for today's interview episode as we begin part six of the miniseries episode 67 and I am

pleased to bring you a conversation that I had with Bruce McKenna who is the writer of part six. He

also worked on some of the other parts in the miniseries and he was also the producer and lead writer

of the miniseries The Pacific which came out nine years after Ben and Brothers. So enjoy.

So today's interview I'm going to be talking with Bruce McKenna who is one of the writers of

Banda Brothers. He's also one of the writers of The Pacific and also one of the producers of The Pacific.

But you know obviously we're going to talk mostly about Banda Brothers today. So Bruce thank you very

much for joining me and being willing to tell your story. Oh thanks for having me. It's an honor.

So yeah my story. Yeah exactly. So obviously we'll start from from the beginning. How did you get

involved in this little project called the Banda Brothers? I begged. I begged and begged and begged.

It was very early in my career. I had not I'd sold a couple things. Ironically both were were

were two related. One was a script about Navajo code talkers and the other was a a project about

the radar program in England during the Battle of Britain. And but I heard about this from my manager.

He said oh somebody from HBO told me they look you know they might be looking for writers for this

spin-off of saving private Ryan was how it was right. And I'm like I'm in because I'd been a huge

role or two buff ever since I was a little kid. Not about the weapons or the tanks or the battles

or the generals but about what the men went through. And so sort of right up my alley and I quickly

read the book immediately got a general meeting with the executive and HBO. You know

blathered on probably 900 words a minute. So they said I'll get out of my office and they sent me

over to play town and I begged them and talked to them and then they brought me back. Eventually they

gave me the series Bible. The infamous mysterious series Bible which is you know huge it's like 190 pages

long. And I just I went back into play tone probably four times to pitch four or five different

episodes. You know I would do the episode three like this and I would do episode and they finally

agreed to hire me and they I guess they had read my code talker script and you know it was

good enough that I they knew I could write. And so they hired me to write episode six the first

to the best tone episodes. And I found out later that I was the last writer hired

and probably I was given the episode nobody else wanted to do. So episode six is the one that

follows that road right. That's correct. Yeah okay. And when I was hired to work on it it was

you know it was the episode where nothing major happens. It's not the crossroads. It's not

Karen Tan. It's not D-Day. It's not the training. It's not the last patrol. It's not where everybody

dies. You know the infamous FOI sequence and at best tone it's not finding the camps. Each one of

these episodes has a major event in them that are easy to to hang the episode around. And the best

tone episode on the surface of it they were just cold and suffered. A couple of guys got wounded.

You know one one replacement died. So the challenge was to figure out how to create and craft a

a meaningful episode that the kept the viewers engaged so that they continue to watch episode seven

you know. And my you know very early in in the process I hit upon I thought was a I thought

was a good idea to follow Doc Rowe the medic. And little known you know inside baseball about

band I was told you can't do that you know that's not going to work. He's not one of our main

guys because it's got to be a lipped in or winters or you know and I'm like well winters is not

on the front line anymore. He's up a battalion HQ. You know it's just they're all in their separate

foxholes. What are we going to do? And the only person that I figured out took us all around the

the front was was were the medics Ralph Spina and Doc Rowe. So I and then I realized was a great

you could kill a bunch of birds with one stone because Doc checked in on everybody. You know I

I learned very quickly how important it was to the men from morale not just when they were wounded

and so I sort of had this half-baked idea okay maybe I'll just do Doc Rowe and we'll figure out

you know where he is and so I asked and was given permission to fly to Denver to go to the 1999

reunion of Easy Company at some airport hotel in Denver and I spent four days with Easy Company

drinking with getting to know them taping them I have you know a lot of taped interviews with a

lot of guys wow you know and just talk to them about what Eugene Rowe was like and it became

obvious to me that I'd hit upon a really interesting angle into combat and what it's like to be

in combat that nobody we didn't do on the show and nobody's done nobody's ever really followed a

medic and what it means to be a medic in combat so you know I came back with a wealth and material

not just on on Doc Rowe but on on everybody in the company and and then you know talk to

dick winners about it and what tell me about him talk to Ralph Spina a lot because Ralph was alive

he was the only medic still alive in Easy Company and he told me how important Doc was to him because

he was a replacement who came in and in Holland and so Doc taught him how to be a medic you know

that kind of thing and then I went and found out every piece of literature that there is on

medics in World War Two whether it was the Pacific or in Europe and there's not very many to be

honest right so you know it began to take shape at that point and and then of course I discovered

the two nurses the Belgian nurse and Renée Lamar and then this episode got deeper and deeper and deeper

and I realized how did you discover the the nurses just based on the stories from

from Ralph or some of the other guys are because again this was something directly with Doc Rowe

