It's hard to believe, but Saving Private Ryan today celebrates it's 20th anniversary. TWENTY YEARS!! Good God.
It only seems like yesterday that Captain John Miller and his brothers landed on Omaha Beach, in one of the most impactful openings in movie history:
Something you may not know is that the infamous 'beach scene' was actually shot on Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe, Co. Wexford. The real-life beaches in Normandy, where Allied Forces invaded France, have strict filming restrictions, so Spielberg created an almost perfect replica Omaha Beach in the south east of Ireland.
It went on to win 5 Oscars at the 1999 Academy Awards and is reported to have brought £4 million (punt) to the Wexford economy. And $12 million of the $70 million budget went on the scene at Curracloe. Not bad ehh!?
In honour of its rich Irish connection, The Ian Dempsey Breakfast Show put out a call on our social media channels for people to get in touch - anyone who worked on the set, maybe someone who was a child growing up in the area when the filming took place, or possibly somebody who was an extra in the production?
With that, we got a brilliant email from Davey Rosssiter in Wexford;
'I’m from Wexford, 3 miles from Curracloe where the opening scenes were shot. I worked on it from day 1 until it wrapped in Hatfield in London.
I was part of a 4 man team as standby prop men. We were responsible for the top 8 actors during filming of the movie and I spent my days by their sides.
It was without doubt the best job I’ve ever had, in fact I always joke that it would be my chosen topic on Mastermind as I still know it back to front.'
So we give him a call...
You can listen to the chat in full by pressing the play button in the image at the top of the page.
Seeing as it's 20 years old (and how we love to make a fuss over birthdays), here are some more interesting facts about the iconic movie:
Before Tom Hanks was cast as Captain John Miller, Spielberg considered Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford for the lead role.
Spielberg directed Saving Private Ryan as a tribute to his father, Arnold Spielberg, who served in the U.S. Army and Signal Corps and fought in Burma during World War II. Arnold had helped Steven direct his first movies as a teenager, both of which involved plots that took place during World War II.
Saving Private Ryan was the only movie that Steven Spielberg directed up to that point in his career that he hadn’t developed on his own. Screenwriter Robert Rodat’s script was actually sent to Spielberg by his agent. In a stroke of luck, the script had also been sent to actor Tom Hanks, who wanted to make the movie. Spielberg and Hanks, who had never worked with each other at that point, called each other when they found out they were reading the same script and decided to collaborate on the movie.
Robin Williams introduced Matt Damon to Steven Spielberg during rehearsals for the movie Good Will Hunting. Two weeks later, Spielberg contacted Damon about the part of Private Ryan.
When Matt Damon was cast as Private Ryan, it was because Spielberg wanted a relatively unknown actor at the time. This backfired when Good Will Hunting made Damon an overnight star shortly before this movie was released.
Tom Sizemore was battling a drug addiction during the filming of the movie. Spielberg gave him an ultimatum where he would be blood tested every single day. According to Sizemore, Spielberg said that if Sizemore failed, “He would fire me on the spot and shoot all 58 days that I’d worked over again with someone else.”
Many “auteur” directors will issue special instructions to the projectionist in theatres where their movie is going to be shown, in order to ensure that the cinematic experience for any person who sees the film is exactly as they intended it to be. Steven Spielberg was mostly concerned that the carefully crafted soundscape that he had created for the film would be lost if the audio were turned down too low. So he insisted that any theatre showing the film raise their volume as high as possible.
Gunfire sound effects heard throughout the film were recorded from actual gunfire with live ammunition fired from authentic period weapons. The sound effects were recorded at a live fire machine gun range.
On top of the incredibly tough exercises, the actors’ boot camp involved camping in soaking wet conditions, only being allowed to call each other by their characters’ names, and having the boot camp supervisor constantly refer to them as “turds.”
Spielberg and cinematographer Janusz Kaminski modelled the look of the film on newsreel footage from the era. They converted the modern lenses of the shooting cameras to make them capture images more like the cameras from the 1940s. They also modelled the D-Day sequence on the bleached-out, grainy look of the D-Day photography.
Vin Diesel received $100,000 for his portrayal of Caparzo, and Bryan Cranston (of Breaking Bad fame) also makes a very short appearance.
When actor Edward Burns was tasked with bringing to life the scene in which his character, Rieben, searches through a pile of dog tags and reads the names that finds out loud, he used the names of his own real-life friends, in order to help him imagine what it might be like to learn of the death of a fallen brother.
The soldiers went through gruelling army training before filming, but Matt Damon didn’t participate. Spielberg let Matt skip the training so that the other actors would resent him and show it in their performances.
Matt Damon ad-libbed the story he tells towards the end of the film, where he speaks about about spying on his brother in the barn with the ugly girl. The speech was rambling and not particularly funny or interesting, and that’s why it worked! It was true to an unformed kid like Ryan. Steven Spielberg liked it so much that he decided to leave it in the film.
Facts via Factinate
