by Theresa Corrigliano, Dish Magazine, October 2001

September 10, 2001

I am at work. We are talking about the new HBO miniseries Band Of Brothers. My co-worker's wife is a documentary producer, and her project about World War II veterans is airing on the History Channel that very night. Her life has changed by getting to know these men -some of whom who are members of Easy Company and are also featured in Band Of Brothers.

It has been a long day. We all want to make it home by 9 pm to see her work; the clock is ticking. We talk about how Band Of Brothers haunts us. Ordinary men who were called upon to do extraordinary things those are the stories that Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg tell in the ten hours they have produced.

Out loud, I wonder if called upon today, how we would respond -- private citizens, the young men and women in the military, all of us who have grown up in privileged, and for the most part, peaceful times. "After all," I add, "this country has never been attacked."

11 September 2001

What was true the night before is no longer true.

This Tuesday morning, strangers stood by strangers, airline passengers sacrificed their lives for the greater good, rescue workers charged into burning buildings while most everyone else fled, blood donors and volunteers, not wanting to feel helpless, lined up in such enormous numbers they had to be turned away, and Americans everywhere called themselves citizens of New York City, Washington D.C. and Pennsylvania.

There is talk of war, but as the president keeps reminding us, a war unlike any other we have fought. The flag is everywhere, flying in the face of fear.

My question, which we could only speculate on one day before, has been answered, and will continue to be answered as we lift our heads, and move forward into an uncertain new world.

29 September 2001

I have missed my deadline. I, who make my living with words, have no words. Two weeks ago, I couldn't wait to write about Band Of Brothers. Now, I am not so sure. But I am not so sure about anything. I am thinking about war, and I don't want to write about it. My editor asked me to make it relevant to the events that took place on that Tuesday, and I did not understand how to do that until last night.

Of course, the television is on. I have hardly managed to turn it off. I fall asleep to it, and wake up to it. Tom Brokaw is posing a familiar question to historian Stephen E. Ambrose, who wrote the book on which Band Of Brothers is based. He is asking Ambrose about the attack on America, and what it will mean to the young people of today. Ambrose, in his reply, might well have been talking about 60 years ago, about the men whose lives were forever changed when they landed in Normandy, but he was also talking about our soldiers and our citizens, "For the first time democracy is in the forefront of their minds. We are the children of democracy and we are the ones who are going to have to go out and defend it."

That's when I realized that everything I wanted to say about Band Of Brothers I still want to say. In my sadness, I didn't understand that writing about these men now should not be difficult now, but as inspiring as I thought it would be after I finished watching this extraordinary miniseries a month ago. I have changed, but the definition of the word heroes -- those who choose to make sacrifices so that we may live without fear -- has not. I am thinking about heroes, and I want to write about them:

From this day to the ending of the world
But we in it shall be remembered
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;
For he today that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother

Henry V, 4.iii.58

Band Of Brothers: Then And Now: Lest We Forget

by Theresa Corrigliano, Dish Magazine, October 2001

One Month Ago

It is a beautiful, balmy Southern California night, the kind of late August evening that makes you grateful that you live here. HBO is hosting the premiere of Band Of Brothers at what may be one of the premiere venues in America, the Hollywood Bowl. There is the requisite press line, the lavish buffet, the bars, and the wristbands, and of course, the red carpet.

But the color that catches my attention is yellow. There are a handful of men in bright yellow jackets and name tags, spread out over the hills that slope toward the Bowl's main entrance. When I edge closer, I see they are all wearing stickers, and the names on these tags resonate. These are the men of Easy Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne, the men who came together in boot camp, landed in Normandy, captured Hitler's Eagle Nest and survived to see the end of the war. I now know their stories, not only from the 10 hours I have spent with them, but also from the book, which Ambrose has written with the grace and flow of a true biographer.

Bill Guarnere. Frank Perconte. Carwood Lipton. Don Marlarkey. C. Lynn "Buck" Compton. John Martin. Joseph Tory. Joseph Liebgott. Richard Winters. There are 51 remaining members of this company, and a handful of them are here. They sit surrounded by family and friends at many of the dining tables, where the centerpieces are army helmets. I see members of the press trying these helmets on, posing for pictures, and I find this a bit odd. But Hollywood is big on theme dressing for parties, and this is a night of celebration.

