20 facts you might not know about 'Air Force One'

Andrew W. Marlowe came out of the gate with gusto. While Air Force One wasn’t the first screenplay he ever wrote, but it was the first one that was produced. His time in film did not last long, but Marlowe’s career has gone quite well. He was the creator of the crime procedural Castle.

Wolfgang Petersen’s first big movie was the German war epic Das Boot, which is set on a submarine. Many years later, he would direct Air Force One. After that, he left the air and returned to the water. Petersen has also directed The Perfect Storm and Poseidon.

Ford was well into his career as an action star by the time he played President Marshall in Air Force One. He wasn’t the first choice, though. Kevin Costner was offered the role, but he turned it down because he had other commitments. Ford was then offered the part, and he took it.

Oldman plays Egor Korshunov, the Russian terrorist leader who hijacks Air Force One. However, in the end credits, he’s incorrectly listed as being named “Ivan Korshunov.”

A lot of actors like to stay in characters on set, even between scenes. Daniel Day-Lewis is infamous for that. Oldman may have been playing a Russian terrorist, but he did not feel it necessary to stay in character. Petersen said that Oldman was funny and nice on set when he wasn’t filming and then would snap back into character when the time came.

In a classic “one for them, one for me” way, Oldman had plans for the money he got playing the bad guy in this big-budget action movie. He used his fee for costarring in Air Force One to finance the movie Nil By Mouth, his directorial debut.

Close was cast late for the role of Vice President Kathryn Bennett. Her hair was also too short for the part at the time. Given the time crunch, Close wore a wig from her own personal collection to play Bennett. She also asked them to remove a scene where Bennett breaks down and cries.

The terrorists are hoping to get General Ivan Radek released from prison, and we see Radek briefly in the movie. He’s played by German actor Jurgen Prochnow. He was in films like the original Dune and Beverly Hills Cop II, but in one of his first big roles, he played the captain in Petersen’s Das Boot.

A lot of stuff involving Agent Gibbs, the inside man who helps the terrorists take over the plane, was cut from the film. This includes his motivation for why he joined the terrorist plan. He was also revealed to be the mole early on and everybody on the plane knew it, which Petersen felt made the film less suspenseful.

Several crew members from the movie were given the chance to tour the actual Presidential plane commonly known as Air Force One. (Technically, “Air Force One” is any plane the sitting President is on board.) They used this tour experience to help with some scenes, such as when the fake press members are given a tour themselves.

The football game that President Marshall is trying to watch on tape is a 1992 matchup between the Notre Dame Fighting Irish and the Michigan Wolverines. In the movie, they say that Michigan won 14-13, upsetting Fighting Irish fan Marshall. In reality, the game being shown ended in a 17-17 tie.

In Air Force One, the plane has a secret one-person escape pod for the President’s use. The idea of an escape pod on Air Force One appeared in Escape From New York, and it also was used as a conceit in low-budget action films Bermuda Tentacles and Big Game. In real life, no escape pod exists — at least that they’ll tell us about.

Though much of the action in the film takes place on a plane, and thus on a set, Ohio was used for a lot of the other filming locations. General Radek’s palace in Russia was an amalgamation of two buildings in Cleveland, the prison was the Ohio State Reformatory (also seen in Shawshank Redemption), and even the Rammstein Air Base in Germany was an air base in the Buckeye State.

Randy Newman — yes the Randy Newman — was hired to do the score of Air Force One. However, Petersen hated the score that Newman produced, calling it almost a parody of a score. Petersen then hired Jerry Goldsmith, who had to turn the score around in 12 days. Goldsmith managed, but then he vowed to never take a last-minute assignment again.

For his film Clear and Present Danger, Ford petitioned the MPAA to change the rating from an R to a PG-13. It worked, so Ford decided to do it again with Air Force One. This time, the MPAA was unmoved, and Air Force One kept its R rating.

Air Force One brought in roughly $172.6 million domestically and $142 million internationally. All in all, it was the fifth-highest-grossing movie of 1997.

Air Force One was nominated for Best Fight and Best Villain at the MTV Movie Awards but did not win either of them. It was also nominated for two Academy Awards. The movie was in the running for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, but it did not prove more successful with the Academy than the MTV voters.

LaserDiscs have long gone out of popularity, but as with any physical media, there are collectors out there. Among LaserDisc aficionados, the Air Force One LaserDisc is infamous. Apparently, it is extremely prone to “disc rot,” which is when a disc like a CD, DVD, or LaserDisc deteriorates until it is unreadable. Allegedly, there was a problem in Sony’s facility when producing the Air Force One LaserDisc. If a collector has one, they are almost definitely not watching it.

Bill Clinton wasn’t too busy to watch the occasional movie, apparently. That’s especially true when it’s about a President, even a fictional one. Clinton saw Air Force One twice while in office. He liked the movie but noted that its depiction of the plane was a little exaggerated.

President Marshall is able to thwart a terrorist attack on Air Force One effectively just by himself. Maybe that’s what a lot of people want from a president? In 2016, The Wall Street Journal polled people asking them who their favorite fictional president was. The winner? That would be President Marshall.