Ron Livingston's Band of Brothers FULL Video diary

my name's Ron Livingston I'm playing a man named Lewis Nixon he was the intelligence officer for Easy Company in the Second World War 5:06 parachute infantry regiment and I shot a video diary here it is whole thing started I'm down at the production office doing a little bit of research and Tony toe comes up to me as the producer and says Ron listen we got people from HBO and they want to do kind of a behind the scenes actors diary well we'll get you a camera it's no problem you just one thing we want you to do is we would like you to carry it around and shoot as much as you can of both remember what goes on my first thought was I you know I'm already kind of jumping into actor boot camp completely unawares tonight do I really want to have be carrying this camera around for the whole thing yeah and I said okay I figured as he got closer and closer to the time to go the list of the people that that needed to make sure I said goodbye for you know before I left for nine months just got longer and longer and so he had this kind of last-minute for a wealth party and grace Nixon came Grace's Louis's Widow incredible woman I mean amazing woman smart vibrant has has an amazing story of her own and she helped me a lot as far as just explaining kind of what the guy was about I think so too [Music] I'd like to try and do a lot of research so I know what the hell I'm talking about it's pretty easy to start on this one with Steven Ambrose's books d-day about d-day citizen-soldiers about the rest of the war field manuals these are all period field manuals rifle company having down to that one yet map and photograph reading that Nixon was an s2 intelligence officer would have been doing a lot of that pictures these are from the production office there's a man ourselves I got about six years on him I think he was 26 at the time of the war sometimes you can't really see too much you just get a sense of maybe you know the what they look like way to carry themselves the hair right there they carry themselves like goddamn men my favorite here this is winners and Nixon devilish rascal huh Steven Ambrose has described dick winners as being the heart and soul of Easy Company dick worked for Lewis when they came home and they were best friends really for for the rest of their lives I put off calling dick winners for about a month he's kind of a larger-than-life guy after you are in your head he is anyway after you you read Vanna Brothers and DJ all the Ambrose stuff kind of holed up in my in my office and I set the camera up and I had this big elaborate plan how I you know I have one of these phones it's like a speakerphone and so I was gonna put him on speakerphone and and then I was gonna be able to get the conversation from both sides and I dialed him up and I said hello pick any of that funny [Music] hello who's that hello and this is once day and I couldn't get the damn thing off yeah yeah we're here sorry but I did a lot of nodding and saying uh that was my first conversation with dick winters I guarantee that I'll give it everything I go by the first thing they did for us was they set up a tenday actor boot camp they trained us in the same way that they trained military people it seems that the only difference is if you say screw you in in real boot camp they can throw you in jail if you say screw you an actor boot camp they can't put you in jail they just call Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks so I got on the plane in London did a little weapons training on the way over there we almost had a few casualties in customs including Matthew settle and he and Bailey the guys playing Spears and Webster didn't have to work permits so they got they got detained for a while I don't care about that anymore I'm just too wrapped up yes he didn't realize he was recording so it was the first of many times when when somebody tried to take the camera away they given us these corcoran jump boots that we were gonna wear they felt like they were made out of of like corrugated tin when we first got on we were gonna have to run in them on Monday so one of the guys played play hockey for a while I said oh here's dick them on your feet go stick them in a tub full of hot water and then we're I'm around that night and and if you can't sleep in them and then by the morning they'll fit really well any anytime a show starts you know one of it one of the first things that you do is is kind of everybody everybody's sizing each other up a little bit you know it's kind of like alright who's this guy is he gonna be a good guy but this was the first day that everyone was kind of thrown together and nobody really knew what to think and everybody's a little apprehensive about meeting captain Dale died he's basically carved out a franchise niche as military adviser to the movies he and his company have been involved in and pretty much every major war movie that's been made and there's a lot of stories floating around we knew all the guys in private ryan' mutant he didn't wanted to quit you know halfway through and so everybody seemed to have a different story and everybody seemed to have something different to expect and the next thing we did is we get sent down to Donna wardrobe there's a airplane hangar just filled with racks and racks of uniforms okay I'm good webbing webbing please Livingston playing Nixon webbing is it's that you know GI Joe kind harness backpack use that bag stuff hanging off you get all suited up when it's kind of like all right damn I look like soldier not to a soldier you don't look like soldier but you know you think he do so we're standing in the commissary and in Hatfield ready to get on the bus and in come the sergeant's of course and I'm dutifully recording the whole thing for HBO and posterity when the CAD Dre the sergeants who apparently haven't been notified by HBO that this is gonna happen see it okay I know it's okay and I actually had to put it away for a couple of days but there's a little gap about three or four days that no one's ever gonna see what's up yo