The veterans stand in tight little clusters that are hard to infiltrate, signing copies of Ambrose's book and shaking hands. They are smiling and laughing. I feel lucky to be here with them. They are all my father's age, and I am thinking of my Dad now. I have just asked him to speak into a tape recorder for me, and recount his own experiences as an Army private in the Pacific theatre. I want these memories in his own voice. He has forgotten a lot of the stories he used to tell, and I am sorry I did not think to ask him sooner. Underneath my sweater, I am wearing his Army dogtags.

Bill Guarnere is easy to pick out, this elderly man, who maneuvers through the crowd with the aid of crutches. How Bill Guarnere lost his leg is part of the seventh episode of Band Of Brothers, and perhaps, the most effecting. Bill Guarnere leans on his crutch to shake my hand. "Gonorrhea, that's me," he jokes, reminding me of the good-natured but unfortunate nickname that his buddies hung on him.

I meet his beautiful ten-year-old granddaughter Gabrielle. She is in a party dress, and a dusting of sparkle shines on her cheeks. Yes, she knows what Grandpa did in the war, though she admits she is not at all sure she understands what it all means. I want to tell her that you don't have to be ten to feel that way. She tells me that her grandfather came to school to speak and answer her classmates' questions, and they thought he was "cool." That's no small thing, when you're ten, finding out your Grandpa is cool. "I never thought he would be famous," Gabrielle says.

I ask him if it was hard to watch Band Of Brothers. "Yes and no," he admits. "Yes because it brings back a lot of memories; no, because I felt I was honoring the men who passed before me. I owe them a debt, because they couldn't speak for themselves, and that made me happy." I want to know how he felt watching the moment when he was hurt. He laughs, loud and hard. "Hurt ain't the word for it. I had my leg blown off." He smiles. "I just went, 'ouch.'"

Since the war ended, Guarnere has remained tied to his brothers. "I'm the one who organized Easy Company reunions," he explains with pride. "For 54 years I've done it. "Not a day goes by," he tells me, "that I don't think of them."

The actors

From my vantage point, I see many of the young actors who played the men of Easy. I am struck by their genuine sweetness, none of the pretentious self-importance you see sometimes with certain celebrities who never really want to talk to you. James Madio. Ross McCall. Donnie Wahlberg. Michael Cudlitz. Frank John Hughes. Scott Grimes. Kirk Acevedo. Dexter Fletcher. Matthew Settle. Shane Taylor. Damian Lewis, a ginger-haired British actor who plays Lieutenant Dick Winters, the heart of Easy Company, the one character who is in every episode. You may not recognize any of these names, but you probably will.

Tonight, I hear the actors calling out: "Hey, Guarnere." "Yo, Malarkey." James Madio, the warm and witty New Yorker who plays Frank Perconte, says that during filming, they called themselves by their character names, and it stuck. Madio, who reminds me of home, recounts that one day, he and his real E Company counterpart were walking down the street and someone called out, "Hey Perconte." Madio laughs. "We both turned around."

Madio, at first, had been told that Frank Perconte was dead, but that proved untrue. Even though they had long conversations that helped Madio prepare, Madio says, "If you wanted information about your guy, you didn't ask your guy. If I wanted to know about Frank, I had to talk to Carwood Lipton." To this day, the veteran Perconte and the young actor who have forged a real friendship, still talk. But there was something for which Madio did not find an answer, because it never came up in his conversations with Frank Perconte: "The one question I never had the nerve to ask him is how it felt to kill someone."

I am startled when I greet Ross McCall, the actor who played Joseph Liebgott. He is British, pleased to accept your surprise at this fact as a compliment. McCall admits he would have killed to get his part. "Liebgott went missing after the war," he explains of the German speaking man he plays, so he pieced together his character with help from Ambrose and the other veterans, and McCall hopes he got it right. "I would love it if any of Liebgott's family saw this, and got in touch."

Tom Hanks and His Band of Actors

I get the same descriptions from most of the actors working with Tom Hanks. He may be sick of hearing it, but I've got bad news for Hanks: everyone, to a man, uses the words: "Nice." "Humble." "Easygoing." James Madio told me he was far more intimidated by the real veterans than by the movie star-turned-filmmaker.

Hanks, who serves as Executive Producer with Steven Spielberg, co-wrote Episode 1 and directed Episode 5. The timing of Hank's arrival, Madio says, "was brilliant because we were tired and thinking, 'this is too much.'" From March to November, in the cold and damp English weather, this band of actors didn't hang out at the groaning craft service table, and there were no cushy trailers to retreat to during filming. "If it was raining, we were out in the rain," Madio remembers, "trying to keep our weapons dry and our gear together, or Captain Dye [Dale Dye, the military advisor who also plays Colonel Sink] was all over you." And then Hanks appeared, and everyone picked themselves up, regrouped, and met the challenge of finishing the remaining work, work that Madio says he wanted to stand up to scrutiny. "I hoped that I had done a good enough job so that kids who look at this will think 'I want to be a paratrooper,'" Madio adds simply.

