FROM THE VAULT: Air Force One: Everything You Didn't Know

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Speaker 1: Too Much Information is a production of I Heart Radio. Hello everyone, and welcome to Too Much Information, the show that brings you the secret history and little known fascinating facts behind your favorite music, movies, TV shows, and more. We're two guys, but too much free time in our hands. My name is Jordan Ron Tog and I'm Alex Hegel, and today we are talking about Air Force One. We're talking about one of the mid nineties most glowing error action movies. Is that what you call them plane action sinks on a plane, aviation Well, stinks on a plane is like mid two thousand's. I'm talking about this shining four year period in American mainstream cinema where we could not get enough of planes in peril. Independence Day, featuring my favorite cinematic president in Bill Pullman, comes out nine six. Executive Decision also comes out that year with ker Raw Soul, and then Conair of Course, which is just one of the greatest plane action movies of all time, is nine seven. So yeah, planes were having a moment, plans for event a moment. I'm surprised to hear you say that Bill Pullman in Independence Day is your favorite movie president, because I mean, for me, it's all about James Marshall in Air Force one, I mean Harrison for this is quite possibly my favorite Harrison Ford movie, which is a ridiculous and bad take. Um, I hate you so much. I mean, okay, I'll be the first admit I'm not an action flick connoisseur, but it okay, let's back up first. For anyone who is not familiar with you, you are not an action movie person. Yeah. No, you can't see me right now, but I'm wearing an an argyle cardigan right now. Yeah. I haven't seen too many action movies in my day, so my my scope is limited. But this has got to be one of the best of all time. It's just such an incredibly well crafted film. I mean, it's die Hard set aboard the Presidential I mean, what's not to look. It's a great elevator pitch, and I mean that's I think that's how we got all these movies. Was die Hard on a blank you know that Hard on a bus was speed, die Hard on a on a boat was Speed to cruise Control. Yeah, so what you saw this at the right time? I guess yeah, I saw it soon after it came out. Maybe it was just one of those movies that wasn't supposed to see because I would have been like ten or eleven when it came out, and so I just associated it with feeling. Also it's just such a rush though, like I saw it again recently and it's still so it's up there for me with uncut Gems in terms of just being that anxiety producing and interestingful to me interesting, you know. I also just don't remember this in being in the zeit geist. I remember to get off my plane. But for me, this three year stretch was dominated by Independence Day, when did Men and Black come out on the seven This was like the stretch of like Will Smith Dominance, Yeah, and then conn Air, which was on like T n T seven hours a day for the next ten years. Since it's I God, I love Connor. Anyway, on this episode, we're going to learn about Air Force One's strange connection to the Wizard of Oz, Harrison Ford's strange connection to Bill Clinton, how the filming almost caused a major military incident, and whether or not President James Marshall is a Democrat or Republican or a member of the Green Party. So folks, stay tuned because we are coming at you with everything you didn't know about the movie Air Force one. This is so fascinating to me. Well, I love this guy's career. I think it's so weird and specific, So give me the wolf. Air Force one was directed by the German filmmaker Wolfgang Peterson, whose breakthrough movie was dos Boot, which is an incredible movie. Is this drama about life aboard a German submarine during World War Two? One of those dad dad movies of all time. It's got World War Two, it's got good decent men in under pressure rising to a challenge, and it's got submarines. It's maybe the most dad movie of all time. And this movie cemented wolf Getting Peterson's reputation not only is a great director, but as a stickler for historical details. And he was known throughout his career for just exhaustive research to achieve totally ridiculous, painstaking levels of accuracy, which came to bear in Air Force One. As we'll find out, the lower service area of Air Force one in the movie was designed as like sort of a homage to Doss Boot by making it look like this dark and foreboding tangle of wires, like the belly of a submarine. But there were a lot of fortuitous connections. While wolf Getting Peterson was making dos Boot. The star of the movie the German actor Jurgen Prunch Now, who uh I think was also in the original Dune and was in one of the Beverly Hills cop movies. He had a glorified cameo in Air Force One as the evil General Raddick, who's the Soviet block dictator on whom the plot hinges. But the craziest connection between dust Boot and the future Air Force one cast is that Steven Spielberg was filming Raiders of the Lost Arc nearby when Wolfgang Peterson was making dust Boot, and he borrowed the submarine they were using for dust Boots to film the scene where Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones is boarding a nazi U boat. So the seeds for Air Force one were planted what some fifteen years before? I guess has Harrison Ford ever been to space? Um? Because I'm thinking he's been like the ultimate action by land by Oh Star Wars. Is he our most complete action hero by Land, by Sea, by air by space? If he had a time travel movie, he would truly be unstoppable. That's very true, let's getting let's get in that vehicle. But fun fact about Wolfgang Peterson. He also directed the millennial cinematic classic The Never Ending Story, which is one of my all time favorite movies as a kid, Major Kindred Trauma with the Horse in the quicksand Um. He also directed The Perfect Storm in two thousand, two thousand fours Troy with Brad Pitt, and the two thousand six remake The Posidon Adventure. But we're getting way ahead of ourselves, all right, So not my not my president, not my film president, which is the honor that goes to Bill Pullman, but your film president talked to me about President Harrison Ford. So early on the development of Air Force One, Gene Hackman was offered the role of the president, which kind of makes sense because he was in the original Posidon Adventure and this is sort of like the Besidon Adventure of the air and we'll get Peterson would go on to direct the Posidon Eventure remake and No. Six, so all the pieces fit. But in the time honored Gene Hackman tradition, he turned it down because he thought that the script was I believe he referred to it as lousy, just to see turned down Wes Anderson's World ten obomba script initially Gene Hackman very hard to please, so they moved on to Kevin Costner, who also turned down role of President James Marshall in favor of doing The Postman. To quote another India Jones movie, he chose poorly. He directed The Postman too, did he? Okay, so I guess that he wanted his moment. Yeah, you know, Tom Petty's in The Postman. It's like one of the only movies Tom Petty acted in. What the Postman? The titular Postman Man. Kevin Costner What a fascinating guy. I can't believe he created two of the biggest flops of the nineties and his drive to create original sci fi properties water World and what was the other Postman? And water this one Postman. Yeah, I mean, if you think about it, those are original plots. They're they're not developed. I mean one of them was a novel. Postman was a novel, but like it wasn't a superhero movie. They weren't a Marvel film. I'm calling it now. We should have been nicer to Kevin Costner. That's all I got. But he did do Robin Hood. Oh yeah, all right, maybe we'd be just he was. He's adequately rated. But you know what, we do have to thank Kevin Costa for one thing. He gave the script of Air Force one to Harrison Ford when he passed on the movie. He gave the script to Harrison Ford, and Harrison Ford would express gratitude for this twenty million dollar windfall in interview with The l A Times. He said, this was a script that Kevin Costa originally had, and he gave it to me. Kevin knew this was a big commercial movie and his schedule didn't allow him to do it, and he told the producers he would only let it go if I do it now. Kevin and I are not intimates, which is an incredible phrase from Arison Ford. I've met him on a number of occasions, and I like him very much, and I like him a lot more now that they threw a winner my way. According to the DVD commentary of Our Force One, if Harrison Ford didn't want to play the lead role, they were considering asking Arnold Schwarzenegger, which would have been Yeah, I would have totally changed the movie. Keanu Reeves, who I don't think it was legally old enough to be the president at that time. Don't you have to be thirty five? Yeah, I don't think he was old enough to even beat Resident Dennis Quaid. Of course I can't get can't get Harrison Ford. Get The next best thing is non union equivalent John Malkovich, which I cannot see. No, nothing about John Markovich is heroic. Uh, Tommy Lee Jones, which I can kind of see. That would have ruled because I mean from the fugitive like that makes a lot of sense. And Tom Hanks, who I think has appeared in the fantasy cast thing for every single movie we've covered on the show so far. But they got Harrison Ford. And you know what, he really uh he really worked for this. He took a very active role in this production. Yeah, he really put in his sweat equity for this. I mean, first of all, he uh well, getting ahead of myself, Director wolf Game Peterson and the design team tried to get into the real Air Force one for