The Troubadour Podcast
"It is the honourable characteristic of Poetry that its materials are to be found in every subject which can interest the human mind." William Wordsworth The Troubadour Podcast invites you into a world where art is conversation and conversation is art. The conversations on this show will be with some living people and some dead writers of our past. I aim to make both equally entertaining and educational.In 1798 William Wordsworth and Samuel Coleridge published Lyrical Ballads, which Wordsworth called an experiment to discover how far the language of everyday conversation is adapted to the purpose of poetic pleasure. With this publication, he set in motion the formal movement called "Romanticism." 220 years later the experiment is continued on this podcast. This podcast seeks to reach those of us who wish to improve our inner world, increase our stores of happiness, and yet not succumb to the mystical or the subjective.Here, in this place of the imagination, you will find many conversation with those humans creating things that interest the human mind.
The Troubadour Podcast
Exploring the Legacy and Impact of 'Band of Brothers': A Discussion on War, Heroism, and Historical Storytelling
Picture the gritty reality of war and the unbreakable bonds it forges—this is the essence we capture in our heartfelt conversation about "Band of Brothers." Joined by Jax, Jennifer, and Mark, we revisit the powerful emotions and painstaking authenticity that catapult this HBO series into the annals of must-watch TV. With personal connections to the WWII era, we peel back the layers of history, heroism, and horror, offering listeners a glimpse into the complex narratives that intertwine with our own families' tapestries.
Exploring further, we dissect the significance of leadership and the everyday German soldier's perspective, challenging conventional views and bringing to light the soldiers' common humanity. As the series' impressive budget and meticulous actor training come into focus, we appreciate the transformation of television storytelling into a cinematic experience, paralleled by the actors' own journeys in capturing the essence of their historical counterparts. The vibrant discussion illuminates how "Band of Brothers" extends beyond mere entertainment, influencing our cultural perceptions and honoring the legacy of those who served.
As our session wraps, we leave you with a sense of admiration for the indomitable spirit of soldiers and the lasting impact of their stories on screen. Whether you're a first-time viewer or returning to the trenches of Easy Company, our dialogue promises to enrich your understanding and provoke deeper reflection on the narratives that shape our world. Join us as we pay tribute to an era that continues to resonate through time and the groundbreaking series that brings it to life with unwavering authenticity.
Welcome to the viewing room. We're going to be discussing Band of Brothers, which was released September 9th 2001. Think about that date. Today I have Mark Pellegrino, jennifer Boulany and Jack Schumann and we're going to be talking about the cultural impact, the historical context, the acting, the aesthetics, all with the purpose of helping you get a better experience. Now, there will be spoilers, so if you haven't seen it, I would recommend you see it, or you could have everything spoiled and then go see it if you want. That's fine too. So what we're going to do is I'm going to start off with a quick little synopsis here so you get oriented to what we're going to be discussing.
Speaker 1:Band of Brothers, released 2001, follows Easy Company from their training at Camp Takoa, georgia under Captain Sobel, all the way. Follows them all the way to the shores of Normandy on D-Day. From there the series portrays the unit's role in Operation Market Garden. They're experienced during the Battle of the Bulge and their eventual push into Nazi Germany. And throughout the campaign we see leadership shifts, with Lieutenant Winters rising to command of the company, guiding them through the battles and the eventual capture of the Eagle's Nest that's Hitler's house. Basically, the series depicts brutal realities of combat, but also delves into the personal struggles, triumphs and evolving relationships within the company. It all culminates in the war's end and is a detailed I think a great personal plot-driven exploration of Easy Company's journey through the heart of the winter European theater excuse me, during World War II.
Speaker 1:So now what we're going to do is that's a very broad overview of what's going on in this 10 episode series on HBO. So now we're going to go around the room and we're going to give you our 30-second review. So why don't we start with Jax?
Speaker 2:All right. Well, also just for clarity for the super young people out there, this is about World War II. I know we say Normandy in Germany and people are supposed to know that, but I know that if I know that, my daughter would be like what war are we talking about? So I thought that this is the second time that I've seen the show. I saw it the first time when it actually came out and I was watching it live on HBO and but that, of course, was 20 plus years ago, and so the second time watching it I was. The first time I saw it I was blown away. And the second time I was blown away as well for different reasons.
Speaker 2:Now, coming at it from an artistic point of view, I thought it was an incredible, an incredibly bold show that touches on just the absolute struggle and grit and terrible fate and gore of war. That does not take a spotlight away, rather shines the spotlight on what this war was, but just war in general. I feel like you could take this and apply it to any other war and you have kind of the soldier journey, the camaraderie that these brothers have, that these band of brothers have. We few, we many, we band of brothers. The camaraderie that they have is amazing. The loss that they feel is also amazing.
Speaker 2:The story is, I feel it's more. I felt like it was more character over plot, but maybe we can get into that as we go into the weeds more on it. But it was an incredibly touching and compelling series with amazing actors who played their roles, no matter how small they were, because some of them came in for very, very small roles. You could tell that they each relished the roles that they were playing and really embodied those characters. So I was really impressed with it. I have maybe just a few critiques, but we can get into those a little bit later. But I think that they're just very personal. I don't think that they can be considered objective critiques of the show, but also what everybody else thinks. So that's my overall and a thumbs up overall, jennifer.
Speaker 3:Hi yeah, you went mute for a minute. I did, yeah, so I give this two thumbs up. This was probably this goes into one of my top 10 TV shows. I absolutely loved it. I grew up both of my grandfathers were in World War II, so like seems like there was always some kind of World War II show on the TV when I'd go over to their house. My dad loved documentaries. It's a good girl. Growing up.
Speaker 3:You just don't really pay attention to that stuff and you hear about it through the history books. But this story told it succinctly and beautifully and not it wasn't. The characters are amazing, the character arcs are amazing, but the plot is phenomenal. I would say it's one of the best TV plots I've seen. Perfect, just perfect, and so I really couldn't wait to watch it. Hang on every episode. They were all unique and different and yet put you through the trials and tribulations of this journey the soldiers and the leaders and the heartache, and there's themes of leadership in there that are really good. There are very visceral moments that I have to give Spielberg super credit for, where you really can feel their fear and their misery. And yeah, so I'm giving this one two thumbs up. Love it and probably I'll watch it again. And I don't say that about a lot of TV shows and thumbs up, thumbs down, I assume thumbs up.
Speaker 1:Oh, she gave it two thumbs up.
Speaker 2:Oh, she did Okay.
Speaker 1:And then Mark your turn.
Speaker 4:She gave it two, two. I definitely give it a thumbs up. Maybe, even maybe, I could give it two thumbs up. It's quite an impressive feat. To translate Stephen Ambrose's work Band of Brothers into a 10 episode series that follows Easy Company Real people through the vicissitudes of war is a very, very ambitious project. It was ambitious when they took it on and it's still ambitious today. And the sequel to it, the Pacific, was a very ambitious project For me.
Speaker 4:I love I don't think this is just a guy thing, so I won't say it like that the Band of Brothers concept, the idea that you're in a fraternity of men that is bound together by experiences that are unlike anyone else in the world, that it's a hard nut to crack to get into that world, but when you're in it you're in it forever and ever and ever.
Speaker 4:That is a pretty amazing world to see because it's animated by values that I personally emulate Honor, integrity, courage, loyalty. To see these men love each other so much that they would sneak out of hospitals or go AWOL in order to get back with their company, to fight with them, that practically brings tears to my eyes, because it's a level of love that I think most people in a narcissistic generation, don't quite understand. I think it's super important for young kids to see this film, not only to see what spiritually animated the quote unquote greatest generation, which is what they call the World War II generation. There's a reason they call it that because they need to see these values. They need to see what courage is, what camaraderie is, what teamwork is and what good and evil are, because you see them in stark contrast. There's some gray areas, there's some very interesting moral problems that surface up in the course of the show, but they're certainly fighting evil and they're fighting it with everything they got. So, anyway, two thumbs up. I'll give it two thumbs up, tugin. Why?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with two thumbs up myself. I also agree with what you're saying, mark, with the specialness of that bond that they have, which I think most humans don't actually ever experience in that way. So it's very interesting to see it portrayed and I think they did a great job portraying it. I also have another personal reason I like it. My father was in Vietnam. I had grandfather in World War II, great uncle in Korea.
