♪ ("BAND OF BROTHERS"
THEME PLAYS) ♪ ROGER BENNETT: Welcome to HBO's<i>
Band of Brothers</i> podcast. This is Roger Bennett,
I say flash, you say thunder. This podcast is a celebration
of HBO's<i> Band of Brothers</i> as it turns 20.
(LAUGHS) That's right. The epic, groundbreaking genre
changing miniseries created by Steven Spielberg
and Tom Hanks in the wake of<i> Saving Private Ryan</i>
is two decades old. September the 9th, 2001, was the exact date
it premiered on HBO and filling ten intricately
plotted episodes upon the viewing public based on historian
Stephen Ambrose's <i> Band of Brothers</i> Book. But it's all following
the journey of Easy Company, Second Battalion of the 506th
Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division,
U.S. Army. From its inception at boot camp
at Camp Toccoa, Georgia, all the way to the Eagle's Nest and the end of the
Second World War in Europe. The show, with its impressive
budget of 125 million dollars, was at the time of shooting the most expensive
in television history. And it's scope, as a result,
is astounding. Forged by the best writers,
directors, cinematographers, set designers,
hair and makeup artists and on and on.
Breathing life into a script that contained
over 500 speaking parts, most of which are handed out
to a cast of then-unknowns. Who undertook an intense
ten-month production period surrounded by more than
ten thousand extras. <i>Band of Brothers</i> has proceeded
to become a beloved piece of television, revered
around the world, for the quality of its acting, the audacious historic
sweep of narrative, and the show's commitment
at its heart to honoring the legacy of a fading breed
of American heroes. Yet, its own journey
was no straight line. Within 36 hours
of<i> Band of Brothers</i> debut, September the 11th occurred, an event which altered
the course of global history. And while those attacks
cast a shadow that initially muted America's
reception to the show, <i> Band of Brothers'</i>
singular brilliance has proceeded to empower
a popularity that unbelievably seems to grow year on year. This is a series that millions
of die-hard viewers watch on HBO Max on an annual
recurring basis, allowing the show to reinforce
their understanding of and gratitude for the generation
who pulled the world back from the brink of destruction. I'm amongst them. I watch<i> Band of Brothers</i>
every year, and I find that every time
I watch the series, I notice a new detail,
find a new depth of meaning. A line that passed me by
suddenly resonates as truth. Indeed, last year, when COVID
crippled both my city of birth, Liverpool, England, and my adopted hometown
of Manhattan, I sat down with my youngest son,
Oz. He was ten then, and we reveled in episode
after episode on a nightly basis against a backdrop
of chaos and panic of our present-day reality. I wanted my son to immerse
himself in something which embodied the idea
of American leadership I grew up admiring from afar. And<i> Band of Brothers</i>
is exactly that. A show filled with empathy, courage, everyday heroism,
and the "Follow me!" ethos, which is to me, all that's great
about this nation. There's so much to celebrate
about<i> Band of Brothers.</i> And over the next ten weeks,
we will do exactly that. We're going to follow the course
of the series, one episode at a time. With the help of the stars,
creators, writers, directors and producers who made
the series a reality 20 years ago. Including Damian Lewis,
Major Richard Winters, Ron Livingston,
Captain Lewis Nixon, and Donnie Wahlberg, the soulful Second Lieutenant
Carwood Lipton. For all of us,
it's been a wonder of a lifetime to make this podcast series and immerse ourselves
in the memory of Easy Company and allow their astonishing
feats to live on. And also... to revel in the<i> Band of Brothers</i>
creators' commitment to authenticity, with which
they serve their story. A story lived out by the
paratrooper axiom. Hitler made only one big mistake
when he built his Atlantic Wall, he forgot to put a roof on it. MEN: (SINGING)<i> ♪ Glory, glory
What a hell of a way to die ♪</i> <i> ♪ Glory, glory
What a hell of a way to die ♪</i> <i> ♪ Glory, glory
What a hell of a way to die ♪</i> <i>♪ He ain't gonna jump no more ♪</i> ROGER: We kick things off
with the perfect human being to launch
this celebratory series. The gent who was
the show's co-creator, along with Steven Spielberg,
he dreamed of bringing Steven Ambrose's<i>
Band of Brothers</i> book to life, and then made it real. Producing, writing, directing, and even starring in
episode five as an extra, to help fill out the background
of a scene. when my guests picked up
the Peabody Award for the series.
He talked of quote, "The values that have made<i>
Band of Brothers</i> soar in the imagination." His desire to be true
to the stories, the realities, the emotional traumas
these men witnessed, survived or succumbed to. Thank the old gods and the new,
he did. And created a vessel that's been
so vital in ensuring the greatest generations'
legacy would live on in the hearts
and minds of TikTok America. It's a joy to welcome
Mr. Tom Hanks. TOM HANKS:
Well, hello, TikTok America. (LAUGHS) That's a little flowery,
but I'll take it all. Thank you. Thank you. I can tell by your accent
that you're English. ROGER: I ride
with team America now, Tom. (TOM CHUCKLES) ROGER: Tom, 20 years
since<i> Band of Brothers</i> debuted. Has that time gone fast or slow? TOM: Oh, wicked fast.
It always seems to be the case. There is no way to slow
any of this down. It's only when we begin
to ponder a couple of individual images from the time that
it becomes somehow dated. We were shooting this
at the turn of the millennium. We began working on all of this way back in the 1900s
as I like to say. Which now seems like
an awfully long time ago, and in fact, then it premiered at the time of 9/11, when the attacks on
and the destruction of the World Trade Center
and the Pentagon. And also, I had kids who were
little, teeny tiny back then and now they're all grown up.
So, it's gone by very quickly. ROGER: When did you last watch
the show? Because I'm fascinated,
when you do watch it now. -What do you see?
