Cate Blanchett as: Connie Falzone

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

IMDb | Photos | Videos | Official Site

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.

Related Images

View more images at the gallery.

Promotional image

Related Videos

• Cate Blanchett on director 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.”

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.”
• Mike Newell 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 convicingly a prom-queenm 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. — ‘Ah God, there’s lovely old Cate, whoa gorgeous, don’t hurt that one…’ And she’s not really like that at all. She’s actually very cut and dried.”

Quotes from Cate Blanchett’s character, Connie Falzone

• Nick Falzone (John Cusack): “What is it?”
  Connie Falzone: “Sit down, Nick. I’ve been explaining to the kids what it means that daddy… won’t be around anymore.”
  Nick Falzone: “Hey… hey, hey Connie. Wait a minute, Connie… Connie, do you even want to hear my side of this?”
  Connie Falzone: “What’s your side of my father dying…?”

Trivia & Facts

• Filmed in Canada and USA, view here.
• Cate Blanchett and Billy Bob Thornton once again worked opposite each other in Bandits (2001).
• Billy Bob Thornton wrote the screenplay for The Gift (2001) 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.