Speaker 1:Most of my family was in military. I was the first to not go into the military, actually, from basically both my I mean not my mother, but her whole family chain did. All her brothers, a lot of them did. I was pretty much the first who didn't.
Speaker 1:And I was thinking, watching this and the kind of heroism and valor of these kind of men, but really also what they went through, was a kind I have this feeling of but for the grace of God, go. I in a sense, in other words, like that was the life I probably would have had had I been born in an earlier generation. And it's easy to like say, oh, that's what we want, but I don't, or glorify to some degree, but I don't want to fight it. I'm glad I don't have to fight in a war, and one of the reasons I don't have to is because of the things that these guys did at that time, and so there's always this feeling of like wow, when I'm watching this. I've seen it, I think, five times, and then I've watched a whole bunch of reaction series which we could talk about later of this. So I really love this series. I think it brings out a personal side of this era that was not that long ago. We still have a few guys still alive from this era and it really brings alive history in an important way that I think is very valuable for everyone to see.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that's our review. So this is World War Two, and I don't know how familiar all of you are with World War Two history. I have a little bit of knowledge, so I'm definitely not an expert, but One of the things I gained from this show as I watched it was learning a little bit more about the things that I had maybe read a little bit about when I was a kid. It made me explore World War II more and I just wondered, because of the nature of this, the way they did this film, or they had documentary spliced in, especially at the beginning and they did seem to try to be very historically accurate. I'm curious what your knowledge was going into it, what you thought about the historical context and you know if that had an impact on your view.
Speaker 2:So I could speak a little bit to it. I have I wouldn't say I have a vast knowledge of World War II, but I come from the opposite side, where my father never, never fought in World War II. His father did for the Germans because I'm German and his father basically his father was MIA and then it found to be KIA in a Russian gulag. But when my grandfather, my father's father, was back on leave, and I think this is maybe like 1940, 44, I think, when I'm not sure what his rank was, how high up he was, and I mean he was a Nazi, they were all Nazis, but he wasn't like in the higher echelon, he was a soldier and he, he remember my father remembers his father coming home on leave one time and I suppose kind of having this major realization of what was happening to the Jews, and said to my father, or actually said to my grandmother, his wife, because my father was too young, but said to his wife because he had to, he came home and then went back out on leave and never came back and he said to her when I come back from this war I will never lift another finger for this German army or government and went off to fight and never came home. And my father, for about a year, every single day until they had to escape East Germany, every single day, went to the train station to wait for his father to come and he never came home. And I mean, I'm just giving that was kind of. That was the the the side of World War II that I grew up with. And and, of course, when my father came to the States and he saw the Nuremberg trials for the first time, and because he was only 10, when when World War II was going on and he, you know, kind of made it like his mission in life to teach all of us kids about World War II and you know the, the horrors of Nazism and you know what it means to be free, and so the cultural impact for me is that this, this was a very moral war as compared to what we hear about Vietnam and what we've, what we've heard about wars since.
Speaker 2:I mean, you had Americans that were lying about their age just so that they could get into fight in the war, and I think that the but it's such an interesting, I guess, aspect in terms of how this show portrayed the Germans, because they it didn't I didn't get the feeling that they I mean they portrayed Hitler in the you know the horrible way that he was and you don't find out until toward the end of the series what the Americans learn about how bad Hitler was right, and that to me was like epic epic, but it was. What was really interesting to me was how they portrayed just the ordinary German soldiers. You know, some of the like. It was more like the higher-ups that were, you know, that were like the evil ones and stuff. But there was that one episode where one of the they were passing a captured.
Speaker 2:The captured soldiers that Lieutenant Spears had had, had captures, and one of them it was, was was saying that one of our American men was saying something and then the German just came out and spoke perfect English because he grew up basically in Iowa and then went to Germany to was, was German, went to Germany to fight and you know, kind of one of the what, the, what the American soldier said was God, if it wasn't for, if it wasn't for this war, we could have been friends.
Speaker 2:And I don't know if this is a Pollyanna view of it, because you know there there was a lot about, there was a lot of stuff said about how most of the Germans didn't know what was going on with the concentration camps in the Holocaust, and and that's simply not true.
Speaker 2:But I think the interesting aspect that they showed, at least for these soldiers, is that, well, we have to fight. We've been drafted just like, just like everybody else and and I think that that is also we could talk about that from a philosophical perspective of they didn't have the right philosophy to be able to stand up and say, no, we're not going to fight this war, this is an unjust and an immoral war. They had the exact opposite philosophy. So I mean, to me it's a. It's a. It's very culturally relevant war, especially as we're thinking about current wars that are going on right between Russia and Ukraine and Palestine and Israel. But I do definitely think that the soldiers, that the way that the German soldiers were portrayed was I don't know. I felt like it was somewhat genuine and not not disingenuous. I don't know if you guys had the same view on that, but I'll let somebody else talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean I I don't know how to gauge the genuineness. I don't know enough about the German experience. I mean I read a long time all quite on the Western front, but that's World War One. So I it doesn't come across to me as implausible that a vast majority of people, who are many of them rural kids, are actually not that familiar understanding of what the war is. They have an understanding of what their people are doing and so they're just going there and doing a job just like what they say in the show.
Speaker 1:Some of the guys that were interviewed, especially I think in the episodes like the Last Patrol or why we Fight, like the later episodes, when they start interviewing the, or they have the interviews of those real people you know, they say like I probably could have been friends with that guy, we might have liked fishing or something like that. And I do think there's a plausibility of like how much information any German soldier might have individually had. So you know how evil in a sense was he, and I don't know if that's you know in terms of the genuineness of the show or not. But it's an important question in terms of historical context that this show is portraying. I mean, I thought it. To me it made sense because they have part nine, which has why we fight. And so we see the fundamental, you know, one of the fundamental causes and things, which was the extermination of the Jews. But anybody else have any thoughts on the historical context and how it was portrayed?
Speaker 3:Well, for me. For me, what it helped me do is it gave me this historical timeline of the connection. So, like I've heard of D-Day in Normandy, I've heard Battle of the Bulge, or I don't even know if I had really knew the story of the stone. So for me now it gives me a foundation for integrating anything I'd learn about it in the future. And then, of course, we're going to watch Pacific, so that's even. That's going to just add in even more.
Speaker 4:So to me, that foundation that no history class could give me, yeah, yeah, so my foundation, where there was a basic knowledge of the chronological events of World War two, had also read. I also read Shearer's book on Hitler I'm just for the rising fall of the Third Reich and I read Alice Miller's work. Alice Miller is a German psychologist who actually wrote profiles on Hitler and Seiko and various dictators, and she talked about the type of society that the German society was was actually primed for this kind of violence. You know, when people ask the question how could such, you know, insanity have have manifested itself in a, in a civil society, in a, in a in a modern world? You know, this particular psychologist, I think, said it wasn't that the Nazis largely rejected rationality. We know that they were mystics. They were, you know, modern, they were proto environmentalists. They are very much into a German mysticism and mythology and and the society was organized in an educated in a very prussian way, in a very, in a very conformist way. So whether or not individuals knew the crimes that were being committed by the people in the upper upper stretches of the of the Nazi regime, it mattered less that their psychologies wouldn't allow them to break out of the boxes that they were in.
Speaker 4:This is one of the one of the one of the things I found most disturbing about the about the show is we could talk about this a little bit later was the surrender of the colonel. What he says and when he's being translated to the Americans, and there's a sense of camaraderie between both sides, as if well their band of brothers as well, they're in the same boat as us. I actually hated that a great deal, even though that was supposed to make me feel. You know that all the soldiers are probably what Jack was talking about. The soldiers are in the same boat. They're not aware they're fighting for their company. Very much the way of Virginia militiamen might have felt fighting for Virginia against the Union army, as was to fighting for slavery, which was the overall, overall battle that was being missed. Right in the person's focus of this is my land and I have to defend it.
Speaker 4:My own personal connection with it, beyond school books and and my own reading, is a strange one, because my stepfather was a World War two veteran.
Speaker 4:He was in the Pacific and he was in some of the biggest battles of the Pacific. He was in Guadalcanal and he was in Midway, and it's an 18 year old boy, which explains some of the psychological issues he had later on down the line and his violence and alcoholism. But my, my real father, whom I only discovered two years ago, was born in Leipzig and he was drafted into Hitler's army at 15 years of age. His father and put him through some, was able to put him through, get him into a training program that avoided, avoided any combat, so that by the time Germany surrendered he had never experienced combat and was able to flee East Germany, I think before the Russians got there, and find his way into Canada. So my own personal experience is, you know, two World War veteran to World War, two veterans from the two main theaters or the two main theaters of the war were actually a part of my life.
