Aviation Movies (non-WW1) you'd like to see done...

retread · 6 September 2006, 08:25 AM

Like the title states , non-WW1 aviation movies (or for that matter mini-series, or documentaries) you would like to see made or remade. Essentially your fantasy wish-list...
Mine would include a film done on the X-15 project, which included the likes of Neil Armstrong, Joe Walker and Scott Crossfield. There was a film handling this subject made in the very early sixties ( I believe '62) which starred Charles Bronson and Mary Tyler Moore. I have never seen it but would love to whether it be good, bad or indifferent. My fantasy flick would of course follow very closely the actual history of the project as opposed to a story involving a generic pilot and his wife.
My politically correct choice would be a movie on the life of Harriet Quimby, America's first female pilot ( and not incidentally, at least to me, a real babe) who died while exhibition flying over Boston Harbor during 1912. A story that should be done not because it IS politically correct but because it involves a genuinely fascinating character (and did I mention she was a babe).
I think a movie on either the Wrights or Glen Curtiss would be a compliment to celluloid. Intense, brave and brilliant. Fodder for a film with the same qualities if the tendency to wreck a unique story with "artistic license" could be overcome.
Ideas....?

Wind In The Wires · 6 September 2006, 08:56 PM

Flying the Atlantic. Start with the Curtiss America, include Alcock and brown and their competitors, the NC flying boats, the R-34, Lindberg and his competitors and end with the first paid airline passenger service.

A good well researched documentary about the Wright Brothers by someone who understands aerodynamics and is familiar with the technology of the period would be a real treat.

Air racing. I had the good fortune to meet Steve Wittmann and Harold Neuman and they told some wonderful stories. One of the earliest flying movies shows a Wright biplane cranking around a pylon with it's wingtip inches from the ground. There must be a lot more of that type of footage hidden in vaults.

buzz1941 · 7 September 2006, 01:26 AM

You pretty much can't beat the Cmdr. John Rodgers saga with the PN-9 flight in 1925 -- a real-life "Flight of the Phoenix"

retread · 7 September 2006, 05:31 AM

The saga of the attempted crossing of L'Oiseau blanc could shine, except nobody knows what happened past the last sighting off Ireland. I'll bend my own rules (non-WW1 aviation) and suggest that the entire life of Charles Nungessor is tailormade for Hollywood. More like an additional episode of "Raiders of the Lost Ark".
I feel "The Spirit of St. Louis" could rate a remake. The book is brillant , the film O.K. The fly in that soup is I can't imagine finding anyone nearly as suited to play the part of Lindbergh as Jimmy Stewart was.

Lufbery · 7 September 2006, 06:22 AM

I added this to the other thread with the same title, but everyone seems to be here:

Great idea for a thread!

I'd love to see something on the first airmail pilots (in the U.S.), especially since a lot of that story takes place at small Pennsylvania airfields.

Ernest Gann has written quite a bit about that era, and any of his books on the topic might make a great movie.

A movie about Antoine de Saint-Exupery would be pretty cool too. I've read a number of his works and he sounds like he had some fantastic adventures.

And yes, Harriet Quimby was a babe but I wonder if her early death would make the movie too sad.

Regards,

timjnf · 7 September 2006, 09:37 AM

Glenn Curtiss, or the Wright Brothers would be good, they were mentioned on the other thread with this title.

I think Roald Dahl's "Going Solo" could make a good film. Only the second half would involve aviation, but as a whole it is a great story.

Also parts of Robert Buck's story could be pieced together to make a good film, maybe a good work of fiction based on it.

Barrett · 11 September 2006, 05:05 PM

Gone With The Divine Wind: the Kamikaze story!

Simba · 25 September 2006, 04:57 PM

Nice one, Barrett, but it'd never get finance from Sony.

My choice: a movie of the life-story of Louis Aubon Strange. Or even one that just describes his Great War service, starting with how he flew off to war from Gosport in a Farman overloaded with a blind-drunk MT driver passenger with full kit, plus the RFC's only (borrowed from his chum Lt. Penn-Gaskell) Lewis gun . . .