-TOM: We lived this for so long, the better part of three years. That I only catch it now
in individual spurs. There's a couple of times a year where it plays
in heavy rotation. One of them is certainly around
June, June 6th, the D Day anniversaries. Another one is around
the American Veterans Day. Which is in November and also
around the Fourth of July, I might be going through
the grid and landing upon it or one of my kids
might be saying, "Hey Dad, look what's on." And I... am... transported back to some
sort of meeting or moment or conversation I had with somebody about that
very specific moment that is being shot. I can remember it more
in piecemeal of individual beats. As opposed to the grand putting
together a story, because every one of the beats
was a very specific construct, very specific entry
into like the deck of cards. I don't necessarily see
part of the story but... I see the seven of clubs or I see the jack of diamonds
in the deck of 52. Then, along with that almost
always comes along a moment or a person on screen shows up. That has gone off
and done marvelous things in the 20 years since. We had people that were just
out of their drama schools. It was one of their early jobs,
Damien Lewis certainly. But then, up comes Tom Hardy,
few other folks, that have since gone on
to do great things. So, I will tell you
it's a bittersweet experience. It's hard to watch because of-- well, because of everything
that we poured into it. And also the celebration
of the lives that were affected. There are still<i> Band of Brothers</i>
reunions that happen every anniversary from when they
banned their boot camp. And now, a lot of those guys
are married and have kids and... Easy Company shows up
at all the weddings and bar mitzvah's
and birthday parties for the little kids that
didn't exist back in 1999, when we started shooting. ROGER: A lot of life, Tom,
a lot of life. But I want to start
with the genesis of the series. You teamed up
with Steven Spielberg on<i> Saving Private Ryan,</i>
which won five Oscars in 1999. The film itself, groundbreaking. Second World War movies have
begun to be shot and released before the war itself
had even ended. In 1941, President Roosevelt ordered
Hollywood to valorize the war effort to almost
John Wayne heroize the thing. <i>Private Ryan</i> began to strip away
that mythology. What made you
and Steven Spielberg say, "You know what?
We wanna do more." TOM:<i> Saving Private Ryan</i>
was the first movie about the subject matter. In, I would say, years that
just dealt with the subject. There have been war movies
that had become genre films. Sort of like heist movies
of sort. It had really been
not since the '60s, that there had been a movie
about very specifics of the war. Particularly the war in Europe. And when Steven first talked
to me about doing the movie. We're both huge readers
of history, studiers of history, and constantly compare notes
on the documentaries and books that we've read. And what had happened
with that is that the motion picture technology had become more or less
what it is today with CGI. And that alone, I said,
you'll be able to shoot Omaha Beach and the D-Day
invasion in a way that it's never
been done before with a verisimilitude
and an accuracy and the audiences
will be able to take it, because of the tastes
that have changed. And so, the purpose of that
was really to do a double whammy of the details,
grim as they are. Of the specifics of a place
like Omaha Beach and then the human aspects of essentially finding a kid,
so they can go home. When that entered
into the social vernacular, there was interest from the
American Broadcasting Company to do a miniseries based
on a Stephen Ambrose book. We had used his<i> D-Day</i>
as one of the primers and bibles
of the<i> Saving Private Ryan,</i> and along came
also then<i> Citizen Soldiers.</i> His second book in which a lot
of the same characters then are followed throughout
the rest of the war. Stephen told me about that. I said, you know, I don't think
that's the book to do. (TOM LAUGHS) Then he said, "What?" I said, "Look, there's
another book that Ambrose wrote, called<i> Band of Brothers,</i> and it's about a very
specific group of people, and it follows them
all through the war. And I also don't think ABC
is the place to do it, because you'll have
to have commercials, and they'll be standards
and practices, and there'll be any
number of themes, as well as very specific
movie-making moments that you will not be able
to create because of censoring." I had had a history with HBO
because I had done another big miniseries for them called<i>
From the Earth to the Moon.</i> And I said,
"HBO is the place for this. Because you can show
anything you want, and it can last as long
as it needs to, and you don't have
to have commercials." And Stephen turned on a dime,
God bless him. And said, "Well, then let's go." And then, from that,
came the agreement from HBO. To say, "Well look,
if you're going to do this... do it big." -(ROGER CHUCKLES)
-TOM: They gave us the budget, they gave us the time. But they also gave us
the freedom and the wherewithal to go in deeper
into individual moments. I mean HBO agreed
to ten episodes, which is actually much more than
ten hours, I think. Altogether, it was more like,
11 hours of television. To say, make it last
for ten weeks, this was
an extraordinary alliance. And then the question begins, "Well how deep do we go
into all of this?" There are certainly characters
in order to follow, but there's also
the overreaching theme, which is different a bit
from<i> Saving Private Ryan</i> and a different bit
from everything else, is because these guys
were paratroopers. They were volunteers. They had to win the wings,
they had to prove themselves in order to be
accepted into the paratroopers. And so there's a bit of an elite
force kind of thing to them, along with the reality
of saying, "And oh, by the way,
we essentially shove you out
of a plane, and you land, and then you try to get
your job done." So, wanting to do it happens
again and again to me. And I think to Steven as well
is that we learn something, in one experience. And we learn so much
that we were not able to bring to the screen,
that the desire then was to continue on and find
an alliance like with HBO and say, "I think we have
about 11 hours of truly rock 'em sock 'em stuff
that we can bring to the screen, but it's gonna be
a little expensive." And they said okay. ROGER: You all might know<i>
Band of Brothers,</i> that's the book.
What did you see in that narrative when you first
read it? What leapt out at you? Was it the scope of the story,
that you would then be able to take a viewer all the way
from D-Day to Eagle's Nest at the end of the war in Europe? Really the essence
of the G.I. experience. TOM: It was that very narrative, that we took these guys
from the barracks in the United States in Georgia
and we deposited them literally at Eagle's Nest. We didn't have to invent
anything. The narrative was all in place,
all of the logic was there. They did well, they did poorly. They were literally in the great
places throughout, certainly Normandy
and their landing zones. But then they failed miserably
and misguided Market Garden and then they had to drive
in to be surrounded in the Battle of the Bulge. They had to continue on
and they were literally sweeping across Germany
up to the war's end. So, it was the perfect
laying out of locale and character development that...(CHUCKLES) We were-- It was also extraordinary
because there were some guys who didn't get a scratch
on them and we had them from the first beat
until the very last. The scope of what Easy Company
and the 506 experienced was a bit of a gift for us
because we never had to create a narrative
out of whole cloth. We always had it in hand. And while we were
in the pursuit of it, because it was such
a hurly burly in order to do it. We were always writing future
episodes at the same time that we were shooting one, and in the research and work
that we would do on, say episode three, we would
find out something that we could then put
into episode six or episode seven, particulars about
a number of the characters, for example, that were outside
the boundaries of the actual book. We had the veterans
themselves saying, "Well, I didn't do that,
but I did this." And then when we find out
about that he did that, well, holy cow, we hadn't even
imagined that, and we were able to then
put it into the later episodes. It was living and breathing
screenplay process at the same time
that was always growing. So, the excitement of it was
that it wasn't trapped into a bell jar that we were
just trying to cherry pick for wonderful moments. We had an overarching--
literally, if you will, a table of contents and a map
of where they had been and what they had done. And we were always filling this
in with wickedly great details that ended up making it
a lot more human, at the same time, extraordinary, what these young guys
did and said. One of the big things
that we landed upon, in the course of doing it all,
was there was always going to be an accompanying documentary, that were the men
of Easy Company. We went back and they were
all alive, they were all talking and we had an extraordinary
experience making the interviews of the actual men themselves.