Speaker 1:So so in some respects it's, it's a personal visitation for me to, to, to see, to see those battles and I think that's one of the powers of the show is that it was a World War and so most people were probably affected and have some kind of story. You know, I have a story where my grandmother was a French Jew, was fleeing, she was in a war and she was saved from being killed by a Muslim, actually in Morocco, would followed her home by American military police who took her home and married her, and that was my grandfather. So you know, like that we have those kinds of stories in a lot of our history and that's, I think, why the World War two movie in particular, because it was such a pivotal world event, even more so than World War one. I think it affected everybody and it changed the course of, or, you know, it shaped history in a way that you know, I don't know, I guess every war does in some way, but it was such an impactful, powerful war and I thought, you know most a lot of literature and shows and movies in the past were.
Speaker 1:There's some amazing movies in this genre, but one thing that I think this movie did, or the show I call it a movie, you know, one interesting thing I'll just point out is that this is one of the early TV shows that use movie budgets. So they were able, like that's one thing, that's really shaping. You know we can talk about this later, but it's an important point because so much of this is like the realism that they were able to capture really draws you into the storytelling and it really makes you. You know. For me anyway, it made me really feel for what these guys were going through when you know they're getting shot at as they're, you know dropping in and they're all getting shot out like. I was terrified at that.
Speaker 4:You know one of the correct that I talked about. Remind me this finishes. But I want to talk about what it means when you're talking about feature film approach to a television. Yeah, remind me that when you're done making your point, because it's an important way that I want to jump.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's good, I'll just say that. So the historical context for me is making it real. That's the point I'm trying to make. Is that this made it real? It's if you read in a book and you read the facts on Wikipedia or even a well done book. I think it's very challenging to really put you in that place and really feel it. And I'll tell you the most impactful, one of the most impactful moments when I first saw the show. There's a lot of these moments, but one was just after the.
Speaker 1:You knew that they had been training for what? Like a year and a half all these guys were trained and I just remember that when they were flying into D-Day and seeing that plane go down, I was so frustrated in life Like it's horrible to die in war, but the idea of doing like two years of training and all that preparation, not even getting into anything, like there was just something so unjust about that, even though obviously all death of the good guys is unjust. But there's something just extra metaphysically and it was so terrible to see that and I really like emotionally felt it intensely when those guys like it, the flame comes in and just kills all those guys. Like years of training. You know that's true of all of them, yeah, and it's true of anybody who dies in that war, of course, but it was just something about that. They never even made it down, like it was just terrifying, okay, so yeah, real quick. Before we move on to more stuff, mark tell us a little bit about the difference between a TV show budget and a.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so a normal TV show that say now of course we have so many different formats the old format was you have basically an hour long TV show, it's probably about 45 or 50 minutes and the script is somewhere in that range. You know a 50 to 60 page script, one minute per page per se. Now, most of the time when you're working on a TV show you do six to seven pages a day, that's you get an entire TV show done in eight days. So when you're putting a feature film schedule on an episode that's as long as any other network television episode, you are adding two weeks to that schedule. So I think they took 21 days or more to shoot each episode, which enabled them to take two pages a day. One page a day to film at a feature pace, which is so they're not rushing.
Speaker 4:You know, oftentimes in television, especially old-time television, not so much now they. You know if it's in the frame and nobody fucked up they're gonna keep it. But when you got feature film money in a TV show you could take it and take it and go and take it and take it and take it until you get it right. Additionally, these guys trained beforehand. You know they trained with a guy named Dale Dye. That was the go-to guy that everyone who did a military movie would do boot camp with this guy and they became a real unit. They lived with each other for I don't know, a month, or definitely a few weeks, before they had to get out there and actually you know act. So you know there's a real camaraderie, real and real dynamics that develop between people, love-hate relationships that develop, that find their way into the screen. When you have that kind of time, that kind of money.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you can tell. I also wanna Go ahead Jets.
Speaker 2:No, I just wanted to put in context for our viewers of how much money was spent on Band of Brothers because in so as a frame of reference, Game of Thrones, the Game of Thrones budget worked out to about $10 million per episode, which is massive. That's a massive amount for a TV show, but Game of Thrones was what between, like 2016 and 2022 or something like that.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some are.
Speaker 2:The Band of Brothers budget was $125 million for the whole series, which worked out to about $12.5 million per episode. And this is back in 2000, when they're shooting it 2009, sorry, 2010, 2011, which is massive. And, mark, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but they say that, like, the biggest part of a movie or show budget is paying the actors. Right, the bigger the actors, the higher named actors. At the time that Band of Brothers was shot, these were all kind of no-name actors. We didn't have any famous people, so the money they were putting into it wasn't really just for the actors. They were putting the money into the effects and the story and incredible cinematography.
Speaker 4:The deal might have been like the kind of deal you get when you work with Woody Allen. When you work with Woody Allen, it's favorite nations, everybody gets scale, it doesn't matter how big you are, you get scale. And they might have all been in that boat back then. And that makes me, when you're talking about $12.5 million per episode, I remember when we did Maho and Drive and it was originally a pilot, a very linear story it was reviewed by ABC as the best new TV show you'll never see, because it was $7 million for the pilot and they just couldn't see their way to producing a whole TV series at that expense.
Speaker 1:So were there moments in the show, and I guess another way of asking this is like a favorite episode. But I'm also curious about favorite moments or impactful moments. There's not to be like one that made you smile, necessarily, but just moments, whether it's historical context, but because that's really what we're getting. I think in so much of this is feeling what these characters are going through, anything that really stood out for you like I already talked about one, which was the plane going down early on, but anything that really hits you in the gut as a powerful moment or a favorite episode, whichever one you prefer.
Speaker 3:Powerful moment would be episode three I believe Was it Blythe or something that Blonde had a kid that at first didn't join the group.
Speaker 1:Yeah, he was a parent in Blythe.
Speaker 3:yeah, and he is telling, one of the commanders comes up to him and when he's down in the ditch at night and he's like I was scared, and the guy's like look, we're all scared. And he said something like you haven't accepted the fact that you're dead. Yeah that's fierce, and once you do that then you will begin to function like a soldier. Yeah, that was a really powerful moment. And then you, of course, see him begin to function like a soldier as the episode goes on.
Speaker 1:Now, as a writer, do you see how, like, how do you think they set that whole thing up? Right, because that was a powerful moment because of all the things that were going on in that episode prior to it. Right, because it's a great line.
Speaker 3:What are you referring to?
Speaker 1:Well, I'm saying all the things you've been saying and you've been setting up about who Blythe is Basically. He's a character who is drawn as afraid and the whole episode is how do you deal with fear? So they even have the clips from the documentary, which is a real documentary you can watch, where they're talking about some guys dealt with fear well, some guys didn't. I think I was well, I dealt with it well, but I didn't deal with it well after the war, right, and there's all these different. And then you focus in on Blythe and you see that he's absolutely terrified and the whole journey is him coming, getting to that, and you have Spears as one type of leader who is telling him this is what you have to do.
Speaker 1:I think later there's a moment when the thing that really triggers him is seeing Winters standing above him outside of the foxhole, shooting his weapon at the Germans, while Blythe can barely hold his weapon and he looks up at him and Blythe looks up at Winters and finally but I'm just curious about your thoughts as how that was, because it was an important moment that you're pointing out and it was all, I think, set up by great writing where they had really developed that character, so that that moment would be. All these different leaders are trying to get him to come out of his shell, like he had that moment of blindness. So they're all aware that something's going on with Blythe, and that whole episode is about how can we get Blythe to operate as a soldier, to do his job, which is what a leader.
Speaker 3:Well, that starts in character development, which you see him in episode two. So they were planning that out and if you plan a good character arc, then that's kind of the journey that they meant and so, yeah, that was very good writing.
Speaker 2:I think it's also when you plan that character and you're like, okay, we're gonna have this character who represents the terrified soldier and who freezes. What's the thing, what's the thing that we can say to that soldier to get him out of it, and like the obvious trophy things are like there's a good reason for it. We're fighting the moral war and you just have to think of your kids and your family and you'll be back home and you can't have any negative thoughts in your head. And the writers turned it on the other side. They turned it on the end like no, you're dead.