so if you speak with not somebody wasn't Doc I mean I wasn't Doc's grandson it was it might

have been Ralph it might have been a talk to a battalion surgeon who knew Doc Rowe and met him

during Bastone you know and he was he was the 506th surgeon told me interesting things he was

in Bastone it might have been him and then you can go online and learn a little bit about Renée

the wrong Wikipedia not much there's not much on her but I knew she had been married I knew she

was 18 and I also know that she was not really the train nurse it was the Belgian girl who was the

train nurse but you know she spoke no really she spoke French spoke no English and the men didn't

really know her very well all of the guys that I talked to that were alive that were in Bastone

that were in the town you know had medical issues or went back for treatment or were surgeons

remember her every single one wow because she was beautiful and they and they remember her that

called her the angel of Bastone because she would touch them she would bring them chocolates she

would you know make them feel better the Belgian nurse was busy stitching them up and and Renée was

busy attending to their souls and their hearts and so you know from there it was like okay well

is it the next thing you have to do as well is it possible that that doc met her and the answer is

yes I flipped the the medical stations the the easy company won the battalion medical aid station was

in the city hall at the other end of town and the the other one you know for the 50 whatever was

was in the church I flipped and I flipped it obviously for thematic reasons because that's a

stock full of religious imagery yes all about healing and and touch and you know so you know and then

I just researched as much as possible into what that would have looked like and what it meant to be

in that medical aid station knowing doc was from Louisiana I I called up his grandson and got to know him

very well Chris and yeah and um long way yeah and he was fantastic wow he was fantastic because

Chris remember him you know told me about the family and we talked about the idea of a

tattoos and the family says I don't know if there was or not but it's possible you know so we

you know we went with that because tattoos it's all about touch you know healing through touch

and um you know then the whole episode is about touch it's about it's about love and touch

and the men touching each other Eugene touching all the guys being touched by them

and you know and and also you know it's about the weight of death on that guy and you know he

can't expiate it there's nowhere for him to there's nowhere for him to go with his emotions

and so you know just started to take shape and you know talk to dick winners about it and

he liked the idea and we the writers we spent a lot of time talking to dick

all of the guys I mean you know before the actors were ever involved we were the ones that bonded

with the men and picked them clean as much as we could and then the actors you know took over and

got even deeper into these guys and and who they were but um so that's how I got involved and

um you know it was I mean it's the best piece of writing I've ever done so I'm very proud of

the episode and and what I was able to do to show what it's like to be in combat for somebody who

can't shoot back very true what's always amazed me about the band of brothers is I mean I've read

the book and so the book will tell a little story in one sentence about some event I mean even

the the best examples come from you know the the first part of the main series you know when

they're in training you know you know the whole thing just with the uh with with the spaghetti incident

for instance right so just it's it's one it's literally one or two sentences in the whole book

and you know you have a writer who's writing it and takes that and expands on it and gives us

you know a three-minute segment that deals with that yeah yeah so to me that's just amazing

to be able to do that um it takes because the the the book band of brothers as great as it is

it's not a linear story story you know it's not too regular in the regular way when you're reading

a novel at the other thing yeah so yeah no it's a different kind of narrative and look I mean I

can't speak for the other writers but when I got hired I never looked at the book again

I mean I just I just put it aside and I did my own interviews and you know so I interviewed 26

of those guys I have interviews with all of them and I'm Stephen Ambrose focused on winners and Nixon

and Harry Walsh and Lipton he focused on the officers and the ops ops and it's Garnier and you know

he didn't focus as much on on some of the line guys at privates and corporals um and then

you know just because winters was such a compelling character which understood but of course we

focused on I mean I talked to winners as much as anybody else and he was enormously helpful

but you know I spent hours talking to Earl McLong and Shifty Powers and you know so that's

spaghetti stories the result of probably Eric Henderson talking to a couple of the guys about

the spaghetti and they go oh yeah the fucking spaghetti story and they put it on it you know

and then we obviously take liberties and flesh things out and of course you know but um you know

