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5 Flying Solo The Aviator and Entrepreneurial Vision The first thing a genius needs is to breathe free air. —Ludwig von Mises, The Anti-Capitalistic Mentality Martin Scorsese is the cinematic champion of the underdog, even when that person happens to be the richest man in the world. That explains how The Aviator (2004) fits into the impressive body of work Scorsese has created in his long and distinguished career as a director. At first glance, the billionaire aviation tycoon Howard Hughes would not appear to be the sort of subject that would attract Scorsese. As a rich and powerful businessman, a handsome playboy, and a media celebrity, Hughes seems to be the archetypal top dog. He is exactly the kind of person a typical Scorsese protagonist can only dream of becoming. A Travis Bickle (Taxi Driver, 1976) or a Rupert Pupkin (King of Comedy, 1983) stares at public figures like Hughes and is driven to commit crimes in the hope of entering the charmed circle of their publicity. Scorsese is the great poet of the American underclass, focusing on the loners, the losers, the misfits, and the malcontents, those on the outside of society, desperately struggling to get in. As an Italian American, he has often dwelled in particular on the plight of immigrant subcultures as they try to fit into the mainstreamofAmericansociety,culminatinginhisdarktributetotheimmigrant experience in Gangs of New York (2002). Howard Hughes would seem to be the opposite of all this. Stepping right out of the American heartland, he was born in Texas and inherited a fortune and hence social respectability. As a record-setting aviator, Hughes seems cut out of the mold of the quintessential all-American hero, Charles Lindbergh—and hence worlds removed from a typical Scorsese psychotic criminal like Max Cady (Cape Fear, 1991). 167 168 Maverick Creators and Maverick Heroes Slumdog Billionaire Yet The Aviator manages to turn Howard Hughes into a trademark Scorsese underdog, the Jake LaMotta of the aviation industry. Scorsese’s Hughes is a street fighter, sometimes a bully and always a scrapper. He is portrayed as continually at odds with the establishment, whether in Hollywood or the aviation industry, and ultimately he runs afoul of the law and finds himself pitted against the U.S. government itself.1 Despite the fact that he is surrounded by beautiful women and at times an adoring public, the film reveals him to be at heart a loner and a misfit, even a freak. To be sure, in pursuing his ambitions, Hughes is far more successful than the typical Scorsese protagonist, and he does accomplish what they can only dream of doing. Yet in the end Hughes is just as tormented as Travis Bickel, Rupert Pupkin, and Jake LaMotta.2 Like these earlier Scorsese figures, he pursues his dreams obsessively, compulsively, monomaniacally, and therefore cannot remain content even when he achieves his goals. Still, Scorsese finds something triumphal, and perhaps even redemptive, in Hughes’s tortured psyche because it is, after all, the source of his creativity . Precisely because the world does not satisfy him, Hughes is always out to change it and improve it. His obsessive perfectionism continually drives him to new heights of achievement. He wants the perfect motion picture, the perfect airplane, and even the perfect woman, and in each case he keeps on molding and remolding reality to make it fit his visionary expectations. Scorsese uses Hughes’s story to explore the thin line between madness and genius, and ultimately shows that the line cannot be drawn clearly. Hughes’s psychological obsessions make his achievements possible, but in the end poison them and incapacitate him. The artist as madman, the madman as artist—here is Scorsese’s deepest point of identification with Hughes and the reason why he is able to give such a sympathetic portrait of a figure who could easily be presented in a very negative light. Scorsese obviously saw a great deal of himself in Hughes, and with good reason. As an independent filmmaker who bucked the Hollywood studio system, as a perfectionist who kept reshooting scenes and reediting film footage, thereby continually going over budget, Howard Hughes was the Martin Scorsese of his day. As Scorsese himself describes Hughes: “When he made Hell’s Angels (a picture I’ve always loved), he was a truly independent filmmaker, and he literally spent years and a small fortune trying to get it right.”3 Many of Scorsese’s films have drawn on autobiographical material, [3.138.114.38...

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