Says Hanks, "The true scope of what Carwood Lipton and his associates went through has not truly been communicated on film in a way that is palpable to the audience. Never mind what it must feel like to see your best friend die in a hole next to you. Never mind what it must be like to see your best friend lose his leg, never mind what it must feel like to squeeze off a little piece of metal on your rifle that can kill some person across the field who could have been a friend under different circumstances. The distance that we go, really, is to try to put it into human terms so it is not just a flickering black and white myth that is on some channel on your cable system, but instead you might think: 'Well, what would I do under those circumstances?' And my gosh, I sort of recognize myself in these men as opposed to just these mythic heroes."

But now, three years from the time Hanks brought the idea to Spielberg, with the nine long months of shooting behind them, it is time for HBO's Band Of Brothers to be seen here at home, every Sunday night, for ten weeks, at 9 pm. The project budget is rumored to have topped $120 million dollars. It's not television, for sure; these kind of numbers are definitely HBO. The cable giant is often criticized for being arrogant about their success, but on a night like this, I cannot help but think that it's OK to be arrogant when you are good. I cannot help but think that it is HBO that brings this kind of quality to television, that the networks can no longer afford, or seem to understand.

Back To The Party

Tonight, at the premiere, the veterans and the actors, the creative team behind the miniseries are here, joined by press and industry heavyweights, for the first U.S. screening. The composer Michael Kamen will conduct the haunting theme music from Band Of Brothers, which I cannot get out of my head. I am glad to find a promotional copy of the CD in my goody bag, which also includes a sponsor's baseball cap, Jeep and a warm, plush facsimile of an Army blanket, which should come in handy on a cool night like this. I stroke the plush nothing at all like the scratchy rectangle of khaki wool that my father brought home, and that my sister and I spread on the cement patio when we played outside. We all take our seats in the boxes that ring the Bowl's elegant stage.

Hanks, speaking for Spielberg, welcomes the crowd, following the thoughtful words of Susan Eisenhower, Ike's granddaughter, and Anne Roosevelt, great granddaughter of FDR. Stephen Ambrose speaks.

The veterans are introduced, and they stand at their seats, acknowledging the cheers, enveloped by the warmth of the audience.

When the lights finally dim, and the gigantic movie screen is filled with their story, I hear members of the audience weep. I hear them gasp. When the credits roll, over an hour later, the crowd shrugs off their blankets and their sweaters, and stand. It may seem like they are applauding, but from where I am standing, before the fireworks drown them out and electrify the sky, it sounds to me they are finding the only way they know how to say "thank you."

Caption: Neal McDonough as Lynn "Buck" Compton.

Caption: Frank John Hughes as Bill Guarnere.

Caption: Donnie Wahlberg as C. Carlton Lipton.

Caption: James Madio as Frank Perconte.

Caption: Ross McCall as Joseph Liebgott.

Caption: David Schwimmer as Captain Sobel.

Caption: Kirk Acevido as Joseph D. Toye.

Caption: Director Tom Hanks at the camera.

Caption: Dexter Fletcher as John Martin. [Actually, the caption should read: Douglas Spain as Antonio Garcia.]

Caption: Eion Bailey as David Kenyon Webster.

Caption: Dale Dye as Robert F. Sink.

Talking With Band Of Brothers' Damian Lewis

"26-year-old Major Winters established himself as a natural leader, someone who was able to think quickly and lucidly under extreme fire. He was a brilliant, brilliant soldier, but getting the soul of the guy was like climbing Mount Everest. ..."

by Theresa Corrigliano, Dish Magazine, October 2001

He stands out. Not just because he plays Major Richard Winters, the leader of Easy Company, who is a significant presence in each episode of Band Of Brothers. Damian Lewis grabs your attention even when he says nothing -- the mark of an actor who knows that even when there are no words for you to say on the page, your character can still leave his mark.

