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It's A Wonderful Life For Fornof

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By R.T. BYRUM Highlands Today Correspondent

The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 18, 2009

SEBRING - Imagine being able to work at something that you are good at doing, you love what you do, and you are well paid for doing it. If your name is J. W. "Corkey" Fornof - that is your life.

Fornof's father had been a wartime pilot who inherited a fighter aircraft, on which the previous air jockey had lettered the name, "Corkey." After the war, his son, J. W., was nicknamed after the airplane, and most people have known him by that label ever since.

As a young man, Fornof earned income by flying air shows and doing test pilot work. Then came the day in 1967 when Paul Mantz, a family friend who was a "big guru in film aviation," called on him to work in a movie.

"They liked what I did," he said, "and one thing led to another, and it just mushroomed."

Calls for his specialty came from directors at a steady pace, and his title became aerial director and stunt pilot. His job description calls for him to take a script, break out the aviation scenes, and then go out with the location scouts to wherever in the world the movie is to be made.

There, he makes sure that everything needed is available to support his part of the production. Corkey then hires the crews, and leases, buys or modifies aircraft to fit the script. Four years into his new career, a dramatic element was literally added. Directors began to ask him to work with the writers to actually script the scenes based on a few lines of concept.

Over the ensuing years, he's directed or flown in more than 46 feature films. Fans will recognize many of the popular titles, especially the James Bond 007 series.

"I worked on a short scene in 'Moonraker,'" he said. "Then I did the aerial work in 'Octopussy' where I flew Jim Bede's fantastic BD-5J, a tiny one-man jet aircraft, right through a hanger.

"For 'Licensed to Kill,' I not only wrote all the aerial scenes, but I flew them. Even made the opening credits. The last Bond movie I did with director Cubby Broccoli was 'The World Is Not Enough.' Cubby, who has passed away, wanted nothing produced in CGI (Computer Generated Graphics) that wasn't possible in real life."

Fornof also directed the aerial sequences in "Six Days Seven Nights," filmed in Kauai, Hawaii, which starred a good friend and fellow pilot, Harrison Ford. In that movie, Ford and co-star Anne Heche crash their single-engine plane on a small island.

Another friend is director John Woo, famous for his films such as "Face/Off" and "Mission Impossible II."

Corkey, a member of the Screen Actors' Guild, wrote the opening sequence where a 747 crashes. Although that scene was a CGI project, the twists and turns leading up to the impact were based on his first flying the route. His twin-engine 414 Cessna and two helicopters were rigged with cameras that provided data points, which were then used to manipulate the computer-generated action.

He's worked with Steven Spielberg, Frank Marshall, Barry Osborne, Ridley Scott and other giants in the industry, not only on films, but television and commercial productions.

As if all that were not enough, he is also the director of flight operations and demo pilot for the LoPresti Fury. He will be appearing with the LoPresti folks at Sebring's U.S. Sport Aviation Expo to give several talks on his career in the movies.

One final note: when hired to do a series of Japanese commercials, he learned that Corkey in Japanese was the name given to a high level Samurai that meant, "not to be compromised." In other words, don't mess with the man.

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