research purposes, as one does, and they were unsuccessful obviously, because it's a extremely top secret, locked down presidential ferry service. They're not going to just let you in, especially a German national come on. But Harrison Ford was invited to Bill Clinton's birthday party in Jackson, Wyoming. What is it about Jackson, Wyoming that the extremely wealthy gravitate too. It's got to be an energy vortex or something. I don't know like that in Sadonna because he has a ranch there. Harrison has a ranch there. Of course, that's famously where Kanye has a bunch of ranches now. And I don't know something about Jackson, Hawyoming anyway. So he's he gets a carrier pigeon from the Clinton administration in his ranch and Jackson Hawyoming, and he gets an invitation along with Glenn Close because everyone loves Glenn Close, and so they're the party. They're schmoozing, Bill Clinton's playing the saxophone Arsenio Hall is there? None of this is true? Harrison Sweet talks the President into allowing himself, director Wolf King Peterson, and production designer WILLIAMS. Sandel to have a tour of Air Force one while they were in Wyoming, because no one can say no to Harrison Ford. Obviously, they weren't a lot take photos, and a lot of the plane was off limits, but it did allow the production team to get in there and perfect the little details that make the film what it is. For example, the presidential conference room or the room where all the hostages are held, is actually much smaller in real life the table only it's only an eight top. You couldn't get a full brunch party on there, but otherwise looks almost identical to the one in the room. So this tour with Arsenio, Bill Clinton's planning saxophone Fleetwood Mac is there. They have recently played the inauguration. This tour influenced the plot of the film because at the start of the movie, the terrorists are disguised as a news crew and they get this tour the aircraft from the President's deputy Press Secretary, Melanie Mitchell. And this character is actually based on their real life tour guide, which is uncomfortable and weird. The crew said, because this wonderful woman who went out of their way and went out of our way to give them a tour is executed in a brillly gripping scene. There's a lot of murders in this movie for like what it feels like ostensibly like a family action or more violent than like I know, there's a bunch of Nazis who get like machine gunned in Indiana, Jones, But those movies don't feel violent. But Jordan's I need to know. Could this movie happen in real life? Short answer is extremely unlikely. Let's bring up all the ways that this terrifying scenario of Air First one could probably never happen in real life. Despite director Wolf getting Peterson's painstaking attention in detail, they took a number of major liberties which are essential to making the plot of this movie work. First of all, the secret agents work, and what could best be described as a buddy system, very complex buddy system, much more complex than your elementary school buddy system. So you need not just one, but at very least two, or most likely many many more than two disgruntled agents with top level security clearance to be in cahoots against the American government. Uh so this is all very unlikely. Also, once you're on the plane, there are way more Secret Service agents in real life and appear in the film. Uh No, one can just leave the press area unattended, as Gary Oldman's character does with his evil cohorts. There is also no massive gun locker just conveniently located steps from said press area. Yeah, that's the one that kind of stuck out to me, like, leave the m O cash slightly away from where you're going to be doing all the on camera talks. It's like, all right, wait, okay, over here, are is this worthy? Is this where the pillows and blankets are? Oh? No, that's the AMMO cachet. Okay. Most devastatingly, this was kind of a disappointing myth busting fact for me. Air Force One reportedly does not have a presidential escape pod, or at least when this movie was made. This is a very common misconception in Hollywood. I guess you have movies like Escape from New York, Big Game and Bermuda Tentacles all have some sort of version of this presidential escape pod, but sources for the real life Air Force One said back that no such pod exists, although I guess the White House aid joked that the military want to install every single gadget that they saw on their for a Swan the movie, like a SAP, which you know, for all I know they mean they did, because you know, all these really high level security details are on a need to know basis, and according to the government, all sorts of things don't officially exist. So hilariously, wolf Getting Peterson, who as director Director wolf Getting Peterson, as we've said many times in this episode, really prides himself on his attention to detail. He says that he received word from a quote very reliable source that there actually is a pod, and he was very indignant about the White House sources saying that there was no potty. Wolf Gang said, it makes just too much sense. And when we were touring the plan, the cargo hold was the one area that was off limits to us. So I left there thinking, there's a pod down there. There's a pod down there, So make of that what you will. Maybe there's definitely a pod. How is there not a pod? I don't know. Maybe there's a whole Like what's the plane equivalent of a dinghy on a boat. Oh yeah, I mean, I guess it would make sense if they had some kind of like little glider situation for him. But there's gotta be a pod. Well, this is really weird to me because I thought this was just like plane safety measure. One on one, there is no parachute deck at the back of the plane, which we saw at the end of the movie when the hostages left to safety, and that's where you know Harrison Ford does the infamous get off my plane moment. So there's no parachute deck because air Force one reportedly doesn't carry parachutes and hasn't for decades since Harry Truman was in office in the early fifties. And this is because parachutes don't work in a seven forty seven slip stream because they fly too fast and too high, which I don't know. It seems like a good thing and just have, like just in case, But then again, I don't know anything about aeronautics. Presumably like you can't activate it while you're in the slip stream, but if you like fall below the slip stream. I don't know. I don't understand anything about planes. I get on them and I know that they're gonna gout my luggage, and but has how they actually work. I have no idea. I've been drunk on every plane that I've been since up an ambient and some minims, yeah, since like odd fifteen, So no, I don't I don't know anything about planes. So this is just I don't know, like a child, everything is new to me here. Well, speaking of high altitudes, who are really gonna nitpick here. There's that call that Harrison Ford makes on a primitive cell phone from the basement deck of Air Force one to Glenn Close as the vice president. This would have been impossible from thirty thousand feet up, which is Air Force one's cruising altitude. But presumably you could have found one of the approximately eighties seven phones that are on board Air Force one and made a call that way, but from a cell phone. Um. The anti mussile technology on the real Air Force one plane, even back, was much much, much more sophisticated than what was shown in the movie. In the film, they showed the plane jettisoning what's known as chaff to deter oncoming missiles looking for its target, which is like especially metallic dust that confus uses the missile and causes it to detonate early. The real plan has these really complex flares and infrared devices to deter missile attacks. So yes, the film Airforce One bends reality in a number of ways. In the wake of the movie's release, Air Force First Lieutenant Neil Nipper was quoted as saying, I guess we could ask the hypothetical what ifs until the end comes, but we could not have more security than we do or Force one. There is no next level, So rest easy, America. The first plane is secure. Yeah, thank god. Incidentally, speaking of faith in our government, it was more expensive to make this movie than it was to run the actual Air Force One. Despite all of the amenities of Air Force one and its state of the art technology, that is nothing compared to what Hollywood runs. The kind folks at Entertainment Weekly my former employer crunched the numbers on this film for their future back they did on it, and this is just grim to me. Official White House sources said at the time that running Air Force One cost forty tho hundred and fifty dollars per hour, which is insane, almost as much as the mean American salary at that point. So yeah, forty grand an hour to fly the Big five, to fly big plane around, large plane. But I'm just gonna start calling Air Force one large plane forests podcast. So E W put the budget for the movie between seventy eight million and eighty five million, and I I actually double check this in a box office, Mojo, IMDb, Wikipedia, They actually all have it at the higher end. They all have the budget at eighty five million. So breaking that down over the film's ninety day, twelve hours a day shoot, the movie Air Force one costs an estimated seventy two thousand, two hundred and twenty two dollars per hour. So yes, as e W observed in the moment, Hollywood managed to outspend the Pentagon. And it's so this thing costs for there's two of them. There's two large planes. Did you know that? I didn't know that until researching this, I didn't well. The thing that I did know about it that they do in the very last shot of the film that we'll get into or not last shop, but that they