dog all that stuff's gone nineteen forties right are using it if somebody says staffs are farmer becomes a captain and I see him I will call you to attention and I will salute and you will all stand at attention and he'll tell us a stand at ease stand at attention to our ass and make us be push-ups all that other fun stuff I like that you're smiling the day generally would start at about six they have a stupid five-mile run I think we worked up to it I think the first day was maybe four miles oh not all of us had really done five mile runs every day at 6 a.m. for a while so that took a little took a little while to get the hang of it take them inside the next square you [ __ ] away get ready for the field and training they had taught us all the the general orders for two days we were obsessed with learning these things there's an old military adage that says [ __ ] rolls downhill and well I guess that what that means is that this guy yells at this guy yells at this guy yells at this guy yells at this guy and if this guy screws up been into this guy's fault and this guy's fall and this guy's fault in this guy's fault so Damian Lewis he was playing dick winners had been made our platoon leader and so he was in charge at that point of basically bullying everyone into learning their orders but that's pretty much how it came down because if somebody screwed up we get punished for it you know after they've run you around for 14 15 16 hours they get tired and they don't want to run you around anymore so they could just figure we'll put them on card duty the schedule was you'd sleep for two hours and then get up and do an hour on guard duty and then sleep for two hours and get up and do an hour at guard duty and then by then it was pretty much time to get up and go on your five mile run again so the I think it's the seventh General Order is to talk to no one except in the line of duty I don't know I guess I figured at the time it was in the line of duty see what the hell he got was doing yes so he was afraid we were gonna be descended upon but by a cadre of people what's you know I've got to say those guys they did have a way of jumping out and out of nowhere when you least expected it start yelling at you private tipper was he was a new guys to replace when he came in I was a squad leader so we got grabbed somebody showed him how to field-strip an m1 and put it back together it's his first day and sure enough you know the next day Staff Sergeant Freddie Joe Farnsworth come son ran in and it's like yes he know how to field-strip they're like yeah yeah we taught him he knows how to do it and he did it in the bathroom the night before my god he did it in they kids did it in like a min and a half it was amazing I got 20 bucks on tipper who's taking it so I was all cocky but I was like yeah watch this kid go well sure enough tipper you know it's a lot of pressure I got a video camera on him he freezes up a little bit at which point sergeant Freddie Joe turns to me I'm the squad leader [ __ ] rolling downhill takes the video camera away from me hands in a diamond push-up position until he's done with that yes sir I think he's tired of me in videotape do a little bit at this point he's just a little mad that he told me I couldn't have a camera anymore I still get to keep it so he puts me down on the ground then well I like that you know I'm about halfway down you like those hands in a dying I do sergeant it's a nice camera taking home with me I'm gonna be a camera weenie when I get down with it I was down there for about two minutes and and Frank John Hughes who's playing bill Guarnere says all right you know he gets down there too and and next thing you know we had both squads pretty much the hope to tune down they're volunteering to to be down there with me and my god tipper got it okay so they want us to be familiar with maps mapping compass this is kind of a personal thing for me because Louis Nixon the guy that I'm playing that was his job he was the map guy he was the guy that kept the map and had to know where the enemy was you know I'm okay with maps give me a good Rand McNally and I can I'll have a hell of a vacation you know but this is something new to me our objective was a dismantled railway grant whose objective well I didn't really exactly know what a dismantled railway was apparently what a dismantled railway is a hump in the middle of a big field so the pretty much went right to it found the thing walked along it go on oh look at this big hump in the middle of this field on the way to our dismantled railway that blue line there is that watch out for adders fence yeah we took a left turn on that road we came to this intersection here mm-hmm we took a right turn there it came to that big Junction there this you see these terrain features mm-hmm that's that big-ass hill that we had sit down we're going roughly now parallel to where we supposed to be but we're not exactly on line must have gone back and forth over the whole damn camp before we found something else that actually wasn't a dismantled railway but it looked like it was a dismantled railway this is tipper approaching second team objective putting it on camera ban the railroad track right there see the carriage in the background on the left-hand side here we are managing railroad track time to thank compass March was same same deal at night our objective on that one was to find a little coffee pot I don't know the like I think the significance of the coffee pot was it was a Vietnam souvenir of Captain dies and I'm not sure if that was true or not but I don't know if he'd trust us with his Vietnam soon your coffee pot so they face stuck that out in the middle of a field but little you know lean-to over it this one was Damien's exercise okay okay listen what are we suggesting that we did they went wrong with the paces around that first tree the difference with this exercise was this was the officers one we were a bunch of fresh second lieutenants you know gold bars and everybody wants to get to get a spoon in the pot that's why right we've probably put a good