By Anonymous on Monday, July 23, 2001 - 10:59 pm:| By Anonymous on Monday, July 23, 2001 - 10:59 pm: |
Tom Hanks Reunites With HBO
"It is glorious that we are allowed to do this right!"
July 07, 2000
TOM HANKS is hard at work directing a new World War II feature. Get the full story from the Oscar-winning actor. Read on for Tom's take on things!
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ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT: Tell us about "Band of Brothers." How did this all get started?
TOM HANKS: With my great experience with 'Saving Private Ryan,' I read pretty much all I could get my hands on. STEPHEN AMBROSE had already written D-Day, and Citizen Soldiers came out not long after that. Then there was this book, Band of Brothers, which he put together after doing all of the research for his other two books. He came across this story of this one group of guys, this one company of paratroopers. They were together around 1942.
It was a great chronology of the whole European theater of war. It was very personal, as well, because it was a story of three years of these men's lives. Upon reading that, utilizing it for the movie and having a pretty good relationship with Mr. (STEVEN) SPIELBERG and Mr. HBO, it just was able to come along. We scratched the surface quite deeply with the film. The venue of 10 hours of commercial-free television really will allow us this other medium in which we can delve even farther and deeper into history with authenticity on our side. It came out of that!
ET: Did you have to talk Steven into doing it?
TOM: No, not at all. Everybody was trying to put something together. It was almost like the millennium-year study of the most important event in the history of the last century. I broached it with Steven, and he was looking for a broader scope in order to examine it through his company. I said, "Here is the perfect thing. Would you like to try to put this together?" It was so much a mutual coming together in order to get it together that it was outstandingly perfect.
ET: How involved are you two in this?
TOM: Our wish list on this thing would probably be that we would be able to invest more time on it. That would be the initial enthusiastic, knee-jerk reaction to what you want to do with it. As it turns out, the involvement that Steven has put into it has been way beyond the pale of what one could do, and likewise with me. We figured that there is an awful lot of writing left to do and condensing of the story. As the executive heads, we are both into this thing up to our chins, and you can only go in so deep after a while.
ET: This is the most expensive thing that HBO has ever done.
TOM: They are ecstatic about that. I think they are proud; they will make it a big deal. They are going to spend money to talk about how much money they have spent on this thing!
ET: How long did it take to get them to agree to spend this much money?
TOM: I would think that it would be substantial. It is not an easy thing to say go do. Having sort of done the same thing with "From the Earth to the Moon," there is something that they are getting out of it. It is good to say that the money they are paying is going to give them some results. It is both unfortunate that it costs as much money as it does to do this right, but it is also glorious that we are allowed to do this right! There is a cheaper way to do this, but it would not be as exciting for the people making it or for the public at home. I can tell you out of all those pounds, I will say pounds because we are in England, it will be very visible in the 10 hours of television that the audience will see.
ET: How much will the success of 'Saving Private Ryan' affect this?
TOM: It is not so much the success, which of course is a good thing. The pedigree on this production is good. I don't mean to boast or toot my own horn. I think what is more important is that that the movie landed on the consciousness of the world. By in large, the standard wisdom said, "Okay, there is going to be a War World II movie that is going to come out in 1998. It should be interesting." Well, it turned out to be mind-expanding. The timing of the movie was such that there are many great participants of the war who are still alive.
Something happened, and the floodgates just opened with memories because of this movie. The real personal investments of the people who we call uncles and aunts and grandpas came out. I think the way the movie entered into the social consciousness of America was the most door-opening aspect of why we here now doing this series.
ET: How overwhelming will this be?
TOM: Well, it is big! I started talking about this with Steven and the correct team two and a half years ago. It won't be out for another year. So it is three years of full-tilt, constant attention being paid. It is a full-time job that usually lasts seven days a week instead of five. The end result is that we have thousands of people employed here and we have six hours a night to shoot the picture. It is overwhelming, yeah! We started shooting in April and we won't be done until December. That is a long gig to be working full time. It has a finite beginning and an end.
The great, confounding thing about this is that there is nothing that happens after the last hour of this. It is not a series that goes on and on. It is almost like we are going to write the Encyclopedia Britannica. We will be all done with the 24 volumes! We will be finished once this is over. The overwhelming aspects of it are the questions of, "How do we cram all of this into 10 hours and make it right, and when we cheat and change things, are we doing it and still maintaining the blanket of authenticity that we swore we would keep?"
ET: How does being an executive producer on a project differ from being an actor?
TOM: It is interesting because it's an offshoot of my experience to start as an actor. The storytelling part of it that was intriguing to begin with is now just continuing to spill over. It is just that I am using different skills and abilities in order to tell the rest of the story. As an actor, believe me, there are easier ways to live one's life than to be here dong this. As a storyteller, it just breaks off into an infinite number of tangents that one has to go to and follow through. There is a lot of communication that has to go on and a lot of conversations that you have to have. There is also a lot of not-so-much-fun homework if the subject matter wasn't as great as it is.
