With Hollywood’s avoidance of morally ambiguous dramas, the film about a plane crash had stalled. But then Denzel Washington and Robert Zemeckis came onboard.
As an experienced pilot who has logged about 1,600 hours in the cockpit, director Robert Zemeckis understands stalls, turbulence and dead stick landings. But when it came to making “Flight,” his new movie about an alcoholic commercial airline pilot, the ”Forrest Gump” filmmaker had to contend with a different set of aerodynamics: Hollywood’s reluctance to clear difficult dramas for takeoff.
More than a decade in the making, “Flight” marks Zemeckis’ first live-action film since 2000′s “Cast Away” and an atypical wager for Paramount Pictures, which financed the film’s $31-million budget. The production nearly fell apart on the eve of filming over contract terms, and screenwriter John Gatins, who first came up with “Flight’s” rough outline in 1999, worried over the intervening years that the movie never would get made.
“In today’s Hollywood, you can’t make a movie that is about ideas and complex characters for a lot of money,” Zemeckis said. “The development system destroys the possibility of ambiguity. It’s just the way things have evolved. And it’s very disappointing.”
I have been reading quite a bit about the process of making movies and the amount of experience that each person brings to that process. It is truly an art form that demands a lot of knowledge, skill and dedication in order to have a successful project. Reading this piece reinforces Richard Walter’s volume: “Essentials of Screenwriting.” Fascinating article.