Tuskegee Airmen take flight in 'Red Tails'

Think "George Lucas," and one conjures up intergalactic imperial hostilities, moon-size Death Stars and futuristic fantasies. Yet, his latest project -- 23 years in the making -- involves propeller-equipped, fixed-wing aircraft, a very earthly conflict and a not-so-recent past both shameful and triumphant.

"Red Tails," the Anthony Hemingway-directed, Lucasfilms production opening Jan. 20, is about the legendary Tuskegee Airmen -- the African-American pilots of World War II whose legacy has been aeronautical, sociological and inspirational. At a time when blacks were told they lacked the right stuff to be aerial combat pilots, the airmen eventually flew more than 1,500 missions, destroyed or damaged hundreds of enemy aircraft and ended up earning 96 Distinguished Flying Crosses. They helped change their country by changing perceptions.

"Perception is everything," said Roscoe Brown, the nearly 90-year-old educator and surviving Tuskegee Airman, who was a technical adviser on the film -- a war film, albeit one with a real sense of history. " 'Red Tails' is about perception. It's also about action. And it's also about overcoming obstacles."

"I think the movie is about Dr. Roscoe Brown," joked the film's star, Terrence Howard.

"Go on, Terrence," Brown said.

Interviewed together in Manhattan recently, Howard and Brown, who has a summer home in Sag Harbor, addressed various aspects of the movie, one that Lucas has been developing for more than two decades and in which Howard plays Col. A.J. Bullard, who has to battle the Pentagon to get his airmen -- originally part of a project at the historically black Tuskegee Institute -- into real combat.

"He's a composite," said Howard. "But I based him more than anything else on Brig. Gen. Benjamin O. Davis," one of the group's leaders. "While we were shooting in Prague, Dr. Brown reminded me that Davis at that time was approachable, but you didn't make jokes with him. He was like General Washington: You never saw anyone with their arm around Washington. He would talk, he would smile, but he maintained the stature of his position."

"We were about 21, 22 years old," said Brown. "Davis was only 32, 33, but he was a very direct, austere guy. He would socialize at night and play cards and smile, but when he told you to do something, you knew what he meant, and I think Terrence did a good job of projecting that in the acting." Howard added that Davis was responsible for encouraging the young men under his command but also "reminding them of their responsibility. He had to remember the goal."

A '40s war-movie flavor

The chief goal, of course, was defeating the Axis powers, which "Red Tails" views from an air base inside 1944 Italy, where a group of eager but frustrated airmen are waiting for a chance to test their mettle. Under the command of Maj. Emmanuel Stance (Cuba Gooding Jr.), they include daring Joe "Lightning" Little (David Oyelowo), Marty "Easy" Julian (Nate Parker) and Maurice "Bumps" Wilson (Michael B. Jordan). There's a '40s-style war-movie flavor to "Red Tails," with its wisecracking camaraderie and character-driven narrative. But the technical aspects are true to life.

"The way it would work was that Rick would have me watch what was going on," Brown said, referring to producer Rick McCallum, "and if something was done differently from the way we did it, I would tell them. Then I had 'pilot school' for the young actors -- how to sit in a cockpit, how to move a stick, how to move their arms, how to look around. We did that two or three times, and it was a lot of fun." There was nothing fake about the intensity of the action, he said. "The scene where Lightning shoots up the train," Brown said, referring to an early sequence, "that's something we actually did. I shot up a train once and flew so low I knocked off about half my wing. And a piece of the locomotive wound up in my plane. So that was very true. And very dramatic."

Brown recalled downing one plane, and a pilot he simply outflew. "I dropped right behind him and I shot, bang, boom. And I felt badly because he was a young pilot who really shouldn't have been up there, he didn't know what he was doing. And I blew him up."

"Did he die?" Howard asked.

"Guess what -- you blew him up, he's gone," Brown said.

Sending a message

Howard and Brown are convinced the movie will provide more than entertainment.

"Hopefully," Brown said, "this movie will send a message to young African-Americans, and poor white people for that matter, that you can overcome prejudices and stereotypes through excellence of performance. But it also requires that you do a lot of work. Progress is not free; as Frederick Douglass said, 'No progress without struggle,' and some of our more affluent African-Americans tend to forget that."

Howard agreed: "I'm glad George Lucas put his money up and made this movie possible, but now it's the black community's responsibility to make sure we have the next $100 million action film. And create the next generation of Roscoes."