Speaker 2:That's really good writing. Just that's why that line was so amazing, because they set it up so well, because up until that point, the soldiers are kind of being like when they recognize that a soldier doesn't have that kind of fear, they're being positive toward them and they're like come on, pull out, you can make it. And the character who says that to Blythe is understands something fundamental about his character, like, oh, this guy needs to accept that he's dead and then he can go on. So I think that's a really good storytelling.
Speaker 3:And I love that they plant that seed, but that's not the moment he changes. It's like what you said, kirk it's the visual of looking up to the real leader and following his lead, and that's it. Nothing's set at that moment when he actually has changed.
Speaker 1:Well, there's other moments like I think it's Martin is his name and one of the sergeants or something. He's in the foxhole with Blythe and he's like saying it's just a game, blythe, we're just pushing the ball one. So throughout the episode I think there's all different types of ways of understanding Blythe, his character, and trying to get him into that. Even when he's in the, when he's blind, when he's had that hysterical blindness, they're trying to. Eugene is the doc, is trying to work with him to make him better. Winter sees him and is like well, if you think you can come back, then come on back, although he was gonna let him go and say just go, cause you can't fight. So it's all.
Speaker 1:To me it was great writing cause they really hit fear from various different angles. They even have that one as a theme, like fear in war, as the theme of this episode, and they hit it from all different angles to help it and they to me, what that does is it brings out more of the realism of it and it makes you understand it versus you know one thing you could easily just have someone like, like they did with Uppam and you know the other movie, the other Tom Hanks movie with saving private Ryan, where, like Uppam freezes, like that's one way to show fear and that's a movie.
Speaker 4:Oh my God, that scene kills me. Yeah, it kills me every time. Yeah, kills me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but you know, I just thought this one because they had more time to play out. You could see all the different facets of how fear looks in real life. And there's a great book I recommend people reading fiction book called the Red Badge of Courage, which kind of addresses the same.
Speaker 4:I love that book. I read that in ninth grade.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's a great. It's a great like high school, but you know, good, good young age, right, but okay. So any other pivotal moments. I wanna make sure you have some First of all the.
Speaker 2:Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 4:You go ahead.
Speaker 2:So my my favorite episode and also one of my one of my more favorite arcs was with Ron Livingston's character, who plays second to second to Winters.
Speaker 1:Nixon, nixon, yeah.
Speaker 2:And and my favorite episode that he is in is the is episode nine, the why we Fight. Because Nixon is kind of. Nixon and Winters are really good together but they are kind of polar opposites in terms of their, their sense of life, I think. And they both. Winters is very like straight and narrow, he's a very moral character. He doesn't drink, he, but both, both men, you know, really care about their care, about their team members or care about their care about their company. But Nixon, on the other hand, is an alcoholic, seems somewhat purposeless and in in terms of, he just wants the war to be over so that he can go back home and he's trying to find, you know, the best alcohol that he can. And what I love that this show does is that every, almost every episode focuses on a particular soldier's journey. They do a really good job of that and up until so they set up Nixon really well for episode nine, where, you know, because he asked a question I don't he asked it, maybe he asked it at the beginning of episode nine. He might have asked it in episode eight, where he's talking to Winters and he's been demoted. He's just he's not really doing, you know, he's not really interested in advancing very much in the military and he's like why are we even here? Like what's the point? Why are we like what? Like what are we even helping? Like he just didn't understand the morality of that war Because they were just looking at it like well, if they sent us to war, we got to kill the Nazis. You know, apparently they're doing bad stuff and and and there's this great moment where, where Livingston goes into a German house near, near where Dachau was one of the concentration camps, and and he goes into a German house in search of alcohol and runs across a woman the house happens to belong to a, to a high level colonel in the in the army and doesn't find him. But the, the wife is there and the wife just looks at him very much like you're beneath me, you know, look at the kind of man that you are, whatever. And and and he kind of, like you say you can tell that he sort of almost agrees with her, like yeah, I am a piece of shit.
Speaker 2:And and then they find, then they find the concentration camp and this was I'm pretty sure it was, it was, it was Dachau, it was, but it was part of the huge camp that was, that had been turned into a labor camp, and then, when the Germans knew that they were going to be losing the war, they just start burning all the Jews and and they're just horrible, horrible conditions. And the American this was this marked sort of the, the, the realization on the Americans part, the first time that the Americans were like, oh, my God, this is what they're doing. And you just see this sort of transformation in Ron Livingston's, just anger and indignance, and also I almost feel like it's like shame for not understanding the morality of it or not really seeing the significance of it, and and I and I can't remember if it was his character or not that does so I won't even talk about that particular episode, that particular scene, but this, the scene that was amazing to me was this switch between Livingston's character, between Nixon and the German woman that was the wife of the colonel, because they made all the Germans. They made all the Germans because they were like, oh, the Germans are saying they don't, you know, they weren't aware of this. And he was like, well, they'll be aware of it soon enough, because they're going to have to clean up everything. They're burying the bodies and and and they're going to see exactly what happened at this camp.
Speaker 2:And the woman is.
Speaker 2:It was really interesting because she's wearing a I don't know if you guys noticed this or not and I read into things too much sometimes, but she's wearing a red coat and it's kind of among the bodies that are that are sort of like blue filter.
Speaker 2:It's not black and white, but it did remind me of that scene in Schindler's List where with the little girl with the red coat, who you know, that Liam Neeson finally she became real to him, she was a real person to him. And it kind of reminded me of that, because it was that same scene where the girl was picking over the bodies, but but they so he sees the woman like just she doesn't even want to touch the body, she's disgusted by it, like I'm above this, and then and then they lock eyes and he and he just no words are exchanged and you can tell just that the way that he looks at her is like you deserve to be picking up those bodies and you need to do it respectfully and she changes completely, changes her attitude and begins to help and sort of you know, understands that the shame is on her.
Speaker 2:And I just thought that was. I was crying, I was bawling my eyes out for that episode.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a tough one, mark, you had one.
Speaker 4:Yeah Well, I wanted to say the fight as if you're dead is a samurai maxim. So I don't know if that was, I don't know if that was the writer's creativity, putting that in there, knowing that, or whether one of the characters actually said that we have the benefit of Stephen Ambrose's text, which comes from the people themselves. So who knows how many of these words are taken from them, from the men themselves. It's hard for me to pin down like a favorite episode, because I cried. I cried through a lot of it. I had very intense emotional life. You know, lipton's story very much moved me, in part because you know the end the NCO, the non-commissioned officer, the sergeant, is really the glue that keeps the army together. He's really the soul, heart and soul of the army and when he gets the battlefield commission he seems sort of shamefaced about it and he's told you know, there's this guy who really was out there and kept everybody together and when everything was supposed to fall apart he was the one who was the glue. You don't know who I'm talking about, dear. And he says no, you, you were that guy that made me. I almost died at that because it was so amazing.
Speaker 4:The whole Bastone episode was was. I was freezing through it, I was uncomfortable through it. I felt like this is I.
Speaker 4:My esteem for these men to have gone through the torture that that that particular battle was grew enormously, because I don't know that I would have the physical or mental, emotional stamina to withstand what they did.
Speaker 4:Because, for everybody who hasn't seen it, this is a spoiler they go into this winter campaign without winter clothes, without ammunition and without food. So they go in there with everything against them and yet these men is a hundred and first airborne and they have such amazing pride. It's their pride, their spree decor that carries them through it all. Also, two things I wanted to say that I think are uniquely American virtues that found themselves in a couple of the scenes, and that is defiance. Americans don't follow orders if they think the orders are bad. This is uniquely American thing. And when they find out that Captain Sobel is going to be leading them into the first battle, when he can't even find his ass with a map and a compass, they refuse to have him lead them and they actually risk their careers to and their lives and their lives to to get somebody else to lead them, and I think they they wanted winners to lead them, of course, because he's the company that got to remember exactly who.
Speaker 1:but but just not so.
Speaker 4:Just not so. Who is who turns out to be such a petty, grasping, greedy little man? He's the type of person he even tries to ruin. Does he try to ruin winters at one point?
Speaker 2:Yes, he does.
Speaker 4:He tries to ruin winters at one point and winter stands up to him and there's a great, there's a great moment where that comes back around, when now winters are surpassed and he's now a major and he, he salutes, he salutes Sobel as he's walking past him, because he's now like a supply officer and and and that he demands the salute back, which I thought was really great.
