While Atlanta screenwriter Brian Egeston was learning how to fly a plane in 2014, an instructor played an actual flight traffic controller recording of a civilian with minimal flight experience who landed a King Air twin-engine turboprop in Florida after the pilot died midflight on Easter Sunday in 2009.
Intrigued by the story, Egeston found a P.O. box address for the man, a Louisiana pharmacist named Doug White, and wrote him a letter telling him that he wanted to create a movie about his experience. Egeston then drove his Chevy pick-up truck eight hours to White’s home and they spent three days bonding.
“I felt comfortable around him,” White said. “I felt he was sincere.” White gave Egeston the rights to his story.
But it would take nearly a decade for Egeston to turn the film into reality. Dubbed “On a Wing and a Prayer,” the movie, an action thriller with faith-based elements, debuts on Amazon Prime April 7 and features Dennis Quaid playing White with Heather Graham as White’s wife and Jesse Metcalfe as a pilot who helps talk him down to safety.
Egeston incorporates God into the story in a way that White felt was authentic. “I am a screenwriter but also a man of faith,” Egeston said. “At the same time, I wanted to tell the story in a way that wasn’t preachy.”
By the time he wrote the script, his only major writing credit was for Tyler Perry. As Egeston pitched the movie, he faced a wall of noes from production companies. “I’m not Aaron Sorkin or Tyler or Kenya Barris,” he said.
It also didn’t help him that Tom Hanks played Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger in 2016 in “Sully,” the well-publicized heroic real-life story of Sullenberger landing a disabled US Airways plane onto the Hudson River in 2009, resulting in zero deaths.
But in 2019, Atlanta producer Autumn Bailey-Ford managed to get the script to Roma Downey, the “Touched by an Angel” star who had made an array of faith-based programs like History Channel’s “The Bible” with her husband Mark Burnett (”Survivor,” “The Apprentice”). Downey loved Egeston’s work and convinced MGM, now owned by Amazon, to give it a green light.
With Downey in the mix, the film was able to land Quaid, a popular, reliable box office draw with 40-plus years of movie credits ranging from “The Right Stuff” and “Breaking Away” to “The Day After Tomorrow” and “Far From Heaven” to “American Underdog” and “A Dog’s Journey.” Quaid also happened to be an amateur pilot.
“On a Wing and a Prayer,” on a modest $18 million budget, was shot last year in a Covington soundstage and the Fulton County Airport. “We shot at an active airport,” Egeston said. “There were planes landing while we had our own planes and drones.” (They also used Doug Scroggins, the same plane consultant as “Sully.”)
Nearly the entire cast and crew was from Georgia. (The pilot who died midflight, for instance, is played by veteran Atlanta character actor Wilbur Fitzgerald.) And that was by design.
“I’m from Georgia,” said Bailey-Ford, who has more than 35 film producer credits to her name going back to 2010. “I wanted to make sure this movie is a representation of Georgia.”
The movie largely matches what actually happened with one major change, made for cinematic reasons. In real life, the dead pilot stayed in the cockpit the entire time because White’s wife Terri and two daughters couldn’t get him out of such a tight space. In the movie, they manage to move the pilot, enabling White’s wife, played by Graham, to join her husband in the cockpit.
Quaid provides White a grounded intensity.
“Dennis steals the show,” said Metcalfe, who plays the humble but sardonic real-life pilot Kari Sorenson in the movie. “He really delivers.”
And Quaid took his role seriously enough that he called White several times during the filming to pick his brain about what White was thinking and feeling during parts of the flight. “The last call he made to me, he told me he appreciated me letting him get into my head for six weeks,” White said. “That’s what good actors do.”
Credit: CONT
Credit: CONT
White never made it to set but one of his daughters played an extra on set and Quaid, she told him, captured her father’s mannerisms so well, she thought it was him a couple of times from behind. (White said Quaid even donned the actual LSU cap White wore onto the prop plane in 2009.)
Bailey-Ford said her favorite line in the movie came from Metcalfe’s character telling White, “Sometimes you have to trust the things you can’t see.”
“That’s how I live my life,” Bailey-Ford said. “Dennis’ character Doug questions his faith after his brother dies. He questions God. But I try not to question God. He knows better than us.”
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
Credit: CONTRIBUTED
There is also a touching moment near the end after White lands the plane and is sitting by himself in the cockpit decompressing. His dead brother’s spirit appears next to White and they share a touching moment. “It’s like when you hear your parents after they die,” Bailey-Ford said. “They’re your guardian angels. When we were in post cutting that scene, both Roma and I were crying.”
While such a harrowing experience might cause a person never to climb into a plane again, White went the opposite route: he officially got his certification to fly a King Air.
“I ended up flying to Haiti and Belize for relief missions,” White said. He also joined Veterans Airlift Command, providing free flights to help combat injured veterans needing medical care.
Egeston said White “is built differently than most human beings. He faces fears head on. He is the embodiment of whatever doesn’t kill us makes us stronger.”
WHERE TO WATCH
“On a Wing and a Prayer,” available to Amazon Prime subscribers April 7.
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