You did that film Saving Private Ryan.
I know you're an actor,
but everybody says it's one of the most realistic depictions
of what happened that day.
Can you recall what it was like actually filming that
and putting yourselves in their boots for that period of
time?
Well, of course, you know,
part of it is glamorous fun,
you know, But at the other time,
as soon as the canvas started rolling and everything started
happening,
there was a tactile quality to the confusion.
One of the things that happened was the special effects
guys would come up
and all over the beach with these little red flags.
They said, hey, be careful where the little red flags
are because there's an explosive charges underneath and it's going
to throw some stuff off.
And whatever you do, don't step over there because that's
a whole air round.
It's going to throw a guy up in the air
and a guy down there is going to be lit
on fire.
So try to stay away from.
And you put that together and says,
well, this is a pretty glamorous day of work,
isn't it? What time's lunch?
But then it begins and the the first thing they
did was removed all those red flags and I realized
that,
you know, something like that.
Now we are not in any danger at all whatsoever.
But the barista millitude, if I dare use that do
that word does put it in a different sort of
form.
There is a moment when,
of course, as actors were just pretending,
but there comes a moment where the reason we're there's
a capture the truth as the fam,
as the as the film rolls
and to be cold, wet,
scared and have it be awfully noisy for an awful
long time.
I remember
when we when we're shooting and by the way,
this is one of the reasons Steven Spielberg wanted to
make the movie.
He said finally I'll be able to do with film
technology.
I'll actually be able to capture what happened on Omaha
Beach.
And here's how I'm going to do it.
First, it's going to take three weeks
and secondly, it's going to be every single day.
And 3rd, we're going to have all kinds of stuff
going off.
And 4th, in between there,
we'll make some sort of movie at the same time.
We're trying to load it up with as much authentic
and I wanted to use the word again,
barista Middleton as we can.
OK. That's our job as film makers.
It's also our job as lay historians because for good
or for bad,
that movie is a document that has to accurately reflect
the tenor of that day.
And I'd like to think that we did.
And hearing it from a number of people said as
confusing as that is,
well, multiply that the by we did not have the
smell of chordite or
burning flesh or, you know,
blood on the sand. But we did have some version
of that.
The how whatever you can get out of a motion
picture.
I think we captured it on this day.
President Biden is also obviously giving his big speeches.
And it'll all be in the in the cloak of
democracy.
That's what we're defending is when they die of democracy.
Yeah. And and, and without mentioning,
you know, Donald Trump, he will talk about the stakes
for America and for the world.
Finally, do you worry about the United States in case
they're in terms of its commitment to democracy and freedom
and everything these people died for?
If there's another Trump presidents,
I think there's always reason to be worried about the
short term.
But I look at the longer term of what is
what happened.
I think there is a there is a
ongoing. Look,
our Constitution says we the people of the United States,
in order to form a more perfect union,
that journey to a more perfect union has missteps in
it.
We know we, I, I can catalogue them as much
as you can.
And you're a professional journalist and I'm just a guy
that makes movies and reads books and the historian and
OK,
I'm a lay historian. I'll take that too.
Over the long term, however,
we inevitably made progress towards,
I think that more perfect union.
That's whatever. And when, how does it come about?
It comes about because, not because of somebody's narrative of
who is right or who is a victim or not.
It comes out of the slow melding of the truth
to the actual practical life that we end up living.
It comes down to the good deed that is,
that is practiced with your neighbor,
with your local virtues. And I will always have faith
that the United States of America and the Western societies
that have adopted more or less the same sort of
democracy cannot help but turn towards what is right.