Clint Eastwood on the Appeal of Flags of Our Fathers: “One, there's never been a story on Iwo Jima, even though there have been pictures that have been entitled — using it in the title — but the actual invasion, it was the biggest marine corps invasion in history, the most fierce battle in marine corps history. But what intrigued me about it was the book itself and the fact that it wasn't really a war story. I wasn't setting out to do a war movie. I'd been involved with a few as an actor, but I liked this because it was just a study of these people. I've always been curious about families who find out things about their relatives much after the fact. And the kind of people that [have talked to me] about this campaign and many other campaigns, and the ones who seemed to be the most in the front lines and have been through the most, seem to be the ones who have been the quietest about their activity. It's a sure thing that if you hear somebody being very braggadocio about all their experiences in combat, sure thing that he was probably a clerk typist somewhere in the rear echelon (laughing).
There seems to be a commonality with these kinds of people, like John Bradley was, that they came back and it was a time in history when you didn't have a lot of psychiatric evaluation and coddling. When they came back they were just told to go home and get over it. If they didn't have wives or loved ones to help them, they had to adjust on their own - or else they didn't adjust on their own. So it's just those experiences of being a young man thrown into the ultimate celebrity. The picture, I hope, makes a comment on celebrity, of being treated like a president — maybe not always a president, but being treated like a celebrity, and they didn't feel that. They felt very complex about being that, especially when so many of their companions were killed in this ferocious battle. The famous photograph, the Joe Rosenthal photograph, was taken 4 or 5 days into the battle. It was not even a fourth of the way there yet, but it signified a unity that I've always been curious about. So that's it.”
Book to Screenplay – Paul Haggis Tackles Flags of Our Fathers: “…It's a difficult book to translate into a screenplay. Paul likes to joke. After our first meeting he said, ‘I have about an 11% chance of being successful with this.’ And I said, ‘Well, it's going to work out. Don't worry. Just keep things straight ahead.’ We would talk every day or so over the phone and talk about philosophy. It was a way to get started. He had trouble getting it into it and we talked about doing it [in a linear style] — doing it in various acts. But the trouble is, to show the impact that it has on the three soldiers and their recollection that is very difficult to work with. You'd go from present day, which would be 1994 in this case, and back to one period of time and up to another period of time and back, and then up to the present day. The only other time I've done that — I did it with a picture called Bird years ago and I had difficulty in going into flashback, then a flashback within a flashback, and then having to unwind and come back and keep the audience only moderately confused, to get back to the present day of that particular picture (which) present day was in the ‘40s as well. We finally decided this was the way to do it.
Jim Bradley wrote his book as he was researching, doing literally a detective story, going around and talking to people, so it laid out that way. It just seemed like a logical way to do it. Otherwise it's a very big sprawling book and it covers a lot of chapters on a lot of various items. You have to sit there and figure out, ‘Well, what story do we want to do? Just the bond drive or the battle?’ But you have to have the impact of the battle to show the complexities of the bond drive, of the emotions of the guys. I guess Adam Beach's character sort of sums it up when he's on the train and says, ‘We shouldn't be here.’ There's a lot of little key places that guide you back. That is one of them.”
