Con Air at 25: Director Simon West breaks down iconic Nicolas Cage film – from the actors who auditioned to axed scenes

metro.co.uk:

Metro.co.uk.‘So we could do whatever we liked to it and it was only one take because once the plane starts moving, you can’t stop it.

We had 200 stunt performers because everyone near it had to be a stunt performer, it couldn’t be extras. That’s when we had 17 cameras on it from every angle, because it could only happen once.

And of course it didn’t go right the first night. Going down the ramp, it stalled. We had to do it all again the next day. ‘We were on the Vegas strip and they put a barrier up, and there were probably 10,000, 15,000 people watching us do this stunt.

It’s not like our failures were done in secret! We had a massive audience watching this thing go wrong. We came in the next day, set up 17 cameras again, trying to shoot it before the sun came up.