I mean look I have enough material to do this series all over again from from the point of

you of a bunch of other guys that would be totally different and next and also the same you know

well yeah of course of course you like I loved Earl McLong he was my favorite guy to talk to

one of the most honest men about what it's like to be in combat and we have him in the show a little

bit but he was he was an extraordinary character and um you know I wish we had done him um

done him a little better in the show than we did he was because he often acted as the scout

um you know he's on point for their patrols which means he's ahead of them and the object is to

make contact right but what really happens is the Germans let the point through so he's constantly

getting cut off and he's behind German lines throughout the war and he was by far the best

sort of eyes and ears for the company he could smell the Germans he could smell their leather wow

and he had a sort of a supernatural ability to and the men depended on that and I thought that

was fantastic you know he also summed up warfare in one sort of pithy paragraph for young men he

said on D day so you have to understand on D day I was 17 my parents signed the papers so I could

get in early he was from you know Eastern Washington state from one of the tribes up there I

forget which one joined up I was 17 years old you have to understand I was told I was actually

ordered to break as many of the ten commandments as I could kill steel you know curse and when you

tell a 17 year old you can do that it is exhilarating exactly so when I landed I killed with a

band and I mean it was just like I get to kill people he said by the end of the first day I realized

the Germans were shooting back so I got scared and I began to kill even more proficiently and coldly

because I was really scared at first I wasn't scared it's like a video game right and then I began

to kill with a calculation and a cruelty and a coldness because I was so scared by the end of the

third day I was so disgusted with myself that until the end of the war I never shot another man

unless I was directly threatened wow so you know the moral evolution of what it's like you know

was really interesting to me yeah for sure and to carry that for I really think the 70 years after

that is also yeah you know so you know just well learning learning about the guys in that way

learning about the little stuff about you know and some of the stuff we we couldn't put in the show

because it was people were still alive you know and we had to be careful but right you know who shot

spears in Holland and you know that kind of stuff so but yeah it was you know it was just a

labor of love I mean I just spent as much time with them calling and all the writers of course

interacted quite well together we I suppose arrogantly called ourselves the band of writers

and you know every day we would you know and once I knew for instance that episode 6 I was going

to focus on Jean Rowe then I would call up you know the other guys and say look can you set me

up in episode 3 can you put you Jean in that scene that you wrote it with Winters and Nixon you know

where Winters gets shrapnel in his foot you know or can you do that yes so that we can see Rowe

because he wasn't in the show before that he wasn't really in the Bible so you know and then

and then they say well can you set up you know so and so getting you know whatever obviously I

knew I just set up lipped in breaking in seven I'm not lipped in there um the book Compton yeah

book Compton breaking in episode 7 so I wrote that scene of him out on the on the at the OP talking

about the cheerleaders and the you know and he that's something he told me that he lost his girlfriend

she brought him a giant dear John letter that's a true story well you know so but we all helped

each other you know flush out and make sure we covered so whatever connective tissue there is in

the show was actually created by the writers um we were told actually not to talk to each other

to write ten separate one hour movies really that that's actually interesting if you want if you

want there to be some sort of continuity so you know to tell everyone not to be in touch hmm interesting

so and we disobey that or immediately and um and thank god so yeah I mean again the the mini-series

is amazing and in my opinion it's one of the best if not the best uh mini-series ever made because

of the way that the story is told you know you really can feel the characters yeah they're really

well drawn and I'm not you seeming to be talking to you no I look at it I'm very proud of it and

but to the extent that it's first rate is I it's two things it's it's both a lot of things but

you know from the very top tanks and Spielberg's commitment to getting this right to HBOs commitment

to spending a lot of money to do it when World War II was not very popular in Hollywood um to the

writers you know really digging in and and all of us were passionate about the show I mean just

to the we're all a terrible pain in the ass and productions hide because we were just constantly

pushing people to get it right get it right get it right and then of course the actors who bonded

with the real men who who just did an incredible job of portraying these guys and learning even

more about them because the men eventually opened up more to the actors and they would come say

look I just learned this from you know from Buck can you put that in the episode of course you

know we just you know whatever whatever the show was the boss you know and so it was a it was a

it was a wonderful experience it really was well I mean I saw I saw an IMDB that you're actually

credited on three episodes not just on I was hired after I turned in episode six I was hired

to rewrite episode I think it was eight after that which was the last role and it been they had a

draft and they and them so and I look I got a reputation as being that pain in the ass that knows

more about the men than anybody else because I had all those interviews with them it's been the

most time and and so I you know I that I got the gig to rewrite the episode which I did and and

then I got the they asked me to rewrite episode four which was they replaced the first island

yeah replacements or as we like to call bull in a barn that's right that's right and um you know so

and it was just again just learning more about what what it was really like to be a replacement

interviewing babe heffron a lot spent a lot of time talking to him talking to Ralph Spina who

was a replacement and just the whole zeitgeist of it all was was a lot of fun and just figuring it out

and um you know so that's and then I also did some uncredited work in episode one there's a couple

scenes in episode one that that I had my sticky fingers in I wish

no nothing that I you know I was I it was just a couple of long I mean I was not not a lot of work

but um yeah you know and could you you were on the writers were on set the entire time when

but during when your episode being done no no which was odd for television I got to the set

when they hired me to rewrite episode four they flew me out to the set um was it episode four

yeah and and so I went out to the set and just just to take a look at it so I could get an image

