Massaging history into his story

For over five years and through some 15 drafts and even a switch in directors from Michael Mann to Martin Scorsese, writer John Logan has crafted a unique vision of the life of legendary business tycoon Howard Hughes by viewing him through the prism of Hughes’ passion for aviation. The result is “The Aviator,” due out Dec. 17.

“We don’t try to say this is the last word on Howard Hughes,” reflects Logan. “If you hold a diamond in your hand and you turn it, different facets will be illuminated, and in ‘The Aviator’ we illuminate certain facets of Howard Hughes.”

Many may know Hughes largely for the reclusive strangeness of his later years, but Logan honed in on what he felt to be the essential period of Hughes’ life.

As to how he made the vital decision to focus on the 20 or so years from the time Hughes first came to Hollywood to make his air-battle epic “Hell’s Angels” to the single flight of the “Spruce Goose,” Logan says bluntly, “I’ve been a dramatist for 25 years, first as a playwright and now as a screenwriter, and it’s what I do. Instinctively, I knew which scenes were going to communicate the story of Howard Hughes I wanted to tell.”

Having also worked on such historical pictures as “Gladiator” and “The Last Samurai,” Logan says he never tires of discussing the ways in which fact can be used to serve fiction.

“The reality is, I am not a historian,” he explains. “I am a dramatist. ‘The Aviator’ is a work of drama, it is not a work of history, and it does not pretend to be a work of history. I feel it is my responsibility to capture what I imagine is the essence of a historical character dramatically. Does that mean everything in ‘The Aviator’ is true? Absolutely not. However, if in that process you torque, you bend history to such a degree that it no longer reflects the people you are trying to portray, then you have absolutely failed. So for me it’s a process of trying not to torque too much.”