Story Frame 80 – The Man Who Fell to Earth from a Plane
And what happened to both of us as a result
I am sitting on the edge of the open door in the plane, staring at the tiny landscape far below, about to skydive for the first time in my life with the knowledge that 15,000 feet separate me from the earth.
Falling through the air, I will be tethered to Nick, a guy with “Adrenaline Junkie” tattooed on his chest, a guy whose legs have been amputated below the knees.
“Go ahead, jump!” he says, laughing.
I hesitate. This situation is completely counterintuitive for me. I’m a Taurus, an earth sign. I have spent a lifetime trying not to be separated from whatever plane I happened to be flying in.
“Go ahead!” he says again, nudging me ever so slightly.
And so, I do, tumbling from the plane out into the sky with Nick on my back.
Did this actually happen?
No. But this scene played over and over on a continuous loop in my imagination while I was working with a documentary called Get Busy Living.
It was the fall of 2020, and I had just received another email from Keith Ochwat, the Los Angeles-based documentary filmmaker and film consultant with whom I’d teamed up on several films, including the tongue-in-cheekily titled, Thank You for Coming by Sara Lamm.
Would I like to represent a film about a man who fell out of a plane? he asked.
You’ve got to be kidding me, I thought. Do you even know my history with flying?
But I like Keith, so I agreed to watch the film.
Get Busy Living tells the story of Nick Fener, a veteran skydiver who somehow managed to not only survive a fall when his parachute failed to open properly, but also resume skydiving, despite the amputation of both legs below the knees.
The film’s title was based on a line from Academy Award-winning film based on a 1982 novella by Stephen King, The Shawshank Redemption.
“Get busy living or get busy dying” is a line said by actor Morgan Freeman who plays a contraband smuggler to the fellow inmate character played by Tim Robbins. It became Nick’s favorite mantra and the one his wife Lindsay used to pull him through his eighteen-month, post-freefall rehab.
When The Shawshank Redemption was released in 1994, I saw it with Martin & Tom Burch, our gaffer (a film term for lighting guy or electrician) at the Old Town Theatre, located just up the street from the documentary workshop. It wasn’t my idea, prison films not being at all my thing, but Tom had already seen it once and wanted both of us to see it, too. He persuaded me with the promise of a pint of Guinness at Murphy’s Pub before – and after – the film.
I hate being afraid of anything and, much as it pained me to admit, I was still a nervous flyer. When flying home to London from the US during Christmas break from college back in the 70s, the turbulence was so bad a man near me had a heart attack. The pilots turned the plane around and flew back to Boston to get him into a hospital. The rest of us spent the night in the airport hotel and were put on another flight the following day.
Then there was the 747 I grounded in Zurich, Switzerland when I was just 28.
And then, I remembered something else. Somewhere deep in dark tissue of brain memory, something was stirring and I realized my problems with flying actually began when I was eight years old and we moved from the US to London.
My father was already living and working there and my mother, having fallen for the romance of a transatlantic crossing decided she, my brother, Pip (whose nickname came from Great Expectations) and I would travel by boat. In those days of transtlantic travel, there was nothing much to do. I was eight, Pip was fifteen and while my mother wrapped herself up in blankets on a deckchair, read books and sipped consumé, just as she’d fantasized, Pip and I were bored out of our minds.
The only entertainment Holland America offered was a movie shown once a night and so Pip and I saw all of them. Disney’s Three Lives of Thomasina, The Girl with Green Eyes, The Beatles’ Hard Days Night, and in what can only be thought of as a completely self-serving choice for an ocean crossing boat company, Fate is the Hunter – a dramatic black and white film about, of all things, a plane crash.
Although it starred Glenn Ford, Wally Cox, and a very young Suzanne Pleshette, the only character I remember to this day was the airplane’s sole black passenger – a little girl in a little party dress, traveling on her own and clutching a rag doll. After the crash, only the stewardess survived. The rag doll was shown amongst the wreckage without the little girl.
The critics hated it as much as I did. Writing for The New York Times, Bosley Crowther called it a “stupid, annoying film” and wrote that "it might be better for airline travelers if they never see it."
So, when Keith called about taking on a film about a skydiving accident to see if I’d be interested in helping them get it on PBS stations, it took me a few days to get up the nerve to sit down and watch it.
Once I did, however, I found to my relief, that I could turn it down. The storyline was a bit unclear, and I felt overall it had the feel and production values of a home movie. While that can sometimes be effective, I didn’t feel it suited this particular film. In its present form, it wasn’t ready for broadcast. I also didn’t like the title which I thought sounded more like a PBS pledge special than a riveting story of survival. It wasn’t a clickbait film title, which is important given the many options viewers have these days.
Keith, however, was persistent.
“What would it take for you to work with us on this film?” he asked.
“A better title,” I said. “Seriously, who’s going to remember a line from a film that released back in the 90s?”
Get Busy Living sounded finger-wagging to me, whereas with The Man Who Fell Out of a Plane, people would want to know – and then what happened?! That’s just human nature.
“Suggest something,” he said.
“Say you’re going out with your wife to the movies on a Friday night,” I said to Keith. “Which film would you rather see – Get Busy Living, or The Man Who Fell Out of a Plane?
I also pointed out, as tactfully as I could, that the film’s production values were not broadcast quality.
“It looks like a home movie,” I said. I guessed a good portion of it was shot on an iPad.
Keith laughed good-naturedly, said he took my point and promised to run it past Chris Burket, the film’s director and close friend of Nick Fener, the self-described ‘adrenaline junkie’ skydiver.
To my surprise, I won one of those battles. Rather than change the title – words that had carried Nick and Lindsay through the grueling process of Nick’s 18-month rehabilitation – the team chose to have the entire documentary re-edited.
They took my recommendation and hired my good friend Tal Skloot, the talented director, writer, and editor of 4 Wheel Bob, who put together a new edit plan for them with a changed point of view. It was Tal who realized the film was not just a survival story but, at its heart, a love story. And everyone was on board with that.
The results of the re-edit were so astonishing and the story so powerful, I gave up my quest to have the name of the film changed.
Get Busy Living premiered nationally in 2021 in conjunction with anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Get Busy Living received nearly one thousand airdates throughout more than 83% of the US.
I still think it could have done even better with a different title. It’s an unusual and very compelling action, adventure story with two interesting characters. A love story and a hero’s journey.
Even The Shawshank Redemption suffered initially from its title. While it received a lot of critical acclaim initially, it earned a paltry $16 million during its premiere theatrical run. One of the reasons cited for this box-office disappointment was the title, which critics considered “confusing” for audiences.
It was also up against Pulp Fiction and Forrest Gump that same year, very tough competition for audience attention. After it secured seven Academy Award nominations, got a lot of publicity, and people had a better understanding of what it was about, The Shawshank Redemption was re-released and the box-office grew to over $73 million.
So, how did working with this film affect my life?
For a while, I was tempted to face up to my own fear of flying by asking Nick Fener to dive with me. I gave it serious thought, thinking if I could jump out of a plane, it might make it easier for me to fly inside of one.
I haven’t done that yet, but I also haven’t given up on the idea completely. And oddly enough, I find I’m much more at ease flying these days and no longer grab that pre-flight beer.
Kristin Fellows is a published writer, a world traveler, and a well-seasoned documentary film consultant. This tale comes to you from a small farming village in Portugal, where she is still surprised to find herself living.
When not writing, Kristin can often be found listening to someone’s story or behind the lens of one of her cameras.
More about Kristin @ kristinfellowswriter.com
[top photograph from the film, Get Busy Living; bottom photo of me in a helicopter by cinematographer Richard Chisolm]