John Gatins at the New York Film Festival premiere of "Flight"

Credit: AP Photo/Jason DeCrow

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He explored a number of themes in the script, particularly spirituality. Coming from an Irish background, Catholicism was of course very pronounced in his early life. But deeper than that, he got into ideas of Whitaker having a bit of a messiah complex, for instance.

"Most models of recovery suggest finding or at least seeking some sort of belief or understanding or god of your own understanding or a higher power," he says. "The thing I've said a couple times is the idea that there are no atheists foxholes, and there are no atheists at 30,000 feet when a plane is pitching all over the place."

And intriguingly, the plight of addiction has been compared to a low search for God. He references Carl Jung, and asks, "Why do you think they call it spirits? Where did that come from? You drink it and find God? Well, sometimes. Have you ever eaten the worm? Sometimes. Do you know what I mean? It's kind of one of those interesting things because, look, ever since man crushed grapes, it's like people have been altering their state of consciousness by whatever they find. And we have these rituals that all kind of surround it."

In every character, Gatins tried to find some sort of inroad to those considerations. One in particular -- a cancer patient named simply "Gaunt Young Man" in the script -- blows into the story with "his own Greek chorus," as Gatins puts it. And indeed, James Badge Dale's performance in those brief moments makes for some of the film's most profound considerations. The scene is really the heart of the film, and it's one of the things Robert Zemeckis was high on when he came on board to direct. Indeed, it was a role he was very concerned about casting because, as he told Gatins, that scene "is the whole movie."

"Any development person in the world would have looked at that script and said, 'Okay, let's be honest,'" Gatins says, "'You can't have a bald guy dying of cancer walk into the middle of your fucking movie in the beginning of the second act and give a seven-page monologue and leave. That's not going to work for a lot of reasons. Why don't you just go ahead and cut that now?'"

But it does work and it serves as the whole engine that gets the second act going, largely because of Zemeckis' suggestion that Gatins go back to the lab and constrict that area of the script (which was originally much longer, with Whitaker spending a lot of time in the hospital recovering). And it was moving for star Denzel Washington, too, who walked up to Gatins with his hand extended after filming the scene and said, "I just want to congratulate you. That scene, standing in there, listening to that, that's like Shakespeare."

Getting back to Gatins's desire to make the film himself, obviously, it just never materialized. And for a while, maybe with a hint of that self-sabotage still lingering, he seemed to avoid making the real moves to get it there. Friends and peers would accuse him of hiding behind the fact that he didn't think he could get the movie made. "You have this beautiful piece of material that you've been dying for, that people love. Go do that," his wife would say to him when he'd consider other offers. "You're missing the point," he would tell her. "Nobody will do this with me. My life is passing me by. It's like, this movie has disrupted my entire creative life. As much as I love it, I fucking hate it. It's killing me."

But it's a happy ending, of course, because Zemeckis took a shine to the script. He and Washington deferred salary to get it made in the mid-budget range, which was crucial. And while Gatins would certainly have had a different take on the material, he admits after a few moments consideration that it was better off as the movie star vehicle it is, one with a higher sheen of gloss.

"I would have to say so grudgingly, because I have an ego like everybody else," he says. "The truth is, there were things that Bob did that I couldn't do. Watching him until five in the morning shoot like these tiny, excruciating pieces of that cockpit, that I just don't know. [Zemeckis is a pilot himself.] I wouldn't have had the handle to do it. The other thing, too, is we would have to reframe it in the context of how was I making that movie, because they would say to me, 'Look, you're making it with Josh Brolin for $10 million.' What does that look like? That's a different movie.

"Creatively, Bob could not have been a more gracious and amazing kind of collaborator. The fact that he invited me in at all is like testament to him and his comfort with who he is. He doesn't have anything to prove to me, surely, or to anybody else for that matter. He really was drawn to do the material because he thought this is interesting. 'I haven't seen this movie before. I want to make it. I want to see what happens.'"

"Flight" opens nationwide on Friday.

Kristopher Tapley
Editor-at-Large

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Kristopher Tapley has covered the film awards landscape for over a decade. He founded In Contention in 2005. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Times of London and Variety. He begs you not to take any of this too seriously.