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"I've never done heroin," Oscar-winning director Robert Zemeckis says, "but heroin addicts say it's always trying to chase the euphoria of that very first hit. I guess that's what it's all about. For a filmmaker ... that first movie is such a grand exhilarating adventure, and you're always just trying to replicate that ... it happens in small fleeting moments ... (and) when you really pull something off, it's very satisfying."

Zemeckis pulls it off plenty, whether it's sending a DeLorean out of time in the "Back to the Future" films, melding live-action and animation in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit," or shepherding Tom Hanks to the Oscars in dramas like "Forrest Gump" and "Cast Away." Now the director tackles the dark material of addiction in "Flight," which stars Denzel Washington as an anti-heroic airplane pilot.

In an exclusive chat with the Weekly, Zemeckis discusses the film's core issue: the rationalizations of an alcoholic who hasn't yet realized that he is in need of help. "We all have loved ones and friends that have struggled with this disease ... In "Flight," it's certainly this self-delusion. It's this incapability of being honest. It's an amazing phenomenon. But also there's an inborn kind of need to alter our waking consciousness ... little kids like to make themselves dizzy by spinning around.... Then it leaps into different forms of spirituality and different things like that. There's this need to get outside of our physical self somehow."

"Flight" also teems with the irony of a pilot who irresponsibly takes to the air in an altered state, but more than likely saves a hundred lives through his flexibility and quick thinking. Zemeckis explains, "It's just a magnificently ambiguous and ironic situation. And I guess the only worldview that I can think that it speaks to is possibly maybe sometimes the answer is there is no answer. And that becomes a very difficult question for people like Whip who are pilots because they're supposed to do everything ... and they're supposed to know everything."

On the other hand, licensed pilot Zemeckis wonders at the achievement of air travel. "As far as human endeavor, it's one of the most seriously thought out things that humans have ever attempted to do. I mean they work really hard at attempting to do the impossible -- which is perfect it ... every year we get these reports ... (of, on average) 30 general-aviation fatalities. They can't get it to zero. It's a noble pursuit. And they work at it really, really hard. But there's just that human fallibility that, you know, some guys going to get in his plane and run out of gas."

"Flight" marks Zemeckis' return to live-action film after a decade spent making CGI-animated motion-capture films like "The Polar Express" and "A Christmas Carol," but he insists, "Movie-making is movie-making ... it's going to be a giant digital stew. And I think what will be actually a wonderful thing that will come out of that is everything going to get back to the writing." But he hastens to explain his love of "mo-cap": "You get to do scenes like theatre. You get to do a scene from beginning to end, and the actors set the pace, and they feed off each other, and you don't have to break it up for coverage, and you don't have to shoot things out of continuity, and you get to just ... work with them all day long."

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