way he talks

Here's the rest:

http://web.archive.org/web/19980506115224/hbo.com/apollo/cmp/capcom10. html