The Mercury Seven astronauts were mostly negative about the film. In an early interview, Deke Slayton said that none of the film "was all that accurate, but it was well done. However, in his memoirs, Slayton described the film as being "as bad as the book was good, just a joke". Wally Schirra liked the book a lot, but expressed disappointment and dislike for the movie, and he never forgave the producers for portraying Gus Grissom as a "bungling sort of coward", which was totally untrue. In an interview, Schirra said: "It was the best book on space, but the movie was distorted and warped... All the astronauts hated movie. We called