"A biopic depicting the early years of legendary director and aviator Howard Hughes' career, from the late 1920s to the mid-1940s" courtesy of imdb.com
i was really excited for this movie because i'm reading a biography on Howard Hughes right now, but this movie. it almost pissed me off. there is SO much wrong information. well i don't know for sure whether the book i'm reading is wrong or if its the movie, but i would assume its the movie. for one they had him dating Katherine Hepburn as a real serious relationship which was totally wrong, Hughes was a major playboy and he did date Hepburn, briefly but what they were doing was portraying his love life with Billie Dove as his relationship with Hepburn in the movie, i'm guessing because people don't really know who Billie Dove is. and then when he was shooting Hell's Angels (which is where the movie starts) he is married to Ella Rice, which was an arranged marriage he used to get away from his family after his parents died. there was SO much that was contorted and misrepresented.
they also didnt explain a lot, they just showed Howard kind of going crazy and although they showed some of his major plane crashes (which were completely false also) they didnt explain that his plane crashes were why he was slowly kind of loosing his mind.
they also would just mention random things, which i knew about because of the book but i would imagine most people didnt know like they randomly said "well just dip into tool co." which was his fathers business which made his father rich and help start howard in the right direction, and he didnt like the business, refused to run it, but took money from it all the time when he needed it.
although, the acting was good there are a TON of people in it. Leonardo Dicaprio, Cate Blanchett, Kate Beckinsale, John C Reily, Alec Baldwin, Gwen Stefani, Jude Law, (although Gwen and Jude's parts were very small.)
CORRECTION: okay so he did have a real love affair with Katherine Hepburn, i got a little further in my book but they did protray it wrong because they said they were together when he was shooting Hells Angels and thats when he was engaged to Billie Dove, Katherine Hepburn was years later. Hughes was truly a master playboy and the movie doesnt truly convey that and it is a big part of his character and why he never married Katherine or Billie.
The compression of time, while necessary to move a movie along (and keep it from running 5 or 6 hours) is a source of major annoyance to me too. But I understand why they must do it.
ReplyDeleteI'm a huge fan of Katherine Hepburn (she's one of a VERY short list of 'stars' I'd like to have lunch with) and was always a little disappointed that a smart woman like her would succumb to a womanizer like Hughes even briefly.
yeah the same here. i HATED the movie they did on audrey hepburn, it was lame and there was a reason it never got big, for one it ended right when she accepted the offer for breakfast at tiffanys it barely was even 5% of her life and what she accomplished.
ReplyDeletethis movie was really the same.
but in the biography i'm reading it seems as though he never even cheated on katherine, this book focuses on his love life and the break up was because he proposed marriage (again) and she said no - i guess she was actually becoming jeaulous of his fame because she was being claimed as box office poision and couldnt get a new movie for the life of her and he just flew around the world breaking an all time record and doing well as a producer/director. she lost her fame right when he gained his, i can see the problem there.
Kylee, pearl said to you on this blog the same thing i said to you on the same day. That you can't make a good movie in 2 hours or less about a book! do you remember me saying that?
ReplyDeleteAnway, i do remember trying to watch the Aviator. Brian and i don't often give up on DVDs but we did not finish watching it. Even though i do like Leo di c.
I still sort of crack up that you are so into Howard Hughes. of all people. at your age.
i know but i've seen it done before, they can at least capture something thats real. everything was wrong in this movie, and they didnt even explain anything, ahh it drives me crazy thinking about it haha
ReplyDeletebut yes i do remember you saying that lol
yeah it was hard for me to stay awake i just wanted to because i wanted to finish it but it was actually very messy it was all over the place. you'd think a movie about howard hughes should have the essence of him and the director should have embodied hughes, the director and been OCD about it, but oh well not everyone can be Orson Welles or Hughes lol
haha i'm telling you. most fascinating man on the planet. but you know how i have an infatuation with dead people. that sounds weird. but really. Hepburn, Warhol, Nixon. and its so weird because i HATE tabloids with a passion i won't even watch evening magazine or enews! but i will read tons of documentaries on dead people haha