Oftentimes in their homes, and oftentimes asking them
questions and getting to talk about subjects that they
had never spoken of, even with their own families. They all think that, oh,
a movie crew is in this small town in Texas
or Louisiana. And so everybody is excited
about the movie crew coming. So the family would be around
the cousins, nephews, the folks next door
would be coming by to look at all the equipment as we're setting up
the interview in the living room of a veteran's house. And we find out,
no, they didn't care about the movie cameras
and the lights. They wanted to hear
what the veteran was going to be talking about because he had never told
these stories before. VETERAN:<i> Everywhere you would
look, you would see dead people.</i> <i> You know, dead soldiers,
they're here hours, there's...</i> <i> Then civilians besides,
dead animals.</i> <i> So death was all over.</i> TOM: Parts of those interviews were then incorporated
thematically into the beginning of each one
of our episodes. VETERAN 2:<i> Guy says, "Well,
you jump out of airplanes,</i> <i> you know, you've got all
your army equipment,</i> <i>you jump out of airplanes
to fight the enemy."</i> <i> And the other guy says,</i> <i> "Go to hell,
nobody put up their hands."</i> <i>And I don't know what it was,
brought it up, but...</i> <i>the guy giving the speech
was saying,</i> <i>"But you get paid 50 dollars
a month more!"</i> <i>So that made it 100 bucks.</i> TOM: We didn't identify
who they were. They were just these old guys... talking in their natural accents
and their natural cadences, telling some sort of story about something that happened to them
early on back during the war. We don't know who they are. But by the time the series
was ended, we realized who was
Wild Bill Garnier. VETERAN 3:<i> I'm just one part
of the big war.</i> <i>That's all, one little part.</i> <i> And I'm proud to be
a part of it.</i> <i>Sometimes it makes me cry...</i> TOM: He was Carwood Lipton. VETERAN 4:<i> Henry V
was talking to his men.</i> <i> He said, "From this day,
to the ending of the world...</i> <i>We in it shall be remembered.</i> <i> We lucky few,</i> <i> we band of brothers,</i> <i> for he who today sheds
his blood with me</i> <i> shall be my brother."</i> TOM: Who was Dick Winners. VETERAN 5:<i> Do you remember...</i> <i>the letter that Mike Ranney
wrote me?</i> <i> You do? You remember
how he ended it?</i> <i> "I cherish...</i> <i> the memories
of a question my grandson
asked me the other day.</i> <i> When he said,</i> <i>'Grandpa, were you a hero
in the war?'</i> <i> Grandpa said 'No...</i> <i>but I served in a company
of heroes.'"</i> TOM: And that ended up
being just a treasure trove. If you take for example,
the character of Buck Compton. Buck Compton in the book<i>
Band of Brothers</i> was recorded as wounded during the Battle of the Bulge and be sent back
to the rear to an aid station. Well, the real Buck Compton
was talking with Neil Macdonald, the actor who played him. And Buck said, "Hey,
you know in the book, Stephen said I was wounded.
I wasn't wounded. I cracked up." And Neil said, "What do you
mean you cracked up? He said "Look, I've been shot
in the ass during Market Garden, and I was in the hospital laying
on my belly with a bleeding butt and I was surrounded by guys
who had their legs blown off, their genitals blown off,
their heads barely held together with tape and catgut,
I felt like a fool. When I was brought back again,
I couldn't take it. So I cracked up, I had a nervous
breakdown. I was okay later on, but in Bastogne,
I couldn't do my job. Well, Stephen Ambrose
had put that in the book, in the original drafts. And when he sent it around
to all the members
of Easy Company, to a man, they all said, "You are not going to tell
anybody about Buck Compton breaking up
in the Battle of the Bulge. You take that out." I had a couple
of the actual veterans say, "Oh no, if he had put that in,
I wouldn't have anything
to do with this goddamn book." So, we went-- (LAUGHS)
We went to Buck... with this information, and we
said, "Buck, is it okay if we--" He said, "Oh yeah,
sure, go ahead, it's what happened to me." So, we were able to have that
from the man's mouth himself, and it ended up being
one of the prime movers for the character. MAJOR DICK WINTERS:<i>
Buck was a great combat leader.</i> <i>He was wounded in Normandy,
and again in Holland.</i> <i>He received the Silver Star
for his part</i> <i>in taking out those German guns
on D-day.</i> <i>He took everything the Krauts
could throw at him</i> <i> time and again.</i> <i>I guess he just couldn't take
seeing his friends</i> <i> Toye and Guarnere
all torn up like that.</i> <i>No one ever thought any less
of him for it.</i> TOM: The series is just
halfway over. We still have another four hours
of television... and we had something
that had never even been whispered about before, and that came about
from talking. There was one moment afterwards we were putting together
The Battle of the Bulge,
and the Bastogne sequence. And I was saying
to the documentary team I said,
"Is there somebody who talked about how cold it was
in Bastogne? Is there somebody
who talked about it? There's got to be some anecdote
about how cold it was." And they couldn't remember
off hand, but they found footage
of a veteran who just on the off chance
happened to say, you know... VETERAN 6:<i>
Even today on a real cold night,</i> <i>we go to bed and my wife will
tell you,</i> <i>the first thing I'll say is,
"I'm glad I'm not in Bastogne."</i> TOM: It just shaped
the whole episode, of course. I can't tell you
how often this happened -in the course of making it.
-ROGER: This story, reminds me of something
that Stephen Ambrose said when he was asked
why did he work with you? He said, "It's because
in almost all war movies, before<i> Saving Private Ryan,</i> when an American gets shot,
it's either in the forehead or in the heart, and he's dead. And his commanding officer
can write home to the grieving widow
or to the parents, and say, 'He never knew what hit him.
He didn't suffer.'" But Ambrose said,
"It doesn't happen like that. They do know what hit them.
They do suffer. And when you watch
a Spielberg movie or when you see Hanks's<i>
Band of Brothers,</i> you're going to see that." And that was really
your mission, your approach. TOM: You don't want it
to be pretty. At the end of the day,
balls of fire, and gunfire, and machine gun muzzle blasts,
and airplanes, and rockets, it's glamorous to the eye,
it truly is. It looks cool,
and it's part and parcel of every superhero movie
that comes out. Stuff is exploding all the time, and fights break out,
and people are shooting guns. For the sake of entertainment, there is something primitive
in the thrill. The point that we go through
and have gone through since it's in some of our<i>
Brothers</i> product, is that it's deadly. That vicious
and horrible things, grizzly things, visceral things
happen when a piece of hot metal passes through the human body. That it blows off limbs, that it wreaks a type
of inhuman cost that does end up taking lives,
and it is true, they do know what happened. Part of it is because audiences
are more mature than they were and don't want to be
cheated of the actual cost that goes along with it.
