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Jeff Daniels "Thomas Alden": I just think it's a great story. Everybody
is dying for a good story.
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AP: They don't really know each other, because she hasn't really spent
much time with him.
---
R: But he had forgotten what it meant to be a dad.
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R: It seemed like nothing could ever make them a family.
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R: Until one day.
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R: An amazing adventure was born.
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AA: Can I keep'em?
AA: Hey guys, hey geese, hey, heyhey.
R: Columbia pictures presents: a film by Carroll Ballard, Fly Away Home.
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R: To expedite production, Lishman and his team began the process of
imprinting before the actors even arrived on the location.
TK: You had to make these sort of goose sounds at them.
JD: I've worked with more difficult co-stars. Compared to say, spiders
like in Arachnophobia, the geese are much better.
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Jeremy Ratchford "Glen Seifert": Geese don't like ranger Glen.
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JR: But I am after them, because it's kind of my job.
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[The geese aren't in the cages]
JD: There are millions of small-minded, small-thinking people out there.
Thomas is a guy who sees a bigger picture, who sees beyond it. He says,
'no, no, I'll figure out how to do it.'
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Carroll Ballard: In my experience of making animal movies this was the
easiest time ever. The geese are all handled by Bill Lishman and his son,
Jordy. He knows what they are thinking and what they wanna do or what they
don't wanna do. It's great to have someone like that, who is able to live in
the world of goose, which is another planet.
---
CB: And Anna.. The first day she arrived on the set there was an egg
there that was hatcing and Bill put it in her hand and the whole bird
hatched up in her hand. That made an impression on her.
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CB: Hey that's terrific, because that's what happens in the film.
BL: Out of this first flying with the birds came this idea that it's possible
that we could teach these birds a new migration route.
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R: Lishman and his partner Joe Duff and doctor William Sladen have co-founded
an organisation called Operation migration, dedicated to the restauration of
migration routes for endangered or threatened species of birds.
JD: Lishman's one of these guys who won't take a no for an answer.
---
[TA&AA practising with the plane]
TA: It will take four days on a good weather.
TA: You got it, I'm dot doing anything. It's all you, Amy.
TA: 30 nautical miles to Lake Ontario.
TA: A good push out of the bar, off we go.
BS: Mother goose, come in, they've formed a cueue!
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CB: Most of the films that I have done, the scripts have been based on
some values of people and environment. How good life could be.
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AP: When Amy and her dad try to fly them south, she gets to be good friend
with her father.
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DD: They get connected. You know, to animals, to nature, to each other.
JD: If you have ever had a desire to be a goose, this film is for you.
Copyright 1996 Columbia pictures industries, inc.
Leading the Flock - the Making of Fly Away Home
Terry Kinley "David Alden": It's a movie that whole family might appreciate it.
Dana Delaney "Susan Barnes": It's very very simple and very profound.
Anna Paquin "Amy Alden": It's about geese!
Reader: Amy Alden came half way around the world to live on her father's
farm.
Thomas Alden: Make it just like you remember it.
Amy Alden: I don't.
TA: You don't what?
AA: Remember it.
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R: He was a dreamer.
JD: He's just this guy with ideas, mind is always going. You know, like
scattered genius.
AP: She has never been there... He has all these contraptions around
the house.
AA: What's that?
TA: It's a refridgerator.
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TA: I'm gonna be in the shop a lot.
AA: I'm not a baby. You don't have to hold my hand.
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Susan Barnes: Hi! You must Amy. I've heard a lot about you.
TA: This is Susan. She's a friend of mine.
AA: Excuse me!
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[Bulldozers..]
TA: Hey! What do you think you are doing?? No!
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[The geese hatch from the eggs]
TA: Sure.
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Starring Jeff Daniels. And Academy award winner Anna Paquin. With Dana
Delaney and Terry Kinley.
R: Fly Away Home was inspired by the real life experiences of Canadian
artist and inventor Bill Lishman.
Bill Lishman: We've been sitting here envious of the birds for millions
of years. I'm the first one that got up and flew with the birds.
R: Lishman not only flew with them. He lead the geese on a daring
trans-national flight knowing that migratory routes are a learned behaviour
in geese handed down from gander to gosling. He attempted to lead his
flock south.
BL: We raised a flock of 18 geese and we tried an experiment to fly them
to Virginia, which was succesfull. They followed us to Virginia and we
let them go. And the following spring they returned on their own.
