Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 11, 1994 TAG: 9406140049
SECTION: SPECTATOR PAGE: S-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By BOB THOMAS Associated Press Writer
DATELINE: LOS ANGELES LENGTH: Medium
Diane Keaton, who portrays the pioneering flier in a television movie, contends that's the truth.
"Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight," airing on TNT beginning Sunday, traces the flier's final years until she disappeared in July 1937 near Howland Island. Bruce Dern appears as her exploitive husband, George Putnam, and Rutger Hauer is Fred Noonan, the boozy navigator lost with her.
The movie portrays Earhart's final flight as one of over-confidence and miscalculation, her Lockheed Electra running out of fuel before its destination. "She made a mistake," Keaton concludes.
The actress doesn't believe the recurring rumors that Earhart and Noonan became captives of the Japanese, who already had plans of conquering the Pacific.
With her customary thoroughness, she read all the books she could find about Earhart and discovered special help in her portrayal from newsreel footage.
"I got to see all the raw footage that was shot of her," Keaton said. "At that time, celebrity had a more formal aspect to it. There were no in-depth interviews, and it was all very innocent-looking. She was a very captivating person."
Keaton observed that Earhart was a feminist at a time when the breed was fairly rare. She had proved women could duplicate men's accomplishments by flying the Atlantic solo in 1928, earning the title of "Lady Lindy."
With a talent for promotion more typical of today's age, Putnam exploited his wife's aerial accomplishments via endorsements, lectures, personal appearances and the like. He also convinced manufacturers to supply hot new planes for her flights, including a final plan of circling the globe via the equator.
"Putnam was brilliant at what he did," Keaton said. "He made her the most famous female flier, though there were others who were competent, more brilliant than she was.
"She was the one who had all three things - a very captivating personality, the backing of a powerful man, and the will to do it all."
"Amelia Earhart: The Final Flight" reproduces speed planes of the 1930s and recaptures the time when flying was a personal experience. The filming required Keaton to take to the air.
"I'm terrified to fly," she confessed. "That was a motivating factor in taking the job - maybe I could conquer my fear. Unfortunately, it changed nothing. I think the idea of going up in the air is for me, Diane, a little too poetic.
"I went up in those little things for the movie," she said. "It's strange - the takeoff in a smaller plane is a more pleasant experience. You're going much slower; there's a kind of grace to it that you don't feel in a 747. With all that power in a 747, you feel if something should go wrong in those first three minutes, it's really over.
"But in one of those small Beechcraft, which is what we were using for Amelia's plane, it was delicate and gradual. You felt you could adjust something if you were a smart pilot. And she could. She crashed a lot, and she survived."
Keaton has become identified, on and off the screen, with her 1977 Oscar Best Actress performance as Annie Hall, the wiggy, vaguely confused character who has trouble speaking a complete sentence. Yet in an interview, Keaton is refreshingly articulate.
And she has follow through: She has published two books of photographs, and directed the documentary "Heaven" and a segment of "Twin Peaks."
Now, she is starting her most ambitious project as a director, the Disney film "Unstrung Heroes." She describes it as a coming-of-age story about a Jewish boy who loses his mother to cancer and runs off to his crazy uncles. It stars Andie McDowell, Michael Richards and John Turturro.
"Amelia Earhart" is not Keaton's first venture into TV movies. Two years ago, she appeared in another cable feature, "Running Mates." She said she enjoys the accelerated pace in television.
"There is no `down time,' " she observed. "I like that. When you have all that down time in the trailer, you do a lot of thinking and fantasizing, which is no good for anyone. You start to worry. In TV, there's no time for worry. You just have to work."
After portraying the famed flier, Keaton came to this conclusion:
"I think she was somebody who didn't really belong on the earth. I think she was driven by this dream: to conquer new worlds in the air. She had a very strong mission.
"But she was unknowable. That informed her death, too. Her death was sort of like her life: Nobody could ever know enough. That she disappeared and nobody ever found her is absolutely correct for Amelia Earhart. The more I saw her on the footage, the more I fell in love with her. But the more I could never get enough of her."
by CNB