But an awful lot of times in movies-- And look,
I can walk you through moments of both<i> Saving Private Ryan</i>
and<i> Band of Brothers</i> where I said, "Okay, you know,
we soft-pedalled that, that's not quite what you
might think it is", because we fight that battle
all the time. 'Cause we don't want it
to be glamorous, but at the same time,
we don't want to turn World War II
into something that looks like a glorified camping trip. In the episode that I directed, in the conversation that I had
with Dick Winters, he told me that the memory he had
of killing a young German kid in that field in Holland was the last time
that he fired his rifle. And it was the last time
that he was aware of the man he killed. 'Cause after that,
he was promoted
to executive officer. He was no longer in command
of the company in the field. And this was 1998
when I'm talking to him, 1999. He is an old man,
he is in his eighties, and he is still haunted by the look on that kid's face
when he shot him dead. So there is the... (CHUCKLES) There's that double whammy,
that great paradox of, it's horrible to kill a man
under those circumstances. It's horrible to ask
a human being to go off, and risk his life
in that matter. And there is also a horror
that goes along with saying, "Your job is to go off and kill
as many of them as you can." There's an awful lot of stuff
they will not talk about and they do not celebrate. But they don't discount
the price. They don't discount the cost. I can tell you stories,
for example, the greatest soldier
that any of these guys had seen. And that was Speirs, Captain. And then later on Major Speirs,
who was an animal. I don't mean that
in an adorative sense. Speirs viewed his job
as a paratrooper, to end the war
as quickly as possible. And in order to do that,
he needed to kill... German soldiers. And he did. And there's a number of stories
of how he did it that is absolutely
bone chilling. And in fact, in episode three, we filmed
a Rashomon recollection of what guys saw him do,
German prisoners of war. And they were on the move, and the war was going on
around them, and those German prisoners were not going to be making it
to any stockade. There is no doubt that
something happened. But when we were doing it,
I said, "We are not going to lay down in concrete fact a representation
of what happened. We will lay down the question
of what happened. -We will say...
-WARREN MUCK:<i> On D-Day...</i> <i>Speirs comes across this group
of crowd prisoners,</i> <i>digging a hole or some such.
Under guard and all.</i> <i>He breaks out a pack of smokes,
passes them out.</i> <i> -Even gives him a light</i>
-GERMAN SOLDIER: (IN GERMAN)<i>
American tobacco.</i> MUCK:<i> Then all of a sudden,
he swings up his Thompson</i> <i>and...</i> (IMITATES RAPID GUNSHOTS)<i>
...he hoses them.</i> (INDISTINCT CHATTER) MUCK:<i> I mean, goddamn!
Gives them smokes first?</i> <i> Mm. You see, that's why
I don't believe
he really did it.</i> DONALD MALARKEY:<i>
Oh, you don't believe it?</i> -MUCK:<i> You didn't see it.</i>
-SOLDIER:<i> I heard
he didn't do it.</i> (RAPID GUNFIRE) SOLDIER 2:<i> No, no, no.
It was him all right.</i> <i>But it was more than eight guys.</i> <i> -It was more like 20.</i>
-(GUNSHOTS) TOM: Let me tell you, in some ways
I'll only say this because Speirs is no longer with us. He was always good friends
with Dick Winters. And when we had the big
HBO splashing premier, and we took all the veterans
to Utah Beach, and put up a big tent, Captain Speirs did not want
to necessarily make the trip because he was afraid. He was worried about what they
would make of some of the things that he did in the war. And Dick Winters said,
"Don't be an idiot. Come on." I actually watched both of them
and I saw these old guys sitting in a tent in Normandy, looking up at a big,
huge screen, watching actor versions
of themselves land in Normandy and take out the guns
Brécourt Manor. I will definitely say what we
wanted to do, was to bring forward
the multiple faces of the cost of going to war, of what it does
to a human being. And also
at its most primitive level, what happens when a hot piece
of lead passes through the human body at a speed
that is faster than sound. It's a terrible thing to witness and it's a terrible thing
to happen. ROGER: You were asked
what your goal was when the series launched,
and you said, to try and put this
narrative into human terms, quote, "So it is not just a flickering
black and white myth that's on some channel on your cable
system, but instead, is a palpable story that
you yourself might think, 'Well, what would I do under
those same circumstances?' And my gosh, I sort of recognize myself
in these men as opposed to just
these mythic heroes." I've got to say when I read
that, I've got to tell you, Tom, I spent my whole time-- And I watch<i> Band of Brothers</i>
every year at least twice. I spent my whole time watching
the show thinking, with its everyday heroism
and self-sacrifice, and I think, "Oh, my God,
I could never do any of that." TOM: Well, ain't that the point? It's hard to imagine ourselves
as altruistic 19-year-old kids. Many of these guys have never
been more than four or five miles away
from the town they grew up in. And this thing happens,
this global conflagration, that is, without a doubt... a battle between good and evil. There were two empires that
decided to enslave the world because the world they were
enslaving were inferior beings, a theology that says,
we are superior to you. And so therefore,
you must submit to us. (LAUGHS) That's a huge problem. That is a huge issue
that is laid at the feet of, dare you say it without
sounding too jingoistic, liberty loving peoples
everywhere. And if you're 19 years old
and you're seeing the world taking a turn for that,
chances are, many of the 19-year-olds
are gonna say, "Well, hey, if I don't do something,
who will? If I don't take part in this,
who's going to do it?" If you're 19 years old
and you kind of give a shit, you're gonna want
to probably be a part of it. But there's a part of, I think,
in everybody that says, "Well, look, if I'm going
to do it at all, I'm gonna do it
amongst the best. If I'm going to be a part of it, I'm going to be able to take
action into my own hands. And so therefore, I guess, I might have to see
if I can be one of these guys. Let me see if I can be,
you know, in a tank. Let me find out if I have
what it takes to fly a plane." Now, you might not have
what it takes to do any of those things, and an awful lot of guys
got washed out of Camp Toccoa because they couldn't muster up. The next version of this,
which was<i> The Pacific,</i> which took on
the Marine Corps in Japan. It was missing an awful lot of
the marquee elements that<i> Band of Brothers</i> had. The specifics of the characters
is chronicled by Stephen. Everybody knows where London is,
everybody knows where Paris is, everybody knows where Berlin is, so the map is very,
very familiar. But I bet you can't pick out
Peleliu on a map. Or even Okinawa,
or Iwo Jima, or Guadalcanal. Where is it?
