Always

Always
Directed by	Steven Spielberg
Produced by	Steven Spielberg Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall
Written by	Jerry Belson Diane Thomas
Starring	Richard Dreyfuss Holly Hunter John Goodman Brad Johnson Audrey Hepburn
Music by	John Williams
Cinematography	Mikael Salomon
Editing by	Michael Kahn
Studio	Amblin Entertainment
Distributed by	Universal Studios United Artists
Release date(s)	December 22, 1989 (1989-12-22)
Running time	122 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Budget	$29.5 million
Box office	$43,858,790

Always is a 1989 romantic drama film directed by Steven Spielberg, and starring Richard Dreyfuss, Holly Hunter, John Goodman, Brad Johnson and Audrey Hepburn in her final film appearance. The film was distributed by Universal Studios and United Artists.

Always is a remake of the 1943 romantic drama A Guy Named Joe although Spielberg did not treat the film as a direct homage to the earlier World War II melodrama.^[1] The film follows the same basic plot line: the spirit of a recently dead expert pilot mentors a newer pilot, while watching him fall in love with his surviving girlfriend.^[2] The names of the four principal characters of the earlier film are all the same, with the exception of the Ted Randall character, who is called Ted "Baker" in the remake and Pete's last name is "Sandich", instead of "Sandidge".

Plot

Pete Sandich (Dreyfuss) is an aerial firefighter, flying a war-surplus A-26 bomber dropping fire retardant slurry to put out forest wildfires. His excessive risk taking in the air deeply troubles his girlfriend, Dorinda Durston (Hunter), a pilot who doubles as a dispatcher, and is also of concern to his best friend, Al Yackey (Goodman), a fellow fighter. On one flight, Pete makes one extra drop, runs out of fuel, and barely manages to glide onto the runway.

He shrugs off his brush with death and surprises Dorinda with a stunning white dress for her birthday, although it turns out to be the wrong day. Irate at first, she eventually puts on the dress anyway, and the couple dance to their song, "Smoke Gets in Your Eyes".

Al sits Pete down for a beer and likens their situation to wartime England (Quonset huts, warm beer, and hotshot pilots flying bombers) in order to emphasize the key difference: "Pete, there ain't no war here. And this is why you're not exactly a hero for taking these chances you take." Al suggests Pete take a safer job that has just opened up, training firefighting pilots in Flat Rock, Colorado. Pete flatly refuses to consider it. However, when Dorinda confronts Pete and tells him that she hates worrying about him all the time, he decides to take Al's advice.

Pete takes one last mission, despite Dorinda's premonition. While on a bombing run, Al's Catalina water bomber hits a burning tree and an engine catches fire. When Al's fire suppression equipment fails to put it out, it looks like he is doomed. In desperation, Pete makes a dangerously steep dive to skillfully douse the engine with slurry. He saves Al, but in trying to recover from his dive, his bomber flies through the forest fire. He manages to pull up and climb back up to a safe altitude beside Al. However, a small flame in one engine causes his airplane to blow up.

The next thing he knows, Pete is getting his hair cut in a forest clearing. His supernatural barber, Hap (Audrey Hepburn), explains Pete's new role. Just as he was inspired when he needed it most, it is now his turn to provide Spiritus ("the divine breath") to others. As she puts it, “They hear you inside their own minds as if it were their thoughts.”

Six months have elapsed in the real world. Pete is assigned to guide a new firefighting pilot, Ted Baker (Johnson). To Pete's anguish, Ted falls in love with Dorinda, and she begins to respond and recover from her mourning. Pete selfishly tries to sabotage the growing relationship. The next day, Pete wakes up, back in the forest with Hap. She reminds him his life is over, and also he was sent back not just to inspire Ted, but to say good-bye to Dorinda.

