Flightplan

[MacGuffin]

Trailer here.

Release Date: September 23, 2005(wide)

Cast: Jodie Foster (Kyle Sherin), Peter Sarsgaard, Erika Christensen (Fiona), Sean Bean, Haley Ramm (Brittany Loud), Marlene Lawston (Julia), Kate Beahan (Stephanie), Michael Irby (Obaid), Brent Sexton (Elias), Judith Scott (Estella), Amanda Brooks (Irene), Matthew Bomer (Eric)

Director: Robert Schwentke (English feature debut)

Screenwriter: Peter Dowling (debut), Terry Hayes, Billy Ray

Premise: After the death of her husband, a woman decides to return home to America with her young daughter, but while on the flight, the daughter mysteriously disappears.

[squints]

The daughter, Jodie Foster, and the captain are the same person. The 3!

[cron]

is this a remake of that juliane moore aeroplane movie?

[72teeth]

it wasn't an aeroplane, it was a spaceship, remember...

[killafilm]

They would have to give some credit to The Lady Vanishes... right?

[MacGuffin]

Jodie Foster is one of the best actors planet Earth has ever given birth to. Her two Oscars, her performances that haven’t been nominated for anything and the two brilliant films she’s directed all attest to that.

Now she’s starring in the new thriller Flightplan which is about a recently widowed woman who is flying her husband’s corpse back to America in a giant plane she partially designed. Her daughter disappears on the plane and everyone seems to think the girl was never there in the first place.

Daniel Robert Epstein: What was the reason for doing Flightplan?

Jodie Foster: I know it’s a mystery to everyone why I choose the things that I do. It sort of depends on my life and what's moving me at the time. There's something very fascinating about what this woman goes through and clearly there's personal stuff for me there. If I feel someone is burning my arm and you tell me that it's not happening, does that mean that I don't feel it? It's those kinds of sanity insanity questions. Also what would you do and how far would go if something happened to your child. She reaches a point in the middle of the movie where she's so consumed by the desperation that she actually thinks she’s totally deluded myself and made it all up because she couldn't stand the grief. I felt like that beautiful moment was the whole reason I did the movie.

DRE: Flightplan clearly shares themes with Panic Room.

JF: It does share themes with Panic Room just because they are both in the thriller genre although it's kind of a different feeling. Flightplan is more of a psychological drama but yes I'm trying to save my daughter. But I think that once you hit 35 you play a lot of moms. And I think that guys at 35 play a lot of dads because that's really the most impractical thing that happens to people at that age.

The thing about Panic Room, as it was conceived when I came on, was that she was someone who starts the film with a really diminished sense of self. She used to feel like she was secure and knew where she was heading but now she's at this big question mark in her life. She can't even imagine that she would have the strength to be able to cope with it. I think that this character [in Flightplan] is in a totally different place. She's at a place of grief and responsibility, but not a place where she's lost a sense of self at all. In fact it's just the opposite and people keep trying to project that onto her. Part of her keeps fighting and saying, “I'm not hysterical. I'm not going to be desperate. I'm not going to go there.” Then as she gets whittled down she goes through all these different feelings and then eventually makes a decision and doesn't care about what she has to do. So it's actually an opposite journey from Panic Room. What's interesting about this movie is that it was written for a guy originally. Then I read the script and said, “Wow, this is something that could flip and make a woman.” In a weird way it worked so much better than it did with a guy. The man was playing a traditional guy who goes to work and doesn't know his kid that well and now his wife dies so he has to be like, “Do you like peanut butter and jelly or just jelly?” It was the process of looking for her and caring for her that made him have to assume a part in her life that he hadn't had before. We didn't do that. We did something completely different and in a weird way I think that it works a lot better.

DRE: Since you are a mother, you must have identified with this character very well.

JF: Definitely. Clearly everyone comes to this movie for the thriller part because it's a great ride and all of that, but the second reason that you're drawn to it is this question of, “What would I do if the thing that I care about the most was in danger?” It's amazing to me about the things that have happened in my life like broken bones and accidents. But I’ve never been through anything like seeing my kid have a plaster cast on his foot. It wasn't like he broke his foot. It was just some warm plaster and I just had never been through that kind of turmoil before. Somehow there are emotions that you have for your children, fears and worries, that you don't allow yourself to have for yourself. I think that everyone relates to that.

DRE: Did you have any input into casting the other roles?

JF: No.

DRE: It was nice to see Greta Scacchi again.

JF: Oh, I know. Wasn't that great? When I found out that she was coming in to play that part I was so psyched. I've been such a big fan of hers for a long time. Especially for her playing that psychiatrist on the plane. It was such a hard scene because I didn't really have anything to say. She did all the talking and you have someone come in for one day and that's all they do, one day while you've been on the film for 55 days. It was so nice having her next to me.

DRE: Was this screenplay written before 9/11?

JF: I believe that the first draft of this screenplay was pre 9/11 so after 9/11 they sat down and said, “Well, this is a new world. So lets talk about that and how things will change and how it actually affects the movie.” Of course that turned it into a completely different film which I think is great because now it addressees a post 9/11 world. There's an interesting dichotomy in society now where we have this global economy and everyone is saying, “No passports. We're all alike.” You get on a plane and one person is from England and the next person is from India. So we're all so international, but in a time of crisis true human nature in some ways reverts to non-inclusiveness. You look for the first person that you can point your finger at whether it's a hysterical woman on the plane or whether it's a guy that has brown skin. I feel like the film kind of addresses that.

DRE: You need a strong suspension of disbelief for this film, right?

JF: Oh, yeah. It's a big fantasy. Yeah [laughs] but we don't have to go into that.

DRE: Are there really planes like that?