No one really knows. And also, the Marines enlisted
and became Marines. The toughest broad outfit
that there is without a doubt, but the paratroopers had to go
through major school, so, even in there you have that
same sort of, "Well, what does
a 19-year-old do?" Nineteen-year-old
goes after this. But the issue that comes around
with it is part of the glamour
of the cinema. Part of what the cinema can do
to us, is that it forces upon us this question: What would I have been able
to do given the same
circumstances? Would I have been
as tough physically? Would I have been
able to put it behind me like these guys did? Could I have been as cruel?
And could I have taken both the misery,
and could I have survived
the glory of it all? It's almost like something out
of Shakespeare's tragedies, his histories.
It's all about Greek drama. And some brands, it's hubris, and in other cases
it's, you know, do we curse our own fates? And when our series
came out and it was massively huge. As soon as you put
something out, there's always a degree of judgment that
is put forward on it and you say, okay, all right. So, what is the point
of doing all of this? The point of doing all of this
is this, is that a bunch of guys decided to go off and try
to save the world in this way. That's it. And they made a decision
and they were all just kids, none of them were superhuman,
and they did the right things, they did the wrong things. But somewhere in the course
of all of that is that moment of can and can't. And every human being
faces a moment like that somewhere in their lives. We also became a very,
very different thing because of the nature
of when it came out. ROGER: September 9th, 2001. TOM: All right, mark that date.
We started off... being essentially a big
television event for HBO. And two days later we premiered. And two days later,
it's September 11. We went off, we were not back for a while
and we had a question, as to whether or not
the events of 9/11 had made us moot. Had made us a celebration of something that was little more
than a museum piece, that was going to be a Band-Aid or meant to be a tonic
to a world in which we were suddenly
addressing the grander scale and it wasn't going to be
a legitimate connection. And I had questions to HBO. I said, "Should we continue
or just wait till later?" Because we didn't want to come
out and have some sort of alternative editorializing
placed on what we
had set out to do 'Cause suddenly, World War III
had busted out. With the time that had passed
before we came out, we found out that, in fact, we couldn't help but be
a comment on the times. That we were
not just a jingoistic, "Hey, let's go get 'em",
shock and awe quality to it. We were actually, I think,
talking about two things. One, is the long haul that
anything like this was going to be, and certainly what went along with
everything post 9/11 was a very long haul. But also, comes down
to that very thing that you were talking about
is what would I do given the same situations? Well, guess what,
somehow, we were all
in the same circumstances. We were all part
of a home front. They were young men that were
going to be going off and doing what their country
asked them to do. And there were actually much
bigger questions about why...
(CHUCKLES) Why doesn't everybody
accept freedom the same way? Why can't we get along? So, the rest of the series
ended up being a different kind
of viewer experience because, by that time,
we were saying something about World War II,
at the same time, we were asking if we were not living
in World War III. ROGER: September 11th
forever changed America, and the world,
and the immediacy of war. The unsparing horrors and loss
that<i> Band of brothers</i> contains, it meant the audience's
immediate embrace of the series was muted when
it initially aired in real time. But since then, I mean,
this show, the increasing popularity
over time year, on year, on year, it just seems to have
increased exponentially. Tom, how do you understand
that in your own mind? TOM: I think it comes down
to the desire for us all to belong to something
bigger than ourselves. And to earn membership
into whatever that society is. That we seek out like-minded
people that greet the day and look at the possibilities
the same way we do for each other, and ponder
the big questions, like, how do we make the world better? I cannot tell you how many letters, e-mails,
messages I've gotten from servicemen
and women around the world, who say, "We watch<i>
Band of Brothers</i> regularly to remind ourselves
why we're in this
in the first place." There's a cliché they always
say, both in the series and the... (CHUCKLES) and in the military, which is,
we don't do this
for the big picture. We don't do this
to defeat the enemy. We do it for each other.
We do it for the other guys in the tent. We do it for
the other guys in the ship. We do it for the other guys
in the unit. And even in our series,
they all say... VETERAN:<i> Real men,
the real heroes, are the fellas</i> <i>that are still buried over there
and those that come home</i> <i> to be buried.</i> TOM: That's the legacy that
is definitely gone after by Stephen Ambrose himself. That is, if you're going to put
the most positive spin on all of this, it's going to be,
look what can happen when like-minded people
get together. That's it.
It's as simple as that. I am drawn to that
again and again, which is one of the reasons why
I study history. There are moments throughout
history in which impossible things, unimaginable things
have come to pass because like-minded people
decided to get together and make it so. Now, here we are in 2021. This has to come in the face
of the other realities. Meanwhile, you have to add
the meanwhile, dot, dot, dot. We had this great dilemma that we spoke
about at the time, is that we were making a series
about white guys that volunteered to go off
and fight white guys and save the world, in which white guys got
together and saved the world?
All right. Well, what about
the Black troops? What about
the African American troops? What about the segregation
that went on? The best we had time for, and if you watch the series, and it's in my episode.
It's in episode five. We had Black drivers
of the famous, very famous, Red Ball Express, driving the trucks that carried
Easy Company, in the 506th everybody else
into Bastogne. There was one pan thrown
through the windshield over onto a driver. And then later on as all the paratroopers are making
their tail bed jump out of the trucks, the Black drivers get
together and they light-- they literally just pour
gasoline in the ground and lit it on fire
in order to get warm. And you see that all those
drivers are Black. That was it. That's all we had,
the wherewithal and the wisdom or the ability
of what we could do. So along with all the other... aspects of, look what can happen
when good people get together and try to make it,
so comes this other lesson that there's always something else
that needs to be done. There's always some other aspect
that needs to be followed. There are always... there are always
corrections to it. Even though all of this stuff
has this patina victory and success and challenges,
it's still not perfect. We forever have
to keep weighing that. Even when we can
to get into the territory of how some
of these characters had great problems
after the war, we make hints of that as well. So it's not like they graduated
from college with a letter in killing Germans
and then they went back and continued on
and opened up their business and everything was fine. A lot of these guys
had tremendous problems. I'll tell you
an interesting story. It was airing,
it was on the air. Had been on for some time
in November and I was driving my kids
to carpool. And one of my neighbors,
actually, one of the parents of one of the kids
that was in my carpool, came out when I was
picking up the kids, and he said, "Tom, Tom, Tom, I gotta tell you a story,
I gotta tell you a story." He's a prosecutor
for the County of Los Angeles, or he has been, he just retired
not too long ago. He said, "You know,
before I got this job, I was a young lawyer,
I was just out of law school. I was moving up the line,
and suddenly I am working
for the district attorney, and I end up
meeting with my boss, one of the guys
that was ahead things, and, you know,
I go into his office and I see he's got that case
of souvenirs, army helmets, bayonets, and flags,
and da-da-da. And I never talked about it,
but I was talking about it... And then later on I said,
'What's with all
the army helmets? What's with all the war
surplus stuff?' He said,
'Oh, he was in the war.'" He fought in World War II. All right... Da-da-da.