half an hour on the thing like arguing over how how we should go about it I mean on the on the actual physical terrain road and then we can see what angle it's what we have been doing okay listen up I tell you what we have been doing we have been walking in scrub all along here but in the end we found the thing that is the objective Nixon found a coffee pot yeah Nixon that's your trophy news well no wait a minute you navigated here yeah I really just walked in front of you sergeant Lipton went of course there's the senior non calm he sort pretty much hang back and let the officers all work it out I can't think that he had a pretty good opinion of us by the time the night was over blind luck is what that was [Music] Oh probably day five six something I'm not sure captain diet brought out these extraordinary exercises that that that I guess he invented with colorful names like the atomic sit-up the caterpillar press up person to your right do it now right arm over the top the left arm both of these things they only work if any everyone's in sync with each other and they only work if you're sitting in the right order if you have a guy that's too big next to a guy that's too small you can't do it and it should go routed instantly there must be a snap and surge of power in addition to just being a physical challenge there's a there's a little bit of an organizational thing that goes on okay okay you got to get up here and you got to get up here [Music] I think it was kind of a test for the you know the leaders as well to like go okay organize this thing and make it work switch you to a lighter man yes who did not make it raise your hand give it all your heart [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] cata Philip push-up thing is probably not as hard as it looks and the sit-up thing is a lot harder by midweek the the training aspect of what we were doing really started to pick up a lot of guys had been banged up a couple of knee injuries the insurance people were starting to get worried they were getting word back from the production office saying hey you know you gotta eat see somebody else gets hurt we're gonna shut this thing down everybody's fever didn't really want to do that because you know today we're learning how to throw grenades stand tomorrow we're learning how to clear a house neal mcdonough playing playing buck Compton big gi yeah he's GI Joe and somebody catches him with with the muzzle of an m1 crossed across the lip at this point they were kind of worried that this was going to be the straw that broke the camel's back so they drove him about 90 miles out of town and checked him into some local hospital under the name buck Compton thank God for socialized medicine that's all I can say stiva was there anesthesia with this thing I do not think so I am on a given afternoon we might do a grenade assault we do isolate and eliminate a sniper house clearing and in between these drills which of course always seem to take place on opposite ends of the camp we'd be marching over there and marching over here and generally in full gear you'd read all the full gear weighs 80 pounds on 80 pounds is a third grader saying give me a piggyback ride all day okay not like all right okay pick your axe right but all day drinking man hey crazy so they'd have a sing and for some reason it really does work it just makes it go faster it makes it go easier everybody gets into rhythm and there's something happens that clicks over when you lock into rhythm and I think that's why they do it because it's just too pleasant to be allowed in the military if it didn't have some ulterior motive such as making you march farther [Music] dangerous operation it depends on the skill of your machine gunners your machine gunners have got their [ __ ] together you can do this they do sir what could die he'd have the cadre running around somewhere with with these little submachine guns shooting blanks and they would just these guys are good I mean that's they're good that's what they do so you can't catch them you can't find them you're lucky if you can see them and they're no matter where they are they're always behind you you know popping up out of nowhere your first instinct is actually to freeze your second instinct is to run somebody had opened up over here with one of these little submachine guns a third of the guys would freeze and hit the deck the third of the guys would start running towards him a thirsty guy start running off to the side and Ida generated into basically cowboys and Indians let's run it up by the shelves pop it off you know popping off blanks you know I got you know I got you we'd finish up and captain died he'd either come up and tear us a new one or but grudgingly say are you did some good things and yeah you see you did all right easy cleared the tank here the consolidation was good and she needed to [Applause] that's the key consolidation get in here against that counter-attack and lo and behold it came off didn't it that's my suit but you were ready for it we're ready for it not bad that's about as good as it got we spent one night out in an inn in a shelter these bombed out buildings the problem with that is the buildings are all bombed out some of them have no Rouge and there's holes in them and of course we had garden theater that night so nobody really got a lot of sleep I shared quarters with captain died in the tennis dokey which is nice and that I didn't have to do guard duty but you know I'm also sharing quarters with captain tietennis dokey it was very very cold and captive dices hair so you know there's an old infant trick trick take your take those those jump gloves there they put them on your feet keeps your feet warm I said here your kin you gotta be kidding right and is this like okay this is what happens when the new guy comes they you know we do the thing we get the gloves on the feet and then he had gloves on his feet so for about half an hour I was like okay thanks thanks for the tip but a half an hour later I put my clothes on my feet by god I was warm all night that was sort of the