THE STORY – Sally Ride became the first American woman to blast off into space, but beneath her unflappable composure, she carried a secret. Revealing the romance and sacrifices of their 27 years together, Sally’s life partner, Tam O’Shaughnessy, tells the full story for the first time of this complicated and iconic astronaut.
THE CAST – N/A
THE TEAM – Cristina Costantini (Director/Writer) & Tom Maroney (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 103 Minutes
Cristina Costantini fills up the gap in what many science nerds and Americans who grew up in the ’70s and ’80s previously knew about astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman and the youngest to fly into space, in her sublime portrait “Sally.” After replaying an earlier montage of the same press appearances Ride made after completing the STS-7 mission in 1983, Ride’s family members and close ones revealed she had an unsatisfied relationship with the press due to journalists asking about her femininity and not about her work at NASA. Yet, the reserved pioneer was concise with her critical ripostes to the reporters.
Tam O’Shaughnessy is responsible for providing most of Ride’s personal life to the public after she disclosed her 27-year relationship with Ride in Ride’s 2012 obituary. With her firsthand knowledge of Ride and her courage to not let Ride’s humanity be forgotten, O’Shaughnessy is the perfect candidate to executive produce an audiovisual biography on Ride. In addition to O’Shaughnessy and archival footage of Ride’s fame with NASA, Ride’s sister Bear and mother Joyce, tennis player Molly Tyson, and astronauts Kathy Sullivan, Anna Fisher, John Fabian, Mike Mullane, and Steve Hawley round out the talking head interviews.
“Sally” follows Ride’s life chronologically from O’Shaughnessy’s perspective. Growing up with Norwegian parents in Los Angeles, Bear recalls that their culture didn’t allow them the space to share emotions. Ride put that expression into her early days as a tennis player at a tennis camp, where she met O’Shaughnessy and was taught by Billie Jean King. While Ride was part of NASA Astronaut Group 8, the first class of gender and racial minorities enrolled in NASA, it is evident that NASA didn’t love Ride back, as many of its white male employees mistreated their counterparts. Besides a smile in a few public stills with NASA, Ride hid her moods externally to fit in and confront the systemic misogyny in the workplace.
Addressing the film absence of O’Shaughnessy and Ride’s companionship, Costantini deploys 16mm recreations of the couple’s early days when they played tennis together and the reunion during Ride’s end at NASA in the mid-80s. Though the imagery is sharp and suggests a diaristic feeling to a chapter previously unacknowledged to the public, it doesn’t land as strong as the talking head interviews. The interview sound bites dictate the story’s direction, rendering the newly shot footage as eye candy, and it is a curiosity to see if their available stills together speaks volumes to that intention. Otherwise, “Sally” is a splendid rumination on how love persists over time.
Costantini, a lifelong Ride fan, imbues tenderness and love to her canvas of Ride as she soared across the horizon to combat the sexism and queerphobia embedded in the male-dominated NASA. Costantini examines how these societal factors played into Ride’s status as a role model for women and LGBTQ+ people aspiring to be or already working in STEM. As one interviewee says, “Just let Sally be Sally.” “Sally” is a long overdue and emotionally sensitive look at an astronaut wanting to live a private life without fame and intrusion.
