Listen to the interview in streaming audio (requires Apple Quicktime)

"Normally Leo would do Howard and I would do all the other parts. And my Kate Hepburn by the way is very good." Screenwriter John Logan laughed. He was talking to me about his new film THE AVIATOR which opens in limited release this Friday expanding wide in theaters the following Christmas weekend.

He continued.

"For a playwright I found this very comforting and very unusual in fact because in a movie you might get a table reading where the actors meet each other for the first time and read the script. Here we had weeks where we could go through it and see how it sounded. And see how it played, so that was invaluable."

Logan told me that he was first approached about the writing a Howard Hughes script by filmmaker Michael Mann.

"Michael Mann came to me and said what about Leonardo DiCaprio and Howard Hughes and I said without thinking absolutely YES. I knew enough about Howard Hughes to know that he was an interesting and compelling central figure. So I went home and did a solid year of research before I even talked to Michael. I said 'let me know who the man is or have some sense of it.' And in the process of that research it was very complex because Hughes was a very multifarious and multifaceted individual."

THE AVIATOR smartly concentrates on a portion of Hughes' life and doesn't spread itself too thin.

"I began with basic biographical research which soon led to old Hollywood research and Kate Hepburn research and aviation research-commercial aviation, military aviation, corporate histories of TWA and Pan Am as well as a huge study of obsessive compulsive disorder." Logan told me. "In the process of doing that aviation emerged to me as a central dramatic spine because in my opinion it was the passion of Howard's life that truly abided. After awhile, he lost interest in making movies, he even lost interest in women, but he was always deeply committed to aviation. So it seemed to me that that was an interesting story to tell."

From the words written by Logan, Director Martin Scorsese with the aid of special effects geniuses, literally take the audience into the sky to experience to joy of flight as Hughes himself might have experienced it.

"Well we had Robert Legato doing our special effects and he is best of the best. And certainly I envisioned for example what it would be like when there were 40 planes zooming around filming the climax of HELL'S ANGELS to a certain extent." Logan was talking about Hughes' first film the making of which is dramatized in THE AVIATOR. "But then when I saw it and I saw the work that Rob had done, and what Howard Shore had done with the music, and of course what Marty and Leo did, it was mind-blowing for me how beautiful it looked."

A critical scene in THE AVIATOR involves a Senate Hearing in which Hughes must confront a Senator who supports a law that if passed would severely harm Hughes' airline, TWA. I asked Logan whether this dramatization of real life events was accurate.

"Once in my research I came to the great corporate battle between Pan Am and TWA. I knew that this was an amazing cinematic opportunity because it was such a clear David and Goliath story because Pan Am, at the time, it was Tiffany's it was the top of the game. And TWA was just a struggling little airline. So I went and got the Senate transcripts of the entire hearings and, of course, studied them deeply. And indeed in the movie about 70% of what Alan Alda [playing Sen. Ralph Owen Brewster] and Leo DiCaprio say in that scene are from the actual transcripts. And the rest of it and a good majority of it were just extrapolations from other interviews that Howard gave."

Logan continued.

"All of the Owen Brewster hearings were filmed live for television the first television Senate hearing ever. And there are newsreels of Howard's appearance. The strength of will required to face that man and to face the press in a crowded room for four days was incredible. And you can see the tension in his face and he was at the top of his game and he came out swinging. This was amazing to those who knew Howard because shortly before that he had one of his true nervous breakdowns as we portray in the movie when he goes into one of his screening rooms and shuts himself off from the world. So the heroic effort of will to stand up in public and fight this battle I find exceedingly admirable."

Howard Hughes is such a fascinating subject. While a significant portion of his life is covered in THE AVIATOR, I asked Logan if there was something he could share with us that he uncovered in his research not covered in the film.

"What I found most compelling was how he took over the Hughes Tool empire because he was a kid, he was I think 18. According to Texas Law he was not an adult so therefore could not run the company. So he jumped through incredible hoops to convince the judge who would make the ruling that he was responsible. He got married. He married Ella Rice of the famed Rice family from Houston to show he was an adult and went through an incredible propaganda effort to finally gain control of the company. And then he immediately bought out all the rest of his family who might have had shares in the company. So even at a very early age there was that incredible grandiose ambition that you see reflected in that kid you see who wants to make the biggest movie ever made or the man who wants to fly faster than any human being has ever flown. It's just in his bones."

THE AVIATOR never gets to the later tragic events in Hughes life. Logan explained…

"The ending years, when Howard became that almost folkloric figure that reclusive character with the long fingernails and the Kleenex boxes watching ICE STATION ZEBRA over and over again was very much foreshadowed in this period of Hughes' life [covered in THE AVIATOR]. You know, he would frequently from the time he was in his late 20s isolate himself either get in his plane and fly to the middle of the desert or, as he does in the movie, go into a screening room or his house and lock the door and not let anyone in. So we thought we foreshadowed effectively the sad and reclusive figure that he would become later in life."

It is the scenes of budding insanity that give DiCaprio the opportunity to strut his acting chops. Perhaps, this is the role that will net the young superstar an Oscar statue.

And working with Martin Scorsese?

"It was without a doubt the best relationship I've had working with a director. And I've gotten along really well with directors. But there is something so inspiring about Marty. We would get together sometimes with Leo and sometimes with just the two of us and shut the door and really work, really work through the script page-by-page reading it aloud discussing the history and the characters. I never left one of those meetings not inspired to race back to the computer to start writing because he is such an empathetic kind of visionary and inspiring leader."

THE AVIATOR is a marvelous picture containing many inspiring moments both through the content and through the beautiful filmmaking. Look for it to make a strong showing at this year's Academy Awards.

And look for John Logan's work next as he adapts Stephen Sondheim's musical version of Christopher Bond's book SWEENEY TODD promising a real musical film version of the famous Broadway hit.

Listen to the interview in streaming audio (requires Apple Quicktime)

Jonathan W. Hickman