get into is there like such and such plane is now air Force one. So air Force one is lives in all of ours, whatever you want it to be. Yeah, it's a mutable concept. I am air Force one, you are air Force one. Um, there's two air Force there's two of these planes. It's insane and maintenance done at them at Andrews Air Force Base daily, whether or not they're even going to use it, and every hundred and fifty four days, the whole thing is taken apart. So yeah, I mean, this situation better never happened in real life. Because they pay more attention to this thing than they do this stock market. Like the Air Force one is in foul bold. None of the banks were anyway. Another bit of accounting in here, Harrison Ford paid a hundred times Bill Clinton's actual salary to be in the movie. He got twenty million for air Force one, um, which is like the magic number that seems to float around, like when you really hit the A list, Like we talked about Julia Roberts getting twenty mail A pick. What is it recently that, oh, don't look up. I think Leo made twenty mail something. He and Jennifer Lawrence were like in tandem for them. Presidents were paid two hundred thousand dollars a year. Thank god, since w it's been bumped up to four hundred grand a year. On being asked about this paid discrepancy between himself and his real world counterpart, Harrison Ford laughed. My salary, he said, is against the back end of the movie. Maybe if the president could work out a similar arrangement, he'd do just as well. Isn't being the president just sort of a points off the back end deal of America? Doesn't that how that works? Anyway? Sure? Moving on, you know who probably didn't get points for this movie is Glenn Close, which is a shame because that woman is a national treasure. I'd like to see her contract for this super we can pull that up. I'm gonna start doing the thing where I just called to an unnamed producer that we have here to google for us. Yeah, Jamie, pull that up for me. Can we get Glenn closest contract for seven large claim in the movie? Anyway, as we mentioned earlier, Glenn Close was also at this presidential birthday party in Wyoming with Harrison Ford, Arsenio Hall, Bill Clinton, four of the five members of Fleetwood, Mac and Socks, the president of CAT. She was a last minute casting decision, and because Harrison Ford is the best, he lobbied for her very hard to play the role of Vice President Katherine Bennett. And her hair in this movie is a wig from her own collection because she had a cropped haircut that was deemed too short for this role for some reason, probably sexism. And she made a small but crucial change to this original script an interview, she later said they had written a scene where the vice president was breaking down and crying, and I said, I will not do that. Because I thought we'd be doing women a disfavor if we had that cliche moment where she breaks down, that's my president, Glenn Close is my president. And watching this movie as a kid, I thought one of the most unrealistic and insane moments was the sort of petty bickering between the Vice President gun Close and the Secretary of State played by Dean Stockwell over the presidential line of succession, and you know they're yelling at each other, checked your ranks, I'm in charge. Without getting two into the complexities of constitutional law. This was actually based on an extremely petty, real life incident that took place just after the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan in with Ronald Reagan in surgery and Vice President George Bush on route back to Washington, Secretary of State Alexander Haig gave a very famous press conference where he literally said I am in control here, which I mean pro tip for any aspiring leaders out there. If you ever feel the need to say that you are in control in a given situation, you are not in control of It's It's like Kevin Bacon and Animal House like oh as well, oh as well, like yeah, it's it's it's not a good look. It's the Captain Phillips pirate line. I am the captain now, yeah, exactly. Yeah, it's not a good look. And this was not a good look for Alexander Haig. It just came across as a weird power grab. But there's a connection between Ronald Reagan and President James Marshall aka Farrison Ford in Air Force One. There was a novelization of Air Force One that was published just before the film came out in June, and author Max Allan Collins took the central plot of this movie and embellished it a great deal. He developed the characters and he goes into their background. Um James Marshall is a first term president up for re election that same year. He's a former two term governor for the state of Iowa, where he's a Native son, and he graduated from the University of Iowa in the early seventies, and he is a Republican. That is the the that is the link between Reagan and James Marshall, the both members of the gop UH. He's described in the novel as a quote moderate Republican version of Bill Clinton minus the womanizing reputation and without a hint of personal or professional scandal. And he also possesses a smile that's described as quote the most valuable weapon in his public relations arsenal. So that guy Max aw and Collins wrote for the kind of strip Dick Tracy for a number of years, and he wrote the graphic novel that Road to Perdition was based on, which, for those of you keeping track at home, puts our number of Air Force one, Tom Hanks connections at two. That's the taco bell sound. All right, back on jack alright, speaking of long loss see group backstories. One of the biggest mysteries of this movie, and something that really bothered me upon rewatching it recently, was the reason why Secret Service Agent Gibbs conspired with the terrorists and sold out the president and by extension, the rest of his country. Apparently the original script was going to answer this question. It featured a scene that explained gives his treason his motivation, but it was cut from the film because it was felt like it was too long and slowed the pacing. But according to director Wolfgang Peterson, secret Service Agent Gibbs was a former CIA agent who suffered financially after the end of the Cold War for reasons unknown, and thus became angry with the American government and wanted revenge. And he knew these terrorists from a CIA days, so they included him in on their operations. In an earlier version of the script, Gibbs was actually outed as the mole at the very beginning of the movie when the terrorists take over the plane, but they decided to wait until the end of the movie for Gibbs to reveal himself as the traitor, and the presidential missed because it's so much more suspenseful and also creates so many painful moments, Like there's a moment when the unsuspecting president hands him a gun and tells him the stand guard not knowing that he's just armed the trader in his mits. A lot of great moments like that. So that is the story about why the secret Service agent turned on the President. I love that actors Andrew Berkeley from the mid nineties. He's just like weasily dickhead and everything. That's when the central casting needed a guy who was like, had a weak chin and projected grossness, and they would just pick him. Um. I forgot about something when we were researching this and I just remembered, which is, do you remember this scandal with the Secret Service agents that the Post uncovered the Carol Lennig and Peter Herman at the Washington Post, I just did this big expose a on how terrible the Secret Service actually is. When was this? Was this at the time of their fourth one coming out? Or no? This is oh wow? No, high ranking agents in the Secret Service allegedly drove drunk through a crime scene at the White House and March four. Among the other things that came out through this investigation that the Washington Post did was Secret Service agents and a White House volunteer allegedly hiring prostitutes in Colombia, a White House fence jumper who made it fairly far into the building, sniper shots that the Service didn't know hit the White House until days later, and an incident where a man carrying a gun was let into an elevator with President Obama. So maybe this all could have happened. But now it's time as the long arc of history bends towards justice, and all podcasts bend towards Gary Oldman. Yes, Agent Gibbs, as we just mentioned, played by Xander Berke is creepy, but Gary Oldman in this movie as political zealot Ivan korsion Of is just absolutely terrifying in his intensity. He brings an almost religious fervor to this role, and his performance earned him the nicknames Scary Gary during production. But thankfully, unlike most insanely intense actors, he did not remain in character in between scenes. In fact, he was no nice, funnio and genial off screen that director Wolfgang Peterson has said that the experience was more like and this is a quote Air Force Fund, Gary Oldman exemplifies the live Moss mentality continue as you were, Uh huh. Harrison Ford later cited Gary Oldman's character as his favorite on screen enemy, which is pretty impressive. Mean, Darth Vader is on that list, and the bunch of Nazis in Indiana Jones. That's high praise. And it's also pretty impressive that he chose Gary Oldman because the scene when they actually meet face to face for the first time in the movie, Gary Oldman actually smacks him for real. You see the scene where Gary Oldman pushes Harrison Ford's face against the wall of the airplane with all the buttons and stuff. There's like the big climactic moment when the two finally meet face to face near the end of the movie, and they were having trouble making everything look authentic, so the choreograph moves that they've rehearsed just went out the window because I didn't look