of what I could write given you know and it was cool this spectacular and the day that I arrived

there was the day that the actors got out of boot camp oh well and they and they had their fittings

and they came on with their you know they blouse their their boots you know they're they're

they're uh don't they're dungries and they came in but big more arrogant group of you know

cock of the walk actors you have never seen in your life they were so chuffed with themselves

and I remember calling um Eric Henderson and I said dude I've just seen the cast

they're unbelievable I mean this is going to be there like so right all of them were so good

and they did the table read for episode one so I was a lot of fun to sit in on that and listen to

that but after that I never went back to the set I I know some of the I know a couple of the

writers went to the set but not for the shooting they didn't they didn't bring a sin for the shooting

no because you mentioned before that sometimes the actors would say to you what can you

you add in something into the episode I was assuming my assumption was is that you know it was

it was happening on you know on the fly some of it did some of it happened before they had you

know they once they got cast they immediately called the guy that they were depicting if they were

alive or the family members if they weren't and so they began to dig into this really really deeply

and talk to the wives the widows the sisters the you know so they might have questions they would

call why we were still writing the scripts and then and then I'm sure during the filming they

had lived stuff and you know and and and normally the writers on set but I think because it was a

big production with a lot of directors who were sort of more in the film world I just think they

didn't you know they just made the changes and went you know and that worked out because

my attitude as a writer is an actor if you've done it if you've written a good enough script and

you have a good enough actor and a good enough director when they ad lib it generally means they have

a better way of saying what you were trying to say in your scripts right and you're just digging the

ditch that you started a little deeper and and it's you know for me it's I never you know it's only

when that violates you know future stuff or or the spirit of what you've tried to create that

do I ever step in didn't have the chance on on band but I didn't need to I mean I we totally

trusted the actors they were brilliant wow that's really cool so like when you first watched

band of brothers you know I'm assuming you you probably watched it you know when they were when

they did some sort of viewing you know for the man or something like that wasn't it or you

that's just watching an HBO like everyone else yeah right well it's funny because when I wrote

band I didn't have a television because I got so pissed off at the cable company Los Angeles and I

just disconnected it so I don't have a TV while I was writing band I did not actually watch any

television and I reconnected my cable for the premiere in 2001 wow before that they had a premiere

in Normandy and the right everybody went they flew us over there with our spouses

and they had a I guess it was at Utah Beach they had a huge tent and they brought the veterans over

and they showed clips for episode one and then the complete episode two and that's the first I'd

seen a couple of pieces of footage here and there really some of the other writers had seen the

episodes they'd gone into to see the the cuts which I didn't see so the first time I ever saw

any appreciable footage was sitting in an audience of 2,000 people including the men themselves

and watching episode two you know and it was incredible I guess they chose it because it's the

shortest of all the episodes and also because it had come back in episode one first episodes

there are is really difficult in these in limited series because you got to kill a bunch of

birds with one stone right they're never really satisfactory there's no combat in it it's

you know it's it's learning who the characters are it's just set up really right it's it's

it's showing a lot of conflict it's well done right it's showing us a bond between these

and the brothers you know and yeah does it still affect it yeah and then but episode two is

though you know it's got some holy shit sequences in it so they showed that and and and then a lot

of them I mean it's some of the men wept when they watched it it was yeah it was one of the most

profound days of my life because you know we got down there on the special train that they chartered

and we got into the village and there were hundreds of people waiting for us and all the children

were there they'd made postcards thank you for saving us Viva La USA wow they they come up to

the men and touch them and it was unbelievable I mean it was incredible you know it was so moving

you know and then we had the dinner down there or some you know I forget where we had a dinner at

a fancy restaurant it was an incredible day really wow okay and then when was the first time

you saw your episodes the ones that you wrote after I got my television and yeah we I remember

had a little viewing party for episodes obviously I'd seen episode four before that but

episode six and we had my wife cooked up some northern like Belgian French I forget some chicken

dish with the sauce you know it's like a baston meal you know and I've got a couple of friends

and we were just the men had no and you know I had heard it's interesting you know

no one knew when band came out that it was going to be any good I have to remember this you know

World War II was not popular I was told when I got to Hollywood when I wrote my Navajo code talker

script don't do World War II it's dead it's career suicide out here well isn't isn't wasn't

saving private Ryan that's that pretty much yeah that's what yeah so yes saving you that's not

television that's true okay so you know saving private Ryan did rejuvenate it all and and thank God

and and I don't know if you know this but the band was born out of the research for saving

private Ryan because Ryan was in the he was in the 506th so they read band of brothers and also

also one of the nylon brothers was best friends with Mark I believe I think something like that yeah

