Culture

Honor Flight Doc Sets a World Record

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It's official.

Last week ReasonTV sat down with filmmakers Dan Hayes and Clay Broga just before they flew to Wisconsin to attempt a new world record for largest attendance at a film screening. Guinness is now confirming that 28,442 people attended the premiere of Honor Flight at Miller Park on Saturday, breaking the previous record of 27,022.

Here is the original text from the Aug. 6 interview.

In 2009, Reason's Dan Hayes produced a Veterans Day video about the Wisconsin chapter of Honor Flight, a nonprofit that flies World War II veterans gratis to Washington, D.C. to see the memorial dedicated to them. The video is a powerful statment on war, remembrance, gratitude, sacrifice, and the almost-casual heroism of the Greatest Generation.

Since that original piece, Hayes and producer Clay Broga founded Freethink Media and have created a feature-length documentary, Honor Flight, that will premiere at Milwaukee's baseball stadium, Miller Park on Saturday, August 11th. More than 28,000 tickets have been pre-sold, which means that Honor Flight may well break the world record for the largest film screening.

Hayes and Broga sat down with ReasonTV's Nick Gillespie to discuss what initially drew them to the story, how to honor soldiers without glorifying war, and why it's a great time to be an independent filmmaker.