Howard Hughes was an interesting if not odd person in his own right. There have been films made of him which show how brilliant he was, while at the same time a victim of mental illness. His true story is fascinating, and most of us have seen or read the accounts.
So.... why bother making a film which acts as though it is a true account, when it is not? I found myself bored by this film because...... the true story is much more interesting.
This is about Beatty's career
and it's a personal project about
the love of his kids.
If you are a Beatty fan and like his screen persona and the way he puts the personal into his films, it is as interesting as Hughes himself.
This movie could have been called 'The Legend of Howard Hughes,' or 'Howard Hughes Greatest Hits.' Beatty just used the Hughes character to hang his story on whether it made sense or not.
Recall that at the very beginning there was a disclaimer on the screen that dates, incidents, etc. have been rearranged in making the film. How much is true or false? Who knows?
Watching this movie along with Martin Scorcese's The Aviator, what is clear, is that Howard Hughes was a total jerk. No one would have gone within a mile of him if not for his money. A real anti-social, totally dysfunctional loser.
Hughes died all alone in a dark and stinking room somewhere, unloved, unwanted, a person who never gave a sheet about anyone or anything but himself. His death, abandoned by all, except his paid retainers, was a fitting end to a selfish big shot whose Karma caught up with him.
So very sad.
"Hughes was reported to have died on April 5, 1976, at 1:27 p.m. on board an aircraft owned by Robert Graf and piloted by Jeff Abrams. He was en route from his penthouse at the Acapulco Fairmont Princess Hotel in Mexico to the Methodist Hospital in Houston, Texas. Other accounts indicate that he died on the flight from Freeport, Grand Bahama, to Houston.[90]
After receiving a call, his senior counsel, Frank P. Morse, ordered his staff to get his body on a plane and return him to the United States. It was common that foreign countries would hold a corpse as ransom so that an estate could not be settled. Morse ordered the pilots to announce Hughes' death once they entered U.S. airspace.[91][full citation needed]
His reclusiveness and possible drug use made him practically unrecognizable. His hair, beard, fingernails, and toenails were long—his tall 6 ft 4 in (193 cm) frame now weighed barely 90 pounds (41 kg), and the FBI had to use fingerprints to conclusively identify the body.[92] Howard Hughes' alias, John T. Conover, was used when his body arrived at a morgue in Houston on the day of his death.[93]
A subsequent autopsy recorded kidney failure as the cause of death.[94] Hughes was in extremely poor physical condition at the time of his death. He suffered from malnutrition. While his kidneys were damaged, his other internal organs, including his brain, were deemed perfectly healthy.[34] X-rays revealed five broken-off hypodermic needles in the flesh of his arms.[34] To inject codeine into his muscles, Hughes had used glass syringes with metal needles that easily became detached.[34]
Hughes is buried next to his parents at Glenwood Cemetery in Houston, Texas."