I'm pretty sure that's what George says told me George and so that's right and so

God bless George loves junior he's a great guy oh yeah I've had two interviews he's the best

he's amazing this week he's a wonderful human being but yeah so so they that's you know they

had the book and and Kirk Sudusky at play tone it was an executive over there went to Tom Hanks

and said this would make an incredible limited series and so they you know that's where it was

born so that first review of band of brothers came out of the Wall Street Journal and it was

excoriating it was like Tom and Stephen played GI Joe's in their sandbox and it's trite and stupid

and I mean it was just it was a bad review the first you have band and then of course two days

after the of the premiere 9.11 and we thought I mean look you're like 9.11 and you're like holy

shit I guess nobody's gonna watch our little mini series now you know they got bigger

fister for me and in fact it made the series indispensable in America because it became a

cultural juggernaut for an audience to understand what it's like to go to war so and to be comfort

comforted by it so it's you know to be that it's it's something that you can it can be narratively

constructed so you can deal with it right it hasn't beginning a middle an end yes people die

people suffer but we win right right timing is everything yeah and so and then the reviews started

coming in from other places including the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal where the editor

excoriated her own reporter and says you're full of shit this is incredible you know so that

was put you know so when we when I saw it finally in the sixth week there had been a few positive

reviews but no one really knew I didn't know if the episode was any good or no well after you

you probably said in the third week because they did two episodes every week oh that's right

they did the first two and then episode yeah the fourth week yeah so you know and I knew

that episode six was frankly better than episode four of course you're good for my

well I wrote I wrote episode four two eventually so you know I had more to play with emotionally

in episode six but yeah I came out and it was like you know holy shit this is really good

so I hope other people like it you know so we were you were you happy with with the with the end

results because you know oh yeah necessarily put on paper isn't what we we have gotten to watch

over the last 20 years yeah no no that's a very good thing to bring up yeah I know the director

David Leland who since passed away did a think an incredible job and it's a beautiful episode

the way he shot it he also rewrote some of it before I went into production and I don't

agree with some of the things he did but I do agree with some you know some of it like like I said

earlier he dug my ditch deeper and made it better some of it was a ditch that I didn't necessarily

want him digging but you know it didn't really matter he took a lot of the dark humor out of the

episode now there was a lot of funny that happened at best tone because they had no other way

of dealing with how miserable they were yeah so you know and I felt that it made the episode more

moving because you know that that's the aesthetic of the Pacific it's like we're going to go there

it's going to be a lot of darkness this is how men deal with it you know and I guess the director

felt like he didn't he in my opinion didn't trust the material enough that that would play with

what was going on with Eugene and Renee and and everything else it's a very earnest episode in some

ways and so he did that and then he he trimmed some of that there was a couple other characters

that he might have trimmed out or put dialogue and different but and then the one scene that he did

that I did not write the two things that he did that I loved what he did is the scene where the

the pear trooper bleeds out with the two nurses and Eugene try and save his life

and that's an incredible scene and you know it really hit the theme of the episode of you know

the blood of Christ of sacrifice of futility of I mean it's beautifully done and shot and so when

I saw it I'm like oh okay he got my script and he did a great job and then the second thing he did

which dug my ditch deeper to I kicked myself for not doing is he it was his choice to have

Eugene at the end take the blue kurchif which I constructed and make it into a bandage

I mean just keep it as a keepsake but it's much better to turn it into a bandage right that's

like who really is so David I my hat's off to David I you know he did it I am he rest in

peace he did a really wonderful job wonderful job that is so amazing okay so you finished band

of brothers and then a few years later they say we want you on the Pacific how did that happen

well it's a funny story and it's the Pacific started the night of the Emmys for band because the

writers lost yep we lost we were nominated we thought there's no way we're gonna lose we lost

so like oh man what a bummer we went to this huge HBO party this is in the heyday of HBO's

massive you know they had more money than than God so there was a there was a party inside the HBO

party just for band of so we go to the the the the inner sanctum party inside the swanky HBO

party which is itself the swanky is party in hollywood for the Emmys and Wolfgang Pock is cooking

just for the cast and crew of band of brothers and his restaurant and we're all there the men are

there the families and and there is a table reserved for Steven Spielberg and his wife and it

literally said mr. and mr. Spielberg nobody else could sit there so I went over to Steven I said

thank you for giving me the opportunity he had briefly been attached to direct episode six

before David Leeland which would and but he had developed some health issues and he couldn't

shoot it so I want I went over and just said thank you for the opportunity and and his wife Kate

capture I said you know you guys were robbed you know the writers and I said thank you we feel

the same way now that I turned to Steven and I said look if you ever want to do a similar show in

the Pacific I'd love to write a couple episodes for the show that's all I said and he's like I'll

keep that in mind right so then flash forward 18 months the phone rings it's Gary Guestman Tom

