Making ‘Memphis Belle’ Fly

David Puttnam’s penchant for trying new talent has been demonstrated again with “Memphis Belle,” which is being directed by young (33) Michael Caton-Jones. Caton-Jones did one previous feature, “Scandal,” the recent docudrama about England’s Profumo case. Actually, Puttnam had not seen the film but chose Caton-Jones on the basis of a documentary “The Riveter,” which he had done as a student at the National Film School (of which Puttnam, long a governor, is now chairman).

Puttnam’s co-producer, Catherine Wyler, “looked at 36 American directors,” he says, “but we couldn’t find one whose worked we liked as well as Michael’s, and who was available. Michael’s documentary had a Fordian flair.”

Puttnam and his production team were able to locate five B-17s, including one owned by Wyler’s uncle, Dave Tallichet, her mother’s brother, in Anaheim. Two were in France, one of them owned by the French government.

There was a moment, Wyler says, when all five flew in formation over the Imperial Air Museum at Duxford in Cambridgeshire, where three weeks of aerial sequences were shot. “I watched them and I said, ‘My God, I did this.’ ”

Not long afterward, the French government plane crashed on takeoff and broke in half, but miraculously no one was killed and the most serious injuries were two broken legs.

Thereafter the four remaining B-17s did multiple duty, changing paint jobs and configurations to play the various models of the plane.

“This was my first special effects movie,” says Puttnam, “a baptism of fire.” It was tough on the 10 young actors as well, who first spent a week in survival course training, living rough and acquiring the look, and the comradeship, of young but seasoned veterans.

Matthew Modine, not quite 30, plays the pilot; Eric Stoltz the radio operator; D. B. Sweeney the navigator; musician Harry Connick Jr. (who did songs for “When Harry Met Sally”) is the tail gunner; John Astin’s actor son, Sean, is the ball turret gunner; Billy Zane the bombardier. Tate Donovan, Reed Diamond, Courtney Gains and Neil Guintoli round out the crew. David Strathairn is a senior officer, John Lithgow an aggressive stateside Air Force PR man eager to start a war-bond tour and the nearest thing to a villain in the piece.

Designer Stuart Craig mounted an exact-scale mock-up of the plane on gimbals and the lads were able to experience airsickness without ever leaving the sound stage at Pinewood where “Memphis Belle” was completed.

Puttnam brought the eight surviving members of the original Memphis Belle crew to England to spend four days with the actors. They had a lovely time, Puttnam says. “The navigator paired up with our navigator, the tail gunner with the tail gunner, and so on,” for clues as to how it really was.

“At that time,” Wyler says, “the crewmen had a one-in-three chance of survival. The guys were sent over without a change of clothing.” The system of relieving the crews after 25 missions was the first time, as Wyler says, “you could get out of combat without being killed or maimed.” The Memphis Belle was the first B-17 crew to survive the 25 missions.