Airport 2013: How the High and the Mighty Has Fallen

I’ve been reading with great sadness the unfolding news about the crash landing of the Korean jetliner at San Francisco Airport. Normally, of course, airports these days feel like giant bus terminals, full of too many people but not much in the way of drama. An irony: I just flew out of that very same San Francisco International Airport barely a week ago. A second irony: I just saw the latest release from bad-boy Spanish filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar. It’s called I’m So Excited, and it’s an outrageous parody of those tense airline near-disaster movies we know and love. (Think sex, drugs, and flamboyant gay hijinks in the cabin and – especially – in the cockpit.) Did I like it? Not so much. Truthfully, Airplane! (produced in 1980 by my former New World Pictures colleague Jon Davison) was a whole lot funnier. Surely you would agree (and don’t call me Shirley).

Movies set on airplanes have long been popular because of their dramatic possibilities. You have a diverse group of people in a confined space, going on a journey that could prove either exhilarating or tragic. I suspect that even the most frequent flyer occasionally feels a twinge of anxiety. As we realize all too well, so many little things can go wrong. Like weather issues . . . mechanical failures . . . terrorists . . . a pilot who can’t handle the pressure . . . a rash of food poisoning . . . snakes on a plane. Depending on how seriously the filmmakers approach their story, the result could be Airport or Flight 93 or The High and the Mighty or Airplane! or (yes) Snakes on a Plane.

Recently I visited Santa Monica’s Museum of Flying to see a fascinating exhibit devoted to airport design. It made me realize the complexity of an airport’s mission. It’s committed to safety and security (hence those off-putting TSA screening lines), and it needs to move luggage and cargo as well as people. But, given the tensions involved with today’s air travel, it also must be a reassuring environment. Hence the focus on colorful displays, food, and shopping. The star of the exhibit is an airport design specialist named Curtis W. Fentress. He’s the one who gave Denver International Airport its picturesque peaked roof, reminiscent of the Rocky Mountains. Another of his major commissions was the remarkable Incheon International Airport outside of Seoul. Within its confines are a golf course, a skating rink, and a casino. Sadly, this was probably where the doomed Asiana flight took off for San Francisco.

The exhibit got me pondering how movies feature airports as key settings. The classic disaster film, Airport (based on Oliver Hailey’s popular novel) juxtaposes its airline-in-danger scenario with the challenges faced by an airport during a mammoth blizzard. The British romantic comedy Love, Actually opens and closes at Heathrow, where arrivals and departures prompt emotional hellos and goodbyes. In 2004, Steven Spielberg directed a small but charming movie, The Terminal, set entirely within the walls of New York’s JFK. It features Tom Hanks as a hapless Eastern European immigrant who, thanks to bureaucratic snafus, lacks the documents to legally enter the U.S., and so creates a life for himself within airport walls. And, of course, the mood of The Graduate is set by Benjamin Braddock’s arrival at LAX, where he somberly rides a moving walkway, picks up his bags from a revolving carousel, and walks through automatically opening doors, all to the eerie strains of The Sounds of Silence. But if his L.A. is a city on automatic pilot, at least he arrives safely.

Come Fly with Me

I’ve been doing a lot of flying lately. Which of course has made me contemplate the role played by air travel in the movies of the past—and the present. Back in the 1930s, the glamour of flight was highlighted in films both fluffy and serious. In the former category, there’s 1931’s Flying Down to Rio, the story of a dashing aviator who romances a Brazilian beauty. (The film marked the screen debut of the dance team of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers, whose fleet-footed “Carioca” number shot them to stardom.) In 1939, Howard Hawks directed Only Angels Have Wings, a drama about flyboys who risk their lives to carry air freight out of a remote South American trading port.

War movies, of course, encouraged the notion of flyers as heroes. One of the most gripping air dramas to come out of World War II is Twelve O’Clock High (1949), about a bomber squadron and the new leader (Gregory Peck) who must whip his men into shape, then agonize over their survival. Twelve O’Clock High earned praise for its use of actual combat footage, as well as its honest treatment of what was then called “battle fatigue.” (Today, we know it as post-traumatic stress disorder.) Made by men who’d actually faced combat, Twelve O’Clock High stands out for its refusal to accept a glibly optimistic Hollywood ending.

In the post-war period, when air travel had become more commonplace for the average American, a commercial airplane flight proved to be an effective backdrop for an all-star melodrama. Such was 1954’s The High and the Mighty (with John Wayne et al), and the formula worked again in 1970’s Airport, in which such potential disasters as a bomber aboard a flight and an airport shut down by a snowstorm kept audiences on the edge of their seats. Ten years later Jim Abrahams and the Zucker brothers (along with my old pal Jon Davison) had audiences falling out of their seats with laughter when they launched Airplane!, a wicked spoof that still hits its mark. (Says the invaluable IMDB, “An airplane crew takes ill. Surely the only person capable of landing the plane is an ex-pilot afraid to fly. But don't call him Shirley.”)

For some of us, air travel now seems less romantic—and much less funny—than perhaps it once did. Back in 1967, Dustin Hoffman descending through the smog and then riding a moving sidewalk at LAX seemed an appropriate emblem of the dehumanized world into which The Graduate plunged its central character, home from college and about to re-enter his parents’ world. In 2009’s Up in the Air, George Clooney is so cut off from humanity that he’s happiest on a plane, racking up perks, frequent flyer miles, and the occasional meaningless amorous conquest.

It’s axiomatic that when airlines screen films, they avoid anything suggesting an air disaster. I rarely watch movies on planes, but on one long international flight, I was pleased to see that KLM was screening Fred Astaire-Ginger Rogers musicals. The one I caught was the rare Astaire-Rogers picture based on a true-life romance, The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle. How surprised I was, high above the Atlantic in the wee hours of the morning, to catch the scene where Irene learns what just happened to Vernon’s plane. Ooops.

Do wish me bon voyage.