X's producing partner hey Tom and and Steven and I want to sit down with you to talk to you about

doing the show about the Pacific so I'm like oh so I go okay when it is Steven's office which is the

most intimidating office in all of Hollywood you know you go in the office and Rose Bud the sled

from Citizen Kane is on the wall and Norman Rockwell paintings and Oscars and you know pictures of him

with you know it's just it's it's fine I mean it's a great place to be and and Steven's a very

gracious host and so we go in there we sit down and we just brainstormed and we talked about

everything and whether it should be fictional whether it should be real how difficult it's much bigger

who do we focus on do we do the Navy do we how do we do this and Steven said look I've been looking

into the Pacific for about six months now and I hired Hugh Ambrose who was Steven Ambrose's son

and and researcher to begin interviewing people in the Pacific to look for stories and Hugh had

begun interviewing guys from the first not just the first but from the Marine Corps and so they had

sort of and so Hugh sent me a database of his interviews and sort of a paragraph or two on each

interview of so-and-so he was the corporal in the fifth Marines he was on Gordel Canal this guy

was a new Britain and so I I looked through that I called Hugh and so Hugh Ambrose was actually

the first guy hired Steven Steven Ambrose had already passed away at this point right no I he

died it was close yeah yes he had died he had just died when they called me that's correct I

forget the actual date it was probably in the fall of 2002 so yeah that makes sense maybe

the fall yeah it was right around the time that he died he might have died within a week or

the I don't remember anyway so I called Hugh and we sat down and began brainstorming I began reading

books and looking into it and so I figured out very quickly that I had to be the Marine Corps it

had to be the first marine division because if you're going to go from the beginning of the war to

the end of the war the first marine division or men in the first division first marine division

fight a gual of canal and some of them fight all the way into Okinawa they might have been transferred

they might have been in the fifth or the sixth but they might have started in the first and

and then you know so from there it's you know I started thinking about it who do I pick so you

know just started looking at these interviews reading these books and then very quickly said you

know what I love this book with the old breed by Eugene Sledge he's in the he's in you know

he's in the fifth Marine he's in the K-35 but you know he's in new Britain he's in Paley Lou he's

how how do I how do I fit him in I don't know yet I'll put him all put a pin in that guy and then

I read Lucky's book helmet for my pillow which is the sort of the 1950s version of Sledge's book it's

not quite as on not quite as raw it's not quite as good in my opinion a little bit more art of art

he went even though like he was the right guy yeah he's an Irishman and he's a writer so there's

a little bit of flourish to it all and so I read him I said well he's on Guadalcanal and then he

goes and he's on Paley Lou you know wow well Sledge is on Paley Lou maybe I you know and then I

I called up and interviewed Sledge's friend Sid Phillips who was on Guadalcanal and Sid then told

me in the bombshell of all bombshells oh Lucky I knew I was in Lucky's company I would

I know that ain't fall that's the way he just and then when he said that I mean literally

goosebumps over my entire body yeah I knew I could connect you know from A to Z through Sid

through Paley Lou I could put them in the same place at the same time it is possible although not

probable that they spoke to each other because it's Sid Phillips we don't know but I took that

liberty and felt comfortable taking that liberty and they were certainly within a few

hundred yards of each other on Paley Lou so knowing which beach they came in on and you know so it

was that was one of the great moments of my writing career was because I did the research and

dug in so deeply and interviewed these guys there were still alive I got my series out of it you

know so you know we just researched it and then I originally the Pacific had two additional

characters who were aviators one was a both naval aviators one flew at the battle in midway and

then it was in the cactus air force in Guadalcanal briefly and then the other was Floyd Hall from

the book Flyboys who flew Chichi Jima was shot down and eaten by the Japanese you know and we

were going to put them in the show as well and it but it was too big and too sprawling and so we

cut the aviators out of the show but anyway so that's how it all came together I went into pitch

Spielberg and Hank's about six months after they had that meeting I said this is I said before I

tell you the story these are the characters I want to base it on why and I told them who the

characters were and they said go write that and come back and I said well I'm not going to write

you a Bible first I'm just going to write you an outline to a Bible because it's so big

and I turned that outline in in May of 2003 I think and they greenlit me to the scripts at HBO

off that outline because I just had like a page or two for each episode who the characters were

Stephen and Tom loved it and they said go write the scripts so that I began choosing writers to

work with them we then started writing the series in 2000 and took us five years to actually

but how did that one get connected into it that's a good yeah well Basel was great because he's

on Guadalcanal and he's also on eojima so I could get all the most famous battles with Baselone

and he was in the first marine division he would have you know he was with Chasty Polar Chasty

that Paley Lou you know he can I can connect him in any way I wanted to dramatically on Guadalcanal

because you have to remember Guadalcanal is a pretty small place to be in August in September of

