Hobbies

Rating: 9/10 (18 July 2012)

Switching from gangsters to one of the most colorful tycoons of industry Martin Scorsese took the first step in making The Aviator a success when he cast Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes. As he did as J. Edgar Hoover, DiCaprio has the spirit of the man invade his body as he portrays the Texas based industrialist, aviator, and movie producer. He had all those careers at the same time and dealt with a lot demons besides.
The Hughes fortune comes from Howard Hughes, Sr. who patented a drill bit that is the foundation of all oil drilling on planet Earth. If you don't use that drill bit, you can dig for oil with a pick and shovel for however long it takes. It is one of the most profitable patents in the world and it was the foundation of the Hughes wealth.
Which allowed Howard Hughes to indulge himself in two passions which were to all intents and purposes, hobbies. Aviation and movie producing were what drove him. And when we meet him he's shooting and reshooting and reshooting Hell's Angels. A lot of his own money went into the film which eventually was a success and gave Hughes the first of many perks as a Hollywood tycoon, Jean Harlow as played here by Gwen Stefani.
Faith Domergue, Ava Gardner, and most importantly Katharine Hepburn and there were many others follow in the Hughes story. Cate Blanchett won a Best Supporting Actress Oscar for becoming Katharine Hepburn. With some of the liberties taken I don't think it's an accident that The Aviator came out a year after Hepburn died at 96. The movie also missed Jean Peters whom Hughes actually married and Terry Moore who is still alive and who claims she did marry him. Jane Russell and The Outlaw and the famous brassiere personally designed by Hughes also get a passing mention.
As for aviation which was his real love, Hughes had a decades rivalry with Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe of Pan American Airlines. Trippe had more friends in Congress, particularly a rightwing Republican Senator named Ralph Owen Brewster played by Alan Alda. Alda got an Oscar nomination himself playing the smarmy Brewster who threatens to destroy Hughes by Congressional investigation. Hughes who was hardly a liberal in his politics totally turned the tables on the Brewster committee and the Senator himself. Not shown in the film but in 1952 Hughes made it his business to defeat Brewster going for a third term and did.
Besides Blanchett's Oscar The Aviator won several others and was nominated for several more including Best Picture and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio.
In my memory Howard Hughes was the eccentric billionaire who stayed in seclusion and ran his enterprises through a network of underlings. DiCaprio does a wonderful job in showing how Hughes became what he was, his mania against germs instilled by his mother. To have all that money and be living in the largest plastic bubble one could create. Hughes made himself a prisoner in his own mind before he became a prisoner of the jail he personally designed.
The Aviator is a marvelous insight into one of the most eccentric and colorful people of the last century.