The way that Ryan shot [the film], he’s the cinematographer of the film as well as the director, he was sitting there so close to us. Almost the entire film was handheld, and so we didn’t have this huge crew and all this stuff going on around us where it was, just like you said, you get lost in how huge this movie is. It was so intimate. Ryan was sitting three feet away from us with the camera saying, “Action.” It was almost shot like we were there. It almost felt like a documentary. We were thrown into the moment.
Ryan is very much an actor’s director and lets you experiment with the characters. He understands that an actor knows the characters best. And so I think that’s how we came away with something that even surprised us. I mean, we shot the film and we knew it was going to be a great story because it was true. It was about what some call the greatest generation that ever lived, these soldiers. But coming away and actually seeing the film now, and seeing how well it’s doing at the festivals and how much people really enjoy it and are coming away feeling touched and inspired and uplifted, all of a sudden you go, “Wow.” Something with that film was out of our hands. It came together and it was one of those miracles of filmmaking.
30 days is a really short period of time for you guys to have bonded so closely.
It is. It is.
Was it because it was a war film and you were portraying soldiers? Does that add to the dynamics of bonding?
Absolutely, absolutely. And I hate how it may sound cliché because there are a lot of people who are like, “We were together. We were brothers,” but it was like that. Peter Holden who plays the Sergeant Gunderson, who plays my best friend in the film – ‘Deacon’s’ best friend – there’s just something about [him]. We did have camaraderie. It was something that we felt.
We were in those uniforms and there’s something about being in those uniforms honoring those men and women that served us in World War II, and honoring those that serve us today still. There’s something about that that creates such a pride and such a humility at the same time, which doesn’t seem like it could exist in the same plane. But all of a sudden you put those uniforms on and you tell the story, and it really becomes about love and it becomes about brotherhood. It becomes about the person next to you, not yourself. And it was, it was a short period of time. But we went through a hard shoot. It was a physically very demanding shoot. It was freezing cold. The action was intense. The drama was intense, the emotion was intense. And we were there for each other in every aspect as actors, and also as characters. That’s what I think people will see when they see the film.
You said you spoke to some World War II veterans. What was it they told you not to do?
You’d be surprised there’s a lot of people that are World War II buffs that study and are historians and learn all this stuff, and we didn’t really get a lot from the World War II veterans on things that we shouldn’t do. They were so gracious in saying, “Thank you so much for telling this story.” What we heard a lot of was that just anything that happens, anything that happens in this entire world that we can possibly fathom, happens in war. There is no rule. When you’re in war, there are rules of engagement. There are these things, but in the situation when we shot this film and the story it’s centered around, the rules went out the door. Germans were executing prisoners and that’s all we knew as soldiers. There are a few survivors of the Malmedy Massacre still left in the world and Ryan – I was never in contact with the one that Ryan the director talked to – but he did talk to one. He won’t see the film, not because of anything against us, but because for obvious reasons it would bring back horrible memories. But we’ve had people who were historians see the film and I think only twice in the entire span of going to festivals have I ever heard anybody say, “Oh, this was inaccurate,” because it was all accurate. Even the people who were there said, “You know what? That was it. That was exactly what it was like.”
People will say, “Well, you had a medic who held a gun.” We caught flack because we had the medic, on the poster the medic’s holding the gun and that’s technically not supposed to happen. A medic is just supposed to run around and help. Well, that medic would be dead if he didn’t have a gun. And so all those rules go out the door. We didn’t really get anything from the veterans where they were like, “Hey, don’t do this.” They were just like, “You tell the story. You’ve got the facts and you just do it.” When they come up to you and say, with tears in their eyes, “Thank you for making this movie,” and you’re sitting here saying, “Thank me for making this movie? All I did was shoot a movie for a month. You were there away from your family.” It puts things into perspective. I am forever changed having done this film.
