'#SKYKING'

ABC News Studio

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Richard Russell is a folk hero to some folks — including more than a few of the wrong ones — but he’s just “Beebo” to the loved ones he left behind.

In 2018, the 28-year-old Horizon Air (a subsidiary of Alaska Air) ground service agent clocked into work wearing a shirt that said “The sky’s no limit,” stole a $33 million plane (a Bombardier Q400), and took off into the skies of the Pacific Northwest. There was just one problem (OK, so there were numerous problems, but starting with) … Russell did not know how to fly an airplane. Or at least how to land one.

After a few-hour joyride (as joyous as one can be on a suicide flight) around the mountains and over the water, Russell crashed into the side of a sparsely populated island. He did not attempt to land — Russell chose death over prison, and as a way to escape his personal prison of depression.

Along the way, Russell made a few statements to air traffic control that have lived on. One in particular has completely clouded reality, #SkyKing director Patricia E. Gillespie tells The Hollywood Reporter, turning a mental health issue into a race issue.

Read our Q&A below.

***

I either never heard this story or it went in one ear and out there other — what does that say about me? Or perhaps about society if it’s not just me?

You know what’s interesting? My friends back home — I grew up working class — and my friends back home all knew it. My friends from, you know, the city and the industry and college — I was really lucky, I got to go to NYU and do all that — they did not know it. And so I think it actually says something about the echo chambers we all live in, where the stories gain traction and where they’re discussed, and what some of us that are higher up on the economic ladder don’t hear versus those of us who are in the trenches hear.

Is that simply because Beebo is something of a blue-collar folk hero?

Well, he’s a lot of different things to a lot of people. This film really tries to emphasize that he was a human man, and though you can use him in all these different contexts — some of them true and fair, some of them untrue, some of them productive, some of them quite dangerous — at the end of the day, none of those things really encompass his humanity. Our documentary tries to do that.

I’ve seen some criticism online like, “So he steals an airplane, commits suicide … and gets a documentary?!?” What is your response to that take?

I hope they take a moment to watch the film because the film works very hard to address the fact that suicide — it’s not the end of your pain. It passes the pain on to people who love you the most.

The film also — I hope on some level, for people who are willing to engage with it — highlights the fact that when we do have these hot takes, a lot of the time we miss the deeper story. In this case, people were so quick to sensationalize and politicize and quick to take a stand before they have facts. As a result, you missed a really important story about class and its intersection with mental health. The media approaches these stories in kind of an uncurious way. When we approach these things with curiosity instead of judgment, a lot more story narrative — and frankly, facts — emerge.

You mentioned the politics. For readers, during his conversation with the tower, Beebo says he was passed up for a promotion at work because he’s “just a white guy,” so that’s a DEI dig that has inspired some unsavory speech online. Also, one of Beebo’s brothers wears a Trump cap throughout your interview with him. But neither of them seem racist or hateful.

I think the fam— what I hope people take away is that there are people with very diverse political opinions and life experiences in this film. The sort of mainstream narrative that’s going around on social media and in some mainstream media says these people shouldn’t be able to get along on anything, but they actually have a lot of things in common when it comes to the realities of the American economy. When it comes to the reality of a working life in this country and its intersection with mental health, we have a lot more in common. There’s this phrase that comes from my childhood where it’s like, “Anybody who knows what a bread sandwich tastes like is my friend,” right? If you’re down there on that level, scrapping, people that the world will tell you you have nothing in common with, you actually have a lot mor

#SkyKing Director Poached Film's Storytelling Device from Werner Herzog