ET: Did you have to do as much research for 'Saving Private Ryan'?
TOM: No, because on this we are dealing with different aspects of the war and a much larger historical part. The research prior to the beginning of the movie was the work I kind of didn't have to do. It is as if you were a settler and you climbed up the Appalachian hills. You would say, "Hey those were high mountains!" Way off in the distance, though, you see this mountain range called the Rockies. Well, one is one and the next is the next, and you still have something big to get over.
| By Anonymous on Monday, July 23, 2001 - 10:54 pm: |
Quest For History
July 16, 2001
TOM HANKS sat down with ET to talk about the passion he and friend STEVEN SPIELBERG share -- in retelling history with their new miniseries for HBO, "Band of Brothers." Find out what other hot topics are running through Hanks' head!
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ENTERTAINMENT TONIGHT: Did you grow up watching "Combat"?
TOM HANKS: I saw some of "Combat." There was also "Rat Patrol." But I honestly don't remember watching much past the opening credits ... the opening credits were pretty cool for both shows. Combat had that, "duh ditty duh duh" ... of course, VIC MORROW as Sergeant Saunders, that was kind of the epitome of the sergeant of the platoon.
ET: Do you think in any way that those early shows shaped you?
TOM: Well, it didn't really shape me because I think I was actually a pretty hip discretionary viewer. I always thought there were some really good World War II movies, and there were some really fake World War II movies. When Steven Spielberg and I were getting ready to do 'Saving Private Ryan,' we watched a ton of movies that all landed somewhere on the authentic o-meter. Some were trying to be very realistic, and some were just kind of like B movies that were cranked out by the studios.
ET: How many of these 10 have you seen? Have you seen them all?
TOM: Oh yes, I've kept constantly up on every version of each one of them.
ET: So, how satisfying does this whole experience rate?
TOM: Well, it's extraordinarily satisfying, because I feel as though we've landed much more within the parameters of the book, of STEPHEN AMBROSE's book, than I would have thought possible. We had a great team of writers, who bonded together, almost to a troublesome level. (laugh) They talked to each other and worked out quite a few things themselves, and I must say that the level of authenticity, which was something that we were always shooting for anyway, is even higher than I had originally anticipated. My name's on it probably more places than it deserves to be, but I have to say, I look at it now, and in my checkered career as a producer, as an executive producer, I think it's the finest thing I've ever had my name on.
ET: I can't wait to see it.
TOM: It's really good. I must say, it's really good.
ET: What was the most challenging aspect of this whole thing?
TOM: Well, it truly is the scope and how to capture that scope with the budget that you have. Every episode was supposed to shoot in about two days. Well, it stretched beyond that, even if it wasn't principal photography, even if it was just grabbing a camera and trying to go out and get some landscapes, in order to fill it up. There are great, palpable moments that you just do not have time to capture. We could only spend a minute or two on board the ship that took these guys from New York City to England. That's actually two weeks of just hell on earth, hell at sea, that ... you have to fight your battles where you can, and we couldn't fight that one. There's a lot of personal moments that somehow get lost by the wayside. There's also genuine concerns that these guys had -- for example, how terrible "trench foot" was. More guys suffered from trench foot then from bullet wounds. It was a terrible thing to happen to you. We could really only skip upon it, as opposed to investing 30 minutes on what happens when you get trench foot all by itself. We had to be content with the fact that it's one of the 52 cards in the episode, as opposed to spending a much greater amount of time on it.
ET: When you meet these veterans, how gratifying is it? Because I'm sure you're getting a lot of "atta boys" and pats on the back.
TOM: More than I deserve really, but at the same time, I'm just fascinated by the stories they have to tell. They all have deep, rambling, massive stories of human nature and human character, and that are loaded with characters ... I just think they are all fascinating. There is this scope of history that is not relegated to the pile of myth. It is actually very palpable to who we are and how we live today, and these guys, these veterans, specifically, no matter where they come from ... they all say, by the way, you should make a movie about the 10th Armor. You should make a movie about the 3rd Air Force. It goes on and on.
ET: There have been a couple of things near and dear to you heart that have developed into films. Is there anything else lurking in the future?
TOM: (chuckle) Well, I always read non-fiction. I can't read fiction to save my life. Every day I drive my associates crazy because, "Uh oh, Tom's reading a book again, that means he's going to want to turn it into some kind of ... (in loud, brash voice) this could be a great series." I'm reading Sea Biscuit right now. Did you read Sea Biscuit? It's a fabulous book, and it's just loaded with personality. Also, I must say, I think it will be time, some time in order to take another definitive look at what happened in Vietnam again from all the perspectives that we've since gained from the last time we looked at it ... really from OLIVER STONE's movie 'Platoon.' The Cold War is another thing that had a huge presence in both of our lives when we were growing up, that is worthy of inspection. Whether or not we'll be able to do that or not, I don't know.