I really did not want to do this.
My Navy pilot father, Commander Peter Rodrick, died in a crash off the USS Kitty Hawk. Twelve years ago, I had lunch with Gravitt in Los Angeles after she read my book, The Magical Stranger. I did what Fielder did and lived the lives of Commander Hunter Tupper Ware and other naval pilots in VAQ-135, my dad’s old unit, as they flew missions “up the avenue” from the Persian Gulf to Afghanistan in 2010. This helped me understand his life and death better. I didn’t skimp. I deployed with the Black Ravens for a month, passed a tough swim survival test, and finally got up for a flight over Mount Rainier while flying upside down.
Gravitt used to be an officer in the navy on the USS Constellation. Her father and brother were also navy pilots. She had told me that my book taught her more about being a pilot than her own family.
A lot has changed since then, some of it good and some of it so sad it hurts. Last year, on November 28, 2013, I had a son. It was the anniversary of my dad’s death. Michael, Amy’s brother, killed himself in 2023. He was having mental health problems that had stopped his second job as an airline pilot.
Gravitt tells me, “This was after he flew for a living during the pandemic, which was a very lonely time.” “And you need to know that the only thing I ever remember him wanting to do was fly.” As a child, he always dreamed of going to the Naval Academy and becoming a fighter for the navy. From what I know, he was meant to go in for a simulation one day in the fall of 2022 but couldn’t. It was something he’d done a million times before. He didn’t think he could talk to anyone about it, though. They called me out of the blue one day and said Michael wasn’t feeling well. And there’s nothing more shocking than that. For a short time, we had some of the most intimate talks of our relationship. We talked about everything, including our youth. It seemed like he was getting better. Then, in August 2023, my mom called to say he was gone.
Michael died while Gravitt was in charge of of Nathan Fielder’s cracked-fun-house performance art show The Rehearsal season 2, which mixes cringe comedy with personal growth. Fielder has always been interested in plane crashes that happen because of bad communication in the cockpit, especially when junior pilots are afraid to speak up when their captain is making bad choices that put the plane in danger of crashing. This is what the The Rehearsal season 2 of the show is all about. A junior pilot could take over the plane if they believe their boss is flying in a dangerous way. In reality, this could end your job.
I watched the first episode of the show after getting Gravitt’s text. Fielder acts out several bad talks that the pilot and co-pilot have before their plane crashes into mountains, trees, and land. He stands outside the cabin and watches the reenactment without reacting. He types on a laptop that is slung over his shoulder like a cigarette girl at a 1970s nightclub. My face turned red, and I could feel my heart beating faster. I turned it off and went outside to get some fresh air.
A friend I had in Sen. John McCain’s office sped through the red tape and got me a cleared copy of my dad’s accident report years before I started writing my book. The prisoners had just been taken in Iran in 1979, and the Kitty Hawk was leaving the United States to show its strength in the Persian Gulf. Because the commanding officer of the carrier was afraid of being followed by Soviet spy ships, he told all of the planes to turn off their radar altimeters. These are better at measuring altitude correctly than standard barometric altimeters. When you’re at 10,000 feet, being off by 50 or 100 feet doesn’t matter much, but my dad was flying at 200 feet and going 500 mph over the ocean. His EA-6B Prowler was only found to have an oil spill and pieces of a white helmet floating in the water. The story said it looked like he hit a wing as he turned. That didn’t change my life, though. The story made it sound like my dad was flying below clearly stated rules by wearing a flat-hat. Because he was in charge of the squadron, it’s possible that the three junior officers on the plane didn’t speak up.
“One officer wouldn’t fly with your dad,” a member of his squadron told me in 2012 as we sat in a wet Hilton Garden Inn at Newark Airport while he took the day off from being a FedEx pilot. “He felt something in his bones, even though he knew it would probably ruin his career.”
The information changed how I thought about my dad. He was smart at the Naval Academy and is said to have taught Navy quarterback Roger Staubach calculus. He was also one of the youngest squadron leaders in the Navy. Now I had to face the fact that his carelessness had left four women and five children without a father.
I thought I had left all of that behind in my book and didn’t want to think about it again. After that, I watched more of The Rehearsal season 2. It’s like trying to catch water with a net when you try to explain Fielder’s show to someone who hasn’t seen it. In Fielder’s re-creation of pilots’ struggles, dozens of actors play passengers, security guards, and other roles in a replica of Houston’s George Bush Intercontinental Airport. There are also three cloned dogs, autistic children, and Fielder himself as baby Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger, the pilot who landed a US Airways plane on the Hudson River without losing any lives.
Fielder’s complicated and sometimes impossible work made me think of Brian Wilson’s Smile session, where the crazy artist played his piano in a sandbox. The main difference is that Fielder finished his masterpiece. The chef’s kiss at the end of the season shows that Fielder worked hard for two years to get his pilot’s license and was finally allowed to fly a 737. He avoids talking about a possible autism diagnosis, which is an idea about Fielder’s social interactions that has been written a lot and could keep him from flying. The players from the show finally get to go on a two-hour flight with him.
I met Fielder and Gravitt in her HBO office, sitting in the chair where Fielder first pitched the idea for Season 2 in 2023. Gravitt thought my background might make for an interesting talk. In a gray crew-neck sweater, sports pants, and running shoes, Fielder looked very L.A. Except for a few clear cases, he was more open and less mysterious than his image suggested. Still, I made sure that our trips to the HBO bathroom were spaced out so that neither of us would get too stressed.
We talked for two hours. This is a changed form of what we talked about.
Also Read: The Apothecary Diaries Season 2 Plot, Trailer & Updates