Speaker 3:And also you sold the. You sold the sold the role, not the man.
Speaker 1:I think he said Uniform the rain, yeah, something like that.
Speaker 4:Yeah, also the refusal to go on that second assault when they catch.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that that winners lied about it.
Speaker 4:Right that he lied about it to protect his men that those kind of those acts of defiance are. I wish people understood this. I don't know that young people really do. That's a uniquely American thing to value human life to the degree that you don't let elites Even in an army with that, in that more or less stratifies, stratifies status. There's still. There's still going to be somebody's sense of right and wrong. That that may, that may overturn that status at any time. And seeing it there was very surprising to me. I forgot about it in the book. So it was. It was quite amazing to see that American defines.
Speaker 1:Well, I think also the why we fight episode nine is one. It's a really powerful episode, particularly they. They actually is the only episode that does not have any of the interview, so I don't know if you noticed that. It just starts with the violin and it ends with the violin and it's just it's. It is like a little movie and it's. It's much more. It's more fictionalized in a sense because it doesn't have the nonfiction aspects at the beginning. But I think that kind of adds to the power of getting you into that feeling.
Speaker 1:And one of the things I noticed that I just don't know if enough people make this connection. I definitely don't think enough people make this connection in this world today that I wish they would is that that's what you have to do in defeating an enemy is put their face in it, like to really like, because that's what that episode really is all about. It's really like. You see the Germans who you know whether they all knew all the details or not, that's not really. To me the most important thing, it's that they were able to evade all this stuff that was going on right around the corner from them, like you could say you don't know something, maybe they didn't, but you had to like, willfully, not know, you had to be like well, I'm getting along and everything's fine, and you know I'm going to make that episode or that scene with Baker right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's what I mean. Yeah, exactly, and like maybe he didn't know. It's very plausible he just went to his bakery, went upstairs and didn't, but the problem is that he didn't want to know, he didn't want to think about what was going on in the world that he was participating in and feeding soldiers and people who were doing this stuff.
Speaker 2:And really good. I want to recommend a book at the end of this, so go ahead with what you're saying, kirk.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, what's the book?
Speaker 2:Well, the book is called Hitler's Willing Executioners and it turns on its end the overall concept of well, we didn't know what was going on. The regular Germans just didn't know what was going on, and I thought that was really bold and brave for them to have that scene in the baker, because they're basically going into town where the camp is maybe a mile or two miles out, and sure, it's in the middle of nowhere, maybe people aren't going to the forest. But he says something when the soldier crashes into the baker and puts him over and he says okay, so you're not a Nazi, are you a human being? You could smell what they were doing. Burning flesh is a very, very specific smell and in this book, hitler's Willing Executioners, it kind of knocks down all of the theories of well, we didn't know what was going on. No, they did know.
Speaker 2:They chose to evade and they chose to not want to learn more.
Speaker 4:So does Alice Miller's book when she talks about the pedagogy of the German people. I think this is particularly relevant to today, to the Gauze in war, where people are screaming for a ceasefire and when we come back as a Jekyllis many of us do this, I don't know that all of us do we say no. The Palestinians are suffering. This is what needs to happen. They have to suffer until they stop doing what they're doing, believing the things that they're believing. They have to have their faces rubbed in it. And we live in a culture now that evades that discomfort, that evades the awareness, the full awareness, of the evil that they're doing.
Speaker 4:Sherman understood that in the Civil War. He understood that the only reason the war was continuing the way it was continuing was because the rich planters in the South didn't experience the war, it wasn't at their doorstep. So what did he do? He took it to their doorstep. He burned their crops, he burned their plantations. He said war is hell. I'm marching through Georgia and you're gonna know it. You're gonna know war now and it ended. It ended. War ends when people understand that what they are trying to do will bring hell on earth to their doorstep.
Speaker 1:Yes, and I think that episode the episode here doesn't go into all the details of it, but I thought they did a very subtle personal job of making that end. Jack, the moment you're talking about you talked about earlier with the German woman. I think that almost represents the whole people in a sense of what they needed to realize, because how could you be in bed with a man and not know how evil he was? And obviously she did, or at least had some inkling of what, because he could have been the head of that camp. He probably was. He probably was the head of that camp and she's like I'm better than you because you're a drinker. And one little touch that I thought was really interesting. And this is maybe this will actually move us into the next segment that I wanted to talk about, which was characters and acting and how do you project this. And I'll just bring this up and we can talk a little bit about this. But so Nixon in that episode is just got a letter that his wife is leaving him and taking the dog, and so you know, and she's like he doesn't even like that dog, it's not even her dog, and he's like so upset about this and it's really, you know, his life is a mess and he goes into this German house where life is actually was probably really nice. The family house looked very calm. You had a cute little dog kind of just barking at one step and he looks at Nixon, looks at the dog and just like and then walks away. So it's like it's an interesting to me it was a very interesting, you know shift of here's, these people. They have this great house and there's no chaos and it doesn't feel like there's chaos in the household and yet they're doing this systematic slaughter of you know good people and it's whereas Nix who's you know military intelligence he's doing this thing to. So you know he may have been somewhat equal in his kind of role to the guy he's looked at house. He's kind of very polar opposite of this, but he has good and moral on his side.
Speaker 1:Okay, but let's talk about the acting. And Mark, I wanted to start with you because you know the one you had a story I wanted you to tell everyone about. You know you were a part. You've done a portrayal of a real life person. These are people so like and this even more, this blew my mind. Just thinking about this is like these characters in this show. They're literally, you know, right before they're on screen there's a clip of the hero they are playing and there has to be a kind and they must have met those. I don't know if they met them like, but there must be an intimidation to that to like portray, you know, one of the great American heroes of these. You know what I mean and how do you take on that role? How do you portray someone, especially if that person's still alive? And you know you're telling this war story. That's such a part of our DNA as Americans. How do you take that on?
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it is daunting, especially if they're alive, because you know they're gonna see it and they're going to judge you. You hold a sort a kind of a part of their reputation in the palm of your hand. Just a little piece of trivia I actually auditioned for the part of Winters, but at the time I had a shattered leg. I did it with a cast. It was a very fun audition, I had a great time and, of course, casting director was like oh, that was amazing. Well, what's going on with your leg? When will it heal? And I lied. I said, ah, a couple of weeks it was shattered. It was literally shattered. I had metal in it and so there was no way I could go to a callback or do the boot camp that they were gonna do. So I missed out on that opportunity because of physical issues.
Speaker 4:Now, the character that I played was Dick Hickock, who was one of the quote unquote killers in Cold Blood, a story popularized by Truman Capote. And I did it in the movie Capote and what I was fortunate enough to have were tapes of Dick talking. But he actually took a very proactive stance in attempting to defend, to save his life. He didn't actually commit any of the murders. I think today he would have been found not guilty for a number of reasons. But I got to listen to hours of him talking and I got to. I read the book in Cold Blood seven times, wow.
Speaker 4:Now, partly because Truman Capote had a talent for capturing the voices of the people that he interviewed. Apparently he had amazing recall. He could recall 99% of every conversation that he ever had and he could also capture the voice of the people that he was talking to. So I got a sense of the character's voice, literally and figuratively, through him. And there was some film, the little bit of film captured on the two men. So I watched as much of that as they could give us. And had I been playing somebody like Winters? I didn't see any. I didn't see any. I know a lot of those actors and I didn't see any characterizations in them. They were more or less themselves and were probably cast because they were very much like, like the part or as the producers imagined them to be. And I didn't see any characterizations in Damien who played to.
Speaker 1:Winters.
Speaker 4:I didn't see him when I'd see Winters actually interviewed of course it's much older man now I didn't see any of the same characteristics of the two. One seemed very, very laconic and had a different energy, had a much more peaceful, calm energy than Damien did. Damien, he's got that. He's got a certain something to him that maybe Winters had when he was a young man. But certainly, if you can, if you can study the person, if you can see how they move and incorporated into your world, if they have a different dialect and you can incorporate that, certainly that takes lots and lots and lots of practice. What's?
Speaker 1:Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 4:No, you go ahead.
Speaker 1:I was gonna ask a question about character arcs and the larger story and getting that historical accuracy, because that, from a writing perspective and from an acting perspective, because that to me seems the hardest thing to get is that you have here's what really happened, you have stories of what really happened, you have a specific thing that these types of things actually happen at this time, but then you have to somehow show that in your acting, while maintaining historical accuracy to your character or being honest to your you don't have to show anything.