This, that and the other thing, and then later on he says, "I didn't realize it
till last night, when watching your show,
that's Buck Compton, my boss!" (LAUGHS) Buck Compton went out
and became the prosecutor for the city of Los Angeles, and he persecuted Sirhan Sirhan. ROGER: The man who
assassinated Robert Kennedy. TOM: Here's a guy that never--
"Hey, let me show you, here's what I jumped into, I jumped into Normandy,
I jumped here, I was in the
Battle of the Bulge,
there was an eagle's nest", la-la-la... That kind of stuff is just
the absolute high country when you can try to go from ordinary guys to almost
mythic cinematic heroes and then follow them back
to being ordinary guys. That's like the great sine wave
of existence. ROGER: You talk about
everyday heroes, I have to ask you, one
of my favorite Youtube clips that I watch whenever
I feel low, is you winning the Emmy for best
miniseries in 2002, and you and Stephen
brought up Dick Winters
to the stage to address the world. Dick Winters, who passed away
January 2nd 2011. You actually eulogized him
at his funeral, in Ephrata,
Pennsylvania, with these words. You said,
"When our days run their course, and a man like
Dick Winters leaves us, time and providence
remind us that human beings can do giant things." Now, after that funeral
of a great American original, a man you always
called "The Major," you were interviewed,
and you said, "It was life-changing to meet
a gent like that." Tom, how was it life-changing? TOM: Let me tell you. We had been working.
We had some footage. We had a lot of pages. We were doing it-- trying
to discover at the same time. Starting with what we have
and then dreaming big. And what often happens is that
you discover possibilities in the course of shooting and then
you can shape the story in this kind of way. Now Ivan Schwarzman,
who was one of our UPMs, He was very close
with the Major. Dick Winters had come back
to our production offices a couple of times
and I talked to him regularly. As did Ivan,
and Ivan took some footage. To Pennsylvania to show
the Major and his wife. They're on their farm. Anticipated that the man would be delighted
by what he saw. He was not. And Ivan said,
"Is there a problem?" And Dick Winters says
"Yeah, there's a problem." "What is it?
Doesn't it look good?" "Oh, yeah the guns are great. The machine gun fire is fabulous
and all the uniforms are in place and, yeah,
all the buttons are corrected. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
that's really great, but there's something missing." So, Ivan... (CHUCKLES) Ivan-- I-- I called up Ivan
and Tony To, who is also one
of our main guys. Tony To carries his own weight
and then some. He says, "Hey, boss,
you gotta call the Major, 'cause we got a problem." I just said, "What happened?" Then, well, Ivan showed him
some of the footage that we have
and he was none too happy. "All right, well, then,
let me call up the Major. Let me call up the guy,
whose life we are representing. The man whose life
has been chronicled his entire military career by one
of the greatest historians of World War II in the history
of American publishing. And let me find out
what he's pissed off about." So, I called him up and I said,
"I understand... that you're not wild
about what we've done so far. And I've seen the footage
and it was fine. And I know how the movies make,
things get better every chance. We have no ego about this. So tell me
in no uncertain terms, what your problem is. Because... our job here
is not to screw up the lives of the subject matters
that we're making. Our job is not to discern them
for ourselves, what you went through,
but to find out what happened and try to dramatize that
and make it real on screen. What's the problem?"
He says, "The problem is... you have us looking like
we don't know what we're doing." And I knew what he was talking
about because we had characters that land and they take a moment
to figure something out and they say, "Maybe we should
go this way," or "what do you think, Captain?"
Blah, blah, blah. And I said, "Well, I think
what we're trying to do is, we're trying to make you land,
and try to have a few moments of sussing out
the circumstance and then trying to find out where to go and what to do." And he said, "Tom, we knew
what we were doing. We knew where we were. We knew what needed to get done. You have it look like
we haven't even read the map correctly." And I said... Uh... "Well, I don't think
it's that bad, Major. But, uh... (STAMMERING) Let me ask you
a few other questions." And I asked him some
specifically, because this was really about taking out
the guns at Brécourt Manor. I said "Major, I want you
to understand something. None of this is locked in stone. There isn't anything
that we've shot that can't be moved,
changed, altered. There isn't a page
that we've written that is part
of the golden tablets. All of this is moveable.
All of this is changeable. There is nothing that is ever
going to stay exactly is." And the course of everything
else that we're gonna-- You'll see how often we make things better
and we focus better. And so I said to him,
"What I sense is is that what you're saying is... that what is missing
from the footage that we have so far is...
follow me." And he said, "Mr. Hanks, that is exactly
what is missing." Now, what he was saying is, "Why are you dropping me
on the ground and making it seem like
I'm not sure of what I'm supposed to do. That I'm untrained,
that I haven't studied this backwards
and forwards. That I can't read a compass,
that I am hesitant in any way, shape or form," because I will
tell you, that man was not. And what had happened was,
the guys in the editing room
would say, "Hey, wouldn't it be great if we
add a little bit of uncertainty to it." And da, da,
da, da, da. And to experience that
from the get-go, from the very first time we put
together any sort of footage, and from the man himself
saying, "Guys, you're getting this wrong," that gave us a heading. That gave us
a very specific task. To, "Guys,
we cannot embellish this. We have to remember constantly, these guys worked, trained,
planned from the get-go and unless they were hurt
and unless they were conked on the head and unless
they were under fire, they were moving
towards their objective." So, that one conversation
did a lot of things for me, both as a producer, and also in that
individual circumstance. Because what was happening was
that people were thinking, "Oh, how can I make this
a little different than it is?" By the way, their job
is to do that sometimes. What came down
from up top was, "Your job is to
not make it different. Your job is to hit it on
the head as we have prescribed." So that altered things. One of the big things
that I learned and one of the reasons
that the series sticks to it is that it was
the job of everyone. Was to find a way to make what
really happened, dramatic. Do not embellish,
do not feel as though well, that doesn't work,
so we have to do something else. I said, "No, no, no, no.
