Pushing Tin (1999)

Cate Blanchett as: Connie Falzone

Director: Mike Newell
Selected Cast: John Cusack, Billy Bob Thornton, Angelina Jolie
Written by: Darcy Frey and Glen Charles
Release Year: 1999
Genre: Comedy / Drama / Romance
MPAA Rating: R

 

 

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Nick and the other boys working the hotspot of air traffic control in New York are impressed with themselves, to say the least. They thrive on the no-room-for-error, fast-paced job and let it infect their lives. The undisputed king of pushing tin, “The Zone” Falzone, rules his workplace and his wedded life with the same short-attention span that gets planes where they need to be in the nick of time. That is, until Russell Bell, a new transfer with a reputation for recklessness but a record of pure perfection shatters the tensely-held status quo. The game of one-upmanship between the two flies so high as to lead Nick into Russell’s bed with his wife. His sanity slipping just as fast as his hold on #1, Cusack’s controller is thrown out-of-control when Thornton’s wanderer quietly leaves town. Nick must now find a way to regain his sanity and repair his marriage before he breaks down completely.

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Quotes from Cate Blanchett

  • On Mike Newell: “Mike is an absolutely fantastic major general. He understands the balance between the comedy and the pathos and he was such a great audience for which to play.”
  • On her character, Connie Falzone: “[Connie] is the goodness in the film. Her sense of self lies in the world she has created, her cushions, her family, and the certainty that she and her husband share an uncoditional love. Of course, ultimately she still ends up like Munch’s The Scream.” (Elle US, May 1999)

Quotes from Others

  • Mike Newell:
    — On the cast: “I’m so devoted to the entire cast. They are a very talented, very odd, very ill-assorted bunch that works perfectly for the film. There is no safe average in the cast and no safe average in the film. You know, you set out to collect this weird platoon of people who are real but who also have to spiral off into this extraordinary kind of comic logic. They all are so wonderfully adept and full of technique and invention that I simply just let them go… I rode them with a very light rein because they were so magnificently inventive.”
    — On Cate Blanchett: “[Cate Blanchett is] an absolute chameleon. She’s entirely inside the thing. In Elizabeth you see this rather horse-faced girl, but in Pushing Tin she is magnificently and convincingly a prom-queen with a great big cloud of bouffant hair, long nails, and jeans that are painted on her — a Long Island housewife with not quite enough taste and a little bit too much money, but very sexy. What she’s determined to be in a film is adorable and tender and lovable, and by God she is. And that’s what she brought along to the set every day.”
    — “Cate’s [Blanchett] a killer, and I mean that in the best way. She’s very grounded, savvy, and worked out, with a clear sense of her own ability and worth. As an actress, she’s like a jeweler and a gem; she takes herself out of the black velvet setting and holds different facets of her talent up to the light; she only shows you parts, but you realize how many carats that diamond has.”
    — “While Connie is a victim, she’s not a dishcloth. She’s the emotional center of the film. Cate [Blanchett] played that, not ruthlessly, but absolutely.”

Trivia & Facts

  • Filmed in Canada and USA.
  • Cate Blanchett and Billy Bob Thornton once again worked opposite each other in Bandits (2001).
  • Billy Bob Thornton wrote the screenplay for The Gift (2000) where Cate Blanchett plays the lead character, Annie Wilson.
  • Billy Bob Thornton and Angelina Jolie first met on the set of this movie. They fell in love and were briefly married.
  • Billy Bob Thornton and John Cusack attended air traffic control schooling in Toronto as part of their role research.

At the Edinburgh Premiere