BACK-STORY
The series was the brainchild of Tom Hanks
and Erik Jendresen, who was the lead writer.
Steven Spielberg was brought on board to add his creative vision. The series used “Saving Private Ryan” as its
template. HBO was convinced to make the
very expensive project. Back then,
before epic series like “Game of Thrones”, a series costing over $125 million
was a huge gamble. It was the most
expensive per episode series until the similar “The Pacific” series by
HBO. 2,000 German and American uniforms
were produced and 1,200 costumes. 10,000
extras were used. 700 authentic weapons
were used. Some days of shooting
expended up to 14,000 rounds of ammunition. There were 500 speaking roles. The series made stars of Damian Lewis, Ron
Livingston, Donnie Wahlberg, and Neal McDonough. It also had several future stars in minor
roles, like Colin Hanks, Michael Fassbender, Tom Hardy, James McAvoy, Simon
Pegg, and Andrew Scott. The main core of actors was put through a grueling ten
day boot camp by Dale Dye. Dye served as
technical adviser and also played Col. Sink.
The series was filmed mainly at Hatfield Aerodrome in Great Britain. The old airfield was converted into a 1,100
acre studio with a 12 acre village set that stood in for eleven different
times. Believe it or not, the Bastogne
forest scenes were filmed indoors with 250 real and fiberglass trees. The snow was a type of paper and plastics.
The series was critically acclaimed. It won Emmys for Outstanding Miniseries,
Achievement in Interactive TV Programming, Casting, Directing, and Sound
Effects. It was nominated for Writing,
Special Visual Effects, and Cinematography.
It won the Golden Globe for Miniseries.
Damian Lewis was nominated for Actor in a miniseries and Ron Livingston
was nominated for Supporting Actor. It
was awarded a Peabody Award.
EPISODE 1 -
Currahee (Sobel) - The series opens with the now iconic theme
music. No war movie lover can hear that
now and not immediately be taken back to the series. This was followed by the genius decision to
start each episode with cuts from interviews with the aged veterans and not
identify them so the audience would not know which characters were going to
survive. This episode deals with the
training of the unit. It revolves around
the Sobel-Winters dynamic. There are two
acting revelations in this episode.
David Schwimmer joined Matthew Broderick from “Glory” as actors who were
able to play against audience expectations.
He gives an Emmy-worthy performance.
The series is going to make stars of several actors, and it obvious from
this start that Damian Lewis will be one of them. It’s also nice to see Dale Dye (with a lot of
dye) giving his stamp of approval and being rewarded with a meaty role. The
episode lays a firm foundation for the small unit template it will follow. The appearance of real C-47’s at the end was
a good sign that the series would be big on fidelity. The only real weakness of the episode is it
did not do a good job of showing how elite the unit was by having a high
percent of the men wash out. One often
overlooked aspect of the series is it makes Sobel a villain and yet he was a
real person and the series did not change his name, thus showing it was serious
about being historically accurate.
Herbert Sobel – Sobel is not a fictional name. Sobel was the first commander of Easy Company
and he is accurately portrayed in the series.
At the Emmy Awards, David Schwimmer apologized for his characters
treatment of Winters in the series to the real Dick Winters. Winters told Schwimmer that the real Sobel
was much worse.
The idea for putting the pig guts on the
ground when they crawled under the barbed wire came from Maj. Strayer, the
commander of the Battalion. It became
known as the “Hawg Innards Problem.”
Dale Dye –
Dye appears as Col. Sink, but he also served as technical adviser. Because of this he was made an Honorary
Member of the 506th. Dye was
a Marine combat correspondent in Vietnam.
He was eyewitness to many battles and was awarded the Bronze Star and
Purple Heart for an incident in the Tet Offensive where he helped with a
machine gun and rescued some wounded. He
was a character in Gustave Hosford’s “The Short-Timers” and was portrayed in
the subsequent movie “Full Metal Jacket” as Daddy D.A. played by Keith
Hodiak. He created Warriors, Inc. to
offer to prepare actors for war movie roles and to ensure realistic depictions
of war in films. His first boot camp for
actors was for “Platoon”. He
appeared in the film as Capt. Harris. He
went on to appear in numerous other war movies.
Ambrose in the book does not specify that it
was Sobel who served them spaghetti before they had to run up Currahee.
Their motto was Currahee, which meant “Stands
Alone”.
In the war game, Sobel did not leave a good
ambush position to walk into an ambush.
Instead, they were in a defensive position when the wind went rustling
through the trees caused Sobel to panic and jump up and yell “Here they come!”
There was talking about shooting Sobel in
combat (what they called “fragging” in Vietnam), especially after the raid on
the men’s contraband. This was an important
scene in establishing Sobel as an asshole, but in reality the items he found were
contraband and the peaches were stolen. Would Gunny Hartman have done anything different?
NOT HISTORICAL LICENSE: Luz did imitate the voice of Maj. Horton to
get Sobel to cut the fence, thus releasing cows that got a complaint to
headquarters by the farmer.
Why did Sobel accuse Winters of dereliction
of duty? Sobel felt challenged by
Winter’s competence and the fact that Sink saw him as an officer on the rise.
Nixon was an alcoholic. The book does not specify that he insisted on
a particular brand.
Why were Harris and Ranney singled out for
punishment for the sergeants’ mutiny?
They were the ringleaders.
NOT HISTORICAL LICENSE: Guarnere did find out about his brother’s
death at Monte Cassino when he accidentally picked up Martin’s jacket and then
read a letter from Martin’s wife.
$10,000 life insurance - Members of the armed forces were offered a
$10,000 death benefit, but you had to sign up for it. If you have seen “The Pacific”, you might
recall that John Basilone neglected to sign, so his new bride did not get the
$10,000.
leg bags
- they were someone’s brilliant
idea of a way to carry even more gear into the drop zone. The bag would be attached to the
paratrooper’s leg and land just before he hit the ground. He might even have a softer landing by
landing on it. They carried extra
ammunition, radios, machine gun tripods, medical gear, high explosives,
etc. Unfortunately, the shock of jumping
out of a plane caused most of the leg bags to part from their owners. There are no records of any Germans being
killed by falling leg bags.
How many pounds did they carry for the drop? An average of 70 pounds of gear.
The things they carried - pocket knife, spoon, razor, socks, cleaning
patches, flashlight, maps, three days of K-rations, emergency rations package
(4 chocolate bars, pack of Charms, powdered coffee, sugar, matches),
ammunition, compass, two fragmentation grenades, anti-tank mine, smoke grenade,
Gammon bomb (plastic explosive to use on tanks), 2 cartons of cigarettes,
canteen, shovel, first aid kit, M-1 carbine, bayonet, gas mask
Why are their faces painted? So that the moonlight would not reflect off
their faces, making them easier targets.
Some of the men did have Mohawks shaved into
their hair. This would have been pretty
common for paratroopers. Ironically, the
Germans were telling French civilians that the paratroopers were felons and
psychopaths with shaved heads.
Are those real C-47s? They used four C-47s. All were built in 1943-44.
Why do the C-47s have white and black
stripes? To identify them to avoid
friendly fire. In a nice touch, the
planes used have a sloppy paint job, which reflects the hurried painting before
the actual drop.
What are the yellow vests they are wearing? It is an inflatable vest in case they landed
in the water. It was called a Mae West
in honor of the buxom movie star.
