Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe

Gateway.net News

Easy Company Medic Eugene Roe: Band Of Brothers in the News: Gateway.net News

Please visit a sponsor and help keep this site free

By Derek D. Tircuit (Dtircuit) (216.78.134.127 - 216.78.134.127) on Wednesday, October 24, 2001 - 10:21 am:

BAND OF BROTHERS
Executive Producers Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg

bob
After completing “Saving Private Ryan” together, Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg were both considering separate World War II projects. Spielberg was interested in adapting Stephen E. Ambrose’s “Citizen Soldiers,” and Hanks was interested in Ambrose’s “Band of Brothers.” The two decided to collaborate on BAND OF BROTHERS, which follows one group of men from the first day of training through the end of the war, hitting all of the major elements in the European theater – D-Day, Holland, Market-Garden, the Battle of the Bulge, and the capture of Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.

This very personal narration lets the reader get to know these soldiers as ordinary men, what they cared about and feared, how they spoke, how they related to each other, and what was important to them. Such a story makes the enormous scale and scope of World War II approachable.

Having collaborated with HBO on the Emmy ® -winning miniseries “From the Earth to the Moon,” Hanks suggested doing the same with BAND OF BROTHERS, because, he notes, “I have a great history with HBO, we’ve done this kind of thing before. They understand the type of authenticity we’re going for and they throw away all the rules – we can say what we want to, the stories can last as long as they need to, and we, as storytellers, think that’s very important.” Tony To, who also worked on “From the Earth to the Moon,” joined the production team, and casting began.

The focus of the casting sessions was to find the actor with the right essence, the right emotional attributes for each character, not specific physical characteristics. After winnowing the crop of hopefuls to the 50 that were to become Easy Company, the producers held sessions where Spielberg operated a camera and Hanks staged the action, watching how the actors related to each other in different roles to find the right part for each man. The only exceptions were casting Damian Lewis as Richard Winters, who became the company’s commanding officer, and Ron Livingston as Lewis Nixon, one of Winters’ closest friends – the producers knew they were right for those parts as soon as they walked in the door.

Having met Winters himself, Hanks knew they were looking for “an enigmatic leader who, at the same time, is the exact symbol that you would want to have for a leader; a guy you can’t explain, but who explains himself by his mere presence. And in that case, you’re looking for something chromosomal. You’re looking for someone with a certain air about them that comes across even before he opens his mouth, and Damian had that without question. As soon as he sat down, we knew.”

Before shooting started, the actors went through a grueling two-week boot camp run by Capt. Dale Dye, USMC (ret.), the colorful taskmaster who was to turn a disjointed group of actors into a highly-trained company of soldiers who share the bond of brotherhood. Having done this on “Saving Private Ryan,” Hanks and Spielberg insisted that this intense training was absolutely essential to the process, and the most important rehearsal time the actors would have. Capt. Dye’s boot camp made Easy Company a reality.

Finding the perfect set location was key. Returning to the site where part of “Saving Private Ryan” was shot, BAND OF BROTHERS set up shop at the Hatfield Aerodrome outside of London, a location that offered office space, empty airplane hangars for sets, and 1000 acres of open space, which was perfect for creating the 11 towns, fields and forests necessary. As Hanks said, “it’s a first-rate production facility for recreating the past, as well as creating the next generation of special effects.”

Working with a different director for each episode presented continuity challenges, but guidance from the producers gave the project coherence. As To puts it, “Steven has set such a template for us with ‘Ryan’ that we agreed to use the filmmaking languages he created there – the handheld, subjective point of view, the image shaker, the grunt’s view of the battle. From that basic template, we’ve let the directors evolve it into something new, something that will become identifiable as BAND OF BROTHERS.”

There is a great deal of mutual admiration among the producers. For To, working with Hanks and Spielberg was “exhilarating. In passion, commitment and talent, you couldn’t ask for anything more. It’s been singularly creatively and personally rewarding.” Hanks was very grateful to Spielberg for being “allowed” to be in ‘Ryan,’ and that Spielberg was “very benevolent in saying, ‘Let’s do BAND OF BROTHERS together’.” Ultimately, they share the same desire, says Hanks, “the hope that the viewer will have an emotional and human experience that will allow them to appreciate the sacrifice that the men who fought in the Second World War gave.”