Trivia for
The Aviator (2004) More at IMDbPro »

• Leonardo DiCaprio spent a day with Jane Russell to hear her memories and impressions of Howard Hughes. She was very impressed with DiCaprio's visit and told him that Hughes was a quiet yet extremely stubborn man who always got his way in the end.
  
  
• During the crash of the XF-11 aircraft over Los Angeles, Hughes (DeCaprio) radios that he will put down on the Wilshire Country Club. Hughes actually lived in a Spanish Villa at Wilshire Country Club (near the 8th hole), the crash of the XF-11 was into Beverly Hills at the Los Angeles Country Club.
  
  
• Michael Mann was originally going to direct the film, but having directed back-to-back biopics The Insider (1999) and Ali (2001), he decided to produce instead, and offered the script to Martin Scorsese.
  
  
• This is the first feature film that Leonardo DiCaprio's production company "Appian Way" is involved with.
  
  
• Martin Scorsese designed each year in the film to look just the way a color film from that time period would look. Achieved mainly through digitally enhanced post-production, Scorsese recreated the look of Cinecolor and two-strip Technicolor. Watch in particular for the scene where Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) meets Errol Flynn (Jude Law) in the club. Hughes is served precisely placed peas on a plate, and they appear blue or turquoise - just as they'd have looked in the primitive two-strip Technicolor process. As Hughes ages throughout the film, the color gets more sophisticated and full-bodied.
  
  
• Barry Pepper was due to play Howard Hughes's chief engineer, Glenn Odekirk, but due to prior commitment and scheduling conflicts with the film Ripley Under Ground (2005), he had to drop out.
  
  
• Jim Carrey was originally considered for the lead role as Howard Hughes.
  
  
• Also in preparation for his role as Howard Hughes, Leonardo DiCaprio spent some time with an actual OCD patient named Edward. He advised him on a number of different aspects of the condition, in particular the tendency to repeat sentences over and over as in the scene where Hughes repeatedly asks to see the blueprints for the Hercules.
  
  
• Production was delayed in October 2003, when wildfires in southern California burned several sets.
  
  
• Gwyneth Paltrow was originally signed on to play Ava Gardner but dropped out. She was replaced at the last minute with Kate Beckinsale.
  
  
• Freckles were painstakingly painted onto Cate Blanchett's face, arms, and chest to make her resemble Katharine Hepburn.
  
  
• Cate Blanchett's portrayal of Katharine Hepburn makes her the first performer to win an Oscar for playing a real-life Oscar winner (Hepburn won a record 4).
  
  
• At one point in the film, Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) and Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) address each other as "City Mouse" and "Country Mouse" - a detail lifted from telegrams exchanged between the two that were auctioned off after Katharine Hepburn's death in 2003, in which they address each other by those names. In the movie, Howard calls Kate "country mouse", and she calls him "city mouse." This is incorrect: Howard was the country mouse (living in suburban Los Angeles) while Kate was the city mouse (a regular in New York).
  
  
• Cate Blanchett felt that accurately reproducing Katharine Hepburn's distinctive upper class New Englander accent was crucial to her portrayal of this Hollywood icon. She did daily voice exercises with the film's voice coach Tim Monich (with whom Blanchett had worked previously on The Talented Mr. Ripley (1999)), and also studied Hepburn's early films and documentaries about her to learn her mannerisms.
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Martin Scorsese] in a tuxedo and slicked hair, pulling a woman from behind Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) as he walks the red carpet with Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett).
  
  
• Director Cameo: [Martin Scorsese] Voice of the projectionist Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) talks to in the screening room.
  
  
• Cate Blanchett had three different red-hair wigs for this film.
  
  
• The film marks the debut of singer Gwen Stefani. Martin Scorsese was looking for someone to fill the role of Jean Harlow when he noticed Stefani appearing on a Vogue cover poster in New York.
  
  
• Martin Scorsese requested that Cate Blanchett watch all of the first 15 films of Katharine Hepburn to learn her mannerism and her poise.
  
  
• Nicole Kidman was also considered for the role of Katharine Hepburn. When the scheduled start date was delayed by several months, Cate Blanchett became available after finishing filming The Missing (2003/I). Martin Scorsese claims that Blanchett had always been his first choice.
  
  
• In preparation for her role as Katharine Hepburn, Cate Blanchett learned to play tennis and golf and took cold showers, something Hepburn is known for.
  
  
• The budget for the costumes was $2 million.
  
  
• Kate Beckinsale gained 20 pounds for her portrayal of Ava Gardner.
  
  
• Jane Lynch's scenes as Amelia Earhart were cut from the movie.
  
  
• Several scenes feature actual footage from the movies Howard Hughes produced, such as Hell's Angels (1930) and The Outlaw (1943).
  
