The movie Apollo 13 famously depicts a tense scene from relatively early on in the accident where the astronauts were having diffucilty controlling the space craft due to the centre of gravity being off.
The dialogue in the scene in question is as follows:
CAPCOM: Aquarius, Huston, watch your middle gimbal, we don't want you tumbling off into space
Lovell: Freddo, inform Houston that I'm well aware of the god-damned gimbals
Haise: (politely) Roger that, Huston
Lovell: I don't need to hear the obvious, I've got the frappin' 8-ball right in front of me
CAPCOM: Uh, Aquarius, we have you both on VOX
Lovell: What, you want us to go to VOX?
CAPCOM: You have a hot mic, we are reading everything you say
I seem to recall Lovell confirming that an incident to this effect did occur in his book, Lost Moon, but I don't have a copy to hand.
EDIT: I have since had the opportunity to check my copy of Lost Moon/Apollo 13. The incident described in the film would appear to be loosely based on a passage on page 154:
Whether Lousma heard Lunney or whether he was too distracted by the troubling talk of the crew was unclear, but at first the Capcom didn't respond to his flight director and continued listening in on the line.
"Why the hell are we manoeuvring like this?", Lovell was asking. "Are we still venting something?"
"We're not venting.", Haise was saying.
"Then why can't we null this out? What if we --"
"Every time I try to I --"
"-- Can't get this roll out"
"Try to get the roll out"
"Well what's the frappin' attitude?", Lovell asked
"The attitude's OK", Haise answered back
"Damn!," Swigart exclaimed, "I wish you guys would get to something I know"
Lunney clicked back onto the loop. "Capcom," he warned again, this time more sternly, "You might let them know that we're copying their vox"
The above was taken from a book that lists Jim Lovell as the author, although it was ghost-written by Jeffrey Kluger.
However, I can find no trace of the word "frap" (or of the actual word that "frap" is probably substituting for) anywhere in the transcript on NASA's website. I did find several uses of the word "damn", and plenty of references to gimbals in general and the middle gimbal in particular
Neither the dialogue as described in the film or as described in the book apparently exist in the comms transcript. The closest I can find is the following excerpt, which seems to roughly correspond with the dialogue described in the book:
059:05:22 LMP Neither am I, okay. Why the hell are we maneuvering at all now? Are we still venting?
059:05:34 CDR Well, we're at ATT HOLD for one thing - I mean, we're at MINIMUM IMPULSE.
059:05:38 LMP No, I mean why can't you null them out, somewhere?
059:05:41 CDR Every time I try to - I can't take that doggone roll out. I got to wait until they get around to the bellyband.
059:05:50 LMP Wait a minute. Do you - you fight roll by using the TTCA left right. That's what you need to play with.
059:06:04 CDR Okay. We'll try that. Let me get around though. Let's roll. Let it roll all the way.
059:06:12 LMP Yes, you can't let it roll all the way.
059:06:13 CDR I know. I know. But I mean -
059:06:16 LMP Okay. Then until it's upside down at least, huh?
059:06:18 CDR Yes.
It's possible NASA edited it out in order to save the embarrassment of its crew, but the other possibility is that this exchange never occurred in either form.
Did this incident or something similar really happen?