BACKSTORY

When Jim Calio finally found Uli Derickson's home a month after she had been released by hijackers, he knocked on her door with high hopes of interviewing her for People magazine. Instead, her husband, Russell Derickson, slammed the door in his face.

Calio later learned that a New York Times reporter erroneously reported that Uli had collaborated with the hijackers in singling out passengers with Jewish-sounding names, which resulted in Uli's being welcomed home by more than a few death threats. The Dericksons had little love for reporters.

Calio, however, wasn't about to leave without making his intentions known, and left a note in Uli's mailbox asking for a first-person account of her experience aboard Flight 847. To his great surprise, Uli called him and three days later, he was back at Uli's home, getting his exclusive interview.

''It was a chance to tell her story,'' Calio explained. ''We didn't pay her a cent. It was very difficult for her to talk about it, but we managed to tape 10 hours of interviews -- about 500 pages of transcripts.''

After interviewing Uli Derickson about the hijacking, Jim Calio "was so
intrigued that he asked Derickson for the TV rights to her story." He and
his friend, David Kennerly, had been looking for a film to make together,
and after his exclusive with Uli, he called up Kennerly and said, "I think
we have one here." Nine studios were interested.

Once Uli agreed to sell Calio the rights to her story, Calio sold them to
NBC. "We could have done the story from the public records without her
permission," says Don Zachary, vice president of legal affairs at NBC.
"But we wanted to portray a human side, how she felt.

After buying the rights to her story, NBC hired Uli to work as a consultant.
Uli wasn't so sure that working on the film was a good idea. "I didn't know
whether I should do it," she admitted, and had long talks with producer Jim
Benson, who had made several docudramas, before agreeing to work on
the film. He told Uli, "You might find it hard sometimes to relive what
happens." But in the end, Uli agreed to work on the film because she "was
curious to see how a film got made."

By May 18th, 1986, NBC reported that the script was almost finished and that
Uli, "who's caught the acting bug, might even get a minor role herself."

"Quite frankly," Uli explained, "it was not my idea to make a movie." Not
being a movie-goer herself and rarely watching TV, Uli had no interest in
her story being made into a film. But "after I realized a movie will be made,"
Uli said, "I thought I would like to not have a fairy tale made out of it and
would go with whoever guaranteed me - up to a point - some input to make
sure it was done more or less the way it happened."

The teleplay is about 85 percent of what happened on board that flight, says
producer Calio. "This is a true docudrama in that nothing was doctored for
dramatic purposes."

"We did stick to the truth pretty accurately," Paul Wendkos, the director said. "The concept on the movie was to really tear the skin off the plane and let the world know what went on behind it. We were determined to make the audience feel like they were hostages themselves - the fear, the terror, the outrage..."

Calio agreed. "Our intention was to get the audience to experience the confinement, to get them on board that plane," Calio says. "It's not a feel-good movie."

Part of Uli's job as a technical adviser was to review Norman Morrill's script. "We had a lot of drafts," Calio said, "and she looked at every one."

"We got a lot of color and emotional nuances from her," added Wendkos. "She would remind me what she did. When she stepped over Kurt Carlson, a beaten passenger, she said she leaned down to feel his pulse, which was not in the script, so we incorporated that."

"We are sticking closely to the facts," Uli insisted. "Certain scenes have to be shot in a different area of the aircraft from where they actually happened because, say, there might be lighting problems. This is a docudrama, and certain liberties have been taken. But it reads true."

In fact, it was so close to her own experience, that Uli had some rough days. "I knew it was going to be hard. Being here on the set is okay, because you see the lights, the cameras, the unrealistic trappings. You feel removed." But when it came to the violent scenes, it became harder for Uli to distance herself. "I remember on the aircraft that was one of the harder things to have to sit through, to hear the beating of adult men. It's very hard when you hear the screams of someone being beaten." "Enough!" soundbyte

As they filmed and refilmed one particular scene, Uli became visibly shaken and began to cry. Since she "could no longer stand the screaming," she left the set and "took a walk around the studio lot and had a cup of coffee." She also admitted that watching the dailies (tapes of the day's filming) was "very emotional."

"When Uli was on the set," Lindsay Wagner explained, "she became understandably upset having to watch certain scenes. They restimulated all that pain and terror and anguish she suffered originally during the 36-hour ordeal. She cried a number of times and had to walk off the set."

Continued - Part 2 - Uli Derickson and Lindsay Wagner