  
• Many had tried to produce a Howard Hughes biopic before this. Among the failed attempts are: - 1. A companion piece to Reds (1981) planned by actor-director Warren Beatty. - 2. John Malkovich and partner Russell Smith attempt in 1993. - 3. The adaptation planned by Allen Hughes and Albert Hughes who wanted Johnny Depp in the lead. - 4. A Brian De Palma-directed biopic with Touchstone which fell through because of the $80 million price tag. - 5. In January 2000, it was announced that Milos Forman was to direct a biopic with Edward Norton as Hughes and a script by Scott Alexander and Larry Karaszewski. - 6. In January 2002, Jim Carrey tried to start the project with Castle Rock Productions but it didn't get off ground soon enough to beat this movie into production.
  
  
• When Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blanchett) greets her family, she mentions an Uncle Willie. This is a reference to Uncle Willie in Katharine Hepburn's The Philadelphia Story (1940).
  
  
• Received the most Academy Award nominations for the year 2005, with 11 total.
  
  
• CAMEO: Thelma Schoonmaker (editor of "The Aviator") appears as one of Howard Hughes' editors putting together the initial cut of "Hell's Angels."
  
  
• The film's prints are coming from a digital intermediate. This digital master has been digitally grain reduced from start to finish. As a result many moving textures (especially human skin) look smeared and very unnatural, like bad quality video watched on a slow LCD monitor.
  
  
• The hangar in which the real-life Howard Hughes partially built his famous "Spruce Goose" airplane was also used for the construction of many of the full-scale models used in Titanic (1997), in which Leonardo DiCaprio also starred.
  
  
• The film's wide release date in the United States, 24 December 2004, would have been Howard Hughes' 99th birthday.
  
  
• Four of the miniature airplanes used in creating the effects for the film are now on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon, home of the real Howard Hughes HK-1 "Spruce Goose". Models on display include two of the biplanes from the "Hell's Angels" sequence, most of the XF-11 model, and the motion-control "Spruce Goose". The "Spruce Goose" model is remarkably detailed, and even includes scale puppets of Howard Hughes and Dr. Fritz.
  
  
• Director Martin Scorsese originally wanted to shoot the film in Academy ratio, 1.33:1, the same ratio as films of the period and indeed all films up until about 1954. Unfortunately, he found that modern theaters are generally not properly equipped to show anything but Flat 1.85:1 or Scope 2.35:1 films. He therefore focused instead on making each portion of the film look like it was made using the color film stock available at the time.
  
  
• If you freeze-frame the film at 2:22:45, you can see an impressive computer generated skeleton of Howard Hughes (Leonardo DiCaprio) as a camera flashes while he is taking the oath.
  
  
• Bob Hoskins was originally considered for the role of Senator Owen Brewster.
  
  
• First film by director Martin Scorsese to gross over $100 million in the U.S.
  
  
• The original screenplay was inspired by the book "Howard Hughes: The Untold Story" by Peter Harry Brown and Pat H. Broeske.
  
  
• Several changes were made in the movie to the relationship between Katharine Hepburn and Howard Hughes. Hepburn did not in fact leave Howard for 'Spencer Tracy'. The two broke up long before she had met Spencer Tracy. And lastly, Katharine Hepburn's brother committed suicide when she was little, not during her years as a star.
  
  
• The film's winning of the Best Cinematography Oscar has been attributed to the unique use of period color palette. The two and three-strip palette that is seen in the film was accomplished by the use of the LUT - 3D Look Up Table - graphics processor. It was designed by Josh Pines, R&D VP of Technicolor Digital Intermediates. The processor was slipped into the digital projector and thus allowed filtering and applying the two / three color look into the negative.
  
  
• Singer Loudon Wainwright III and his children, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, each appear as vocalists at the Cocoanut Grove nightclub during different eras. Loudon Wainwright (who plays the lead singer of "Happy Feet") played guitar and sang as "Capt. Spalding" in three episodes of the third season of "M*A*S*H". Songs included "North Korea Blues (Oh, Tokyo)," featured prominently throughout the episode "Rainbow Bridge." Wainwright's appearance in this film is therefore a bit of a reunion with "M*A*S*H" alum Alan Alda, though the two performers do not appear together.
  
  
• In his speech at the Golden Globes, Leonardo DiCaprio revealed that 'Michael Mann (I)' had a hand in writing the film's screenplay.
  
  
• During a love scene between Katharine and Howard, the song "I Can't Give You Anything But Love" plays in the background. This is likely an in-joke/homage to Bringing Up Baby (1938), in which Katharine Hepburn sings the same song to a leopard.
  
  
• The scene in which Hughes locks himself in the projection room and cuts off most contact from the outside world for an extended period of time is somewhat misleading. Though Hughes battled germ phobia all of his life (the fear of germs was instilled in him early on by his mother) Hughes did not become a recluse until much later in his life. The scene that is portrayed in the movie is very similar to a documented incident where Hughes did spend almost a year in a private movie theater however it wasn't until he was near 50 years old.
  
  
• Alan Alda avoided watching newsreel footage of the real Senator Ralph Owen Brewster. Alda felt that public figures did not speak or behave naturally in front of the newsreel cameras and he wanted his performance to be more natural.
  
  
• The last film to date to win the most Academy Awards (5) without winning Best Picture.
  
  

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