Here's what happened, guys. Break it down. Find a way in order
to make this fascinating." "I don't think they would really
believe that this happened." "It doesn't matter
if they believe it. Find a way in order to make it
so that it believable." And we had that happened with
moments again and again, again. There's one episode in
the village of Foy or "Fwa." F-o-y. No one knows how
to pronounce these things. In which, Captain Speirs ran
right through the German lines to meet up somebody
on the other side. And then he ran
right back again. And the reason he wasn't killed
is because he ran so fast. (CHUCKLES) And they said,
"I don't think
they'll believe that." I said, "You know what,
I don't care if they believe it, it happened and we're gonna
figure out a way in order to do it." WINTERS:<i> At first the Germans
didn't shoot at him.</i> -(GUNSHOTS, EXPLOSIONS)
-(MEN SCREAMING) <i>I think they couldn't quite
believe what they were seeing,</i> <i>but that wasn't the really
astounding thing.</i> <i>The astounding thing was,</i> <i> that after he hooked up
with I Company,</i> <i> he came back.</i> TOM: When I talk about
the deck of 52 cards, if you start
embellishing things, that means you end up
with a deck of 63 or you end up with a deck of 42 cards. And that's not enough.
You've got to nail it when you can,
now when year-- (CHUCKLES) When we were
at that very same premiere that I talked about,
HBO blew out all the stops. All the veterans had been flown
to Paris and then we all took the train to Normandy
and were greeted by little kids from the communities
that were doing their little D-Day clickers.
So it sounded like it was raining.
It was really quite beautiful. Then we all got on the bus, and it was June 6th, 2001. And I was in the bus
with Carwood Lipton,
and understand, we're taking a ride through
the bocage that he himself had walked through
at that very time. And I happen to be with Carwood and his wife and I looked
at my watch and it was noon. It was high noon. And we're on our way down
to the beach. And I said, "Carwood Lipton! It's 12:00 noon on June 6th. What were you doing at noon
on this day, the 1944?" And he said,
"By noon of June 6th, we had taken the guns
at Brécourt Manor, and we're moving on
to our secondary objective, of the village of Colleville." (LAUGHS) I said, "Thank you very much."
(CHUCKLES) And I had to pinch myself. ROGER: Tom, you spent
time with these men, Speirs, Dick Winters, Carwood Lipton. And I read this recently,
in June 2020, there were about 300,000
Second World War veterans still alive. In June 2021, there are now just 100,000
Second World War veterans
still alive. And the youngest who served
are now around the age of 95. Do you see this story
the<i> Band of Brothers</i> story actually getting more important
as time goes on and these heroes are no longer
able to tell it themselves? And what do you believe
will happen if we lose their narrative
in our own consciousness? TOM: Well, the narrative
is going to change no matter what.
Simply because, on one hand, we went off and we specifically
encapsulated this. So, in a lot of ways,<i>
Band of Brothers</i> is going to be locked in amber forever. It's always going to be
this example of what it is. We're gonna come up
to a moment when the last veteran
of World War II is going to pass away,
just like I remember reading of the last veteran
of the Civil War died. On some very specific date,
that is around the corner. I think that if it is proposed
to be some sort of a model for aiming for, I don't want to overuse the word
accuracy or verisimilitude, let's just call it
spiritual physiological truth, to the experiences
in World War II. There are enough stories
to go back and revisit it again and again, and again,
and again, just the same way, you know. A lot of stories told
about the Punic Wars. How often you can watch<i>
Henry V,</i> or<i> Richard III?</i>
Shakespeare had this stuff down. There's always something new
to experience. If there is a possible pitfall,
is that we become too enamored with them,
become too soothed by these stories, because the divisions of World War II
were so straight forward. The Nazis were undeniably
a hideous people. Let's call it
a hideous philosophy. Imperial Japan was feudal,
Old World. That brand of thinking
cannot stand. Now, we see representatives
of it again and again, we do. We see that kind of
brand of embracing of the totalitarianism. We see that type of shaping
of the narrative so that everything is always
a protagonist and antagonist. It's always us versus them. It's always we got a raw deal
and these people are the reason that we got a raw deal. I turn to, and I still seek
these things out, I'm still reading World War II
history to get farther and farther, and farther
down into the nuggets and the ore of human behavior, of recognizable present day
human nature that always says... "There's 49 people out there
that are going to subjugate us. Are there 51 people out there
that are going to take them on and say 'no'?"
That's what it requires. And<i> The Good War,</i>
as Studs Terkel wrote about--
Studs Terkel's<i> The Good War</i> is one of the first books-- I read that book, I'm going
to say 30 years ago. ROGER: Fantastic!
What a human being. TOM: And I remember
for the first time, there was a guy in there,
he was in the first wave or second wave at Omaha Beach.
And he said, "As of June 6th, I was either fighting
or marching for the next 119 days." And when I heard that
the back of my head blew off. ROGER: God. TOM: And, you know, their teeth
fell out because the nutrition of a K-ration, the canned goods,
was so poor that they would be eating
this raw, uncooked stuff as best as they could just
to put calories in their bodies, and their gums bled and their teeth
slowly filled out because the food
was actually so horrible. And by the way,
with maybe a cup of coffee, but certainly not a Coca Cola, not an ice-cold beer,
a canteen of water. I'm digressing here, probably
doing the same thing that I'm a little bit
worried of. Turning it into something that is so honorific,
and so edified. And it makes us feel good,
like comfort food. With what stories of that war
and what those men went through and what the entire
world went through, it should instead
give us cause to ponder. How do we keep
that from happening again? Who are the people
that are going to see to it that we don't fall into
that same sort of narrative, which is "Us versus them. They screwed us.
And it's our time." ROGER: So, Tom, last question 'cause you've been
incredibly generous. TOM: Oh, I could be talking
about this stuff all day! ROGER: Tom,
I watch<i> Band of Brothers</i> on an annual basis and I know millions of others
around the world do too. So last question for you,
speak to an audience, a young audience
who have not yet watched it, and make the case, Tom.
What will they see? (TOM CHUCKLES) TOM:
Well, thanks for the challenge. What they will see
is themselves. And if they don't see
themselves, we failed. They will see themselves,
in that, every day they make a decision.
We all make a decision... of how we take on... the responsibilities
of doing the right thing. As in ways that are large
and small. Against a huge patina
of a worldwide conflagration. You don't have to shift
your focus very much to see that the world
is in the same state of affairs. That there is great injustice
being done. There are great movements afoot. There are great philosophies
and theologies out there that are based on dividing us
as opposed to uniting us. Sometimes, it's an absolute... mismatch of cultures
that can never ever see
eye to eye, but... in the midst of all of that,
comes the reality that we all just have to make this decision. We all have to make a choice
at one time. I will tell you, I made this
other movie... (CHUCKLES) ...that said it more.
It's not even my line. I wasn't even-- I made
this movie called<i> Cloud Atlas.</i> In which, at the end of it,
someone is being castigated for trying
to be a goody two-shoes. And he says, "Oh, why are you
trying to do this? It's just gonna be a drop
in the ocean. Why are you trying to make such
a sacrifice? Why you're trying to do the right thing?
