in working with people in some of the villages to figure out who we can do to prepare for the future. a state thattely depends on oil and up will be true for a long time, but making the most efficient and effective use of those resources is really important. that the way we hope universities like ours we can train people for those jobs of the future. 22 whenus july 21 and we feature our visit to alaska. watch alaska weekend on c-span, c-span.org, or listen on the free c-span radio app. >> in 1998, the academy award-winning world war ii fil "saving private ryan" was released in theaters. if our trade the d-day invasion of normandy and the mission to find a soldier behind enemy lines. american history tv, at a national world war ii museum

symposium to mark the 20th anniversary of the film's release, historians explore and contrast other d-day films and talk about the directors process of creating them. this runs an hour and 40 minutes. because 20re today years ago an amazing film about the second world war came to the screen. thisnk all of us can agree has to be one of the top world war ii movies ever made. fascinating, compelling, powerful, realistic, riveting. an amazing film. here we are one day after the 74th anniversary of d-day to talk about that wonderful film, "saving private ryan" that really capture the horrible events, the necessary that horrible events on the beaches of normandy on 6 june, 1944. the film changed the way the nation look at the war movie. rethink the way we thought about our world war ii

veterans. they began to rethink the way we thought about ourselves as a nation, and we certainly as citizens thought about the cost of war and if your powerful way as a result of this film. we will approach the film. we have four really exciting sessions. all addressing the film of different ways. twofirst panel will be from wonderful film historians, dr. marshall gordon and dr. nick call of the university of southern california, both good friends of the museum. we are glad to have here today. the next will be dr. kevin ferrell, retired u.s. army --onel, and dr. robson rob satina. we will see captain dale dye who served as the military advisor on the film, and the cleanup hitter and will up to the job is on founding president and ceo

itritus, dr. nick mueller, will talk about with the film into the country, this easy him and the overall lasting legacy still being felt today. i encourage you to give your eyes up for another thing that will be coming out in the next is hard at work on a great book about the d-day landings from the perspective of our oral history collection. it is a gangbusters book. i have seen some early chapters and it's really powerful. in addition to this, we know that the audience will continue to be a great part of this conversation. you will drive discussions with your great questions and comments. onto the programs now. i don't want to drone on addressing these people. all the speakers have amazing resumes and we can waste half the day talking about their accomplishments. i would encourage you to look at your programs you received if you're interested in the full biographies. again, they are here throughout the day. engage our speakers.

they are looking forward to talking to you. our first speaker, dr. marshall gordon from north carolina state is the author of "film is like a battleground, sam fuller's or movies." ihe will be followed by dr. n ck call, the director of the master public diplomacy program as well as president of the international association of media and history, a good friend and partner organization of her own institute. welcome present, please marsha gordon. dr. gordon: ok, good morning everybody. thank you so much for having me here today. it is truly an honor. i have been asked to speak about sam fuller and about his war

films, and especially about the big red one, which has a d-day scene that is pertinent to today's discussion. i published this book last year that is on the screen. i will talk a little bit about that in the course of my discussion today. his hotcused on all of and cold war films that he made over the course of his career. i havellywood historian, been working on this project for a long time. it is wonderful to see it out. i will draw from a couple of things i want to mention. how many have seen a sample or film before? -- sam fuller film before? he published that his widow published posthumously his memoir called "a third face." it is wonderful if you're a fan. i would encourage you to read it. his daughter is a filmmaker and she did a documentary called "a fuller life" that is

extraordinary. she is working on a documentary called "organized insanity," the phrase he used to describe more. that describe -- describe war. look for that. very quick overview. fuller grew up in new york city in the 1920's. he worked as a newspaper copy boy and journalist in the 1930's. then he started selling novels and screenplays the hollywood in the late 1930's. he moved to los angeles and work as a screenwriter. when world war ii broke out, illicit insert for the first infantry division, the big red one. for nearly three years during the war. after the war he returned to hollywood and he started directing his own films in the late 1940's. this is just a partial filmography, starting with his first film but the films in the

second half of the list are the ones that i discussed in the book. the three in red are related to world war ii in some way. i also will be showing you some images that are from his personal collection. krista and samantha, his widow and daughter have all of his papers and photographs and letters and were journals in the possession. they were kind enough to give me full access to that. that image at the top is from a barbara stanwyck western culture "40 guns." the big red one patch and insignia. he always inserted a reference to the first, even if the film had nothing to do with the war. the film frame below is from one of my favorite films, "a pickup on south street." you see the soldier standing between them. thing thatthe

defined his life and what he cared about most and thinking about over the course of his career. a few things more about his military service. he was inducted in the army as a private on august 20 4, 19 82 in los angeles. after basic training he was deployed to north africa with k company, 26 infantry any close the work with a rifleman. he identified with the 16th. fuller he joined by order of none other than colonel george taylor. he wanted a rifleman hiccup report for the history books i've been disappoin -- eyewitness accounts of attacks and counterattacks. this came out after the war. you can see corporal sammy fuller gets a byline. i'm pointing to that screen. fuller conservative heavily to this history of the 16th.

he participated in the battles or campaigns for central europe, normandy, northern france, the rhineland, sensibly and tunisia -- sicily and tunisia. this is a letter from major john lawton praising fuller's gallantry in action during the day that d-day -- during the day. this is from the personal collection that is framed and all the while the full or household which is why it is not a very good image because i could just take a photograph of it. he was wounded in action at normandy on june 8, two days after the landing. in germany on september 14, -e tripfter a post v to france.