1932 and so and I also wanted a character look it's right there on the title of the show the Pacific

it's a show that is ironic on the face of it Bander Brothers is not ironic it is a heartfelt

pan to heroism it is a celebration the Pacific is the most expensive anti-war film ever made

it is not flag waving in the way that Bander's it is much more well it's much more accurate

about the moral corrosiveness of combat and so it's in the title the title is ironic and so lucky

is an ironic character sledge in some ways his arc is in one of irony where the the hometown boy

becomes a killer you know his father doesn't want him to go because his father doesn't want him

to change but he as a as a youth right against his father and eventually realizes at the end

yeah hey what do you know my father was right yes so there's a lot of irony in the story

everywhere in the in the Pacific it's a very in that sense late 20th early 21st century

you know Hollywood production in the way that sopranos is ironic and breaking bad is ironic and

you know it's a little darker and that's a lot darker but but I wanted a character who wasn't

that who was just the Greek hero doing and dying and John Besslon was that man I mean I did a lot

of research into him I found his best friend from the Marine Corps who served with him on

Guadalcanal who was still alive and I interview you know his my interviews with him are

profound John Besslon is nothing like the way that he was depicted in popular literature or you know

he was not a boxer he was not he was very sensitive funny work he you know we and we tried

to capture that and and and he was the do or die guy I remember writing the sequence on Guadalcanal

where you know he picks up the machine and this is all true it really happened you know

burns his hands it really happened burned his arms and and Tom Hanks said I we can't put that

in the show it's just a Hollywood trope it's like Rambo I'm like Tom it happened because I don't

believe it happened you have to prove to me it happened so I found all these different you know both

sources interviews and he said okay really that's who he was he was that guy you know and he was

far braver on on the eugenia which is you know on the beach there was what he did was incredible

getting this guy's off the beach and you know so I wanted somebody that that was the classical

Greek hero who died right early for his country so you know all the stuff about him playing golf

that's all true I mean one of the things I like about Besslon is that we get to see both sides of

him we get to see the side of him fighting and we also get to see the side of him of loving yeah

and he did you know she died before I could interview her Lena but I did somebody in her family

that was able to get in touch with I can't remember a niece maybe but I I do know that she you

know she kept this dog tags in her purse the rest of her life and you know she never remarried

and you know she was a tough broad too she was a really so I really enjoyed crafting and then

giving the writers who flushed it out their story because it's so moving to me and you know

the cost of what he did for all of us right to her you know he obviously dies but you know

she's one with an empty hole in her heart for the rest of her life so yeah yeah anyway

no that's just amazing but is there a reason why it took so long to get the to get the show

finally released I mean you said if you started working on it in 2000 the end of 2002

beginning 2003 so we're talking seven years almost yeah we started filming in 2007 and it came

out in 2010 March March 14 2010 was the first episode came out right my birthday there you go

so that's right yeah no the reason why it took so long is you know it took maybe a year to write

the first 13 episodes with the five writers that we hired and then I turn them all in and we had

this big meeting with Hankson Spielberg and Spielberg said to me I love your second episode the

battle in midway I just love it I've always wanted to do a midway but it's going to cost us

50 million dollars alone for that episode it was the most what we should episode you've ever seen

you know diving on those four carriers and it was incredible aircraft carriers and you know

dudes in the water and and it was all based on this real guy named Bob Elder who had been a

don'tless pilot and you know and then went on to be a trained other other other flyers later in

the war and his girlfriend who became his wife woke up on December 7th went out on her porch her

lanai and watched a Japanese torpedo plane fly right over her roof I mean you know so she watched

Pearl Harbor wow in front of her so we had a character so um but so that you know so then we

had to throw out the aviators okay let's make it 10 episodes we have to go back to the drawing board

reinvent the structure how do we do it we didn't lose the three Marines that we

picked we had to weave them together a little tighter you know we had to do that

they we did that and then we had the political fight inside um HBO whether to make this and this

is the part of Hollywood that viewers never you know really see that how the sausage is made

we knew it's going to be we had preliminary budgets of 320 million bucks if we did it in a Y