convincing on camera. So finally Harrison Ford just told Gary Oldman to hit him for real, and that's the take that's used in the final film, Gary, I want you to hit me. Yeah. Harrison Ford not a great pilot, great screen combatant. I love. I think it was in like I Love the seventies or something. But remember how sparks. Oh yeah, he makes the great observation that Harrison Ford's punches as Indiana Jones sound like they're breaking the speed barriers, you know, just like like just these it's just incredible. And there's that famous thing in Raiders of the Lost Art but the guy with the big sword, he's like whipping the sword around and Indie just pulls out a gun and shoots him because he had been shooting his pants all day and was like, I don't have I don't have a fight scene in me, so we're going to do that. But I assumed that was written just as a joke because he just, oh yeah, so you don't know this, okay. So there's that whole bit and Raiders of the Last art during the scene when Marion is um kidnapped in the market and where are they America? And Indie runs around a corner and there's a baddie with a big, an enormous sword. He does the like throws the sword back and forth between his hands and he's doing all the bad guy's sword waving stuff. And he was supposed to be a big choreographed fight and I guess Harrison Ford had dysentery or you know, whatever you get from being overseas, and uh, I think he pitched it to George Lucas. He was like, George, one of George one. If I just shoot the guy, my brains out, George, I don't have this one in me. And it's it's just such an incredible scene because all this momentum has been building up and you're like conditioned to think that's going to be a big fight scene. He just like very distractedly pulls out his gun and shoots him. But Harrison Ford loves to fight, apparently for real. There is this. I implore everyone reading this to stop what, pause the podcast, come back to it, but pause it and look up Harrison Ford Ryan Gosling punch because in the movie Blade Runner, Harrison Ford actually punched Ryan Gosling in the face accidentally, and there is a high quality still of that moment that is out there that is transformative. And then like last year, he's seventy eight and he dislocated his shoulder shooting the New Indiana Jones while rehearsing a fight scene. Harrison Ford loves to fight. Hashtag I mean that's gonna that's gonna make my next two notes about Gary Oldman nowhere near is uh kind of kind of a damp squib after those incredible facts, um, Gary Oldman. Two interesting facts. He used his fee for this movie Air for Us one to fund this directorial debut, Nil by Mouth with Ray Winstone, a great famous British batty character actor who is in The Departed and the birthday that comes up on the i D screen and Gary Olban's character is getting searched by security at the beginning of the movie when they bore the plane. That's his actual birthday. March by Mouth won two BAFT Awards, so worth it, worth it, but still doesn't have the fireworks of Harrison Ford punching Ryan Gosling in the face. So I'm sorry, I need to I need a sound board effect on my phone. Now you know what I bet it sounded like when Harrison Ford punched Ryan Gosling in the face. So, speaking of lawsuits, because we're almost surely gonna get sued for using the taco belt thing this much A yeah, it's free ad space. Think, yeah, we really should. And having said all that, we'll be right back with more too much information right after this. So the role of the president's daughter, Alice was originally offered to actress gen Malone, who I understand you hold something of a torch for torches isn't the right word. She's just as in some of my all time favorite movies. She's in Donnie Darko, She's in Contact as the young version of Jody Foster's character, The Ballad of Jack and Rose, and Pride and Prejudice. She's also in step Mom in The Hunger Games. She was encouraged to try out for Air Force one, and since sarahs and Ford was already attached, this was basically like, you know, a one way ticket to superstardom. But she turned the part down because she didn't find the role interesting, which I mean, it's totally fair because the role is mostly crying but crazy integrity for a thirteen year old. So yeah, gentle alone walked away from the part. But the person that they did get to play the role was equally amazing. The part was played by the actress Lisel Matthews, which is going to be like a bar tribute name unto eternity because she's really only known so much for a Little Princess. That's a lot of people think on that movie very fondly. You have a crush on Leze Matthews or nine year old Yeah, okay, anyway, she was a great actress. Director Wolf King Peterson said he loved working with her because she could cry on que which is, you know, good skill for an actress to have. Matthews doesn't have much else on her resume besides the Little Princess An Air Force one. There's a movie she didn't the year two thousand called Blast, which I know nothing about. But she doesn't need to act or do anything because she's a member of one of the wealthiest families in the country. Her full name is Lezel Pritsker Simmons, and the Pritzker family has been at the top of the Forbes Richest Families list since two They founded the Hyatt chain. They owned the brand if Airlines and Royal Caribbean Cruise Line. They have controlling interest in magazines like McCall's. They can they controlled TransUnion. Technically somewhere, Lizel Matthews has your credit score at her fingertips. But much like every famous family, they all hated each other, and they all wanted each other's money. I don't know, maybe I'm projecting. Lizel was a freshman at Columbia, and she fired a six billion dollar lawsuit against her dad and eleven of her older cousins, claiming that they misappropriated money from trusts established for her and her brother. In early two thousand five, the parties settled the lawsuit and the family fortune was split eleven ways, so that result placed all eleven print Skers into the Forbes four hundred, the most members from any single family, which is so nice for them. Under the settlement, Lizel and her brother each received roughly two hundred and eighty million dollars in cash, and we're giving control over other trusts valued at about a hundred and seventy million dollars each. So she doesn't need need Holliday would what is she up to? Does she have like a rich kids of Instagram? Uh? I think she's like a philanthropist. Now I think she's like, oh, yeah she is. She's doing good to the world. Yeah, she found something even more lucrative than acting with Harrison Ford and she's done some good for the world. So I say, well done. Alright, fine, I withdraw a portion of my bio. Anyway, now that we're done with the casting and and the behind the scenes of director Wolf King Peterson's attention to detail in the filming of Air Force One was at a cross roam. Yes. They began filming in September of n To start, they chose the most difficult scene that included two d and fifty members of the armed forces. I guess maybe maybe they wanted to just get that out of the way first. I can understand that. So it's really insane. It's when Air Force One makes a chaotic emergency landing at Ramstein Air Force Base in Germany. Koreans around the runway, narrowly missing transport vehicles and other aircraft and people as the presidential pilots are trying to wrestle the terrorists for control of the plane and then it takes off again. And this wasn't done with c g I. This was actually done with a real seven forty seven and an assortment of aircrafts on loan from the military, which is just the amount of cooperation between the production and all four branches of the U. S Military and National Guard was just insane. They allows has to be a record, right, like, you don't get this anymore. After nine eleven. The government was just like, hey, have a bunch of our planes. They're making a movie that sounds fun, Mozel, We're not using these, but put some gas in the tank when you're done and give them back. So the Army allowed the production to film at the Rickenbacker Air National Guard Base in Ohio, which stood in for Ramstein, and they kicked in a tremendous amount of resources. Um in honor of my stepbrothers serving the r Force right now, I'd like to do a quick rundown for him and any other Air Force gear heads out there. The military contributed six f fifteen fighters and MC I thirty E talent, a C five A transport, a C one four one Star lifter to UH sixty nine black Hawk helicopters, and a pair of C one thirty cargo plans. I don't know what any of that meant, but hopefully some people do and enjoyed that these weren't all in Ohio. You mentioned two of them were from Florida, the third was from California. There were others from New Jersey. Yeah, these were shipped in and along with approximately two fifty military personnel on hand to maintain and operate all this equipment, and also twenty military ground vehicles, and basically, in exchange for their support, the Air Force was given script approval to basically ensure that the military was being shown in a positive light for the film. Pretty nuts, I guess. I don't know. Maybe they saw it as like a chance to have almost like a giant recruitment poster in a big budget Hollywood move the I don't know, Yeah, I mean this would have been right around when did black Hawk Down happen. Maybe they Yeah, it was ninety three. Yeah, they probably needed the good press anyway, So the scene of the May day on Air Force One was shot at Rickenbacker Air Force Base, which we just said and it was just insane. Wolfgang Peterson would say that it was quote one of the most difficult scenes I've ever done, involved an air base at night with the seven