Ted, with Pete's inspiration, puts together an extremely dangerous mission to rescue a ground crew of firefighters surrounded by flames. Unable to bear the thought of losing another loved one, Dorinda steals Ted's aircraft to do the job herself. Pete, unseen to Dorinda, tries to talk her down, but she won't listen. Dorinda completes the dangerous task, with Pete's unseen help. On the way back, he tells her all the things he wanted to say, but never got around to while he was alive.

Dorinda is forced to make an emergency water landing on the lake. As the aircraft sinks into the lake and the cabin fills with water, Dorinda appears reluctant to try to escape until Pete appears before her, extending his hand. She takes his hand and they swim to the surface. As Dorinda wades ashore (now alone) to the waiting Ted and Al, Pete releases her heart so that Ted can take his place, saying, “That's my girl… and that's my boy.”

As Dorinda and Ted embrace, Pete smiles and walks the other way down the runway to take his place in heaven.

Cast

As appearing in screen credits (main roles identified):^[3]

• Richard Dreyfuss as Pete Sandich
• Holly Hunter as Dorinda Durston
• John Goodman as Al Yackey
• Brad Johnson as Ted Baker
• Audrey Hepburn as Hap
• Roberts Blossom as Dave
• Keith David as Powerhouse
• Ed Van Nuys as Nails
• Marg Helgenberger as Rachel
• Dale Dye as Don
• Brian Haley as Alex
• James Lashly as Charlie
• Michael Steve Jones as Grey

Production

During production, Spielberg confided that while making Jaws in 1974, he and Dreyfuss had traded quips from A Guy Named Joe, considered a "classic" war film, that they both wanted to remake.^[4] As an "inside joke," A Guy Named Joe is aired in a scene in Spielberg's Poltergeist.^[2] Dreyfuss had seen the 1943 melodrama "at least 35 times."^[4] For Spielberg, who recalled seeing it as a child late at night, "it was one of the films that inspired him to become a movie director,"^[4] creating an emotional connection to the times that his father, a wartime air force veteran had lived through.^[5][6] The two friends quoted individual shots from the film to each other and when the opportunity arose, years later, were resolved to recreate the wartime fantasy.

Principal photography took place in Kootenai National Forest, Montana, with some scenes filmed in and around Libby, Montana. Some 500 people from nearby Libby, Montana were recruited for the film as extras to act as wildland firefighters. Those scenes set in "Flat Rock, Colorado" were filmed at and around the Ephrata airport in eastern Washington.

Two A-26 fire bombers (No. 57]^[7] and No. 59^[8]) were prominently featured in Always.^[9] The flying for the film was performed by well-known film pilot Steve Hinton^[10] and Dennis Lynch,^[11] the owner of the A-26s.

Reception

The film opened at #5 at that week's box office, grossing $3,713,480, competing with Christmas Vacation, Tango & Cash (opening the same weekend), The War of the Roses and Back To The Future Part II. Although now considered a "box office flop" when compared to other Spielberg properties, the film brought back modest returns, grossing $43,858,790 in the U.S. and $30,276,000 on foreign territories, for a $74,134,790 worldwide total.^[12]

More importantly, Always was considered a departure from the usual Spielberg blockbuster and was not critically acclaimed. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times considered it "dated" and more of a "curiosity," calling it Spielberg's "weakest film since his comedy 1941".^[4] Variety gave it a more generous accolade: "Always is a relatively small scale, engagingly casual, somewhat silly, but always entertaining fantasy."^[13] Recent reviews have been slightly more charitable and rank the film as pleasant fare with a 61% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.^[14]

Awards and nominations

Although only moderately successful commercially, Always was nominated in 1991 for the Saturn Award as Best Fantasy Film, while Jerry Belson was nominated for the Best Writing category of the award at the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films (USA). A number of critics have now considered the film as the progenitor of a new crop of "ghost" genre films including Ghost (1990).^[15][16]

See also

• List of firefighting films

References

Notes

Citations

Bibliography

External links

• Always at the Internet Movie Database
• Always at AllRovi
• Always on Rotten Tomatoes

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