Speaker 4:The words, the stuff takes care of itself. You know the I mean David Mamet wrote a book called True and False where he sort of puts down every acting technique on the planet, even though he studied from Sanford Miserth and Edward Playhouse and that's very much his approach. He was the only director who's ever given me a totally actable direction in all of the things I've ever done and he nonetheless is like acting technique. Come on, you just you say the words and you do the things that the script is telling you to do and shit happens, real experiences happen. You as the actor don't have to worry about the arc so much. You have to be engaged in the moment.
Speaker 4:You as a person in life, you don't know your own character arc. You just know that you're day-to-day living and what you've planned for the future. And like good scripts, they take your plans and they fuck them up. They put all kinds of obstacles in the way and then you got to deal with it. And you know there's certainly a how you deal with it that is enmeshed in character, in a character. If it's outside of the way you would in life, then you'd certainly have to know what that is. But you don't have to be demonstrative about anything or show anything. It takes care of itself.
Speaker 1:But they are.
Speaker 2:Would you be aware?
Speaker 1:I'll go ahead, Jacks.
Speaker 2:I was just going to say. I do think that there is a natural character arc built into telling the story of soldiers in war, because it, especially if you're starting out the story where they've not been in war before, and especially with Easy Company, you follow them through their boot camp and basic training and then you see, and then war creates an arc in and of itself, right, the war itself and, depending on you know what these personality types are like, these characters, that arc naturally goes a progression. What I thought was interesting about Damian Lewis' character is I don't think that he had, I don't think that he had a tremendous arc and I think that's okay.
Speaker 4:I agree.
Speaker 2:I agree. He was the constant, he was already baked. He was His cookie was already there.
Speaker 4:He's the rock. He's like the rock. He's the rock yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, he starts out and he stays consistent, which is really good, because you look at all the. It makes all the other arcs really interesting in comparison to his. But I don't know how you can have war and not have an arc. But I will say that it is. As a writer, it is a very specific challenge to write on real historical figures, episode after episode, building in arcs, building in climaxes, because life doesn't work in the same way that a story works. Right. But you've got to, you have to make it so and you have to make it true at the same time, or at least resonate true.
Speaker 4:And Kirk the good news about this show. This is like one of the first shows where they started coming out with 10 episodes, where they started emulating the BBC model of television. Right, and oftentimes, when you're doing an episodic television in 23 episodes, the writers themselves don't know where the character is going. So you are often in the dark about where your arc is, even though I've done shows where I'm like, well, fuck, I wish I knew that seven episodes ago, because if I knew that, then that changes an entire. That changes a lot. You know, if you would know it, you should, yeah, you know. So if there's aspects to your arc that you would know because they should have planted a seed that let you know what was going on then it's definitely that's. You don't show it, but it's definitely a part of your process, it should be part of your process.
Speaker 1:Nice. Yeah, that's like the cyber-snap thing, but the part you have to, the part of it.
Speaker 4:Well, tell me that in a second. But the art of acting is knowing where you're going. But acting is if you don't. It's knowing where you're going and yet allowing it to happen spontaneously as if you don't know where you're going, as if the moment is taking you there, right In Hamlet. I know I'm gonna die, I know it's a tragedy, I know in the end Hamlet dies, but I still have to be fervently searching for the truth, trying to unmask the killer. So I let the arc go to my subconscious somewhere while I actively engage in the problem of the moment.
Speaker 1:Well, like. So this is a question I have. So think about Buck Compton. He comes in in episode two. He's like, I don't know his exact rank, sargent, or maybe he's a lieutenant, but anyway he's in charge of a group of men, right, and he's very happy-go-lucky, he seems very enjoyable, pleasant. He's always joking, seems like, in a good sense of mood. His arc is seems to be one of the more harsh ones, cause he collapses at the end. In a sense he's just like huddled. He's like this, like you know, after Joe Toy and the other gentlemen Garnier get their legs blown off and he just, you know, there's that scene from the opening sequence where he drops his helmet, like that pivotal moment. That's he just like he's done. He's emotionally, spiritually crushed. That's in episode seven, the Breaking Point.
Speaker 4:And that was. That was okay. That was one of my favorite episodes, by the way, because that was Powerful, crazy.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that was a crazy episode. It's one of my favorite. I mean, they're all so good, that's fine to say. But yeah that one's amazing in terms of emotional impact.
Speaker 4:Luckily these actors got all 10 episodes. You know they get all 10 episodes because they're probably all written by that time and you know they'll do some polishes on them on the way, but you'll basically know what your character goes to the whole-.
Speaker 1:Well, that's what I was trying to get at is so as a, you know, I guess as an actor, but also maybe this is a place of writer. In the same way, is he's aware of that? So that is gonna go into his acting on some level, like he might play up a little bit more so he could have more of a collapse or something like that. I mean, I don't know, but he has some. At least it informs his process, as you said earlier.
Speaker 4:Yeah, so it informs his process. Maybe we're saying the same thing in just different language. It would definitely. He knows that he's gonna have a collapse and if that makes him, as an actor, choose to be, you know very much the opposite in personality. I think it's in the script. It's all probably there in the script.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, just like I just said enough you would play that earlier.
Speaker 1:So like if he would not the knowledge of that, but just like where he's going would affect how he's starting. That's my question. So, like the Severus Snape story I was gonna tell you was the I don't know if you know about, if you've seen Harry Potter, if you like anybody Potter people, yeah, okay, so I won't spoil it then. But basically, the who's the actor who plays Severus Snape? Pastor Alan Rickman, right? He was told by JK Rowling that the secret of his character that doesn't appear until the very final seventh book, that is, in the seventh part two of book three. That's important and it was so important that other directors did not know it throughout the time, and so they'd be like why are you playing it this way? And he's like you just have to trust me on this one, and it was just like a whole thing. So, like what I'm saying is his character. There was something in there that his character knew. The actor knew that informed the character.
Speaker 1:That wasn't just an immediate thing but, I guess that was a backstory, so I should take that back.
Speaker 4:That was a secret backstory, well, that is relevant but, there's oftentimes in those 23 episode shows where they would give a character arc and and or a backstory. And you look at it and you just say I would have done the whole season differently if I had known this in advance. But the problem is the writers don't know it in advance. And now they can, now that they're doing you know six, eight, 10 episodes. Now they can plan out in five seasons of something and they and they can do the whole thing.
Speaker 3:I think. I think that's why TV is so much better now is because they have the time to do that.
Speaker 1:I agree, and so go.
Speaker 2:Yeah, how many times in TV shows before we had Serial TV where it was, you know, 22, 24 episodes. Even when we did have Serial TV where it was like that season took a completely dramatic shift and you know you could tell that that the writing room changed, that the character arcs were different and it. That's the kind of thing that just pulls you out of or pops you out of the narrative. But with the kind of TV that you're doing now, where you see the scripts and you know you know what the end is going to be, at least from season to season, that changes the ballgame. I think of TV.
Speaker 1:I agree, like having that full structure.
Speaker 2:There was a funny story, a super quick story, with Game of Thrones when the writers David Benioff and I can't remember the other TV writers name, but they're screenwriting partners where they sat down with George RR Martin to pitch him on doing Game of Thrones. Martin hadn't finished the series yet. The reveal of who Jon Snow was didn't happen yet. George RR Martin asked. Many people had approached him before and he rejected all of them to make the series and he asked the writers one question. He said okay, I'll let you do it if you tell me who you think Jon Snow is.
Speaker 1:No, who Jon Snow's mother is.
Speaker 2:Who's Jon Snow's? Well, what Jon Snow's background is, which is who his mother is. And they guessed it and he was like yep, you got it. So I just thought that was. You know, that's good storytelling, that's good writer, gatekeeping, I guess.
Speaker 1:That's good storytelling. Okay, so I did want to talk about some themes and cultural impact of this as perhaps a final segment here. So we've already talked about a lot of impact in terms of just the television industry, because this is one of the first big budget and I think it really set the precedents for shows like Game of Thrones and others where it's like, oh, this is the model, Like we need to find good writers, we need to give them the money they need to do the kind of show that they need to do. And I think you know, I don't think you could do a true detective in a 1980s style of you know a show. I don't think that type of show can exist back then. I think you have to have a post band of brothers. I don't know if this is the first one for sure, but I know it's one of the early ones that does this.
