Comprehensive information and links about The Aviator

The Aviator is a 2004 biographical drama film, directed by Martin Scorsese. It was distributed by Miramax, and like many of Scorsese's films, was nominated for numerous Academy Awards, and went on to win 5 Academy Awards including Best Supporting Actress for Cate Blanchett. Roger Ebert, a respected American film reviewer, described the film and its subject Howard Hughes in these terms:

dl"What a sad man. What brief glory. What an enthralling film, 166 minutes, and it races past. There's a match here between Scorsese and his subject, perhaps because the director's own life journey allows him to see Howard Hughes with insight, sympathy — and, up to a point, with admiration. This is one of the year's best films."

Summary

The movie is a biopic of the aviation pioneer Howard Hughes. It follows his life from the late 1920s through the 1940s, a time when Hughes was directing and producing Hollywood movies as well as test piloting his own groundbreaking new aircraft.

Orphaned at 17, Hughes was the son of a Texan inventor, who left him most of his tool company upon his death. At the time, he was a college student at Rice University. From there, he moved to Los Angeles to become a movie producer, helping fledgling actors launch their careers, such as Jean Harlow, whom he cast in . Later in his career, he branched out into other industries, such as electronics, and most significantly aviation. His company Hughes Aircraft was responsible for the Hercules, aka the Spruce Goose. Hughes's mental deterioration with his obsessive-compulsive behavior is a major plot thread through the film.

The movie also details Hughes's romances with Ava Gardner and Katharine Hepburn, and his battles with Pan Am's Juan Trippe, who has allegedly bribed Maine senator Owen Brewster into granting Pan Am a coercive monopoly on international registered air travel. Hughes admits to having Congressmen in his pocket, too, which he did in real life.

Detailed synopsis

The film begins with nine year old Hughes being bathed by his mother, who warns him of disease: "You are not safe." This shows the root of his obsession with germs. We next see him as a 22-year old preparing to direct Hell's Angels. He hires Noah Dietrich to run Hughes Tool Co, while he oversees the flight sequences for the film. He is two cameras short and unsuccessfully tries to get loaners from Louis B. Mayer, who laughs at him and tells him to go back to Texas. Realizing that the audience will not be able to have a sense of space from the shot dogfight footage, Hughes becomes obsessed with finding "clouds that look like giant breasts full of milk" to re-shoot against. He hires a meteorologist whom he calls Professor to determine the next perfect formation, and ends up waiting eight months. When the Professor tells him there are clouds in Oakland, California, Hughes moves production there, and re-shoots the dogfight himself.

By 1929, the film is finally complete, but, while watching will have to be re-shot for sound, costing another year and $1.7 million. The film is a huge hit, and Hughes is the one laughing now. He makes films such as . However, there is one goal he relentlessly wants to pursue: aviation. During this time, he falls in love with Katharine Hepburn, and the two hit it off, going to nightclubs, playing golf, and flying.

As Hughes's fame grows, he is seen with more starlets. He also takes an interest in commercial-passenger travel, and purchases majority interest in Transcontinental and Western Air (TWA). In 1935, he test-flies the H-I monoplane, breaks the speed record of Charles Lindbergh, and crashes in a beet field. "Fastest man on the planet," he boasts to Hepburn. Three years later, he flies around the world in three days, shattering the previous record by four days. Meanwhile, Juan Trippe, owner of Pan American Airlines, and Owen Brewster worry over the possibility that Hughes might beat them in the quest for commercial expansion. Brewster has just introduced the Commercial Airline Bill, which will give world expansion to Pan Am. Trippe advises Brewster to check to the "disquieting rumors about Mr. Hughes."

Hepburn takes Hughes to meet her family in Connecticut, which turns into a disaster. When, over lunch, her mother tells him that "we don't care about money," he shoots back "That's because you have it," in effect, exposing the Hepburns as snobs and hypocrites. Things get uglier as Howard continues to date other women. An angered Hepburn finds herself confiding in the co-star of her new film, Spencer Tracy. Hepburn finally tells Hughes she has fallen in love and is leaving him. Howard responds by burning all his clothes that night. Yet, he soon has a new interest: 15-year old Faith Domergue. He also fights the Motion Picture Association of America over the steamy scenes in . He learns of Pan Am's efforts to run TWA off the map. He secures contracts with the Army on two projects, a spy plane and a troop plane, by throwing a massive dinner party. Next, he is hounded by the press after being caught with Ava Gardner by an enraged Domergue. Hughes then meets with a shady tabloid editor to purchase the photo negatives taken of Hepburn with her new beau Spencer Tracy before they become public.

