Travolta turned down Flight over 'silly' plane action

John Travolta has revealed that he turned down the lead role in Denzel Washington vehicle 'Flight'.

The 'Pulp Fiction' star and amateur pilot said that it was the realism of the aviation in film, rather than the lead character, that turned him off.

“The funny thing was it was written for me. But it was not written well enough yet - the plane stuff, not the character. I loved that he was an alcoholic and I loved his journey a lot. But the plane stuff was silly, from my perspective,” he told Contactmusic.

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“Flying upside down - it’s a bit much. I just wanted those bits to get redone. I asked the writer, ‘Did you not ask a professional or someone who knew something?’ And he said, ‘I didn’t want any interference - I just wanted the screenplay done. To hell with that stuff!'”

However, in spite of Travolta's claims, an interview with John Gatins, the film's screenwriter, suggests that he did much research for the screenplay, and also that the idea of the inverted plane - one of the film's most memorable sequences - was inspired by actual events.

“There are a couple of accidents that it was based on,” he told Movieline. “But there was a crash off Oxnard, CA in 2000. A pilot told me to look at that and it was fascinating. Air traffic control asked them to take the plane out over [Santa Monica Bay] so as to limit collateral damage on the ground.

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“And they did fly it inverted but they put the plane back over and lost control. It was an un-flyable plane, it wasn't their fault. They did an amazing job. And this pilot said that had they known what was really wrong with the plane, they might have known their only recourse was to keep it inverted and descend. It was really rough.”