I've shot a lot of pilots that have never seen the light of day, jobs that have fallen apart or gotten canceled, so I'm really weary about what contracts I sign and where I swear my loyalty to.
I've done 10 or 11 pilots for network television, which is ridiculous.
I've done, like, eight pilots, and every time, everyone thinks it's going to go for 10 years.
As a physician and as a pilot, I think it lets me be a pretty good translator having one foot in the medical world and one foot in the flying world. Sometimes when the medical guys come in and speak medical stuff to the pilots, the pilots really don't know what they're saying.
I can still remember them wheeling the black and white TV sets into our classroom at school so we could watch the men landing on the Moon, and that obviously had a huge impact. I later found out those people flying Apollo were ex-military test pilots, so I decided to join the Air Force and become a test pilot.
Very often when I go in to meet for movies or pilots, I'm put on videotape. I hate the notion that that tape is going to sit on a shelf and never get better.
My family are doctors and pilots and people involved in indigenous First Nation land rights; not overtly artistic.
In aviation they have auto pilot and color radar and a lot of other instrumentation that is a backup for pilots. It's really brought the incidents of plane crashes way down. Same thing ought to happen in the medical industry, I think.
During my career as an airline pilot, I had the opportunity to be a check and training captain. Part of this job was to train and test experienced pilots to ensure that they had the necessary knowledge and skills to safely and efficiently operate those magnificent big jets.
I did pilots here and there but mostly I was doing little bits in movies.