The British actor moved through an intense three-month audition process to win the pivotal role of Dick Winters, "Anyone [in England] who was under 35 and still had both his legs was being seen," he says. Lewis submitted a tape, but didn't hear anything for a month; so when he got the call "to read for the main guy," he admits he was stunned. He was asked if he would like to fly to LA to meet Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks. "Then the Hollywood machine took over," Lewis says with a laugh. "I'm a Londoner so I have to refer to things like the Hollywood machine. It's the epitome of things that work slickly." Two days later, Lewis was in California, reading for the part of Winters, opposite Hanks, who read all the other parts. "I can say I acted with Tom Hanks, so that was quite nice."

Since he didn't expect to meet Spielberg at all on this trip, Lewis "celebrated" that night, not getting to sleep until the wee hours. No sooner did he crash than he got a call that the famous director did, indeed, want to see him. "I had about three showers, and drank a gallon of coffee, and I went in to see Steven." Lewis recalls that Spielberg talked about his son's soccer match, and when Hanks joined them, they talked about Christmas tree shopping. The two Hollywood titans left the room, and Tony To, the executive producer, returned to say, "Hey Damian, how'd you like to go to boot camp in March?"

Ten days of boot camp, to be exact. "I looked a little like a rice pudding before," Lewis says, "and afterwards, like a stick of celery, the love handles went, the flabby arms went." The actor, who says his knowledge of WWII before Band Of Brothers was "the ten greatest hits," soon got a taste of what these soldiers went through to prepare for battle. He remembers one day hanging in under the watchful eye of Captain Dale Dye, doing 70 pushups, and then felt his arms go to Jell-O. "I'm watching you, Winters," Dye bellowed, "You better not give up on me, Winters." Lewis says it took him as long to get to the requisite 80 pushups as it had taken him to do the first 70. "I felt like I was in 'Full Metal Jacket,'" he adds ruefully.

Somewhat easier than the physical preparation was the phonetic. Lewis, as Winters, speaks with a flawless American accent, mastering the dialogue with the help of a coach. "My accent before I did Band Of Brothers was kind of a wishy-washy generalized one. probably a mixture of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart." He opted not to duplicate Winters' real Pennsylvania accent, "We chose a middle ground, and just went for credibility."

The trickiest challenge still lay ahead of Lewis - how to tap into the soul of Dick Winters, who wasn't flashy but whose focus earned him the respect and loyalty of the men he lead. "It was incredibly daunting but a privilege as well," Lewis says. "He was a twenty-six-year-old, jumping into Normandy. He established himself as a natural leader, someone who was able to think quickly and lucidly under extreme fire. He was a brilliant, brilliant soldier, but getting the soul of the guy was like climbing Mount Everest."

Lewis calls Winters "your archetypical enigmatic hero. They really did make them like that an old-fashioned hero who was economic with words, wasn't a womanizer, a drinker or a smoker. He was a man with incredible moral bearing." Getting to know the real Dick Winters proved an equal challenge to portraying him. "I felt from meeting him I had to earn his respect. It doesn't mean he was a cold man, but he was a pretty formidable man. With me he was always generous and warm and encouraging but I don't think he sat around in bars for the last forty years "anecdotalizing" about the war, using that as his therapy, laughing and crying about his experiences with strangers. I think the way Winters has dealt with it is to militarize his experiences."

Lewis admits: "I left pretty quickly asking him for emotional responses. When he was on the dyke in Holland surrounded by 50 SS troops, to say to him 'What were you feeling?' was kind of a cul de sac of a question." Winters would always reply that he felt no fear or anxiety, that he just focused on what he had to do. "It's clearly that presence of mind and control of his emotions that made him the incredible soldier he was," Lewis says. "But I couldn't really probe more than that."

So Lewis knew what he had to do, "I had to find a way to make the silences interesting. I think one of the most interesting things to watch an actor do on screen is to watch them listen. Robert DeNiro has that quality. You always feel like he's listening, or he's going to kill you." Lewis believes that "the thing that Dick Winters had was the common touch. You can illustrate that through listening and that gives you humility even though you are performing these incredible feats at the same time. I hope I have been able to convey some of that."

Callout: "I felt like I was in Full Metal Jacket."

Callout: "My accent before I did Band Of Brothers was kind of a wishy-washy generalized one -- probably a mixture of John Wayne and Jimmy Stewart."

Callout: "I had to find a way to make the silences interesting. I think one of the most interesting things to watch an actor do on screen is to watch them listen. Robert DeNiro has that quality. You always feel like he's listening or he's going to kill you."

Caption: Damian Lewis & girlfriend Katie Razzall at the premiere of Band Of Brothers at Pearl Harbor.