In its December 2019 issue, AOPA Pilot, the magazine of the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, took its readers inside Air Hollywood, the aviation-themed film studio founded by producer Talaat Captan. The feature, written by Julie Summers Walker with photography by Chris Rose, set out to answer a question many moviegoers have wondered about: where are all those airplane scenes actually filmed?
For an audience of private pilots and aircraft owners, people who know exactly what a real cabin and cockpit look like, the piece offers a useful outside view of what Talaat Captan has built over more than two decades.
A question every moviegoer has asked
The article opens with familiar screen moments: Kristen Wiig weaving down a cabin aisle toward first class in Bridesmaids, and Brad Pitt and Leonardo DiCaprio settled into 1960s-era airline seats in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Scenes like these, AOPA explains, are shot not aboard working aircraft but at Air Hollywood, which the magazine described as a maze of more than 100,000 square feet filled with fuselages, cockpit sections, seats, uniforms, avionics, dinnerware and even a replica airline terminal.
That idea, complete airline environments that stay on the ground, is the core of the studio, and it is explained in more depth in our article on how Air Hollywood films airplane scenes without a real plane.
Born from red tape at LAX
AOPA tells the founding story in brief. Talaat Captan, a film producer, grew tired of the red tape involved in filming at Los Angeles International Airport. He opened Air Hollywood in May 2001, and after the security restrictions that followed the attacks of September 11, 2001, it became clear that film crews needed an accessible place to shoot aircraft scenes away from a working airport.
The fuller version of that story, including the Ground Control shoot that set it in motion, is told in How Talaat Captan Turned a Ground Control Setback into Air Hollywood.
It started with a 767
According to the magazine, the studio’s first major acquisition was the interior and seating of a Boeing 767. Captan told AOPA that this was how everything began and that he has never really stopped looking since, keeping an eye out for anything connected to airplanes and airports. Over the years he added repurposed aircraft parts and entire collections of airline memorabilia, and AOPA described the result as the world’s largest aviation-themed studio.
The props side of the business clearly impressed the writer. Captan explained that the inventory runs from airport security uniforms to flight recorders, and he recalled a production that suddenly needed vintage luggage and found a choice of pieces on site. His point, as the magazine reported it, is that filmmakers value not having to search elsewhere: if it is aviation-related, the studio probably already has it. That collection is now offered through Air Hollywood Props, and our article on preserving aviation history through props looks at it more closely.
What caught a pilot magazine’s eye
For movie fans, AOPA singled out several highlights of the facility:
- the original cockpit from the comedy Airplane!, which the magazine called everyone’s favorite;
- flight attendant uniforms, insignia and hats spanning many airlines and eras;
- period dinnerware, glassware and cabin decorations;
- a fully equipped airline terminal about 200 feet long, complete with non-working X-ray machines;
- avionics that can stand in for anything from a Cessna 172 to a Gulfstream V or a Boeing 777.
That last detail is exactly the kind of thing a pilot audience notices: the same studio that dresses a widebody cabin for a feature film can also make a small general aviation cockpit look right on camera. A list of productions associated with the studio is collected in Films and Shows Made at Talaat Captan’s Air Hollywood.
A side trip to the golden age
A sidebar turned to the Pan Am Experience. AOPA explained that the studio’s large collection of memorabilia led it to begin inviting the public in, and that this grew into an evening aboard a Boeing 747 fuselage where guests dine and socialize the way Pan Am passengers did in the 1960s and 1970s. The magazine described cocktails, a chateaubriand dinner, white-glove service and dancing in the upstairs lounge. More about the experience is available at panamexperience.com.
Why the feature matters
Coverage in a pilots’ magazine is a different kind of recognition from entertainment press. AOPA’s readers are aviators, and the article treats Air Hollywood as a serious aviation collection as much as a film location, highlighting the care taken to make each cabin, cockpit and terminal convincing to people who fly for real.
The main feature ends on Talaat Captan’s own explanation of why he does this work. “Airplane travel is magical,” he told the magazine, describing flight as the promise of a new adventure. It is a thread that runs through everything the studio does, from its film sets to the Pan Am Experience and its programs that help nervous travelers and families prepare to fly.
The AOPA feature also includes a short video tour of the studio. The full article and video are available on the AOPA website.
