Amelia
From award-winning director Mira Nair and starring Academy Award® winner Hilary Swank in the title role, comes the true story of the woman who won the hearts of the nation with her daring dreams of flight.
Celebrated as the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia Earhart led a bold and uncompromising life as a woman ahead of her time, an adventurer who refused to see limits, and a symbol of American spirit.
Amelia chronicles her skyrocketing rise to fame; the record-shattering flights that forged her image as 'Lady Lindy'; a love life complicated by her devotion to flight and freedom; and a legacy of courage, social advocacy, and independence.
"Amelia is a love story and an action-adventure for the whole family, about a young woman who broke the boundaries and gave a lot to many different people," says Nair.
"I wanted the film to be a living, pulsating portrait of this woman who dared to dream of things that no one had ever done before. Amelia lived life as fully as possible and didn’t put a lid on her emotions or her ambitions. She left behind a legend that I hope will continue to fuel a passion in people to accept no limits."
The most vivid and adventuresome period in Earhart’s life from her sudden exposure to global fame in 1928 to her shocking disappearance mid-flight less than ten years later comes alive on the screen thanks largely to the dogged passion of Avalon Pictures CEO (and the pioneering co-founder of the technology company, Gateway, Inc.) Ted Waitt.
An aviation and exploration aficionado in his own right, Waitt had long been fascinated by Amelia’s story.
"Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated with Amelia’s disappearance. As I began reading about her, I became even more fascinated with her life than her disappearance," explains Waitt. "Hers is an incredible story of courage and she was a real pioneer for women as well as aviation."
He continues: "Everyone today knows about Amelia’s disappearance, but very few people understand her life. I thought her tale could be an inspiration, as well as very entertaining. She still ranks as one of the 10 most famous Americans of all time, and people are naturally interested in her - yet not many know her real story."
Avalon purchased two seminal biographies of Earhart: Susan Butler’s East To The Dawn, which explores little-known aspects of Earhart’s life, including her friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and became the first book to document a secret affair with the aviator and businessman Gene Vidal; and Mary Lovell’s The Sound of Wings, which focuses on Amelia’s intricate relationship with her publicist husband and the intense promotional machinery that surrounded her.
"I read all the biographies of Amelia -- and Sue Butler’s was incredibly well researched and well written. Mary Lovell’s book was great as well," comments Waitt.
Waitt also brought in Elgen M. Long, co-author with Marie K. Long of Amelia Earhart: Mystery Solved, as a consultant. Long is an expert on the flight logs that reveal, moment by moment, what happened on Amelia’s final flight from New Guinea en route to Howland Island as what Long calls 'multiple failures of navigation and communication' put her plane in insurmountable peril.
Using these heavily-researched sources as the backbone of their story, two award-winning writers -- Academy Award® nominee Anna Hamilton Phelan (Gorillas In The Mist) and Academy Award® winner Ron Bass (Rain Man) were brought in to forge a screenplay that hinges on authentic, documented history, yet soars beyond the facts to get to the heart of the woman beating.
After an intensive examination of her life and times, Phelan and Bass emerged with a portrait of an Amelia so in love with what she saw and felt in the sky that it influenced her every move on earth.
Compressing ten years into a couple of hours, Phelan and Bass reveal the many faces of Amelia; businesswoman, daredevil, fashion icon, promoter of women’s rights, wife, lover, die-hard individualist but most of all as a woman whose palpable humanity is just as moving as her record-setting feats.
What especially struck Mira Nair in reading the screenplay was the idea that Amelia was, in many ways, America’s first true modern celebrity. She was not merely famous but so internationally idolized that her very name and image became a money-making machine.
This fame granted her influence that she never imagined and, ultimately, she learned to use it to advance both women’s rights and the age of aviation.
"No matter how you come at it, Amelia’s story is a fascinating tale of mystery and tragedy, says Nair. "But what intrigued me about the screenplay for Amelia is seeing her as the first real American icon that also became a brand name.
