Interview with Barry Sonnenfeld
All his life, Hollywood producer and director Barry Sonnenfeld has believed he’ll die in a plane crash. His premonition hasn’t kept him from flying, however.
On February 16, 1999, on a chartered flight to Los Angeles, the corporate jet Sonnenfeld was traveling on plummeted from the sky. Save for the crew, Sonnenfeld was alone on the flight, prisoner to the terrifying vision outside the window of the ground rushing up to meet the plane. He told ISB about his fear of flying and what happens when you find yourself in the middle of your worst nightmare.
ISB: When did your fear of flying begin?
With my mother. The first time I got on an airplane, I was 12. We were flying back from Miami when she somehow persuaded the pilot to drop the oxygen masks. She said she was dying, that there was no oxygen on the plane. Everyone else was fine. The rest of the masks just dangled.
ISB: But then you went on to have a career that makes you fly a lot, right?
Well, that’s the secret to any good neurosis: You have to feed it. My philosophy is “Live in fear.” It works like this: When there is no crisis, that’s when you’ll find me living in fear and profound anxiety. But give me a real situation, and that’s when you’ll find me calming down.
ISB: Have you ever had any fear-of-flying rituals? Xanax? A drink? A little prayer?
For about ten years, I would get on the plane and put the seat belt on the outside of the blanket so they knew I was belted in, then put the blanket over my head and fly the entire time with my whole head and body not visible, my theory being that if no one could see me, then I didn’t exist. But as airlines got cheaper and cheaper, the blankets started to smell more and more horrific, and I just couldn’t take it.
ISB: And then—as you predicted—you were in a plane crash. What happened?
Columbia Tristar Television chartered a Gulf Stream II to fly me to Los Angeles for a meeting. The pilot, the copilot, and the flight attendant were all in the cockpit with the door closed. I was alone in the cabin. Fourteen thousand feet above Van Nuys Airport, the plane started to shudder and took a deep descent. From the cockpit I heard an incessant beeping: BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP. No one told me what was wrong. So I crossed my arms, put my feet up on the seat in front of me—just to be comfortable, I wasn’t taking the crash position—and said to myself, “And now I die.”
ISB: You mean you were calm?
Yes, completely calm—it’s happened before. Once, in 1975, I became so calm and banal that I accidentally talked two muggers out of mugging me.
ISB: But how did you get out of a plane crash!?
We were flying over the airport. The plane was shaking. At the end of the runway there was a wall and a fence. We made a sharp left turn, then hit, bounced over, and continued to hit and bounce over five other airplanes. Each time, I said to myself, “And now I die.” But I didn’t, and we hit another plane, and I waited to explode.
Eventually we crashed through the fence into a parking lot, where we destroyed a Dodge Ram and came to a stop. Pilot, copilot, and flight attendant emerged from the cockpit, hysterical. Outside there was gasoline spewing. I stayed in my seat waiting for instructions until I realized they had all jumped out the back. So I got up and walked through broken china and luggage spewed all over, and into the luggage compartment, where the door was open. Standing around the door were about twenty Van Nuys firemen, yelling at me to jump off the plane. I said, profoundly calmly, “You say jump off the plane, but who is going to catch me?”
They yelled, “It doesn’t matter, just jump, get off the plane!” And I said, “No, I need to know which one’s going to catch me.” So I looked around, found the fireman with the biggest mustache who was the most manly of them all, and I said, “You. You are catching me.”
ISB: [laughing] And YET you still fly—you fly all the time!
The plane crash made me a better flier. My fear had always been less about dying, and more about knowing, at 35,000 feet, that I was about to die—that for six minutes I would weep uncontrollably with snot pouring out of my nose, screaming about all the sadnesses in my life, all the people I had to leave behind, all the things I should have done, should have said, should have not said, and those six minutes would be just horrifying.
As it turns out, dying in a plane crash is no better or worse than dying in a car accident or having a heart attack.
