The Tuskegee Airmen and Red Tails

I picked up The Tuskagee Airmen on DVD today in the bargain bin for $6.99. I’ve just watched it and must say what an interesting story and well acted drama it is.

However, not trying to criticise, I noticed it seems to have been a bit on the low budget side, resorting to lots of real footage that didn’t match, and scenes from Battle of Britain. Plus the continuity of scenes was lacking when aircraft crashed, etc.

The most noticeable allowance for budget in the film was the use of P51D’s in the Morrocan campaign. I think they actually flew P39’s there, didn’t they? And then P51B’s in Italy, wasn’t it? And I’ve read of them flying P47’s too. Did they ever actually fly P51D’s. I don’t know a lot about the Squadron or Group so am keen to be informed properly if need be.

Did Eleanor Roosevelt really fly in the PT17 Stearman?

Something I’d like to ask about – George Lucas is working on a film about the Tuskegee Airmen now, and I wonder what your thoughts are on this. With the millions of WWII stories out there still to be told, should this one be retold?

Or in his retelling will it adress previous “errors” such as basing it on real people and not amalgamations of several people into one, and does he intend to use the right aircraft in his film? At least the special effects and continuity will be better.

Here is a quote from this site about the progress of the film, from but a few days ago on the 7th of October 2005
http://filmforce.ign.com/articles/657/657069p1.htmlago:

George Lucas’s Current Projects
McCallum reports on what the Flanneled One is up to these days.
by Todd Gilchrist

October 7, 2005 – During the recent press day for the November 1, 2005 DVD release of Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith, Sith producer Rick McCallum described a few of the projects, including the long-awaited Indiana Jones sequel, that director George Lucas has scheduled to follow up the completion of the Star Wars series. “He’s gone completely nuts, McCallum said during a panel discussion with Lucasfilm Sr. Vice President Jim Ward. “He’s mad now. He’s doing Indiana Jones, the script, which he should finish by Sunday, and then he’s meeting with Stephen next week to try and figure out where they’re going to go and what changes they want to make.”

One of the projects that was previously announced was a film about African-American fighter pilots called Red Tails, which Lucas would produce, but McCallum said he has a number of irons in the fire. “[Lucas has] another idea for an animated musical, which I won’t tell you about, [and] literally dozens of documentaries. He hasn’t really focused yet on what we’re going to do after we get the [Star Wars TV] series started and once we get Red Tails completed. But that’s really more to do with the fact that we only just completed the kind of worldwide tour of Star Wars in the middle of August. So we’ve just been settling down, trying to get the basic stuff in terms of the animated and live-action series going, and then he’ll start to really get into what he wants to do, which will be interesting to see.

McCallum said that concurrent with the press junket, he and Lucas were working on the Red Tails project as well. “We’re actually meeting today,” McCallum said. “We have fifteen pilots, the original [Tuskegee] pilots, and that’s what I’ve been doing all this morning, which I’ll go rush back to as soon as I’m finished with this. They’re here for the next three days. We’re just going through their experiences and listening to everything that they have to go through, so that’s something that’s really coming up forward.”

McCallum added that Red Tails was only in the incipient stages of development, and may not enter production until late next year. “We don’t have a writer yet,” he said. “We’re starting to really figure out what’s going to come out of these next three days and then we’ll star on that immediately. I don’t think we’ll be shooting that probably until the end of next year or the following year, 2007, but at least we’re making real headway on it.”