"Here was a woman who loved just one thing flying but because that was so revolutionary in her time, she came to stand for all kinds of other things including women’s rights and felt a responsibility to be something more to people. Amelia tried to reconcile what she needed to do for money and society against what she felt she had to do to be herself. That’s a game that modern women are still playing."
The director of such culturally and emotionally rich films as Salaam Bombay!, Monsoon Wedding, Vanity Fair and The Namesake, Nair was born in India and lived in Africa before building her distinctive Hollywood career as one of a handful of woman directors at the forefront of cinema today.
Nair fell in love with the forward-thinking American pilot and her fearless vision of life as she read the Amelia screenplay. Although Nair grew up in an utterly different time and place, she instantly related to Amelia’s strength, optimism and hunger to get things done -- on a deeply personal level.
"I was born in a small town in India," the director notes, "and Amelia was from a small-town in Kansas. I felt a great sense of affinity for her dreams to experience the bigger world around her. Those were my dreams, too."
Nair liked that the script’s portrait was honest, exposing Amelia’s human flaws along with her zeal and bravery. She continues: "The way Amelia trained herself to overcome fear and to go after the impossible is a lesson that I think we all aspire to. And yet I was drawn to a portrait of her that went beyond the iconic, that looks at her quirkiness, her need for love, her capacity to make mistakes and even to be so brave as to be reckless."
The screenplay spurred Nair to dive into her own research, screening hours of newsreels and documentaries, reading Amelia’s diaries and documentation of her life collected over the years.
"The more I learned about her, the more I was struck by the kind of sweet humility Amelia maintained through it all," she says. "I think humility and passion make such a lovely combination and is so rarely seen. That really interested me as a filmmaker."
Finally, Nair was attracted, like Amelia herself, to exploring the lure of flight in the thrilling early days of aviation when human beings first began to attain a vast freedom over the landscape that only birds previously had known.
"I saw in Amelia’s tale someone who is ecstatic in the sky, but also very earth bound," comments Nair. "She loved nature, and believed in its power, so it’s especially moving that, ultimately, it was the ocean or the skies that swallowed her."
The screenplay also introduced Nair to the two dashing, fascinating men who grew closest to Amelia: her savvy business partner and eventual husband, George Putnam; and the accomplished pilot and pioneer of the American airline industry, Gene Vidal.
Nair found herself compelled by both men. "George was the first person in this country to create what is now known as public relations. He was also an adventurer in his own right, but he knew he didn’t have what it takes to be an Amelia Earhart or Charles Lindbergh, so he threw his support behind Amelia in his own way, financing her trips with sponsorships and publicity events.
"Yes, it was Putnam who packaged Amelia, but he was also the one who really allowed her to explore her passion by finding a way to make money out of it," she notes.
"Gene was also a huge force in Amelia’s life because they were both very much the public faces of American aviation," Nair continues. "I think they were deeply attracted to each other, but Gene was the one person who told Amelia the blunt truth, who told her that her adventures were getting reckless, and I think she felt that hampered her dreams. There was both love and conflict driving the three of them."
"My journey through Amelia amassed an unforgettable history rich with detail- from newsreel footage, to artifacts to biographies and first-person accounts. Amelia’s life spanned decades of love, loss, heartbreak, and success," said Nair.
"Throughout the making of this film, I had the privilege to become acquainted with not only Amelia’s history in the skies, but also her history on the ground - with characters like Amy Guest and Dorothy Putnam and Mabel Boll - and others surrounding her close-knit group.
"Despite shooting the world around Amelia, I had to make choices that sharpened the journey of this utterly modern woman as she lived the seesaw between the ecstasy she felt in the sky and the responsibility she assumed towards the earth.
"Ultimately, my film began to soar as a study of one woman’s ‘ecstasy of the sky’. I hope Amelia sheds new light on this fascinating individual and encourages audiences to further discover the woman, the history, and the individuals who made that history. Ms. Earhart certainly gave me the key to the skies."