turning point when everybody kind of crossed the exhaustion line and really started getting tired what are we at day 6 day 5 there was one day when they said ok everyone's all banged up we're gonna take the afternoon and everyone's just gonna relax and heal up and rest order of the day is to relax get our bodies healed up so we can start doing stuff and it was a trick they basically got us all with it with all our gear off and and and 20 minutes later they came in screaming okay there was constantly something to do and if there was nothing else to do there was polishing your boots you could get things to look alright but it would take a good 45 minutes an hour you get the can the Polish you have to do with the little dip the water and the time honor and spit-shining of the thing polish and polish Polish polish for Pasha that hour that you had spent polishing your boots turned out eventually to be about the best hour of the day cuz you were inside we're sitting still there's he nobody's jumping out of a corner throwing a grenade at you we'd get to talking and it's kind of shooting the [ __ ] about the day reddleman was up there's in the Jeep today and so it was so around I would try to stop Jeep yeah before you to Lewis you random entrants aired up a soccer star Tracy gets don't start tries again it's been going on and on and on I'm not trying to start with me so finally I take weapons you know get behind it push it down the hill of jump start doesn't start dragon didn't start father all we know the bottom of the hill battery's dying you push it all the way back at the top of the hill here comes Sarge Sarge gets in with one turn of the key starts it up and takes off just drop front you totally showed us up so now that joke is how many dummy sergeants does it take it start an old G one how many officers know it doesn't matter how many you want the money you have no obviously can do anything right it got to be pretty relaxing it was kind of nice they're still alive [ __ ] last three days of our training was called they called the jump week they came down pretty hard when they jumped I guess it was about 150 200 pounds of gear on well let's just say it's pretty tight down there once you have the gear on you can't see it you can't and and you can't really turn around you don't have any room to maneuver they pack as many guys in those planes as they can you can't check your own equipment you have to check the guys in front to make sure none of the laces are loose everything's they're not wearing the gear yet we had been given to us so really it was just to get us used to doing it by the numbers which basically meant that equipment check was an excuse to like grab the ass of the guy in front of you trying to make me feel uncomfortable as possible time is you can't judge it in your head you jump out of a plane time speeds up slows down you don't know what it's gonna do so you yell 1,000 2,000 3,000 4,000 because it takes a certain it takes about four seconds to say that which is when you want to pull the chute a big part of their training was to get him not to freeze up at the door you'd have to go out as fast as you can in a line because they didn't want you to get spread out the farther spread out you were the longer it would take to come together and easy to be to get lost or to get separated we worked on that in this little stage in this kind of classroom area jumping into this blue mat getting chewed out every time we did it wrong too [Applause] again and again and again stand up hook don't sacrifice position coming out it'll cost you a malfunction it's easy to do it [Music] [Applause] picture day came along we had about an hour and a half we're kind of everything relaxed a little bit the lights beautiful right now - it took some pictures we've got hit it 1000 2000 3000 4000 outstanding thanks hey I hear that a leaf god becomes an exercise in our hike or maybe everybody's gotta count the diameter it's not a hard you know Richard Speight actually has one that involves the hand puppet bull Randleman has probably the best captained diet bet anyone has [Applause] [Laughter] gotta use your literation I'll rip your head off and [ __ ] your shoulders picture day was the first time he actually dusted it off in front of captain diet [Laughter] [Music] our final field exercise was basically the idea was we're gonna do a maneuver now as a company so all 4050 guys are gonna be involved the squad is gonna go over here and defend the bridge and this one's gonna have be with the machine guns set up a base of fire and this one's gonna come around here do a double pincher movement this one was a big deal especially for Damien because he had to run the whole thing and sort of coordinate it maybe people watching this in HBO don't get to see Nixon do too much stuff he should have seen this furious word on the battleground the other day hopefully we'll get you to do it again I was acting as the company intelligence officer and it was my job to go out do a reconnaissance of the terrain so Nixon could you tell us what we're looking for again sir see fresh dirts turnaround signs of entrenchment spare parts off the tank anything mechanical I kind of thought that there probably would be you know a German soldiers out there or minefields even if you know that you were an actor in the middle of central England and by god there's just nothing out there no one's coming you hear things and you see things and there's always like a woman coming over the hill this is my indicator minefield don't step on any of these don't do not step on any of these guys cadre was running around in German uniforms and now they had German uniforms and submachine guns [Applause] second Platoon under Harry Welsh took a left flanking movement which left flanking movement basically means sneaked around on his left [Applause] pass it down weapons platoon set up inside the command post put a machine-gun nest up top first Platoon sort of came at them from the front and put a base of fire base of fire basically means that we shoot at you a lot so that you put your head down as