JF: Clearly it's not the Airbus A380 which is the new fabulous new plane which can house up to 800 people. In the world of air travel engineers are saying that's the future. The idea being that you can stuff as many people on these things and so you can make the world a shuttle area. We're not recreating the A380, but it's not dissimilar.

DRE: Even though you’ve been doing this for such a long time, the thriller genre is still new to you, is it difficult to play this film while knowing the twist ending?

JF: I've done a lot of different types of movies in my life and my career. In fact I’ve probably been doing it for too long, but I like the architecture of making movies. I like knowing what's coming and setting it up and trying to figure that out. The whole puzzle of it. A lot of actors become actors because they like dancing for grandma and putting a lampshade on, but that's just not my personality.

DRE: But you got to dance for grandma in movies!

JF: Exactly, but I can't do it in life. The fun part of making movies is really seeing it as the director sees it. The great surprise on this movie was that [Flightplan director] Robert Schwentke is such a lovely man and very unassuming but yet is a really good leader. He had a really good sense of where the film was headed and he always had the answers. The funny thing about him is that he's one of those guys that's a foodie. He has first editions of arcane books and he likes The Clash and has all of their records on vinyl. So he's kind of an arty guy. He's seen every Japanese movie ever made but he has a real commercial sense. He was just such a nice guy that I think sometimes I do better performances when I know the director is nice and I feel like he's not taking advantage of me or that he's not going to yell at everyone. Then I just want to cry for them.

DRE: How did you end up being in A Very Long Engagement?

JF: Jean-Pierre Jeunet is someone that I wanted to work with so I tracked him down and said “Look. I made a couple of movies in France when I was a kid. But for some reason they just don't think of me even though I can speak French like a French person.” I wanted to know if he had anything for me. He said, “I'm doing this movie. The big parts aren't for you but I have a couple of small parts.” I said, “Great. I'll do whatever.”

DRE: He’s such a visionary, how did you imagine the film would end up being?

JF: I didn't imagine it really. The script was quite complex and so was the movie. Although I speak French well it's still my second language so the script was even more complicated so I had no idea what the film was going to be. I thought that it was such a beautiful movie and I was proud to have been a part of it.

DRE: Do you want to do another French movie?

JF: Oh yeah, it was great being in a French movie. I could play a bartender in a French movie and it would be the most challenging role of my career because it's hard to do a film in a second language. It doesn't even have to be a challenging character. You're just sweating.

DRE: How was doing Inside Man with Spike Lee?

JF: I have a smaller part and it's a really different from everything I’ve played. When I do a big commercial movie I like to be the person who helms it. To be the protagonist who controls the movie. But on smaller boutique movies I like to be the one who comes in for three weeks and does some great part that normally no one would give me. That way I'm able to take more chances.

DRE: Is Flora Plum gone forever?

JF: These things have a way of resurfacing and I'm sure that it will because it's such a good script.

DRE: Delaying that movie indefinitely must have been very frustrating. Will you be directing something else?

JF: I have a thing that I'm working on right now. I'm still in rewrites so it'll probably take another year or so to get it right.

DRE: What’s the film called?

JF: Sugarland. It's about Jamaican plantation workers in the Florida cane fields. It's a hard story to tell. There's nothing better than controversy in a morality tale. I think we hope that people will go home and debate the wrongs and the rights. You really want people to feel passionate because both sides are true.

DRE: Just in the past couple of weeks they mentioned doing another Hannibal Lecter film, with him as a young man, how do you feel about where those films have gone?

JF: I don't really like to comment on movies that I'm not in so I wouldn't really comment on those films. What really attracted me to Silence of the Lambs and why I think it’s such a classic and a truly beautiful movie from start to finish is that I really feel that all of us from cinematographer Tak Fujimoto to [music composer] Howard Shore to the actors have never been as good and maybe we never will be again. It was just one of those movies that was so inspiring and it allowed us all to live up to this really high potential and the reason is because of Thomas Harris' book. It's just a beautiful book. I don't know what a franchise means, but if I could do films as beautiful as a Thomas Harris book everyday I would do every one of those. But even he knows, you don't always have a thousand of those in you. I don't know what the next installment is, but if it's not from a Thomas Harris book then I don't know.

DRE: Are your kids seeing your movies now?

JF: They've seen two of my movies but they're not very interested in seeing my films. They like seeing the trailers. My oldest son is seven years old and he asked if he could see Flightplan but clearly he can't.

One of the movies they’ve seen is Napoleon and Samantha which I did when I was about six. They’ve also seen Bugsy Malone which I did when I was 12. I think that's a good one for them. I sort of debated it because there are guns in it and stuff. But the guns shoot cream.

DRE: Is there a tendency now in Hollywood for people to try to get actresses to take their clothes off?

JF: No one is asking me so there you go. When women hit 42 it just doesn't become an issue anymore. They're like, “Please don't take your clothes off.”

[cowboykurtis]

where does d r epistein publish?

[modage]

http://suicidegirls.com/words/

[Ravi]

Does it bother anyone else that "Flightplan" is one word?

[The Perineum Falcon]

Notreally.

[B.C. Long]

The Forgotten 2: Flightplan

[72teeth]

The Forgotten 2: Panic Plane

[NEON MERCURY]

i always thought she was kind of cute.  can anyone recomend me a film where she gets naked thats relatively new?

[polkablues]

i always thought she was kind of cute.  can anyone recomend me a film where she gets naked thats relatively new?

"A Very Long Engagement".  Other than that, "Nell" is your best bet.

[NEON MERCURY]

i always thought she was kind of cute.  can anyone recomend me a film where she gets naked thats relatively new?

"A Very Long Engagement".  Other than that, "Nell" is your best bet.

polka, thanks.  you gave me a reason to rent AVLE.  nell, looks like something  that i couldnt bring myself to watch even though shes naked in it.