Steven Spielberg Interview on HBO’s THE PACIFIC
Mr. Hole The Magnificent: An ABC Studios Production
their highly successful 2001 mini-series Band of Brothers with the
epic 10-part The Pacific, premiering on HBO on March 14th.
The mini-series tracks the intertwined journeys of three U.S. Marines
— Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and
John Basilone (Jon Seda) — of the 1st Marine Division, which is the
oldest and largest active duty division of the U.S. Marine Corps.
While Band of Brothers followed the experiences of one company of Amy
paratroopers in the European Theater of Operations, The Pacific
depicts the war a world away in the Pacific Theater of Operations,
which encompassed most of the Pacific Ocean and its islands, including
the Philippines, the Netherlands East Indies, New Guinea and the
Solomon Islands. With the support of their fellow Marines and comrades
in the Navy, Air Force and Army, the 1st Marine Division was at the
forefront of many of the hardest-fought campaigns of the Pacific War.
Over the span of 10 hours, The Pacific takes an unflinching look at
the experiences of these men and their brothers in arms, which is
nothing less than what is expected from the man responsible for the
personal looks at war that he brought audiences in both Saving Private
Ryan and Band of Brothers.
While talking to press about this historical upcoming mini-series at
the Television Critics Association Winter Press Tour, Steven Spielberg
expressed his passion and desire for continuing to bring these stories
to audiences, as well as how the recent success of Avatar has been
inspiring to him as a filmmaker.
When you were making Saving Private Ryan, did you have a sense that
you were establishing a visual template for war and war depictions
that were going to be carried over for 12 years now?
In Saving Private Ryan, I had a sense that I was establishing a
template, based on the experiences communicated to me by the veterans
who fought that morning on Dog Green, Omaha Beach, and their
experiences, and the very few surviving photographs of the great war
correspondent, Robert Capa. I combined those photographs to try to
find a 24-frame-per-second equivalent for how I can show that kind of
terror and chaos without making a movie that looked elegant and
beautiful and in full living color, very much like war movies had been
made in the past.
It wasn’t that I was trying to break the mold of the old war movie
approach, visually, but I was simply trying to validate all of this
testimony that had been communicated to us, based on the young men
that lived and survived that battle. I didn’t know it was going to
establish a look for war movies, but it was certainly what I thought
was right for that particular story.
Given how pervasive that look has become in subsequent movies, when
you do a project of this scale, do you try to get away from that and
give it a different look?
We did give The Pacific with a different look. There was a very
strong, desaturated quality to Band of Brothers. In The Pacific, it
was blue skies. They weren’t fighting in overcast weather. Sometimes
monsoons would come in and it was terribly rainy and muddy and you
couldn’t see the hand in front of your face, but it was a blue-sky
war. It was a hot, dry, humid blue-sky war. So, there are more vivid
colors in The Pacific than we ever had in Band of Brothers because
that was the way it was, when you read the books and talk to the
survivors of those campaigns.
How tough is it to sell a project like this?
Thank goodness for HBO. They gave us this opportunity to put the
stories of these very brave men and women on the network. We’re very
beholden to HBO for making room on their schedule for something like
this.
How much time did you spend working on this?
I would say years. Longer than I actually remember. It was inevitable
that we would do The Pacific with HBO because there was such an
overwhelming response, not only from the general public that got very
involved in Band of Brothers, but we got so much positive mail. At the
same time, that mail said, “I was a veteran of the Solomons.” “I
fought on Tarawa.” “I was at Midway.” We got so many letters of
veterans from the Pacific Theater of Operations, asking us if we could
acquit their stories the way we acquitted the stories of the European
Theater of Operations.
The combat scenes in this have an enormity, in how riveting and
visceral they are. Does it get any easier to do them?
It doesn’t get any easier because these are all new actors to this
experience, and all new directors to this experience. But, I could
imagine that this was a very grueling, difficult and scary experience,
being where Tom and I have been twice before, with Band of Brothers
and Saving Private Ryan.
Do you see this less as strictly a history of that part of the war and
more another story of soldiers’ experiences?
What moved us to tell these stories, based on these survivors and
veterans, was to see what happens to the human soul throughout this
particular engagement. These islands were stepping stones to the
mainland of Japan. We weren’t trained by the drill instructors
stateside. We were trained by the enemy, in how to fight the enemy.
They trained us how to fight like them.
I don’t want to compare one war to the other, in terms of savagery,
but there’s a level when nature and humanity conspire against the
individual. To see what happens to those individuals, throughout the
entire course of events, leading up to the dropping of the two atomic
bombs, is something that was very, very hard for the actors, the
writers and all of us to put on the screen, but we felt we had to try.
Are there more stories to tell?
There are many more stories to tell, and we’re going to tell them.
Are you developing them?
We are developing them.
Having made Schindler’s List, how do you feel that there’s a whole
generation that’s only going to know about the Holocaust second-hand,
through films and stories?
There’s no other way to learn about it, except through documentaries.
I encourage documentarians to continue telling stories about World War
II. I think documentaries are the greatest way to educate an entire
generation that doesn’t often look back to learn anything about the
history that provided a safe haven for so many of us today.
Documentaries are the first line of education, and the second line of
education is dramatization, such as The Pacific.
Do you feel that a soldier’s journey is the ultimate hero’s journey?
For one thing, I don’t think that anybody in any war thinks of
themselves as a hero. The minute anybody presumes that they are
heroes, they get their boots taken away from them and buried in the
sand. That’s not going to happen.