forty seven. We were using his Air Force one and an escort of six F fifteens. The seven forty seven was trying to land while they were twenty or thirty helicopters. You didn't even mentioned the F fifteens earlier, No I did. Oh did you six of them? Those are what like billion dollar planes each? Jesus Christ, that's what my Steprother w Yeah, those ain't cheap. The seven forty seven was trying to land while they were twenty or thirty helicopters, troops and many types of military vehicles on the tarmac and everything is moving. It's difficult enough to shoot with just the seven forty seven. Very true, and the scenes supposed to be taking place at night, but they needed a small amount of light so that the plan would be visible on camera. So this restricted filming to just to fifteen minute intervals each day at dusk and dawn. So not only this insane aerial ballet have to occur, but it has to occur in a very specific fifteen minutes set twice a day, further complicating matters. As if it needed further complications, the breaks on the seven forty seven needed to be cooled down after each run, which meant that it took sixty hours to get ten takes, and all sorts of calculations were made to get the acceleration and the breaking distances with weight and air density to establish a maximum speed. Everything was just it was a giant calculus problem. I don't I don't know matter, and everything was meticulously storyboarded out like a comic book to get these very near misses picture perfect. The only bit of movie trickery that was involved was that they filmed at half speed, which meant they could take everything slower, so as like the planes clipping the trees and narrowly avoiding expensive, multi million, possibly billion dollars military vehicles, they could take it a little slower and get a little more accuracy. They shot it at fifteen frames a second, but when it was projected back at twenty four frames a second, it all look normal, look like everything was happening at breakneck speeds, so a hundred and twenty knots rather than a glacial sixty knots, which is still pretty damn fast. Incidentally, as if you couldn't surmise from all of what Jordan just said, there were a number of problems with this production with these planes for shots when a real plane was needed. For example, in this whole mad cap first day of production, uh, they rented a Boeing seven seven wide body passenger jet formerly owned by Japanese Airlines, which took a crew of ten people working twelve hour shifts four days to re shell it to give it an Air Force one paint job costing three hundred grand. I am shocked the budget for this movie was eight five million. I honestly, the way that these numbers are shaping up, it should have been so much higher. This is like Titanic level budget. Yeah, yeah, which we'll get into that later if that's one of my other favorite bits about this. So there is one crucial giveaway that it is not the real thing. The actual Air Force one has a bulge in its nose for mid air refueling sessions as we see in the movie, but regular seven forty seven's like this one do not have that bulge, but regardless, it was a very convincing facsimile, so convincing in fact, that to F A eighteen fighter jets passed over it while they were flying over l A X saw the fake bullet holes in the fuselage and scrambled to intercept it because they thought someone had been taking pot shots at the President while in air. Thankfully, base command told them it was a giant movie prop before there was some kind of international air incident. I love that. I mean, I guess we should be thankful they weren't like drunk like the Secret Service apparently. Anyway, I digress. We've talked a little bit about these different sound stage overlaps, about how many of your favorite movies were all done on the exact same desolate stretch of back lot. So, as with most movies, the majority of the scenes in this film were shot on a sound stage, in this case the Sony Pictures Lot in Hollywood. A full scale replica of Air Force one was built on the country's largest film stage, which is Stage fifteen at the Sony Pictures Lot, also coincidentally the site where Judy Garland strolled the yellow brick road in the Wizard of Oz and not far from where Jeopardy is filmed, and where they did was at the pirate ship Hook. Yeah in Hook. Anyway, all three levels of flight decks were built to the exact size. Production designer William Sandel is quoted as saying, we worked from drawings, whatever official photos we were given, and any published photos we could find in newspapers and magazines, and of course the tour that they got. He went on to add, we designed the look of each level to reflect the mood of the script. Cold and austere, your blues and grays for the upper level, which is the nerve center of the plane, and warm grays and beiges for the middle level, where the business of the presidency takes place. The mysterious lower level was designed to be very dark and foreboding and almost spooky place, with a nod to das Boot in real life. Approximately two hundred and thirty eight miles of wire are wound through air Force one, and this is more than twice the wiring that you would find in a comparable seven forty seven, which is to protect it from the electromagnetic pulse generated by thermonuclear blast, which as viewer long time listeners will recognize from our Oceans eleven podcast, in which we did a long dissection of the science behind a pinch the electromagnetic pulse device from that movie. Anyway, according to Harrison Ford, set looked pretty close to the real thing. Obviously. I imagine him doing the hand back and forth gesture, like pretty close. I don't have a good Harrison Ford impression. Well you were, You were doing a great Harrison Ford impression earlier. You doctor the results. What's the speech from it belongs in a museum. He's only ever yelling in my mind, where do we do the eraser head whet? And I give you the full force of my David Lynch oppression. Um So the thing looks pretty close to the real thing, And I mean, this is fun. They built it on top of a bunch of hydraulic gimbals so that each individual section of this set could be rocked back and forth to simulate turbulence and air flight. And you know, all of this was happening right where Dorothy's house crushed the Wicked Witch. So movie magic, hashtag movie magic. The more you know, and there's another beloved nineties blockbuster connection here. Jordan's tell us about that. Oh, I love this speaking of Air Force ones ties the cinematic history. The Russian prison that Radic, the jail dictator has let out of at the end of the movie is the same one that was used in the Shawshank Redemption. It's the Ohio State Reformatory. And god Smack also filmed the video for the two thousand song Awake there too. Yeah, that's the song that's in the Navy, that's in the that's their navy recruiting song. Don don don don don don don't do do Do do screen Jun And then there's um. I think it's one of my favorite voice actors, Keith David, and he's like Navy Accelerate True life. Anyway, I don't remember that. Oh buddy, come on, surely you've seen the I don't know why I'm some bullets on this called us a Navy. I love Keith David anyway, god Smack digression over Weirdly, the actor Brian Libby played a bit part in both shaw Shank and her first one. And while we're on the topic of cross movie cameos, as we mentioned earlier, the actor who plays the evil General Raddick Urgan Approach now start as the captain of the U boat in Wolfgang Peterson's breakthrough hit Dos boot Um. Ohio got a lot of play in this production. Raddick's Palace seen in the film's opening, was shot at two locations in Cleveland. The exterior where the paratroopers land is Severance Hall, the home of the Cleveland Philharmonic Orchestra, and the interior was the Cuyahoga County Courthouse. And then there's the Rickenbacker Air Force Base, which, as we mentioned earlier, that's also in Ohio. So I've almost been offering some crazy tax breaks for film productions or something like, there's a lot of filming done there. Yeah, I wonder if they go Ohio was the Georgia of the nineties. You know, everything is filmed in Georgia these days because like crazy tax breaks through um. So this is prefaced by you writing I don't want to get too into the airplane Minutia, but we will. Yes. I just want to shout out the final scene of this movie, which is insane. So to recap for those who haven't seen it in a while, or to spoil it for those who have never seen it at all. Air Force One can't land, and it's running out of fuel and it's going to crash into the Caspian c So a military aircraft pulls up alongside it and fires a zip line into the open airplane door of Air Force one, and the plan is a zip line the President and his family off the crippled airplane and into this military craft flying alongside it, connected by a thin zip line. And I assumed this all had to be primitive c g I or some kind of green screen effect. But these crazy bastards actually had a seven forty seven jet flying in formation within a few feet of a military m C one thirty, and then a modified B camera plane flying alongside it to film it all. So this is just this crazy aerial ballet. They filmed this off the coast of California, above the Channel Islands, and they even tried to film a dummy on the cable that was in place between the two planes. They called the dummy Felix, and it was dressed in a suit to resemble Harrison Ford. But once it was tossed out of the plane, it got caught in the jet stream and its clothes were ripped off and it just flailed in the wind. Itch is not very presidential and should that They should have just done it with Harrison, because then then somewhere would be dailies of Harrison Ford being