Posted on 10/19/2006 8:30:57 AM PDT by Valin
It is Clint Eastwood’s “Dirty Harry”-esque directing approach - not the star-studded cast - that “Flags of Our Fathers” actor Barry Pepper credits for the oh-so-real on-screen re-enactment of World War II’s bloody Battle of Iwo Jima.
“Eastwood didn’t rehearse anything,” Sgt. Michael Strank’s alter-ego told the Track. “So we didn’t know when these massive explosions were going to be sending a ton of sand in the air or where the weapons were going to be fired.”
Battered from a blast, the startled stars would voice their surprise to Eastwood after a take. But Pepper said the Oscar winner would “just smile and say, ‘Well your look was accordingly perfect.’ ”
“That was exactly what he had in mind to get these incredibly accurate emotions of these young, 18- or 19-year-old kids scared and out of their element,” said Pepper, who also appeared in “Saving Private Ryan.”
And if an actor sustained an injury during a scene, Pepper said you had to bite the bullet and get stitched up later.
“He doesn’t wait for anybody to have their actor weeny moment,” the war movie veteran laughed. “He just expects that you are a mature actor and you can get through the film. If you don’t, then you are just left in the dust because he can pretty much take you or leave you. He’ll shoot the movie without you!”
Pepper witnessed Eastwood’s tough love first-hand when a “squib-hit” blew up in his face, bloodying his lip.
“A medic came up to me after the shot and told me I had to go to the hospital,” he recalled. “But I went up to Eastwood and said, ‘I’m not leaving because I know you - and you’ll shoot the day without me! I won’t be in the movie!’ He laughed and said, ‘Good, because it’s a long way from your heart.’ ”
Then the 76-year-old icon reached over and plucked a 1-inch copper wire that had piercedPepper’s lip adding, “But, you might want to take this out first.”
Yikes! Was Eastwood channeling Gen. Patton???
“Flags of Our Fathers” tells the story of the six men who raised the second flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima. Ryan Phillippe, Jesse Bradford and Adam Beach portray the three survivors who are shipped back home and whisked off on a propaganda tour to raise money for the war effort.
“Flags of Our Fathers” opens in theaters tomorrow.
BUMP!
Yep, and the great Dale Dye was the one who was in charge of that boot camp. Dye was also the one who played Colonel Sink in BoB.
He played Joe Galloway in "We Were Soldiers" and Dale Earnhardt in "3."
Don't know why, but he does seem a bit different...he must not have come across as a Hollywood lib then...
He was also in Saving Private Ryan as one of Marshall's staff officers in the scene where they decide to go find the surviving brother. Great movie, even if some parts were a bit far featched.
Band of Brothers is probably as good as you're going to get.
I can only wonder what SAG will say about this.
I will be glad to see this. Europe has been covered over and over again. It will be good to see something about the Pacific. The mud, rain and conditions they had to live in.
Quick, somebody ban squibs!!!!
A ''Harry Truman'' cabinet meeting moment.
Since I have not yet seen the movie, was Ira Hayes mentioned at all?
The guy who played in "Codetalkers" with Nick Cage is Ira Hayes, I think.
I am a pampered baby boomer, too young for Vietnam, too old for anything else, 46 and have never had my life on the line (well, except for an armed robbery in a Radio Shack I was working at twenty years ago.) But mostly, the roughest thing I have been in has been an occasional car accident.
This game really made me appriciate what our fathers (and theirs before them, for that matter) lived through. Even in simulation, the experience of walking through a South Pacific jungle, listening for the snap of a twig, and wondering if death was up in the trees, was an education for me.
Many of us in here really have no idea. We respect the military and their bravery and sacrifice, but we have no idea of what it is to really go through it. How much worse must it be for the defeatocrats, the Europe-lovers, the Lefties and the "journalists" who blather on about "what America REALLY should be doing right now."
If you get a chance, play this game. And I'd like to see all the nay-sayers dropped in the middle of a real South Pacific jungle sixty plus years ago to see what real bravery is.
The customs and courtesies as well as the necessary separation and non-fraternization of enlisted - offiers were almost flawless in Band of Brothers. Long time military wives understood it but to listen to a recently minted wife of the 0-3 son was an experience. She shortly thereafter received a copy of ''The Officer's Wife'' manual.
I seem to remember that before they began shooting Saving Private Ryan they put Tom Hanks, Barry Pepper, and all the rest of the actors in the squad through a two week boot-camp-like deal where they were living in the mud, sleeping in the rain, eating bad food, and going through all the stuff soldiers in France were forced to go through.
Samething happened in "Band Of Brothers". If you get the DVD it was filmed.
I was thinking more along the lines of The Longest Day. Hollywood doesn't (normally) do stuff like that any more in these PC times, though, so I suppose I'll have to settle for some of the history written by Ambrose and others.
My idea for a movie? "To Save Bastogne", based on the book by the same name by Robert Phillips, about the delaying action by the 28th and other divisions that made it possible for the 101st to make it into Bastogne in time to defend it as the krauts were advancing from the east.
That's JMHO, of course.
I was hoping for something from the European Theater that no one's done an historically accurate movie about...
The Battle of the Bulge, for example
Band of Brothers.
Titled Letters From Iwo Jima, it's supposed to be in Japanese with English subtitles.
Out of the 22,000 troops they had there, 21,000 were killed. They were told they wouldn't be going home, they were there to die for the emperor ...
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