Flight attendants' lives revealed

Airline employee shot 'The Aviary' with small budget, lofty aspirations

Friday, August 19, 2005

By JANET PARMER

FOR THE PRESS DEMOCRAT

Courtesy photo

Petaluma native Silver Tree, a flight attendant for a major airline, with her fiance, Abe Levy, has made "The Aviary," a film about flight attendants. It took 1 1/2 years to shoot the $25,000 film.

Jetting between exotic foreign cities, staying in plush hotels and rubbing shoulders with celebrities and corporate executives sounds like a glamorous lifestyle.

On the surface, that's how many flight attendants spend their time. But they also live with wearying jet lag, stressful job insecurity and passengers who are nervous or nauseated.

The flight attendant subculture has been fodder for literary accounts such as "Coffee, Tea or Me?" and actress Gwyneth Paltrow portrayed a flight attendant in the movie "View from the Top."

Silver Tree, 28, a Petaluma native, is a flight attendant for a major airline. She started writing a screenplay about flight attendants during an involuntary furlough.

She and her fiance, Abe Levy, a director and cinematographer from Tomales, honed the script until they were ready for casting and filming.

It took them 1½ years to shoot "The Aviary" because they financed the $25,000 movie themselves. People told them they'd need $2 million to make a professional-quality film, but they were undaunted.

"We would save up for a piece, then shoot a piece. It was an overly ambitious project," Tree said.

Her full-length romantic comedy movie premiered recently at the Lark Theater in Marin County. She said she's trying to interest other Bay Area theaters in showing the film.

Tree lives in Hollywood, but is based in San Francisco and won't divulge the name of her employer. She says "The Aviary" is semiautobiographical, and she doesn't want to tarnish the reputation of the airline that employs her.

"I wanted it to be a movie that fairly portrayed the spirit of the lifestyle," she said. "It wouldn't alienate the mainstream crowd and would appeal to flight attendants. "

The film doesn't look like it was made on a paltry budget. That's largely because the professional actors and technical crew who participated agreed to work for a fraction of their normal fee. Among the leads are Lara Phillips ("Road to Perdition"), Josh Randall ("Ed," "Scrubs") and Rachel Luttrell ("Stargate: Atlantis").

Tree also was successful in getting services and supplies at greatly reduced prices.

Tree hired photographer David McFarland to help shoot the movie, but she and Levy filmed many of the segments.

Because of her flight privileges, Tree was able to get scenes in Paris, New York, San Francisco and Chicago whose cost otherwise would've been prohibitive.

The movie tells the story of four flight attendants, three women and one man, who share an apartment.

"I was really married to the theme of anonymity and loneliness. It's something people don't have a grasp on," she said. " They think of them as always partying.

"But there's real loneliness in conveying the protagonist who needed to be all over the world," she added. " You're jet-lagged, don't have the currency and are alone. You're constantly adjusting and working the next day."

In "The Aviary," the characters are often on the move, dressed in uniform and pulling their carry-on bags through airport terminals. They wait at home for their next assignment and dread the prospect of involuntary relocation.

They also have love lives in flux, and the goal of at least some of the flight attendants is to snag an airline pilot, get married and live happily ever after. "The Aviary" features drinking and sex scenes, and at least one illicit drug scene.

The movie shows flight attendants with passengers who are rude and condescending. Tree says some regard her as nothing more than an in-flight waitress, but many passengers are warm and endearing.

"When there's someone smiling from ear to ear, that's what makes it bearable," she said.

Her parents, Scott and Susan Tree, encouraged her to be an adventurer, but she didn't aspire to an airline job.

"I had liberal parents and got to travel on my own. I always knew I wanted to see the world," said Tree, whose parents are divorced.

She lived in Petaluma until she was 7, then moved to Monte Rio. She attended El Molino and Nonesuch high schools, and later lived in Petaluma while attending Santa Rosa Junior College and Sonoma State University. She was majoring in biochemistry and had thought about a career in research.

Her life took a major change in direction when she accompanied a friend to San Francisco and had time to kill while her friend was occupied with school. Tree wandered into a Holiday Inn where interviews were under way for prospective flight attendants.

"I was immediately seduced by the benefits," she said.

Tree was asked to go to a second interview in Chicago, and was hired, but it took a year for the hiring process to be completed. She initially was based in San Francisco, and a year later was transferred to London.

Three weeks after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Tree was given an "involuntary furlough" that lasted six months. That's when she began writing "The Aviary."

She's witnessed a profound shift in the aviation industry since Sept. 11.

"I got in at the end when it was still fun. The last two years have been the end of an era," she said, noting things like union battles, pension cuts and airlines charging for meals.

"It was glamorous in the 1960s. There was a mystique. A distance between flight attendants and passengers existed. Now it's more of a public job.

"The regulations have changed drastically. They used to require more rest (between flights). Hijackings were a thing of myth. Now there is a lot of security training," she said.

Tree, who is writing another screenplay, is trying to distribute "The Aviary" through word-of-mouth and welcomes opportunities to show it at theaters or film festivals. It is available through the W eb site www.theaviarymovie.com.