Harrison Ford Frames Documentary About Beloved Aviation Pioneer

For documentary filmmaker Kim Furst, the first major post-production highlight came in January. That's when aviation legend Bob Hoover, now 92, signed off on her documentary Flying the Feathered Edge with the words: "The film captures my life story in an authentic and accurate way. I don’t know how it could have been done any better."

Knowledgeable critics agree. Ahead of the documentary's world premiere Sunday August 10th at the Rhode Island International Film Festival, the 87-minute bio was privately previewed in late July at the EAA AirVenture Museum in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. From Aviation Week reporter Fred George's review:

The film opens with actor and pilot Harrison Ford, airshow performer Sean Tucker and Hoover sitting down at a table in Ford’s hangar to discuss his aviation career. Tucker says he “wouldn’t be alive today” if it weren’t for Hoover’s mentoring. Ford says “You just can’t get to be a Bob Hoover anymore” as he points many of Hoover’s exploits and insights...

After 90 minutes, there were few dry eyes in the house as the credits rolled at the end of the documentary. This is Kim Furst's finest documentary, in Aviation Week’s opinion, a film well worth our readers’ viewing time when it appears in nearby theaters.

On the film's website, there is a also great Director's Note from Furst. She begins by recalling how the project started:

My dear friend and aerobatic legend Sean D. Tucker invited me to a legendary “Bob Hoover Dinner” near Bob’s home, in Palos Verdes, California. That evening, our party of ten, consisting of Bob, Sean, fellow test pilots and air show pilots, Bob’s wife Colleen, Bob’s last air show sponsor Randy Fry, myself, and my friend Jessica Ambats (editor of Plane and Pilot magazine) sat listening to Bob’s stories spanning a truly remarkable career. I was enthralled.

And somewhere along the line, as the laughter and the true friendship between Sean and Bob set the stage for some of the best flying stories anyone has ever heard (and between glasses of wine for all of us I might add, there was a rare Magnum that was about the size of Bob’s wife Colleen, and she’s a normal size woman) I decided that Bob’s story – deeply moving and uniquely American with themes of integrity, skill, competency and heroism – deserved to be a big, glossy, elegant, dynamic feature-length documentary.

[Flying the Feathered Edge]