Speaker 3:Sopranos was the biggest.
Speaker 4:Oh, Sopranos was the first one. Yeah, I would agree with Jennifer Sopranos.
Speaker 1:It's around the same time, then right, and at the same time Sopranos.
Speaker 4:I'd have to look that up.
Speaker 1:I'd have to look it up, it's definitely early.
Speaker 2:I think the Sopranos came after the wire and I always see, when I think of HBO, like how they made their mark on big budget TV, I always think of the wire, but maybe I'm wrong in my Sopranos is 1999, just so you know.
Speaker 4:Yeah, I feel like Sopranos changed television and yeah that makes sense. And then the wire. I mean those shows really, really up the ante.
Speaker 1:Now I want to know who the executive was at HBO, because it was, yeah, sopranos 99, band of Brothers 2001, the Wire, 2002. So this is probably some executive change that happened, where they're like there's some visionary.
Speaker 3:Some visionary Brought all this together.
Speaker 2:He was a good one.
Speaker 4:I should know this.
Speaker 1:Yeah but yeah, so like. But also, I think, the cultural impact of just the show itself, not just on television but also on culture. You know, I've already said on other shows I think, about my love of reaction videos, and Band of Brothers is one of the most reacted to reaction videos and these shows get hundreds of thousands, sometimes millions of views. So you have dozens, if not hundreds, of YouTubers doing reaction videos to Band of Brothers getting hundreds of thousands or millions of views. That's on top of the millions of views that already has it's, you know. So this thing is resonating with people decades after it's been created, which is pretty rare. So this has some kind of influence that I think is worth thinking about and I was curious about your thoughts about the kind of resonance and cultural impact that you think it might have.
Speaker 4:Well, I mean, I didn't know this, that they do these reaction videos with this show, particularly so many years after the fact. I did get the sense that this was one in a handful of shows that changed the way television was made. I even think it influenced the way Lost was done, because Lost was a different network at ABC right, so a network that was typically much more conventional in its approach to television, but we would spend three weeks on the finale episode, three weeks with two crews going simultaneously, and that, I think, comes from the feature film orientation of television. Another cultural change was look at one time television was considered a demotion for an actor, and a feature film actor wanted to be a movie star, theater actor wanted to be a Broadway star. If you were on TV, you were considered a hack. In fact, one of my very good, very good friends, who has since done a show for like eight or nine years, refused to do television and I'm like dude, you're crazy. You're absolutely crazy because you can make bank and you can be independent. Don't be a stupid, don't be stupid, do a TV show. He eventually did a TV show, but he resisted it for a long time, I think because his dad was a major star and I don't know that his dad did any TV, he just did feature films.
Speaker 4:So, but because of the Sopranos and because of the wire and because of Band of Brothers, feature film directors were crossing over, feature film actors were crossing over. That's no mistake that the television sets got bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. They're capturing more detail. You don't want to see a bad television actor on an 80-inch screen, you want to see a good feature film actor who's subtle and clear up there and that. So that's transformed our medium in the way we watch TV. We don't even have to go to movies anymore. We have these big screen TVs. We have feature film actors and directors giving us television.
Speaker 4:So yeah, I think and I hope its cultural impact is even deeper, because I feel like we live in an age of narcissism and the characters that these men represented and what I mean by characters, the virtues that they embodied, are so important for every human being to emulate. Every young child should see this and look to emulate many of the virtues of the culture, many of the virtues that those men had, especially Winters. Who's like? He's like the roar of the, he's like the Howard Roarke of the show.
Speaker 2:I think that one of the cultural impacts, at least for me, was and I had not had negative impressions about soldiers before I saw Band of Brothers the first time. I didn't start out there, but what I was with the exception of one other piece of work that I'll talk about in a second all of the movies and the shows that I had seen not really there weren't like a lot of shows, but the movies that I had seen about soldiers and war up until that time didn't really show the morality of these soldiers and the just like, the nakedness of being in war, and it didn't humanize the soldiers. I mean, there was saving private Ryan, for sure, but it just wasn't humanized to me in a way. What I had seen before then was Tom Cruise and Born on the Fourth of July and Vietnam movies where Platoon you know Platoon Apocalypse Now where horrible things were, the horrible things were happening and the soldiers weren't seen or treated as actual humans with lives, with values, with goals. And we see it today where in war strategy, unfortunately today, we just send our soldiers out and we're still. We make this distinction between the soldiers and innocent civilians and the soldiers are the expendable ones and, yes, up to a certain point they've signed up to sacrifice their lives, to give up their lives for the sake of their country and their mission.
Speaker 2:But this was the first show to me that came along and really humanized their experience, with great respect, with great honor to what these soldiers value to their lives and their loves, and the simple things getting a piece of chocolate finally getting out of the cold and getting a blanket, or when the fog lifts in Bastogne and they're able to drop in supplies to them.
Speaker 2:It was so humanizing. And the exception, I was gonna say with the exception of MASH, because I think MASH the TV show if anybody hasn't seen MASH, I think it was probably one of the most brilliant war TV shows, especially when it came out in the 70s and it humanized. It was a Korean war and it had. It was a sitcom somehow. It managed to mix greatly comedy and tragedy. But I think Band of Brothers had had and hopefully still would have a positive impact on the culture of understanding what it is, what it means to be on the right side of a war and still the toll that it takes, just the absolute violence and destruction and murder, but still being able to come out on the right side of it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, go ahead, Jennifer.
Speaker 3:Yeah, it seems like I don't really know what kind of cultural impact it's having, but I can say that it seems like we were on this trajectory. We had great military movies like Top Gun in the 80s and then it's been going kind of anti-military, anti-war ever since as the culture's changing. And yet this is the one show where it seems like every man that I've spoken to has not only seen it but seen it multiple times and it's like wait, and we've been doing TV talk for a couple of years and I don't get that with any other show. In fact, my brother was like I've seen that five times. It's like you have. I didn't even know that about my own brother. So it's just, it kind of gives me hope that this story is being told to a younger and a way that's resonating.
Speaker 1:Well, this so something I don't know how to make. I'm trying to make this as short as possible. So I think there's an important role that war literature as a broad genre plays for us as because the one reality we have to understand, of course, is that even in the midst of the war, a very small portion of the population actually experiences real combat, even people in the military, very few. Like Nixon reveals at the end, like I never shot, and Winters was like really, and yeah, he did, he never shot one, although he just shot ahead at one point.
Speaker 4:Winters himself, also after the first campaign or so, didn't end up After Bastone.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's in the last episode points when he's being interviewed. The commanding officers, like you, went through Bastone without firing a shot. Now, that's a test of a leader and that's right. I was a good you know, that was a really good moment. But the point is that part of the role that I think that war movies make and I do have to make a distinction I don't think Top Gun is a war movie. I think it's an action adventure, because a war movie is something very specific where it's really trying to like. Part of the role of a war movies, war genre, is to educate you on the specific thing. It's to get you to empathize with what these individuals went through.
Speaker 3:And I want to make clear. But we're talking about culture and Top Gun was very much a part of culture back then.
Speaker 1:OK, ok. I thought you said something like it was a war movie and I was like it's not a war military pro military.
Speaker 1:Ok, yeah, so if you're so, if you're making the argument that there was like there's a pro military thing, I think that's true. I don't know that Band of Brothers I mean, I guess it is kind of pro military, but it's more like that's not the focus in my view, like it's not like America is good. They even have that scene that Mark hates, right, which is the. The guy who sums up the entire theme of the show is a German general and he's doing it in.
Speaker 4:What do you know? What do you think of that Kirk, Because I think that would have really bothered me.
Speaker 2:That that scene would have worked really good if, after he made that speech, winters shot him point blank in the head.
Speaker 4:Now I mean I look, there's a part of me, there's a part of the war was over.
Speaker 4:There's a part of me that there's a part of me that thinks it's good writing it is. There's a part of me that it makes a dynamic, a thematic point that we were talking about earlier, which is, you know, which is sort of seeded throughout. You know, I think I could have gone fishing with this guy. You know, we had the soldiers on the ground and have a lot more in common than they do, than they do. They do differences, they they're experiencing the same types of things in the same way, they're under the same kinds of pressures and and even when you're on opposite sides, it's that, it's that crucible of war that you're in that binds you together in a way that no other people can understand. So, even though they're on the opposite side, based those experiences behind them together. It makes it true, it makes a true point. I just didn't, I just didn't like it. It made a. It made a moral equivalence in a sense to me that it wasn't deserved.