stripped naked. Just Jane stopped this crazy thing. Wolfgang, Wolfgang. There's rats and here Wolfgang. It's a Jetson's reference wrapped within a deer Hunter reference. Folks, you're not going to get that on any other podcast. Yeah, you were wrong about doesn't have anything on us. Yeah, radio allowed. No, No, I mean, I just would have loved to have seen a nude Harrison Ford unable to stop himself flying into an open door of an aircraft mid flight. But sadly we did not get that. And that's also a very interesting, very vivid demonstration of what we were talking about earlier, with the parachutes not working at that altitude, I suppose. So, yeah, this idea was abandoned after the dummy Felix was left in tatters. Yeah, and the filmmakers decided to use visual effects for all the shots of people on the cable. But still three planes flying in formation, three very big planes. It's insane. It's insane. This is making me love this movie so much more. As we mentioned, earlier. Air First one is not a fixed location. It exists in all of our state of minds. Air Force one large planes a state of mind, And so that happens at the end after he's spoiler alerts, after he's successfully rescued, the m C one thirty pilot says, Liberty twenty four is changing call signs. Liberty twenty four is now air Force one. So obviously the inference there is that any air Force aircraft carrying the president is air Force one. Now, fun fact, helicopters cannot be air Force one because the Marine Corps are is in charge of the helicopter, so the helicopter is Marine one, but not air Force one. And if then the President flies on a Navy aircraft, it would be Navy one. So since the air Force maintains the president's plane, it's designated as air Force one. But if the President is in a civilian aircraft, it's call sign is Executive one, which is all needlessly complicated to me. No, if so, if the President takes Jeff Blue, Jeff Blue is now Executive one. Alright, So I don't remember anything about the score for this movie, but this score has popped up many places, right you said Trump uses the score for this. Yeah, Trump, who is an enormous fan of this movie, as we'll we'll get too later, use this a lot of his rallies. I think he used the theme. I think it's called parachutes, when the hostages are triumphantly leaping out of the plane. UM. I think he used that when he took the stage to give his um his victory speech the night that he won the election. But we almost could have had a very different score. This is funny. So, as we've mentioned many times, director Will King Peterson is famous for his eye for detail, so it's somewhat surprising that he tapped Randy Newman, of all people, to do the orchestral score for Air Force one. You know Randy Newman. I don't know if you knew this. Randy Newman comes from like movie scoring royalty, not just Alfred Newman, but Thomas Newman. They are the most Oscar nominated family, the Newman's, because of all their scores. What did Alfred and Thomas do? Oh? Boy, I mean, how much time do you have? Sorry, no, it's it's let's let's highlights real. So Alfred did or was an earlier era He did Wuthering Heights, Hunchback of Notre Dame, Mark of Zoro, How Griem is My Valley? All about Eve Love is a many splendord thing, The Diary of Anne Frank, How the West was one greatest story ever told. His final score was for Airport in nine, all of which were nominated or won Academy Awards. He did the twentieth Century Fox Fanfair. Uh what that's Randy Newman's uncle or father uncle Wow Alfred Newman is Randy Newman's uncle. His son, Thomas, Randy's cousin, has scored over seventy five films, including Little Women, shawsh Ank, Redemption, American Beauty, Road to Perdition, Finding Nemo, The Good German, Wally Skyfall fifteen Academy Award nominations for him, and Randy is a two time Academy Award winner. So yes, the Newman's of the most Academy Award nominated family in Oscar history. Randy had just come off of Toy Story and James and the Giant Peach, so it's not completely insane that he would tap Randy Newman for this, But it is like there's a quantifiable difference between Toy Story and Air Force Juan. Yes, that's true. It does seem a little out of his wheelhouse. Do you think about these big like Michael Bay drum pounding productions or like like he's not a Hans Zimmer will say. I mean, the theory was that Peterson was attracted to Randy Numan's ability to sort of evoke Americana, which is something he did really well in the soundtrack for The Natural with Robert Redford and Avalon, and later on in the score that he did for Pleasantville. But a lot of Randy Newman's nods to Americana have kind of a satirical edge, and they're very sarcastic and biting me. Yes, I mean, listen to a lot of the albums he put out in the seventies, I mean sail Away, especially the song Political Science, or the album Good Old Boys, which was originally envisioned as a concept album about the Deep South and had songs about poverty and the recession and the assassinated Louisiana politician Huey Long. There's the album Little Criminals, which has the hit short People. So the satirical side came out when he wrote the score to Air Force one, wolf get. Peterson wanted, like you said, a stirring flag waving Hans Zimmer like theme, but instead he got something from Randy Newman that sounded to him like a parody. It sounded like he was basically taking the piss, and there was just sort of a silliness to parts of it, which totally undercut the movie. I mean, that's what you need in these kinds of action movies. They're inherently ridiculous, and the whole illusion falls apart, whether or not presented with a completely straight face. So even the Q titles are pretty funny. And the bootleg versions of Randy Newman's score that that's making the rounds on YouTube, and I think it's even come out on c D. There are song titles like American bad Guy, pres gets Idea, Got Milled and mo Cutes and what does that mean? I don't know, you know, I actually don't know how real these titles are. But that's been like, you know how bootlegs that kind of like have makeup, like you know, sort of weird working titles or you know, it's kind of at the whim of the bootlegger. So maybe that's not real, but still i'd like to believe it is. Wait, I want to look at some of these now, have you heard any of them? The really interesting? Some of them good On YouTube? Some people paired Randy Newman's oh yeah you did on video where he put the score up to the scenes. Okay, interesting. I don't think it's better or worse than the gentleman who actually wrote the score, who is legendary composer Jerry Goldsmith. Yeah, Jerry Goldsmith's grade did Star Trek Rambo, Logan's Run, Planet of the Apes, Patent, Chinatown Alien, Poultergeist. I love the Poulter Guist score. It has the creepy kids singing Gremlin's hoosiers. I can't believe he did this. You got this assignment twelve days to write and record a score, that is because they rejected Randy Newman's and all of a sudden Peterson was like, I need a soundtrack a sap. Yeah, twelve days, good lord. And apparently it was such an undertaking that he said he would never take on a project with that kind of turnaround again. I hope they gave him some hazard pay for that. That's funny. We brought up Hans Zimmer because you know, getting back to Randy Newman, Hans zimmer was once quote is saying that he felt he had never written an action queue as good as any of Randy Newman's in Air Force one. Uh. And this is probably my favorite fact about this is that Newman, not one to waste effort, recycled some of this score that was rejected for Toy Story three, which is a film that literally everyone I ever knew talked about bawling like a child at the end of that film when Andy drops his toys off. So there is a connection between large plane movie and a movie that made of America cry. And that connection is Randy Newman being too lazy to write a new score. Oh boy, I love that anyway. And this also contains our third Tom Hanks connection of this episode. That is, oh yeah, I for I completely whipped that in the execution there. That is our third Hanks reference. What do we get for that? We're going to take a quick break, but we'll be right back with more too much information in just a moment. You know we haven't talked about. Is president car the presidential car? Yes, that's right, president car. Yeah, large car, talk about large car. Jordan's so now we're getting into the sort of the odds and ends of production factoids for this movie, and one of them involves the presidential limousine. At the beginning of the movie, the president rides in his motorcade back to the plane through Moscow. The United States is the only country in the world that transports his presidential motorcade vehicle to whatever country the president goes. It's you know, most notably these days is the presidential Cadillac limo, nicknamed the Beast. It's always sent ahead by a military cargo plane, so it's in place on the tarmac when the president arrives, which seems like kind of a waste, but I mean it tracks right. Yeah, I guess it's probably a bigger security concern actually have the track down a vehicle and then scope it out and everything for every taking apart. Yeah. Another fact toy on the DVD commentary, Director Wolfgang Peterson has said that he probably wouldn't have made Air Force One after the nine eleven attacks. Terrorists hijacking a jetliner obviously cut a little too close to the bone then and probably now, To be honest, Peterson said that if Air Force One came out after nine eleven. He sure would have been a total flop. Another odds and ends fact. In Air Force One, the first terrorists killed by Harrison Ford's character is played by a name named Elio Vallak. A few years later, he acted in a