Flying in film

One of the few survivors, he and his dog Jasper live at an abandoned airport, their only neighbor, Bangley, a trigger-happy, grumpy man. Hig flies his Cessna 182 around the perimeter to detect marauders or hikes the woods and takes Jasper fishing. Then, one day, he captures a radio transmission, indicating that there’s life beyond the perimeter….

Peter Heller, author of The Dog Stars, always goes to extremes. Well known in the outdoors world as a whitewater expedition kayaker and an extreme surfer, he writes “about what I’m excited about at the time, so when I learned to fly, I wrote The Dog Stars,” he said. Mind you, when Heller talks about learning to fly, he means bush flying into backcountry strips, and that became a topic of his 2012 novel.

Fast forward 14 years, director Ridley Scott, famous for movies including Hannibal, Blade Runner, Alien, and The Martian, acquired the movie rights and production wrapped up this year. The movie was shot in the Abruzzo, Veneto, and Friuli-Venezia Giulia regions in Italy and Heller spent a couple of days there to watch the filming. “It was unreal getting on set,” he said. Sometimes movies based on novels don’t much resemble the original version, but Heller is sanguine about that. The screenplay was written by Mark L. Smith and Heller thinks it’s “going to be fairly true to the book. They even called and asked for permission to add a scene for cinematic purposes. It’s going to be a new discrete work of art.” While Heller was on set he noticed that certain elements in the novel—a tower in the woods, a deer stand—were depicted from the book. Heller wrote his own aircraft, a white and blue 1956 Cessna 182 called the Beast, into the novel. For reasons of contrast and so the airplane would really pop in the flying scenes, the Cessna 182 used in the movie is yellow, but it’s still called the Beast. Heller also mentioned that Scott left copies of the novel in the hotel for talent and staff to read and understand the vision behind it, and Heller thinks Scott wouldn’t have done that “unless they wanted to be true to the book.”

Jacob Elordi plays the character Hig in the movie; a stunt pilot is involved in the flying scenes. The other main characters are portrayed by Josh Brolin (Bangley), Margaret Qualley (Cim), and Guy Pearce (Pops). One day on the set in the producer’s tent, Heller was able to watch Elordi act a poignant scene, mist generators and rain setting the atmosphere. He was so moved to see how his novel was coming to life that “I had tears in my eyes.” He said while Elordi’s better-looking than his idea of Hig, he embodied him perfectly.

Most writers only get an hour on set, but Heller was able to stay a couple of days and got to talk to the crew and other people involved in making the movie and he said that he felt there was “something about bush flying that fascinates people and is exciting even for nonpilots.”

The Dog Stars is set to appear exclusively in movie theaters on August 28, and a special edition of the novel will be published at the same time.

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