Speaker 1:Agree. What, yeah, I mean? I guess to me, what it shows is the focus of the show is not, is more focused on as an art, on the band of brothers, the, and that's really what they're doing, and they were by selecting as the subject the American soldiers and this part Remember, this is still one teeny sliver of this massive allied war. We're just seeing a sliver of it. And what's the point of that? From an artistic standpoint, it's to expand an important point, which is the band that is forged between men in war, and that's, I think, what the major theme. It's called band of brothers for that reason, and I think what they're showing is that this is a more universal theme, that it's applied. It does apply to the opposite soldiers, whether they're right or wrong. I don't, that's, that's a. That's a separate issue to me. In the while we fight episode, we get that they were wrong but that the other side was, you know, bad. I mean there's there's that kind of funny scene where, oh man, he's super famous now he plays Bane. What's the? The actors.
Speaker 4:Tom Hardy.
Speaker 1:Tom Hardy. Thank you, tom Hardy. Great, he was great, but and and he's like reading an article- and he's like reading an article.
Speaker 1:Yeah, reading the article, that's great, writing right, and it's like OK. And but he said, and he's like what do you? What's it about? He's well, the Germans, they're bad. And then the other one else is like, oh, do you hear that? The Germans, they're bad.
Speaker 1:This is like OK, but to me the the point is that that's not the point of this whole series. Now, that is the point of episode nine in a sense. But you don't see the other soldiers very much, except as they're shooting at you and you're shooting at them, right, like that's. It's really so. This is what makes it such a powerful art. Is there's so focused on you know, these bad this, this 101st Airborne and all their experiences and boot camp and in Carrington, and you know, you see the enemy soldiers just kind of yelling at each other as they're shooting at you and that's it. And so my point is that I think what they're doing by scanning out for a minute with that German soldier in the last episode is you get the universality of this theme of Band of Brothers, but I do think it could apply to those Germans.
Speaker 4:I agree with you. I agree with you.
Speaker 1:And there are a lot of famous, yes. So since we're talking about Tom Hardy, I know there's a lot of famous actors in here, right, and I would be curious who spotted who did anybody? So we kind of chatted about this, so we kind of spoiled it, but did anybody who did you all catch as a famous person that that was not famous at the time of the making of this but became super famous? There's some.
Speaker 2:There's like I didn't catch every. Yeah, I didn't catch everybody. Jennifer pointed one out to me who?
Speaker 3:did you catch.
Speaker 2:I, I will. I caught James McAvoy.
Speaker 1:Tom Hardy. So James McAvoy is replacements. He's one of the replacements who gets killed. Yeah. Who is the last one.
Speaker 2:What's the? What's the Fossbender's first name?
Speaker 4:Michael.
Speaker 2:Michael Fossbender, so he played Magneto. So we had Magneto and what's his name and Xavier right, the Professor X, in the same episode. So many, so many people, I think, like so many famous people, came out of band of brothers now, but there were, there were many more. Who was the one that, jennifer? Who was the one that you pointed?
Speaker 3:out Jimmy Fallon, who was already famous, but he was just like passing out food or something. I was like was he famous. Yeah, he was.
Speaker 2:Who's on SNL? I think it's not that.
Speaker 1:OK, but not as famous as he became. I mean he was an SNL cast member. I don't know if that makes him super famous. That means more famous than me, but you know he's not as famous as he is today.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So the first, the first person I recognized was Andrew Scott. I was like holy crap, that's Andrew Scott. I wonder what's gonna happen to him, dad. Yeah, but the same with McAvoy. I'm like, oh there's, there's McAvoy. Oh my god, what's he got? What's gonna happen?
Speaker 1:He's dead dad. That's not funny at all.
Speaker 4:And then my buddy, but then my buddy, richard Spade, is in. He played Muck and I'm and you know, you see him, he's featured throughout and you know. Then finally, in episode seven, he's saying a lot, of. He's saying stuff I'm like, oh shit, he's finally talking. What happens to him, then dead.
Speaker 1:Yeah. What's that but episode does he die in seven, you said remember.
Speaker 4:I think it's a. I think it's that. I think it's in breaking point. It's the best down there.
Speaker 1:He's there going come to our fox oh, come on. Yeah, and they get.
Speaker 4:Direct hit him that was. That was awful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I mean that this show does.
Speaker 2:I was waiting for something like that to happen, because I kept thinking at what point is a foxhole gonna Not protect them anymore? I knew I can't protect a direct hit.
Speaker 1:Yeah yeah, it's supposed to protect you from shrapnel that goes across right, but right nothing old.
Speaker 2:Neil McDonough. Neil McDonough to me Was he's not like a super famous actor now, but he's been. He's kind of one of my favorite character actors. But I I had completely forgotten that he was in band of brothers and so when I saw him the first time I'm like, oh, that's good yeah yeah, johnny, donnie Wahlberg wasn't, was lifted.
Speaker 4:Yeah, he wasn't. He wasn't a big man.
Speaker 1:Yeah, definitely not big. He did a great job, so Okay. So we'll close off with this. So I think one mark you did you have Something you wanted to share that you knew. You said you had something. No, it was just, it was, it was my audition, oh, okay but I actually auditioned for it.
Speaker 4:I read the book for it, yeah, and they gave me. You know, they gave. They gave us a sort of directory of characters, so you got to see pictures of winters as a young man. They give his bio and then you read the scenes. But I did it with a shattered leg so I couldn't go any further. That that was my. That was my story.
Speaker 1:So so let's go around for final thoughts very quickly. Any, any final thoughts. Anything you didn't get to say that you Wanted to say about this show.
Speaker 2:I had a. I thought that Lieutenant Spears was an awesome character. He was as close as they came, as close as someone comes to being an actual superhero, who's a real person. And there was just this one scene when the when Lieutenant Spears had to replace the guy that froze I can't remember the guy's name the other lieutenant that was a terrible lieutenant, and Dyke, yeah. And. And there was this one scene where they Damian Lewis's winter sends Lieutenant Spears in to any, doesn't hesitate, and he charges the field and then you see them watching. Some part is below. You know, something is completely blown up and whereas normally it would mean a soldier is dead, lieutenant Spears just jumps through the blow-up and he's like there should have been like like superhero music playing because he just Destroyed that scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I loved that.
Speaker 1:He had a really great run. Just the way he runs is really yeah, I forgot he was another one.
Speaker 4:Between he and Winters, winters was the more human but he was the Robo cop of the the unit and Winters was the was the more feeling guy, but he was definitely a very cool, interesting Cat man. He could have been a Ragnar Danis gold.
Speaker 1:I could, I could see yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, okay, final thoughts, mark Jennifer.
Speaker 4:No, I think. I think that this, this TV show, should live on and on and I hope many people in the younger generations Get a chance to see it. Like one of the most beautiful things about it Is it it integrates reality with the, with the fictionalized storytelling, so that you actually see the men, the men in there, in there at the end of their lives, basically Telling the story that you get to see it in flashback with, with characters. So it's, it's. I think it's a very important movie for young people to see today.
Speaker 3:Jennifer, that's a great point, the integration of the reality with a, with the fictional and I. The only thing I didn't talk about was that I thought, and I said in the beginning, I thought it was probably one of the best plots that I've ever seen over. You know, a series like this and I think it's because it's almost as if easy company is its own character, because it's journey going from just terrible running up the hill dying, to they're, they're climbed, their battles, their scars, losing, people being replaced, and you have a stone and they're cold, dark of night. You know, like you, when you write a movie, you could, everybody clapses into the dark of night and then they rise up from that and they actually end up at Ingalls nest and in the Alps, at the highest point where the Nazis met, and that's where they end and like, what a journey. It's so beautiful. I am, I just, I just love the way that it's encapsulated.
Speaker 2:That's a really, that's a really great visual. That's that's a really great way to tell that story, that they're in like the cold and dead and then they end up high, you know, at the highest point, over everything. That's really great.
Speaker 1:All right. Well, thank you everybody. I hope that you enjoyed that and that you go and watch again it's assuming you've already seen it band of brothers. It's definitely worth watching. So thank you, viewing room, and I'll see you all next time. Thank you, thank you.