LMGI COMPASS
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Summer 2022
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35
The Anti-Iceman
Being a SLM is all about solving problems, whether it be nesting
birds or nding a solution to an iced-over runway—exactly the
problem Mike and the team faced in Fallon one morning when Ferg
came to tell everyone they wouldn't be launching planes.
"I was like, 'guys … this is TOPGUN. You're in Nevada at like
6,000 feet elevation and you don't have a way to de-ice a runway?
This is the Navy! What the hell?'" laughs Mike.
What Ferg saw next blew his mind. "Mike gets on the phone with
people from NASCAR in either Talladega or at the Texas Motor
Speedway because they apparently have a big track dryer," he
laughs, "and I go, 'Mike, that thing's like, 1,800 miles away,' and he
just looked at me and said, 'if they'll rent it to me, I'm gonna get it
here.'"
Mike even asked Ferg if they could get Harrier jets to come from
Lemoore and hover over the runway to melt off the ice. Ultimately,
the easier solution was to turn the cast around and launch them
from Lemoore instead, but Ferg was impressed.
"To watch Mike always trying to nd a solution," he says, "that
was phenomenal. And the issue in Fallon was a drop in a bucket
compared to the stuff they were dealing with most of the time."
For director Joseph Kosinski, that spirit is what makes Mike
great. "He's a total pro and has the experience to know what we
can and can't do. He also has the relationships with people to
know what he can get. He's absolutely one of the best I've ever
worked with."
"It's Classified.
I Could Tell You but Then I'd Have to Kill You"
One of the trickiest locations by far was the base at China Lake
which the team wanted to use for scenes early in the lm, featuring
an experimental plane—The Darkstar.
"That base is a weapons testing facility," says Mike. "It's a
quadrillion acres of just shit blowing up. Grumman, Lockheed,
Boeing, Raytheon … they've all got their compounds out there.
I don't know exactly what they do there and they don't want me
to, but I surmise that they test new weaponry and cutting-edge
prototypes."
When they rst asked to scout a hangar, there they were told to
paraphrase another classic lm, "Forget about it, Mike. It's China
Lake." But at some point that changed and they were told they
could.
"It went from 'don't go near that hangar,'' says Hindle, "to 'OK,
you can go inside but don't take any pictures.'"
Later they got permission to shoot reference photos, but what
they could shoot was extremely limited.
"You'd be standing there with your camera and they'd go, 'tell
me what you want to shoot and I'll tell you if you can,'" says Mike.
"I remember at one point, I'm setting up and I said, 'OK, I'd like to
grab this shot.' A security person came over, looked through the
viewnder and approved it, but after I took the photo, she zoomed
in, scrolled around and then she goes, 'yeah, no … see this thing
here?' And I swear it was, like, the roof of a shack four miles away,