small role in the sixth season of the TV show Friends, playing a dry cleaner who claims to have never seen Air Force One. I have no idea how this came up in the plot line, but cute. I like that. Okay, well, that segues into our next bit, which is that Harrison ford Uh nuclear grade charm apparently did not make it as far as the m p A A A little background for any one he doesn't know. The Motion Picture Association of America has a draconian hold on its ratings process. It is a famously fickle and opaque process. The people who decide these things are not public facing employees. The criteria is not made public. I'm like, I'm a horror movie nerds. So there's all kinds of famous incidences of movies that were either chop tissue by the mp A because they were going to give them an X, which is like a kiss of death. For a long time, are was a big kiss of Death too, like you couldn't you don't want to have an our movie opening during the summer, like because kids couldn't go see it. Blah blah blah. What is X now is that you have to be over seventeen, not think it's n C seventeen. Now. I don't use X anymore, but uh yeah, And people have all kinds of workarounds for this, Like I think the famous thing that horror movies do is they will shoot either decoy scenes that are like way more graphic that they never intend on being in the movie, so they can kind of put those in and the m p A Is like, oh my god, but you have to take that scene now, and they're like, of course, I meant never meant to for it to be in all along. Or they'll deliberately like overshoot if they have like a murder or something, they'll deliberately overshoot that because what the board gets into all these ridiculous things, Like in a sex scene, they'll be like, well, you had thirteen thrusts and we'd really like to see that down to like nine. They'll overshoot like a murder scene to take out like six knife stabs and that'll but it's it's asinine too because they've done stuff where they like the MPa will request all these cuts and they'll send it a new cut to them back that has like a third of the cuts, and then there's been instances with the m p a's like yeah, that's fine. So anyway, numerous people are shots in the film, so they give the film an R rating, and like I said earlier, this was still considered something of a kiss of death as far as these big, big budget mainstream blockbusters go. So Harrison Ford makes a personal appeal. He flies in with our Seniel Hall, Bill Clinton's they're playing the Tenor Sacks Phone. Six out of the seven members of Fleetwood Mac are there. They're playing Don't Stop Thinking about Tomorrow. It's the closest to unity the Western world has ever been. It does not work, but funnily enough, this worked before because Harrison Ford did make the same appeal to the m b a A for the movie Clear and Present Danger. But you only get one, you get the m p A only gives you the one. So they say no large plane is rated hard are doesn't matter because Harrison Ford is the Teflon don Teflon Harrison cut that my god, biggest opening for an R rated movie ever, thirty seven point one million it's first weekend after being released July, beating out the previous records set by Jordan's What movie Interview with the Vampire. That's dumb. You would have thought it would have been something cool like die Hard. Speaking of releases, Jordan's s Yes, the release of air Force One delayed the release of Titanic, but that's okay because Rupert Murdoch thought it was better Despite the R rating. Our Force One was predicted to be a huge summer blockbuster in and several huge movies had their release dates pushed back so if they didn't compete at the box office. One of these was Starship Troopers, which, like Air Force One, was a collaborative partnership between Disney's Touchdown Pictures and the Sony owned Columbia Pictures, and that was pushed back until November so that you know, they weren't competing with themselves. But Air Force One also delayed the release of James Cameron's Titanic. The team behind Air Force One didn't want to go head to head against the historical romance disaster movie, which is being produced by Paramount and twentieth Century Fox, and once again Harrison Ford got involved personally. He threatened to end his long relationship with Paramount if they dared to open Titanic against Air Force one in the summer of seven. So Paramount caved and ultimately released in December, which I don't know. I think it kind of fits something nice about nice isn't the right word? Or something fitting fitting about a winter release considering Titanic was said in the fridge at North Atlantic. Is there is there a Hanks connection to that? Or just we live in moths again? Oh, we're just still living moss. This has just made me a lot of Harrison Forward so much more. He's personally involved in every aspect of this. Yeah, it's either. I mean, the ungenerous reading is that he's mad with power, and he's like, I will personally speak to any institution, no matter how powerful they maybe, and bend them to my will. But it just does make me love him that much more. He's like, I don't care who it is, the President, the m p A A Paramount Pictures itself. I will find and kill God if they interfere with my large plan movie anyway, but the the large boat movie production needed all the help we could get because Titanic had notoriously trouble shoot, with costs balloting to an then unprecedented two hundred million, and there were big fears at Fox that Titanic would be just a huge loser. And Rupert Murdoch, the tsar of Fox don't even know what his title is, himself was skeptical of Titanic, and he demanded to see a rough cut just to see what James Cameron has been doing all these years. And hilariously, I can't believe this happened. The cut that was sent to Rupert Murdoch was damaged and couldn't be viewed. So Rupert Murdoch watched, instead of all things, an advanced cut of Air Force One, and Rupert Murdoch loved it. In fact, he loved it so much. Then when he finally saw a completed cut of the Titanic Epic, the first thing he apparently said was it's good, but it's no Air Force One, which can you imagine how galling that must have been for James Cameron. I love it so much. Of course, Titanic proved to be a significantly bigger hit than Air Force One, becoming the first movie to earn over a billion dollars at the box office and winning a host of Oscars, including Best Picture um although Air Force One didn't do too shabby at the box office either, pulling in over three hundred and fifteen million dollars worldwide and ticket sales in its first year alone. Another terrifyingly powerful mover and shaker who was a big fan of Air Force One was not surprisingly, Harrison Ford's buddy Bill Clinton. He reportedly saw the film twice while in office, and some sorts of say once was while he was aboard the real Air Force one. Imagine watching Air Force One as the gain flight movie aboard air Force one. No, I don't know how I feel about that. Clinton gave a good reviews, though he was quick to point out the elements that strayed from reality, like the escape pod and the rear parachute ramp like we talked about earlier. Although, like I said, these types of things around a need to know basis, so maybe he just didn't know. Harrison Ford has repeatedly said that despite his friendship with Clinton, he did not base his performance on him or any president quote living or dead. If I were president and I found out that Harrison Ford based his performance on me, I would dine out on that story forever. Yeah. I mean that's far more impressive than becoming president of the United States. Um. Another president who loves Air Force One is Donald Trump. Conversation starter between those two are one. Yeah. Yeah, a moment is shared connection. Um. Yeah. He talked about this movie in an interview during the lead up to the election, but he did not mention the title. This is the most trumpiand quote ever. In response to being asked his favorite movie, he got astonishingly close to calling it Large Plane. He says, my favorite was Harrison Ford on the Plane. It's just just my favorite way of describing this movie. Yeah, do you have Harrison Ford on the Plane? I love Harrison Ford, he said, and not just because he rents my properties. He stood up for America. Um. Trump's love of middlebrow action movies is well known. I will use any excuse to talk about about this because it is also one of my favorite movies. But Trump loves blood Sport. I didn't know that. I am, of course talking about Jean Claude van Dam's undisputed Masterpiece, a movie that is so good. He has remade it twice, well technically so Kickboxer. He made Kickboxer, and then I think he made blood Sport after that it's the same plot, and then ten years later he made The Quest starring Roger Moore, which is essentially also the same movie, but with a bigger budget. Blood Sport is incredible, and this whole Trump bit about it has been repeated so much that there is now on oral history at Mal magazine solely fixated on Trump's love of the movie blood Sport. Ground zero for this is New Yorker profile where he's being shadowed on his plane and there's this whole moment where he talks about how much he loves it because he's brought videos to watch on the flight. One of them is Michael, which is the John travel to the Fallen Angel, the Fallen Angel one of what was this thing? I mean, this just goes to show that Highwood always moves in cycles, right, because not only do we have the Michael, we had City of Angels, which is the Cage one, which is a remake of the wind Winders movie Wings of Desire. Anyway, so Trump has Michael. He's in a crossroads and he has Michael and blood Sport on his plan, blood Sport on his plane. He gets bored of Michael predictably, and