Howard Hughes as portrayed by director Martin Scorsese in "Aviator"

For those of us who were working the news desks about the time Howard Hughes moved to Las Vegas as a recluse, Hughes was a nutty figure of dubious successes. The move "Aviator" clarifies some impressions of the man, showing him to be a visionary and a mentally deeply troubled person, warped perhaps by his mother’s’s warning that "you are never really safe."
Hughes was a complex man and the movie shows him as he was, warts and all. He inherits the Hughes Tool Co., which provides him with the funds to make the blockbuster "Hell’s Angels," which he reworked when sound came to Hollywood. continued to make major films as well a setting world flying records. He crashes once but is nursed back to life.
Hughes (played by Leonardo DiCaprio) appears with many characters taken from real life, such as Katharine Hepburn (Cate Blachett), Ava Gardner (Kate Beckinsale), Pan Am’s JuanTrippe (Alec Baldwin), aide Noah Dietrich (John C. Reilly) and Sen. Owen Brewster (Alan Alda).
This was an award winning film with Blanchett wining a supporting Oscar award. It runs 170 minutes and is rated PG-13. It’s available at the Carson City Library.

Cast
As appearing in screen credits:
Leonardo DiCaprio as Howard Hughes
Cate Blanchett as Katharine Hepburn
John C. Reilly as Noah Dietrich
Kate Beckinsale as Ava Gardner
Alec Baldwin as Juan Trippe
Alan Alda as Senator Owen Brewster
Ian Holm as Professor Fitz
Danny Huston as Jack Frye
Gwen Stefani as Jean Harlow
Jude Law as Errol Flynn
Adam Scott as Johnny Meyer
Matt Ross as Glen "Odie" Odekirk
Kelli Garner as Faith Domergue
Frances Conroy as Katharine Houghton
Brent Spiner as Robert E. Gross
Stanley DeSantis as Louis B. Mayer
Edward Herrmann as Joseph I. Breen
Willem Dafoe as Roland Sweet
J.C. MacKenzie as Ludlow Ogden Smith
Raymond Ducasse as Roscoe Turner
Kevin O'Rourke as Spencer Tracy
Michael-John Wolfe as Cary Grant

　
　　Making the movie
Hughes crashes in a field; screenshot showing the simulated bipack color film used in scenes depicting events before 1935.
For the first 50 minutes of the film, scenes appear in shades of only red and cyan blue; green objects are rendered as blue. This was done, according to Scorsese, to emulate the look of early bipack color movies, in particular the Multicolor process, which Hughes himself owned. Many of the scenes depicting events occurring after 1935 are treated to emulate the saturated appearance of three-strip Technicolor. Other scenes were stock footage colorized and incorporated into the film. The color effects were created by Legend Films.
Movie models
In Aviator, scale models were used to duplicate many of the flying scenes. When Martin Scorsese began planning his aviation epic, a decision was made to film flying sequences with scale models rather than CGI special effects. The critical reaction to the CGI models in Pearl Harbor (2001) had been a crucial factor in Scorsese's decision to use full-scale static and scale models in this case. The building and filming of the flying models proved both cost-effective and timely.
The primary scale models were the Spruce Goose and the F-11; both miniatures were designed and fabricated over a period of several months by New Deal Studios.[5] The 375 lb (170 kg) Spruce Goose model had a wingspan of 20 ft (6.1 m) while the 750 lb (340 kg) XF-11 had a 25 ft (7.6 m) wingspan. Each was built as a motion control miniature used for "beauty shots" of the model taking off and in flight as well as in dry dock and under construction at the miniature Hughes Hangar built as well by New Deal Studios. The XF-11 was reverse engineered from photographs and some rare drawings and then modeled in Rhinoceros 3D by the New Deal art department. These 3D models of the Spruce Goose as well as the XF-11 were then used for patterns and construction drawings for the model makers. In addition to the aircraft, the homes that the XF-11 crashes into were fabricated at 1:4 scale to match the 1:4 scale XF-11. The model was rigged to be crashed and
break up several times for different shots.
Additional castings of the Spruce Goose flying boat and XF-11 models were provided for new radio controlled flying versions assembled by the team of model builders from Aero Telemetry.[6] The Aero Telemetry team was given only three months to complete three models including the 450 lb H-1 Racer, with an 18 ft (5.5 m) wingspan, that had to stand-in for the full scale replica that was destroyed in a crash, shortly before principal photography began.