JD: I remember seeing the thing on TV, Lisham going across lake Ontario
with the geese and you just go: Woa!
DD: It's something we all dream about. I've had dreams about that, you know
to be able to do that. We all wanna do that and Bill Lisham actually does it.
R: The key to Lishman's success is a process called imprinting.
AA: Heyheyheyhey!
TA: It's amazing, you know, how they follow her around like that.
Glen Seifert: Yeah, the first living thing a goose sees since it's
born, it automatically assumes it is it's mother.
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AP: They recorded my voice and they played it to the little baby goslings.
TK: Everyone that dealt with the geese in the movie had to imprint
themselves into the psyche of the goose.
JD: Yeah, we had to connect with a bond with the geese. We were on a
weekend retreat like individually. There's this cabin, which had like
a half a dozen of geese and we in the same room with them.
DD: I was only with the female geese. It was a sort of a feminist thing.
JD: Basically you just get down on your hands and knees in front of the
geese and make a lot of very stupid sounds.
DD: They love that.
AP: You're very good at them.
JD: Thank you, Anna.
DD: You have to throw your dignity outside the window.
JD: One way I can get them is a 'ha'.
DD: Because basically you have to become a goose.
JD&DD: [goose sounds]
DD: Come on, your turn!
AP: [shakes her head]
DD: She's too proud!
AA: C'mon, geese, c'mon!
TA: Where do they go?
GS: See, that's the problem. I get calls all the time. They land on people's
front lawns, golf course... That's why we have ordinance 9314: all
domestically raised geese have to be rendered flightless.
GS: What you do is take the wing and you just shave a bit off the cuticle.
AA: What are you doing this?! Stop it!
TA: What do you think you're doing, huh?
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GS: If your birds fly, I'm gonna have to confiscate them.
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GS: So they're flying, aren't they?
AA: What do you want?
GS: I just came by to say hello to your father.
AA: He told you to stay off our property.
AA: Daddy!
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TA: I have this idea. About the geese. I've been watching the way they
follow you around. And it just occurred to me that they just might follow
my aeroplane too.
AA: They're not gonna follow you.
TA: No... But they might if you help me.
---
[Amy and geese]
AA: Hey guys..
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CB: Anna is simply natural. I mean, she is really able to do it without
thinking about it.
CB: She went through an enormous change during the making of this film.
She changed fron beeing a little girl to beeing a little woman.
Barry Strickland: I've seen a lot of flyers in my time. I guess I'm trying
to say is that I think you're a natural.
AA: Do you really think so?
BS: Some people own what it comes to fying. I think you're one of them.
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R: Unlike most directors, Carroll Ballard often directs from behind
a working camera.
CB: I get a lot of my best ideas by shooting, because it's kind of where
I come from. The camera to me is ultimately what's gonna be up there. And
by sooting some of it, wether or not the shot that I shoot is in the movie,
the important thing is that I get ideas that I can't get if I'm standing
off the side, you know, observing a thing.
TK: Film-making has never been about dialog with him. It's been about images
and that's what he concentrates on. He tells his stories through imagery.
R: Carroll Ballard chose Caleb Deschanel to capture the visuals of Fly
Away Home.
CB: I've known Caleb for a long, long time and my first feature, Black
Stallion, he photographed.
DA: And if geese can do this then really rare birds like whooping cranes and
trumpeter swans, maybe they can learn it too. They can start new flocks
and give them a crack at a comeback.
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BL: We're working with sandhill cranes this year. They're such a marvellous
birds, they're so much different from geese. Now if we can apply this to the
endangered species, in particular whooping crane. That's the most endangered
bird in the North America, there's 140 left in the wild, so the idea is to
get a secondary flock and then migrate it to a different location. If we
can do that, if we can establish that migration route for another flock of
whooping cranes, boy that's a dream.
DD: He believes in deep ability to dream and make a dream happen.
TK: We have embellished certain areas of the story, but I think we've stayed
close to the spirit of what he tried to accomplish.
TA: Suppose I built another aircraft and then taught Amy how to fly it.
AA: It's a great idea! You know, birds follow me, I follow you. We'll go south!
TA: Now we're gonna go hard to the right, lean to the right, just like we were
flying.
AA: Dad! Look, they're really flying with me!
TA: Woooh!
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AA: Hello, papa goose! This is SO cool!
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TK: This is a big family epic.
Holter Graham "Barry Strickland": It's something very original.
TK: It's just eccentric enough that it makes you feel kind of hopeful about
life in general.
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