Where to watch The Aviator (2004)

Trivia & production notes

• Before Martin Scorsese took on The Aviator, at least five other directors had developed competing Howard Hughes biopics, including Brian De Palma with Nicolas Cage, the Hughes Brothers with Johnny Depp, Miloš Forman with Edward Norton, William Friedkin, Norman Jewison with John Travolta, and Christopher Nolan with Jim Carrey.
• Angelina Jolie turned down a role in The Aviator after learning that Harvey Weinstein was involved as an executive producer.
• Leonardo DiCaprio experienced a recurrence of mild obsessive-compulsive disorder he had as a child while filming The Aviator, prompting Scorsese and DiCaprio to work with UCLA psychiatrist Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz to accurately portray Hughes's OCD.
• DiCaprio spent hundreds of hours researching Hughes's OCD, meeting with people suffering from the disorder and studying how they compulsively washed their hands, which inspired the scene where his character's hand bleeds from scrubbing.
• Scorsese chose to use scale models instead of CGI for the flying sequences after witnessing negative critical reactions to the computer-generated effects in Pearl Harbor.
• Aero Telemetry built three flyable scale model aircraft for The Aviator, including a 375-pound Spruce Goose with a 20-foot wingspan and a 750-pound XF-11 with a 25-foot wingspan, completing all three in just three months.
• The XF-11 aircraft model was reverse-engineered from photographs and rare historical drawings using Rhinoceros 3D software and fabricated as a 1:4 scale replica that was rigged to crash multiple times for different shots.
• The miniature homes that the XF-11 crashes into were built at 1:4 scale to match the scaled aircraft model.
• Motion-controlled miniature models of the Spruce Goose and Hughes Hangar built by New Deal Studios for The Aviator are now on display at the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon alongside the original Hughes H-1 Spruce Goose.
• The recreation of Hughes's HK-1 Hercules historic flight from November 2, 1947 was filmed at the Port of Long Beach using the miniature aircraft.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article The Aviator (2004 film), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Rewritten for StreamShack; errors are ours — tell us about them.