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Features
THE FLYING TYCOON
MARTIN SCORSESE'S NEXT FILM, THE AVIATOR, STARS LEONARDO DiCAPRIO AS HOWARD HUGHES, THE FAMOUSLY PHOBIC BILLIONAIRE WHO CUT A SWATH THROUGH HOLLYWOOD'S LEADING LADIES IN THE 1930S AND 40S, BROKE AIRSPEED RECORDS, AND PURSUED THE DREAM OF TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT. BRIGITTE LACOMBE PHOTOGRAPHS A CAST THAT ALSO INCLUDES CATE BLANCHETT, KATE BECKINSALE, GWEN STEFANI, AND JUDE LAW, WHILE JIM WINDOLF CHECKS THE ENGINES OF A CLASSIC BIOPIC IN THE MAKING
Features
THE FLYING TYCOON
MARTIN SCORSESE'S NEXT FILM, THE AVIATOR, STARS LEONARDO DiCAPRIO AS HOWARD HUGHES, THE FAMOUSLY PHOBIC BILLIONAIRE WHO CUT A SWATH THROUGH HOLLYWOOD'S LEADING LADIES IN THE 1930S AND 40S, BROKE AIRSPEED RECORDS, AND PURSUED THE DREAM OF TRANSATLANTIC FLIGHT. BRIGITTE LACOMBE PHOTOGRAPHS A CAST THAT ALSO INCLUDES CATE BLANCHETT, KATE BECKINSALE, GWEN STEFANI, AND JUDE LAW, WHILE JIM WINDOLF CHECKS THE ENGINES OF A CLASSIC BIOPIC IN THE MAKING
Unless something goes horribly wrong, next year's Oscar talk is likely to center on The Aviator, an old-fashioned, unapologetically big-budgeted ($110 million is the official figure) telling of the life and times of ingenious billionaire madman Howard Hughes.
Martin Scorsese is the director, and he's the perfect fit. The Aviator (with money coming from Miramax, Warner Bros., and the Initial Entertainment Group) takes him away from his nearly obsessive interest in the folkways of New York's gangsters and thugs, which has led to masterpieces (Mean Streets, Raging Bull, GoodFellas) appreciated more by film critics and movie geeks than by mass audiences and Academy voters. But he's not straying as far from his pet themes as he did in Kundun or The Age of Innocence: Hughes has a lot in common with the typical Scorsese antihero—namely, an individualist streak bordering on the sociopathic and a love of sticking it to the Establishment.
The success of this big-time, Hollywood-style epic will depend on its star, Leonardo DiCaprio. In his last collaboration with Scorsese, Gangs of New York, the smooth-cheeked, thin-waisted DiCaprio was playing not only a street tough but a street tough who slugs his way toward becoming lord and master of a whole slum full of street toughs. The Aviator would seem to play more to his considerable strengths: when not waging his losing battle against the demons of mental illness, this Scorsese-DiCaprio protagonist scores victories on the battlefield of romance with such stunners as Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) and Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale).
Rounding out the cast in relatively minor roles are Gwen Stefani (Jean Harlow) and Jude Law (Errol Flynn), plus Alec Baldwin, John C. Reilly, Willem Dafoe, and 3,000 extras populating the movie's numerous nightclub, factory, and airfield sequences. John Logan {The Last Samurai, Gladiator) has written a muscular script with a lot of action and just the right amount of com. It's all here: the man's rise from humble Texas roots; the airspeed record that made him the fastest man on earth for a time; the crashes, both aeronautical and personal; and the hand-washing in public bathrooms. But, for an in-depth look at the wacky, longhaired Hughes of his declining years, you'll need to give Jonathan Demme's Melvin and Howard a rent. The Aviator's main action cuts out in 1947, when Hughes was still presentable.
