He, producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Simon
West and writer Scott Rosenberg were visiting
Folsom, a maximum-security facility in
Sacramento, California — all part of their
research for a $70 million action blockbuster they
were making. After signing a no-hostage waiver
(to ensure that, should a prisoner injure or kill
them, their families wouldn’t sue), they walked
into the yard. It was busy: 2,000 prisoners talking
and exercising. “Gradually they started to
recognise Nic,” says Rosenberg. “And bigger and
bigger groups started to gather around asking
questions.” One wanted to make a film with him.
“And one guy came up to Nic and said, ‘Holy
cow, it’s really you!’ Nic said, ‘Yeah, it’s me.’ And
the guy said, ‘Yeah! It’s you! Jerry Seinfeld!’”
Cage was not impressed. But as more and
more cons approached him, the Hollywood crew
got anxious. “You could feel it getting slightly out
of control,” says Rosenberg. And then, across the
yard, a stabbing. Guards grabbed the filmmakers
and hustled them out of the yard. Fast. “I say this
now,” says Bruckheimer, “I felt okay — but that’s
’cause I’m out of there. I was nervous.” To borrow
a line from the film itself: welcome to Con Air.
The ultimate high-concept napkin pitch
(“Prisoners on a plane!”), it was the pinnacle of
late-’90s action-movie excess, an outrageous film
that cared little for logic, amplifying everything
until the amplifier broke. A Bruckheimer
blockbuster directed by an Englishman who’d
never made a film and starring indie actors who
had no business being in such a production,
it revelled in its own ridiculousness. But as the
Folsom excursion suggests, the craziest parts of
Con Air all happened off-camera.
IRONICALLY FOR A movie so removed from
reality, Con Air is rooted in fact. In August 1993,
Los Angeles Times staff writer Eric Malnic heard
about the Air Operations Division of the US
Marshals Service, which flies prisoners around
the country for transfers, medical examinations
and court appearances on Boeing 727s. Malnic
wrote about it in an article entitled ‘When
Jailbirds Fly, They Always Use ‘Con Air’’. Of
course, a guard told him, convicts dreamt of using
the service to escape, adding that a successful
attempt had never occurred: “If they bite or spit,
we put pantyhose over their heads.”
Donald De Line, then president of Disney’s
adult offshoot Touchstone Pictures, thought it
would make a good movie, and Todd Garner,
then vice president of production, began looking
for a screenwriter. Rosenberg’s screenplay for
Things To Do In Denver When You’re Dead,
a twisted character-driven drama inspired by his
father’s death, was getting a lot of buzz, so in
1994 Garner hired him for Con Air. The writer
spent a jovial three days flying with some cons,
then wrote a draft.
The story’s driving force was Cameron Poe,
a former street hood on the verge of freedom
who just wanted to get home to his daughter but
found himself, says Rosenberg, “on the wrong
plane with the worst possible people you could
be on with”. Characters were musically inspired.
Rosenberg listened to Lynyrd Skynyrd and The
Allman Brothers Band while writing, and Poe
was a take on the respective southern rock
frontmen, long-haired beardies Ronnie Van Zant
and Gregg Allman. Black Guerillas general
Diamond Dog got his name from David Bowie’shit, rapist Johnny 23 was a take on Bruce
Springsteen’s Johnny 99, and cross-dressing
Sally Can’t Dance was a Lou Reed song.
Touchstone gave it to Bruckheimer to
produce. “I thought it was a terrific idea,”
says Bruckheimer now. “It just needed to be
more realised on the page. So we went to work
on it.” On the set of Michael Bay’s The Rock,
Bruckheimer passed the script to Cage, who
loved it. Together the pair started making PoeJUST A FEW DAYS
AFTER WINNING A
BEST ACTOR OSCAR
FOR PLAYING A
SUICIDAL ALCOHOLIC
IN MIKE FIGGIS’ $3.5
MILLION-BUDGETED
DRAMA LEAVING LAS
VEGAS, NICOLAS CAGE
WAS IN PRISON.
Nic Cage sporting a luxuriant head of
hair plus compromise five o’clock
shadow as Cameron Poe.Criminal mastermind
Cyrus The Virus
(John Malkovich).