Tony Bill and David Ellison talk Flyboys

It's been more than 40 years since a film about World War I aviation was made. But Tony Bill, producer of the Academy Award-winning film The Sting, was on a mission. After six years of waiting, Bill finally accomplished that task with Flyboys, a heroic tale about the young American men of a French air squadron. recess' Janet Wu and Shirley Lung talked about the epic film with Tony Bill and cast member David Ellison, who plays the not-so sharp shooter, Eddie Beagle. Check out a few of their stories:

Tony Bill, on what attracted him to the story:

"[The pilots of the Lafayette Escadrille] were romantic and adventuresome and patriotic and altruistic and they got to go to France at the turn of the century and fly airplanes, which sounds like my ideal. I was a student of the literature and aviation and have been a pilot since I was 13, so I was very familiar with the subject. I never thought it would get made into a movie because it was so difficult and expensive. But lo and behold, seven years ago or so Dean Devlin [producer of Independence Day and The Patriot] called me and said, 'I just read a script about the Lafayette Escadrille. Do you know anything about them?' And I said, 'Do I!?' So he said, 'I'm sending it over to you. It's the movie you were born to direct.'"

David Ellison on the thrills of flight:

"I started flying when I was 13 years old and then I flew aerobatics and I used to compete nationally... To be able to combine my two passions [of film and flying] is really unbelievable. There's not really many aviation movies made, but there are even fewer made from a pilot's perspective. [Bill and his team] captured what it's like. It's all the passion, exhilaration of flight-what these guys actually went through, how close they went before they started shooting and the chivalry that existed during the period. It was really unreal. The coolest thing was I grew up with guys like Bob Hoover and Chuck Yeager being heroes at the air shows. And then, to go back and play in a period where they all existed was sort of unbelievable."

Ellison on the chance way he got casted:

"I was training for nationals, which took place in late September and school at Pepperdine started at the end of August. I didn't have any place to keep my airplane-there were no hangars... My coach Wayne Hanley, who had also coached Tony Bill, told me he knew of a guy who lived down in L.A. and he said that I could keep my air plane in his hangar and the card he handed me was Tony Bill's."