In the re-creation of combat situations, and this is coming from a
director who’s never been in one, being mindful of what these veterans
have actually gone through, you find that the biggest concern is that
you don’t look at war as a geopolitical endeavor. You look at war as
something that is putting your best friend in jeopardy. You are
responsible for the person in front of you and the person behind you,
and the person to the left of you and the person to the right of you.
Those are the small pods that will inadvertently create a hero, but
that is someone else’s observation, not the observation of those kids
in the foxholes.
From a filmmaker’s point of view, how do you see the current state of
the industry?
I’m very unqualified to talk about the state of the industry right
now. But, thank goodness for Avatar.
Has the success of Avatar challenged you to try some new forms of
filmmaking?
It is such an inspiration for all of us.
http://www.collider.com/2010/02/04/steven-spielberg-interview-hbo-the-pacific/
RichA
Production" <classic.mr.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are following up
> their highly successful 2001 mini-series Band of Brothers with the
> epic 10-part The Pacific, premiering on HBO on March 14th.
>
> The mini-series tracks the intertwined journeys of three U.S. Marines
> — Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and
> John Basilone (Jon Seda) — of the 1st Marine Division, which is the
> oldest and largest active duty division of the U.S. Marine Corps.
>
Is he going to "humanize" the Japs?
moviePig
Too easy. Perhaps he'll 'humanize' the Jap-haters...
--
- - - - - - - -
YOUR taste at work...
http://www.moviepig.com
Madara0806
Patty Winter
In article <19644c7a-3b42-447b...@p23g2000vbl.googlegroups.com>,
You never saw the closing scene of Indy III? :-)
Patty
tomcervo
> I think Spielberg needs to make a western.
I think he needs someone to tell him he's full of shit. Even if he
isn't, he needs someone who can tell him "No". He's become a curator
instead of a director, a high school history teacher instead of an
artist. Reportedly he ignored Welles' pleas for money--money that
wouldn't have paid the pizza bill for "Always". All this now must be
karma. Does he ever wonder what the entry for him will look like in
the film history books ten years after he's dead?
Anim8rFSK
<1640b507-b56e-486b...@k41g2000yqm.googlegroups.com>,
tomcervo <tomc...@aol.com> wrote:
> On Feb 5, 4:37�pm, Madara0806 <madara0...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > I think Spielberg needs to make a western.
>
> I think he needs someone to tell him he's full of shit. Even if he
> isn't, he needs someone who can tell him "No". He's become a curator
> instead of a director, a high school history teacher instead of an
> artist. Reportedly he ignored Welles' pleas for money--money that
> wouldn't have paid the pizza bill for "Always".
Welles gave an interview when SS paid $50k or something for Rosebud.
Welles had 2 points. 1) for $50k he'd have given SS a new episode for
Amazing Stories, and B) he *burned* the freaking sled. On screen.
--
As Adam West as Bruce Wayne as Batman said in "Smack in the Middle"
the second half of the 1966 BATMAN series pilot when Jill St. John
as Molly as Robin as Molly fell into the Batmobile's atomic pile:
"What a terrible way to go-go"
Mark Nobles
> On Feb 4, 9:57ÔøΩpm, "Mr. Hole The Magnificent: An ABC Studios
> Production" <classic.mr.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are following up
> > their highly successful 2001 mini-series Band of Brothers with the
> > epic 10-part The Pacific, premiering on HBO on March 14th.
> >
> > The mini-series tracks the intertwined journeys of three U.S. Marines
> > ÔøΩ Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello) and
> > John Basilone (Jon Seda) ÔøΩ of the 1st Marine Division, which is the
> > oldest and largest active duty division of the U.S. Marine Corps.
> >
>
> Is he going to "humanize" the Japs?
It was done in Letters from Iwo Jima. You seem to forget that the
Japanese soldiers were, just like American soldiers, mostly young kids
who were drafted and sent off to fight in brutal conditions. Actually,
conditions were worse for them than for American troops. They have not
been treated well in history, I think probably because there were so
few that survived the major island battles, and fewer still who have
written about it. They fought the way they did because they were more
afraid of their own officers than they were of the Americans, not
because they were robots driven by worship of the Emperor.
tomcervo
> RichA <rander3...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > On Feb 4, 9:57 pm, "Mr. Hole The Magnificent: An ABC Studios
> > Production" <classic.mr.h...@gmail.com> wrote:
> > > Executive producers Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks are following up
> > > their highly successful 2001 mini-series Band of Brothers with the
> > > epic 10-part The Pacific, premiering on HBO on March 14th.
>
> > > The mini-series tracks the intertwined journeys of three U.S. Marines
> > > oldest and largest active duty division of the U.S. Marine Corps.
>
> > Is he going to "humanize" the Japs?
>
> It was done in Letters from Iwo Jima. You seem to forget that the
> Japanese soldiers were, just like American soldiers, mostly young kids
> who were drafted and sent off to fight in brutal conditions. Actually,
> conditions were worse for them than for American troops. They have not
> been treated well in history, I think probably because there were so
> few that survived the major island battles, and fewer still who have
> written about it. They fought the way they did because they were more
> afraid of their own officers than they were of the Americans, not
> because they were robots driven by worship of the Emperor.
Scarily enough, the soldiers of the same army were lauded for their
humanity to their prisoners in the Russo-Japanese war of 1905--but 30
years later, the ruling class decided that they need a racist army,
and they got what they wanted. In much the same way, casual references
to Death Marches in the Philippines are often met with a response of
"When?".