By 1945, Hughes has only finished the XF-11 Spy plane and is building the H-4 Hercules Flying Boat. The budget is increasing, the deadline is looming, and Hughes starts to show signs of alarming behavior, such as worry over dust and germs in the air and repeating phrases over and over. That July, he takes the XF-11 for a test flight. The engines give out; Hughes attempts to land it on a golf course in Beverly Hills, but crashes into a neighbourhood. He is rushed to the hospital, where he slowly recuperates. He learns the Spruce Goose is no longer needed by the Army, but orders production to continue. When he is discharged, the whole TWA fleet is built and ready to go, but he is in big danger of being bankrupt by the airline and the plane.

Afraid of the media trying to find him, Hughes places microphones and taps Ava's phone lines to keep track of any suspicious activity. After being confronted by Gardner, he returns home to find the FBI searching his house for incriminating evidence leading to embezzling government funds. Hughes meets with Brewster, who offers to drop the charges if Hughes supports the CAB Bill and sells the TWA stock to Trippe. Hughes refuses and sinks into a deep depression, locking himself in his screening room, terrified of germs, urinating into dozens of empty milk bottles. Hepburn talks to him from outside the door, thanking him for buying the negatives and apologizes for having treated him badly. Trippe then pays Hughes a visit, but an enraged Hughes vows he will never sell TWA to Trippe. Trippe warns Dietrich that the world will see what Howard has become if he goes to the Hearings. After nearly three months, Hughes finally emerges and prepares to face the Senate, with encouragement from Ava, who gets him cleaned up.

Hughes arrives at the Hearings, and starts off with counter-claiming Brewster's charges. Humiliated and enraged by this turn of events, the Senator formally states that Hughes charged the Defense Department $56 million USD for planes that never flew. Then, Hughes states that other companies did not deliver planes either, yet they have not been charged with embezzlement. In a final blow to Brewster and Trippe's Pan Am monopoly scheme, Hughes exposes their offer to drop the charges, if he sold his stock over to Trippe and Pan Am, and he adds that on their little date, Brewster told him this would never take place, if he would just give up. Hughes is acquitted of all charges, the CAB bill is defeated, Trippe's plans for Pan Am's global expansion is ruined, and TWA starts to expand to Europe and the Far East. Hughes then proves he was right about the Spruce Goose by personally flying it himself. As he talks to Noah and Odie about a new jet-liner for TWA and makes a date with Ava at the party to celebrate, he sees three business-men in suits and white gloves. Are they his future "Mormon Mafia" or figments of his imagination? Dietrich's reaction implies that they are real: "Every works for you Howard." This suddenly sets him into a obsessive-compulsive fit, constantly repeating "The way of the future." Dietrich and Odie hide Hughes in a bathroom and keep him there until they can get a doctor. Howard has a flashback of his boyhood self, realizing that he has accomplished all his goals, and that he has already built the grounds for the future. As the film ends, he keeps muttering "the way of the future." The darkness closing in around him, Hughes finally succumbs to his fears and obsessions.

Fact vs. Fiction

The film takes many historical liberties. Ella Rice is not seen or mentioned although Hughes was married to her while he made His lover at the time, Billie Dove, is not mentioned, either. Dietrich tells Hughes that the board in Houston is alarmed by his spending on ; in reality, he was an emancipated minor, and answered to no one. Ava Gardner and Linda Darnell are referenced before either had entered films. The lunch scene of Hughes and Hepburn at her parents' home is fiction (as per her autobigraphy), as is his "audition" of Faith Domergue. Hughes had brown eyes, but DiCaprio does not wear brown contact lenses. The film also overlooks Hughes's already well-known racism and anti-Semetism. In his review, Rex Reed observed that the Hughes in the movie bore little resemblance to the man those who actually knew Hughes knew.

In the first half hour of the movie, only the colors red and blue appear; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to a Scorcese, to emulate the look of early two-color movies, in particular , which Hughes himself owned. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and incorporated into the film. The colorization effects were created by Legend Films.

Famous names mentioned or briefly viewed

The following is a list of names of famous people that were named or briefly viewed in the film. Also included is a quote or the scene in which they were mentioned or seen.

(George Cukor and Cary Grant were both seen briefly before Howard met Katharine Hepburn for the first time)

Olivia De Havilland - "I've even managed to coax the luscious Miss De Havilland and her equally luscious sister to accompany me"

(Along with Jean Harlow and Jane Russel, Ann Sherriden, Irene Dunne, Claudette Colbert, Rita Hayworth and Betty Grable were all mentioned at the meeting of Howards with the Motion Picture Association)

(Along with Joan Crawford, Ginger Roger and Linda Darnell, Joan Fontaine and Bette Davis were mentioned in Katharine Hepburns argument with Howard)