- Title: USA: THE WORLD PREMIERE OF "SAVING PRIVATE RYAN" IS HELD IN LOS ANGELES
- Date: 27th June 1998
- Summary: VARIOUS LOCATIONS (FILE) (RTV) BLACK AND WHITE ARCHIVAL FOOTAGE OF THE FIVE AMERICAN SULLIVAN BROTHERS WHO SERVED TOGETHER DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR ON THE US NAVY DESTROYER JUNEAU AND WERE ALL KILLED WHEN THE VESSEL WAS TORPEDOED IN THE PACIFIC. THEIR DEATHS PROMPTED THE US CONGRESS TO PASS "THE SULLIVAN ACT" WHICH PROHIBITS SIBLINGS SERVING IN THE SAME UNIT IN THE US ARMED FORCES.
- Embargoed: 12th July 1998 13:00
- Keywords:
- Location: LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, UNITED STATES, FILM LOCATIONS & FILE.
- Country: USA
- Reuters ID: LVA3NMOYAY4RYRDMP5Y55UM5JZS9
- Story Text: Some of Hollywood's biggest stars turned out on Tuesday (July 21) in Los Angeles for the world premiere of Steven Spielberg's World War II epic "Saving Private Ryan," starring Tom Hanks, Matt Damon and Edward Burns.
The film doesn't open in the United States until Friday, July 24, but it's already causing controversy because of its intense and brutally graphic depiction of the allied D-Day landings in Normandy.
The film tells the story of a small squad of soldiers led by Captain John Miller, played by Tom Hanks, who are ordered behind enemy lines in occupied France following D-Day to rescue a lowly private named James Ryan, played by Matt Damon.
The reason for the mission is based on a real U.S.
military policy.
In the film, three of Ryan's brothers are killed in the week leading up to D-Day, and the military brass decides to risk the lives of Miller's men to prevent the entire Ryan family from being wiped out by the war.
The actual American military policy forbidding family members from serving in the same unit or on board the same ship came from an act of Congress called the Sullivan act.It was named after the Sullivan family, which was decimated after five brothers were killed when the ship on which they were all serving went down.
Although the mission is at the heart of "Saving Private Ryan," the sequence that is generating all the talk is the first 24 minutes of the film, which contains Spielberg's disturbingly realistic recreation of the D-Day landings at Omaha Beach.
Spielberg defends his choice to make the sequence as gory and bloody as he has by saying he didn't want to dishonour the men who fought and gave their lives on that beach by "Hollywood-izing" the experience, as so many other war films have done in the past.
Still, the intense violence has prompted the Motion Picture Association of America to add a warning to its usual "R" rating which reads: "Includes intense, prolonged, realistically graphic sequences of war violence and language." In addition to re-creating the tortuous physical conditions of June 6, 1944, Spielberg also ensured credibility for his film by working with historical consultant and author Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the definitive book on the Normandy landings.
He also brought in former U.S.Marine Corps Captain Dale Dye to put his actors through an intense 10-day boot camp, which included weapons drills, close combat, individual maneuvers and tactics, and World War II-era military lingo and hand signals.Dye has previously served as a military consultant on Oliver Stone's films "Platoon," "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Heaven and Earth," and on the features "Forrest Gump" and "Casualities of War." Dye's training was so realistic and brutal on the actors, some of them started to get physically ill during boot camp.
At one point, several of them started discussing giving up and walking out of the film.
It fell to Tom Hanks, a personal friend of Spielberg's prior to filming, to bring the potential for mutiny to the attention of the director.Spielberg encouraged Hanks to go back to his fellow actors and rally them to finish the course.
In the end, Hanks was able to convince the squad to continue with boot camp, finish the training and honour the memories of those who served in the Allied invasion of Normandy.Besides Ed Burns, the other actors in the squad included "Heat" co-star Tom Sizemore and newcomers Jeremy Davies, Vin Diesel, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper and Giovanni Ribisi.
Matt Damon was allowed to sit out Dye's boot camp because his character is not a member of Hanks' squad in the film and Spielberg didn't want him acting like he trained with the others.
While the actors went through their preparation, Spielberg had his own challenge to face: the re-creation of the massive D-Day landing at Omaha Beach.After weeks of research, he settled on a stretch of Irish coastline that was very similar to Normandy as his location.
Next he had to turn the Irish coast into a fictional German stronghold, complete with defensive Belgian gates and iron hedgehogs.On the beach, the crew built a low seawall of rocks and sand topped with barbed wire.They also dotted the cliffs with pillboxes from which the Germans rained down a relentless barrage of gunfire.
Spielberg also tracked down World War II landing craft known as Higgins boats and cast 750 members of the Irish Army as extras.Many of them were already movie veterans, having worked on Mel Gibson's "Braveheart." In the end, all the actors agreed they were glad Spielberg chose to film the D-Day sequence first, because it gave them a real perspective on which to base their performances for the rest of the film.
"Saving Private Ryan," which is already generating talk of Oscar nominations for Spielberg and Hanks, opens in theaters throughout the United States on Friday, July 24. - Copyright Holder: REUTERS
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