John Travolta says a near-death experience inspired him to make his latest film, about a plane that suffers an electrical failure. “I knew what it felt like to absolutely think you’re going to die,” he told an audience at a screening of The Shepherd last night. It is based on a short story by Frederick Forsyth, published in 1975. “When I read it I thought: I’ve lived this,” said Travolta. In 1992, he was flying a plane over Washington DC with his family onboard when the electrical systems failed and he was forced to carry out an emergency landing at Washington National Airport. “I had two good engines but no instruments, no electric, nothing and I thought it was over,” he said.
Forsyth’s The Shepherd tells an eerily similar story, of a young pilot who flies home for Christmas and faces an electrical failure. “I purchased the rights to this book to make it into a film but because it was right after Pulp Fiction, I was doing one movie after another,” Travolta said. “Of course, I was young enough then that I could have played this part [the pilot].” He instead plays the titular shepherd, an older character. On Ben Radcliffe, the actor who took on the lead pilot role, Travolta said “he's so convincing and he’s not a pilot but he played that so beautifully."
"I was with him every second of the way. He didn’t have a false note. That’s hard to pull off. We see a lot of actors in cockpits and often it doesn’t go so well," he said. Forsyth, who also wrote The Day of the Jackal, was at the screening, along with acclaimed Mexican filmmaker Alfonso Cuarón, who backed the film. Forsyth said he gives the film “a definite thumbs-up”. Not a bad review.
