When life imitated art: the role that connects Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford
In 2009, Harrison Ford attended a dinner at the White House honouring a gathering of aviation heroes. A keen pilot himself, Ford was the obvious celebrity candidate to speak with these heroes of the sky. One of the pilots wanted to pick Ford’s brain about something, though. He had written a memoir entitled Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters, and he wanted to know if Ford thought it had a chance of being turned into a movie.
Ford gave the pilot Frank Marshall’s phone number and encouraged him to call the legendary Indiana Jones producer. That pilot was, of course, Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger and his incredible tale would make it to the big screen in 2016. When Ford turned down the opportunity to play Sullenberger himself, he was played by Tom Hanks instead – but then life imitated art in a truly horrifying fashion.
In November 2016, Marshall told The Hollywood Reporter that he considered it a true honour when Captain Sullenberger gave him a call. He knew the amazing story of January 15th, 2009, when Sullenberger landed US Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River after a bird strike obliterated both engines. Sullenberger’s quick thinking ensured all 155 people on board the plane survived. The National Transportation Safety Board investigated Sullenberger’s miraculous actions despite them saving so many lives. Ultimately, it determined that he was correct to attempt such a risky water landing instead of trying to return to LaGuardia Airport.
After speaking with Sullenberger on the phone, Marshall met the hero at his publisher’s office in Beverly Hills. He was “awed” by him and soon optioned the memoir for film. However, when he asked Ford if he wanted to star in the movie, the Star Wars icon turned it down. Marshall said, “I think Harrison wanted to just give us the gift of the story.”
For the next four years, the project remained in limbo. Its progress was undoubtedly hampered by the 2012 release of Flight, a similarly themed – though entirely fictional – tale of a pilot played by Denzel Washington who executes a miracle upside-down landing after a mechanical failure. By 2014, though, the project had been resurrected by Clint Eastwood, who wanted Hanks to play Sullenberger. At the time, Hanks wanted to take a year off after shooting Inferno, the second sequel to The Da Vinci Code, but he was so struck by Sullenberger’s real-life heroism that he agreed to come on board.
Amazingly, though, a few months before Sully went into production in September 2015, something happened that may have seemed like a bad omen for the movie. Ford, who had got the ball rolling by connecting Sullenberger and Marshall, crashed his vintage World War II plane on a golf course near the Santa Monica Airport. The crash was nearly fatal, with the Hollywood legend suffering a broken back, shattered pelvis, a huge laceration on his head, and a broken ankle. He wound up recovering in hospital for a month and admitted he “changed a lot of things” in his life in the aftermath.
Life can be pretty strange sometimes, but when the star who started a movie about a plane crash is involved in a plane crash in real life, you really need to start pondering the mysteries of the universe.
Even more incredibly, though, Ford wasn’t the only star connected with the production who lived through a plane crash. After all, when Eastwood was a 21-year-old fighting in the Korean War, he was the passenger in a Douglas AD torpedo bomber that went down in the water near Point Reyes in Northern California. He and the pilot had to swim for several miles through shark-infested water before they reached the shore.
When Eastwood was asked if this personal experience was why he signed up to tell Sullenberger’s tale, he replied, “I definitely did think about it when I was shooting this. I’m probably the only director who’s actually been in a water landing. But it had no bearing on me making this movie. I would have shot this movie anyway.”
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