he puts in blood Sport. And it's Eric Trump's job to fast forward through any non action scenes in the movie blood Sport, with the stated goal being of getting the film's run time down from two hours to a tight forty five minutes, which fair. There's not much cows going on in blood Sport, but god, I love that. So Trump's tastes the movies. We got blood Sport, We've got Michael, and we've got Air Force One. Trump has been very vocal about his love of the movie Air Force One, and specifically Harrison Ford's role when Harrison was on the plane. Yes, Harrison for I was on the plane. Harrison Ford did not return the compliment. He was asked about Trump's love of Air Force One during the presidential campaign, and Harrison Ford's response was to stare down the camera lens and address Trump directly, saying, can you can you read this? And your It was just a movie. Things like this don't happen in real life. Thank you. He went on to say that he didn't think Trump's presidential bid would be successful. Um, so that's one out of two. Harrison Um. Trump was such a fan of this film, as we mentioned earlier, that he played a part of the triumphant orchestral score from the soundtrack during many of his campaign stops, often with his own Trump jet in the background. The film's producers were not happy about this and asked him to stop using it, but he continued to keep playing it, even on the night he was elected, just prior to taking the stage to make his victory speech. Um. Harrison Ford's character of James Marshall has proven to be a much less controversial presidential figer than Donald J. Trump. Impolls about the best fictitious presidents held in magazines and newspapers and websites over the last twenty five years, James Marshall has come out on top pretty much every time. On the Wall Street Journal to is just one of many examples. Harrison Ford's character beat out Martin Sheen's Jed Bartlett of the West Wing, which is second place, and your beloved Bill Pullman's Thomas J. Whitmore of Independence Day he came in third. I just love that movie so much and it's the best speech. Harrison Ford arguably kicks more ass in Air Force One, but he does not have a show stopping jingoistic speech at the very beginning of the movie. They do. It's it's not as good. He's not. Only he's not it's not as good. You're okay, I guess it's not. The be afraid speech is no, this is our Independence Day. Yeah, okay, so inspiring, it's so good. Um, it's now time to get into a little recurring segment we like to call Alex's fan theory moment. Yes, this would not be a beloved nineties property without an insane internet fan theory. Alex, take us there. Well, the good folks that read it brought us an interesting theory about the shadow plot that animates Air Force one. Uh and it's somehow manages it wants to be both incredibly practical and patently ridiculous. Reddit user Aerostotle and arrow I have to point out here is spelled a e er o like aerospace. Very good. Yeah, whatever, he says. President Marshall wanted to have a policy of never negotiate, no longer tolerate, no longer be afraid with terrorists, but his senior advisors chastised him for it in the limo after his speech. The National Security Advisor was the most harsh with him, and so of course he was the first hostage to be executed by the terrorist. His chief of staff also took a dim view of the policy, and he got shot as well. With his opponents in his inner circle out of the way, he could get on with business. So yes, the entire plot of this movie, according to this person, hinges on Harrison for Ward's character wanting to remove all of his political rivals in his inner circle literally physically, and has the added bonus of helping him win reelection because, back to the users positing, because he was victorious in capturing Radich, single handedly, defeating all the terrorists and rescuing his family who were held at gunpoint, he will probably win the next election, which is what it's all about exactly. Remember, his chief of staff pointed out the Reddick operation might bite them in the acid in November, So the hijacking was probably an elaborate campaign stunt makes sense. Sure, stranger things have happened, I'll say that, yes, Uh, stranger things like Harrison Ford's attempts at flying a plane. Harrison Ford's history with flying unfortunately is not as smooth as Air Force Travolta's or is John Travolta. That's right. I mean, it's funny you think of like seventies A listers who are both like plane guys. John Travolta doesn't crash his planes. We didn't. Well here, well all right, well let's take this one step a time. We're gonna end with Harrison for his relationship to flying, which, as we said, is not as triumphant as it was in Air Force One. He started training to be a pilot back in the sixties, but couldn't afford to continue the lessons, which makes me love him so much more. Uh So he started it up again in the mid nineties once the Han Solo dividends and paid off, and he got his pilot's license in nineteen six, the same year he filmed their first one, and someone asked him during the press round for Air Force one if he could really fly a seven forty seven, and he quoted a line from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade fly Yes, lands No, which is incredible. Um, this is all the age of fifty four, which is impressive for a guy at that stage of his life. And he later admitted to the l A times, I've never trusted myself to do certain things until I got to a certain age. I never rode motorcycles, so I was past forty five. I was too much of a wild child. I knew my limits, and I rarely exceeded them. That being said, he said some fairly troubling airborne incidents. In he did crash a helicopter right He crashed the helicopter near Lake Peru outside Santa Clarita, California, and though the helicopter was badly damaged, he and his passenger escaped without injury. But he would not be so lucky in when he made an emergency landing on the Penmar golf course in the Venice neighborhood of Los Angeles and broke his ankle in Pelvis. But of course, probably his most notorious air related incident occurred on February when he accidentally landed on a taxiway at the John Wayne Airport in Orange County. And it's basically the flight equivalent of getting on an off ramp on a highway. I mean runways or where you land and taxi ways or where you take off. He landed on the taxi way where an American Airline jet with a hundred and ten people was about to take off, and this moment gave us some truly fantastic audio where Harrison Ford radio the control tower with a shame steeped voice saying, I'm the schmuck that landed on the taxi way. Can you please please read that for me? You doctored the results. I'm trying to get in Harrison Ford character. I didn't kill my wife. I'm the schmuck that landed on the taxiway. That's like from the Simpsons. I know, it's gets it always hinges into like it's Hollywood movie mob. I mean it's it's a door because he's sound. He's like on the schmuck that landed on the taxi bay. It's really endearing. And I mean the air traffic control guy was supremely chill, and he said, oh hey, yeah, can I get your name in pilot's license? And you can just hear that this is all out there in the Internet. You can hear Harrison Ford's sigh reluctantly before saying my name's Harrison Ford. And the air traffic is stort guy says, okay, it's not a big deal, and Harrison Ford, to his credit, said, well, it's a big deal for me, which I mean, there's something to be said for becoming famous later in life and actually having a normal career until you're like over three, because I feel like most Hollywood people would have immediately tried to blame other people. So good on him, But also it was a danger. He was seventy four at the time, and not to be agist, but you know, people are worried about their grandparents driving a car, and before he's an old but planes are a little more complicated than cars, so you know, just saying so from get off my plane to I'm the schmuck that landed on the taxi way. Harrison Ford has given us so many aeronautical catchphrases over the years, and for that we should be very grateful. But I would like to end with this fact. He's performed a number of real life feats of aeronautical heroism too. He kept a Bell four oh seven helicopter near his property in Wyoming and assisted with not one but two mountain rescues in the Titon County Search and Rescue Division. On one of these rescues, he recovered a hiker who become lost and disoriented, and she boughted the helicopter and promptly vomited, totally unaware of who was piloting this plane until later, and when informed of who was piloting this plane, she said, I can't believe I barfed in Harrison Ford's helicopter, as any of us would. And thus Harrison Ford is a hero in real life as well, and man for all your soundboards in this I wish we had a soundboard button for like a triumphant flag waving theme with you know, the two of us in bloody torn clothes, hunched over a microphone in our lab. This is our independence day. We declare our independence from large plane. This has been to This has been way too much information about Harrison Ford's large plane movie Air Force One. Thank you so much for listening. We'll catch you next time. Get off my plane. Too much information. Was a production of I Heart Radio. The show's executive producers are Noel Brown and Jordan run Talk. The supervising producer is Mike John's. The show was researched, written and hosted by Jordan run Talk and Alex Heigel, with original music by Seth Applebaum and the Ghost Funk Orchestra. If you like what you heard, please subscribe and leave us a review. For more pods casts and I heart Radio, visit the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.