It's gonna, gonna be
a drop in the ocean." The line is, "Well,
what is an ocean
but a multitude of drops?" And so... I would say that if anybody's
never seen<i> Band of Brothers,</i> what they will see
is that multitude of drops. They will see a version
of the historical document that is nothing more
than a record of ordinary human behavior. The type of choices that we all
make in the course of the day. When we started,
all the actors were assembled, from the beginning of a ten-day
boot camp training. There's a big<i>
Saving Private Ryan</i>
aspect to it. Steven is there. (CHUCKLES) I was making<i> Cast Away</i>
at the time. So I had this big, stupid,
goofy beard, you know. So I dressed them all. I said, "Look,
we're all actors here. You guys are all great actors. All we're doing here
is pretending to be these guys
who lived a long time ago. But because we're actors,
we know how movies are made. We have to do something
a bit beyond, just the making of the movie. So I'm going to ask all of you to show up every day. Even if you don't have lines,
even if you might just be
in the background to be a glorified extra. Even if you're just going
to be part of the visual scope of it, show up and have
something to do in your head. Always. Always.
Be lifting a pack. Always be cleaning a weapon,
Always be looking at a book. Always be studying something, always be sleeping
on the ground, always be doing
something that these guys did on the day
of what we are shooting. And even if you haven't even
been on the call sheet, make some marmite sandwiches,
keep them in your pocket, so you always have
something to eat. Bring a thermos,
just hang around because... people are going to watch
this series over and over, and over and over,
and over again. And if they saw you do something
great in episode six, and they go back
and watch it again, they're gonna see you
in episode one taking a nap. Or they'll see you
in episode two, just walking by
in the background, lighting a cigarette
for somebody like that." And you know what, they all did. And we even had a whole
subculture of the guys who would dress extras
that came every day. And they went
to a different tent but they put on all this stuff
and they rode different buses. Sometimes they were 105 yards
away from where the camera was turning, but they were
moving in the background. So even all of them did it.
Because we knew that this was going to be some form
of document that was going to be so accessible
to a new generation of people who only watch things
and don't read them. ROGER: You knew that, Tom,
before you shot, you saw me, you knew I would
be one of millions watching it -annually over and over.
-TOM: Yes. Yeah, because I already knew
that I watch movies over and over again in order
to catch out new things. And I said, "Look, it's going
to be history classes taught by lazy history teacher
who are gonna say, 'All right, today we're going
to study World War II, we're going to watch<i>
Band of Brothers.'</i> And everybody says, "Hey, great,
we don't have to do--" And it's just like,
"Oh, we have--" "What you do in school today?" "Oh, we watched TV. We watched a thing called<i>
Band of Brothers</i> to learn about World War II." Even if that's what the job
is going to be, you get to be a source,
you get to be a participant. In the authenticity,
and the accuracy, and the verisimilitude. Even if you just show up
and decide to take a nap in the background of the scene.
And God bless them, they did. So to answer your question
again, I think anybody seeing this for the first time will
be saying, "All right, take away the clothes, this is not
a celebration of nostalgia. This is an examination
of the human condition." What do you think?
What would you do? And then they can answer
the question. ROGER: Tom Hanks. Thank you for what you've done
to honor Easy Company. Their sense of duty
and their memory, preserving it for the world. TOM: Well, thank you.
You're very kind. And let me say that
in representing Easy Company, what we did try to do
is also represent
the 82nd Airborne, and the Big Red One,
and the Red Ball Express. The guys who fought
in North Africa, and Italy, and Peleliu. Anybody that voluntarily
goes and puts on the uniform and serves their country
and goes through their training, no matter what
they ended up doing, they become part of something
much bigger than themselves. -And there's no life like it.
-ROGER: "They're paratroopers, they're supposed
to be surrounded." TOM: (CHUCKLES)
That was my episode! -I directed that.
-(ROGER CHUCKLES) -Tom Hanks, courage.
-TOM: Thank you, thank you. ♪ ("BAND OF BROTHERS"
THEME MUSIC PLAYING) ♪ ROGER:
What a gent Tom Hanks is. Oh, there could be no finer way
to kick off this series. "And how do you follow that up?"
You might be asking. Well, only with
one of<i> Band of Brothers'</i> great scene-stealers. LEWIS NIXON: (GROANS)<i>
That's my own piss
for Christ's sake!</i> ROGER: That's right. (CHUCKLES) The legendary Ron Livingston, Lewis Nixon himself
to talk through the first episode of the series,
"Currahee." We'll discover how he gained
insight into his character to deep bond
with the real Nixon's widow. Discuss Herbert Sobel's
tyrannical reign over Easy Company's early days.
And learn why it actually helped prepare them for battle. And also relive
the actor boot camp the entire cast went through
in preparation for the series. RON LIVINGSTON: I gotta say,
Rog. When I say we drank the Kool-Aid,
we drank the Kool-Aid. ROGER: Make sure
you subscribe to HBO's official <i> Band of Brothers podcast</i>
wherever you get your podcasts. And please rate, review,
and share. Taking just a few minutes
to do those things, will help more
than we could ever say. And a reminder,
as if you needed one, you can stream all
of<i> Band of Brothers</i> on HBO Max right now, follow along
episode to episode, week to week, as we relive
that prestige television magic. -Until next time.
-MAN:<i> Currahee!</i> (CROWD CHEERING) ♪ (MUSIC CONCLUDES) ♪
I know this isn't talking about Masters of the Air, but I imagine Band of Brothers is why we're all here in the first place. I really enjoyed listening to this, Tom Hanks is a great speaker.
Understand if it gets removed.
Sucks he wasn't able to devulge much information ;/
The start of this short film also commemorating Band of Brothers caught my eye. It's significant because Playtone, now working on Masters of the Air, produced BoB and The Pacific. The portraits behind Kirk Saduski from left to right show Gale Cleven, John Egan, Harry Crosby, Robert Rosenthal, Alexander Jefferson, Richard Macon, Kenneth Lemmons. All of them except Jefferson and Macon, who are Tuskegee Airmen, have actors known to be portraying them. Given the set photos showing black actors in USAAF service uniforms, it's all but certain the Tuskegee Airmen will be shown, moreover I expect Jefferson and Macon will be portrayed just like the rest on that wall. Neither flew fighter escort for the 8th Air Force according to available sources online, but both were shot down on the same mission over Toulon, France on August 12, 1944, and were transferred to Stalag Luft III where some of the other guys like Cleven and Egan were. This is where we'd see them, with maybe flashback sequences leading up to their fateful mission that brought them there