Nair jumped into production with a team that included Ted Waitt as well as Avalon Pictures President Kevin Hyman; and Nair’s long-time, trusted producing partner Lydia Dean Pilcher. "We had a deeply creative team," says Nair, "who tapped into what Amelia means to so many Americans."
Amelia is released 13th November
From award-winning director Mira Nair and starring Academy Award® winner Hilary Swank in the title role, comes the true story of the woman who won the hearts of the nation with her daring dreams of flight.
Celebrated as the first aviatrix to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean, Amelia Earhart led a bold and uncompromising life as a woman ahead of her time, an adventurer who refused to see limits, and a symbol of American spirit.
Amelia chronicles her skyrocketing rise to fame; the record-shattering flights that forged her image as 'Lady Lindy'; a love life complicated by her devotion to flight and freedom; and a legacy of courage, social advocacy, and independence.
"Amelia is a love story and an action-adventure for the whole family, about a young woman who broke the boundaries and gave a lot to many different people," says Nair.
"I wanted the film to be a living, pulsating portrait of this woman who dared to dream of things that no one had ever done before. Amelia lived life as fully as possible and didn’t put a lid on her emotions or her ambitions. She left behind a legend that I hope will continue to fuel a passion in people to accept no limits."
The most vivid and adventuresome period in Earhart’s life from her sudden exposure to global fame in 1928 to her shocking disappearance mid-flight less than ten years later comes alive on the screen thanks largely to the dogged passion of Avalon Pictures CEO (and the pioneering co-founder of the technology company, Gateway, Inc.) Ted Waitt.
An aviation and exploration aficionado in his own right, Waitt had long been fascinated by Amelia’s story.
"Ever since I was a little kid, I was fascinated with Amelia’s disappearance. As I began reading about her, I became even more fascinated with her life than her disappearance," explains Waitt. "Hers is an incredible story of courage and she was a real pioneer for women as well as aviation."
He continues: "Everyone today knows about Amelia’s disappearance, but very few people understand her life. I thought her tale could be an inspiration, as well as very entertaining. She still ranks as one of the 10 most famous Americans of all time, and people are naturally interested in her - yet not many know her real story."
Avalon purchased two seminal biographies of Earhart: Susan Butler’s East To The Dawn, which explores little-known aspects of Earhart’s life, including her friendship with First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, and became the first book to document a secret affair with the aviator and businessman Gene Vidal; and Mary Lovell’s The Sound of Wings, which focuses on Amelia’s intricate relationship with her publicist husband and the intense promotional machinery that surrounded her.
"I read all the biographies of Amelia -- and Sue Butler’s was incredibly well researched and well written. Mary Lovell’s book was great as well," comments Waitt.
Waitt also brought in Elgen M. Long, co-author with Marie K. Long of Amelia Earhart: Mystery Solved, as a consultant. Long is an expert on the flight logs that reveal, moment by moment, what happened on Amelia’s final flight from New Guinea en route to Howland Island as what Long calls 'multiple failures of navigation and communication' put her plane in insurmountable peril.
Using these heavily-researched sources as the backbone of their story, two award-winning writers -- Academy Award® nominee Anna Hamilton Phelan (Gorillas In The Mist) and Academy Award® winner Ron Bass (Rain Man) were brought in to forge a screenplay that hinges on authentic, documented history, yet soars beyond the facts to get to the heart of the woman beating.
After an intensive examination of her life and times, Phelan and Bass emerged with a portrait of an Amelia so in love with what she saw and felt in the sky that it influenced her every move on earth.
Compressing ten years into a couple of hours, Phelan and Bass reveal the many faces of Amelia; businesswoman, daredevil, fashion icon, promoter of women’s rights, wife, lover, die-hard individualist but most of all as a woman whose palpable humanity is just as moving as her record-setting feats.
What especially struck Mira Nair in reading the screenplay was the idea that Amelia was, in many ways, America’s first true modern celebrity. She was not merely famous but so internationally idolized that her very name and image became a money-making machine.