opposed to look for the the sneaking up left flanking movement side as well we have somebody in here on the left-hand side up our rear am i one of them search for any documents check the pockets private get it get a weapon on this guy thing came off pretty well I gotta say it not bad for not bad for a bunch of actors our final day of training the very last day this is it this were this and we go home you spent at at Brize Norton it's like the British equivalent of Fort Benning it's where they teach everyone how to parachute they wangled the facilities and for us for the day and the instructors sort of stood back scratching their heads a little because of course they're teaching us 19:40 techniques with 1940 gear we were really excited about this because they had a lot of good toys at Brize Norton and we're not just jumping off of a three-foot bench into some sand which we'd been doing for two days oh right snoring we had ramps okay you jump off the end of a ramp and then you and you run up the ramp and jump off the end of the ramp and you swing on this big ring thing fall off the big ring thing this is exactly how you're trained in Bannack we're gonna put you in parachute harness suspension lift you and actually show you how to turn and maneuver the parachute and us learning to slip which means to steer parachute [Applause] are they looking good with it once again weapons platoon is doing excellent work let's watch any comments about weapons platoon lieutenant as a Big Ben of this company I was on time I was ready to kick some ass nice thank you that was a good day I think spirits were a little high everybody saw the light at the end of the tunnel there's a lot of standing in line so you know it was an opportunity to basically everybody got to shoot this yet a little pitch did you jump out of a plane right now there's pop I win he's just joined it he's our new recruit who has not yet been broken in that doesn't make any sense you know why why clearly marked he's a dummy I got two what two harnesses over reason you're gonna need two fat Fox's hit it there is the tower um the Tower of destiny awaits us you know guys did this all their training led up to their jumps they did five of them at the end of the fifth jump they were paratroopers and they got the wings pinned on and that was it they'd made it it was a huge deal to them so it was an enormous deal and it was a it was a big deal to us because they had structured it a lot in the same way for us it was jumping out of the 40-foot Tower at Brize Norton there been a build-up to that the whole time and the things actually a lot scarier I think Bennett Bennett than it looks [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] Anmol time [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you didn't think twice about it and I always made me think of my mom you know saying well you know if they told you to jump off of a cliff would you and yeah I think if captain tiny who told me to jump off a cliff I probably would when the original guys got the wings pinned on I can't even begin to imagine what what a big deal it must have been to these guys after everything that they went through for them it was a huge mark of distinction this was a whole new thing in the in the history of war the idea that soldiers are going to jump out of planes and land behind enemy lines they were doing something completely new and innovative and and they knew it I think that that must have been one of the proudest moments of their lives for us it was a proportional fraction of that there was a sense of relief of okay you know what we made it we're we're through we did [Music] termination today that's what makes the airport so especially my proud privilege a little ways under check [Music] [Music] [Music] we do a stand-down every night which was about an hour after dinner where they he would kept that would just talk sort of talk about what we'd done that day and it was toward the end when he gave us a sort of a big pep talk about what we were doing a mission unlike anything that's been undertaken for television in recent history are we ready to do this can we handle a project like this can this unit put I think if you can think you can you have you won't believe the change that was some rock'n'roll paratrooper [ __ ] down - sit back stay in it you're there that's what you work so hard to do that's what's gonna make this sing or make it sink you can't believe the phone calls I get we understand the three of them died [Applause] you're [ __ ] awesome your familiarity with each other what you work together with each other that I was thinking about it just happens I'm seeing it every day or more don't you think that's going to be on film don't you think what you do naturally right now which is the right thing he's gonna come across on film the truth is in you and the truth will come out of you through your eyes or your actions through your gestures your handling of weapons through your wearing at the uniform everything the truth is there that shine boys let's shine make the world proud of Easy Company and the world will celebrate our forefathers the people who wore the shoes every we've got that chance folks I consider that I consider it an honor to be here and have the opportunity to salute those Genesis and here my good right hand when it comes to Seligman it's got to be done but it's going to take all of your courage it's gonna take all of your tenacity hit walls out here did you miss us in physical walls you get psychological walls you get emotional walls and I told you you were going to well here's the neat thing you broke through every [ __ ] one you're in a place now where you're more capable as a human being as an actor as a soldier don't blow it do the right thing what you learn what you've paid for director call yourself please come and that test is a high honor that's not [Applause] anyway we did sorry [Applause] [Music]

Channel: devin white

Views: 729,120

Keywords: ww2, band of brothers, tom hanks, nixon

Id: Ju11gCisOL4

Length: 51min 24sec (3084 seconds)

Published: Sat May 02 2020