The Aviator was nominated for 11 Oscars for the 2005 Academy Awards. It won five Oscars for the following:
1) Best Supporting Actress – Cate Blanchett
2) Best Art Direction
3) Best Cinematography
4) Best Costume Design
5) Best Film Editing

If you’re thinking of going to Long Beach to see the Spruce Goose, you can forget about it. In 1992, the Spruce Goose was moved from its home in Long Beach to the Evergreen Aviation Museum in McMinnville, Oregon. Tourism at the museum has drastically increased since the release of The Aviator movie.

Leonardo DiCaprio, who played Howard Hughes in The Aviator, was the brains behind the ideas for the movie. It was DiCaprio who found the producers/directors for the movie (versus the directors/producers finding the actor). DiCaprio was also an executive producer for the movie.

If you watch The Aviator closely, you will notice that it subtly changes color themes. This is done in accordance with three different time periods: 1920’s through 1938, 1938 through the 1940’s, the very end of the movie, where the palette is more modern. Visual effects supervisor Rob Legato comments, “The transitions are very subtle and natural so it becomes more of a subtext to the story. This was very important to Marty. He didn’t want to make a grand statement with the visual effects, but rather, wanted them to be a integral part of the storytelling. That’s simply the way he does things.”

Howard Hughes was only a kid when he set three major ambitions for his life:

1) To be the best pilot.
2) To be the world’s best filmmaker.
3) To be the richest man in the world.

By age 11 he had already constructed a wireless broadcast set in Houston, believed to be the first one there. He showed true genius early in his life.

The Spruce Goose was not the name Howard Hughes gave his legendary plane. His name for the plane was The Hercules. The plane became known as The Spruce Goose from media and other detractors that thought the plane was a bad idea and would never fly. It was the name detractors and media gave it that stuck. The Hercules holds the record to this date for the flying machine with the longest wingspan.

Suffering from paranoia, Hughes avoided the press for two decades starting in 1958.

Howard Hughes died in April, 1976. Fingerprints had to be taken to make sure it was him as he had become unrecognizable from his reclusive and paranoia behavior.