240 if we did it in Australia twice the budget have been

wow twice no land had been very successful but there were a lot of

internal dissent from what we learned inside HBO people might have wanted that money to make

other shows because if you make that specific I mean somebody else's show doesn't get made

and so it was probably a year of back and forth they weren't sure um you know we don't know

is it banded brothers part two how do we market it blah blah and finally Chris Albrecht pulled

the trigger and said we're doing this and I got the call in a parking lot in Santa Fe, New Mexico

where you greenlit the show and you know we were off to the off to the races so and it took a year

almost a year of prep too I mean it was we had to you know it was in Australia six months before

we started shooting um they flew me to Guadalcanal I flew to Paley Lou I spent time in both battlefields

you know just soaking it up and and then going back to the scripts and tweaking them and you know

so it was an incredible incredible process sounds fun sounds like it sounds like you you

definitely have stories that keep you going give me a warm and a cold thing and a bass jone night

yeah oh wow that that's just amazing amazing I'm I enjoy watching both of those

you really have a very different shows oh that's nice yeah no I mean it's there I'm

some very proud to work them both they're defining for my career um you know and I'm very proud

of the work that all of us did on them um but I always say tell people you know if we've done

band of brothers after the pacificate wouldn't have been the same you wouldn't have you you

definitely wouldn't have had that as a man around either that you see that's that's one of the things

with band of brothers that I see as opposed to the Pacific because of the 10-year gap or almost

between them that band of brothers you had the opportunity to speak to more of the men were

the pacific there's no question that helped enrich the show I mean the pacific where you said

Phillips was alive I I talked to people who had direct contact with all of those men and some of

them you know like Chuck Tatum was a character on eojima I spent a lot of time with Chuck and Chuck

loved Baselon and and I had kept all of his Baselon memorabilia since the war you know and so he

was you know and and talking to Baselon's best friend um guy named Richard Greer who's going on

to be a very successful businessman and you know he sent me photo I photographs of Baselon that no

one has ever seen that he had on his you know his own private photographs Baselon coming out of

the showers of Melburn you know he never his quirk was he would never towel off he would never

drive himself with a towel so I got him coming out of the shower you know with his boxes on and

the smile at the camera just goofy so funny you know and so yeah but you're right I mean having

the guys themselves but it also it made it more accurate but it also made it less accurate

because there's stories we could not tell now a sledge had been alive could I have told the story

well yes because he put it in his book because he was ruthlessly honest with his own moral corrosion

I guess you would call it but there are stories that that I don't think we could have told

if the guys had been alive in the Pacific or in vice versa for band you know so it cuts both

clear and and because band was more a celebration you know we didn't show who shot

spears in the ass in Holland somebody an easy company you know we don't show them

summarily executing SS officers and you know in the in the out right which they did

you know I was told directly after we did the show now I was told by guy now that you

the show is out I can tell you what really happened you know and there's there's a lot of darkness

there you know this like one example is we focus a lot on on Garnier and Buck and um and

Lipton you know Lipton was a sorry that as that sort of a node of men around those guys and I forget

that I think they're in the third platoon and not so much in first and second platoons and we mixed

platoons up all the time with guys we didn't care but but they're definitely with you know with

that and why is that well it's not just because Garnier gets his leg blown off and we can follow him

and he's a really colorful character it's not just that we can then get babe heffron is best

front in the show it's not just you know it's the reason why is Dick Winner has said to me and we

didn't put it in the show is because the sergeants in charge of like first platoon did not meet their

objective on d-day they hunkered down and they didn't try to make the objective and I never

trusted them ever again in the war with anything of import so he winters ground the shit at a third

platoon because they got the job done and they had the highest casually right in the war and the

other two platoons didn't and because winners didn't trust them as much right well that you know

that doesn't mean a band of brothers and so it's a marvelous little historical tidbit you know

but so there's things like that that we blinked in band because we didn't want to hurt people's

feelings and right okay so now the most important question of this conversation between us is

so what are you Tom and Stephen now working on I know it's funny I I did not work on masters

of the air a John Orlough did that was his his duty overseas and I don't know if those guys

are going to do it I don't think you know I don't know if they'll do another war series so

I haven't worked for those guys I wrote a script for them a few years ago that was

um oh it was World War II based but it was not combat it was about Alfred Lumis who was the

financier who developed radar at the rad lab at Austin at MIT and who you know is the guy

probably more than any other individual who saved the world you know with with money and and

intellect um so but I haven't worked for them so I mean I wrote a script for Stephen animated

film for him that didn't get made a few years ago so I'm gonna stay in touch with them but I

haven't done any I haven't worked for them in a while so um but I do I mean I I haven't left

World War II completely I have a show I'm hopeful I'm hopeful I'll have a show it on MGM about

World War II submarine that I wrote for them and I'm going series that they're wanting to hear

well good luck with that so yeah that'll be a lot of fun with it so all right well thank you very

much for for taking the time to to speak to me yeah absolutely yeah I'm good thanks for having

you good luck with it I appreciate that thank you very much I will back tomorrow with another

but until then great