he returned on september 28, 1945. during the nearly three years of combat and frontline observation, fuller kept wartime diaries filled with illustrations and cartoons that are absolutely fascinating. the road a lot of letters home. he had a wicked sense of humor, as you can tell from this cartoon. he sent home this during the war. he kept notes about what was happening, kind of story materials for his future projects. all kind of in preparation for thinking about how he would use this over the course of his career. these are some examples of females -- mail sent to his mother and brother, often with cartoons in requests for cigars that he loved. 1944, fuller grossly underestimated he had gathered materials to keep them busy for six months to a year after the war. in fact, fuller would give to

andjournals and letters pull material out and use them in his films over the course of his entire career. this is a photo of fuller he sent to his brother. i just wanted to read his little becausefrom his memoir i think it is important to what we are talking about today. people who have never lived through it will never, never know what war's i'm feeling -- unfeelingness will feel like. never know the cold face of middle in your mouth just before the violence begins, the wet toes, the churning in your stomach that seems like it's going to burn a hole in your belly, the dull drumming in your brain, the ghoulish visions come to life, hell, words just can't describe it." flawedys saw that as a

endeavor but incredibly important. on to the big red one, but it think is a key and acknowledged president for what spielberg does in his masterful d-day landing scene in saving private ryan. this still came out in 1980, but fuller tried to make this film since the 1940's. it took him his best the bulk of his career to get this film made. this is a letter from 1946i have exerted about "all quiet on the western front," the wonderful world war i film. i'm going to do my best to be the dog you to write it -- doggie to write it. this is a letter he wrote, a fan letter about the film. he said this is kind of the first reference i found to him talking about making this film. this is definitely the film the full or wanted to make more than any other. this was reported in 1956 by the

hollywood gossip columnist, john wayne will be starring in sam fuller's the big red one. this is not happen in 1956, but hopper was a friend of fuller's. i want to review a little excerpt from a letter that full iraq to her on june 11. note that date, 1954. "we have just returned from normandy. it was quite a sensation going back to omaha beach. standing on the same beach 10 years to the minute after my outfit made the initial invasion of france. but the big thrill was when i took marta, his wife at the time,. there was a first objectives 10 years ago. we lost 1160 men that morning. i showed her the same little old schoolhouse into which we had chased an enemy officer. the pillboxes we

took and she was horrified as she gapped at the 88th. that 88's. this is one of dozens of times that fuller was really trying to return to this formative place and revisit his experiences. these are a couple of images. one is a polaroid on the back of which reads omaha beach. that is fully with a small 35mm and i, which has no sound believe he was using it for location scouting at omaha beach in the 1950's. the other is from a home movie and that is fuller scaling something at normandy. letter toer wrote a his publicist about this trip. july of 1954. this is what she said. "we went to normandy for the d-day ceremony on omaha beach on june 6. under returned to california you

was in the film he managed to take on a cold, rainy day and it tells the story far better than anything i might put on paper at the moment. i will tell you it was rough. i traded this return of sammy to death revisited, knowing it would take a lot out of him. i am glad we went for i'm sure he will remember 1954 omaha rather than 1944. and heartbreaking as it is today with its white marble crosses and stars of david emery over it -- numbering over 9000, it is better than the memory of 1944. marta was wrong. the 1954 image never replaced that 1944 image. by fully dead at the time, the 1950's warner bros. hired him to write a script that was you in january of 1958 and taken to go on another location scouting trip back to europe. if you look at script materials

at the warner bros. archives from the 19th the eight version, you can see him planning -- 1958 version, you can see him using for riley, kansas for a stand-in for the beach landing scene. none of these efforts came to fruition, of course. he continued to work on this throughout the 1960's and 1970's. according to fuller, fellow director peter backed out of it said to him if you write the script i will pretty sit. that is how it -- i will produce it. that is how it happened. fuller started making it in 1978. he had a budget of $4.5 million, which for him was the biggest budget of any film he had ever made for a war film. that is nothing. war films are incredibly expensive. this was his lifelong passion project. he turns in his cut to -- and it's 4.5 hours. they went no way.

nobody will sit for this. fuller refused to cut anything out of it. to under twot hours without consulting him, which was the heartbreak of his life. did he saw the film when it came out in 1980, you saw less than half of what he hoped the film would be. some of you who are fans may have seen the 2005 reconstruction of the film. that brings it closer to two hours. it is worth seeing. the big red one is the first recon that don't focus on the squatter privates in their unnamed sergeant, all of whom survived the war. of the film, fuller explained, "i did not many are reviewed to go see what the generals are doing, no drilling, no flashbacks, no girlfriends, none of that shit -fuller's word not mine -this is a squat in war, nothing else.

most pictures of this kind are semi-work pictures. you watch them learn to sleep for three months. i tried to put the war experience on film. i came close. this is my actual favorite line fuller had about war, to make a real war movie would be to occasionally fire at the audience. during the battle scene. that is right. how can you ever convey what it feels like to be at war? i think it's a brilliant way to remind us a film is always just a representation, even when it is as realistic as possible. they d-day scene is the explosive centerpoint -- centerpiece in the midpoint of the film. fuller is trying to create some nugget of that, and drama. i think his representation might've been more precedent-setting and also might've had more prescient -- that -- there is a lot

of times in the longest day on the landing that film. in the a great one that sequences eight minutes. just a small portion of the film. for the longest they had this wide-angle big view of the day, the big red one folder focuses on the squadron and a very specific objective, to lay down a torpedo to the global whole -- blow a holee to so they can get off the beach. they are predicting a lot of debt germans on the beach. navy artillery fire should've cleared it before they arrived, which is not the case. what full it does is to capture some of the landing intensity with incoming shells, then dying, explosions all around.

it is nowhere near the scale of what we get in the longest day or in the 1998 "saving private ryan" scene. fuller experienced multiple beach landings. i want to read an excerpt from his july 9, 1943 invasion journal. he switches from talking about this is an experience and uses this original voice. he writes, "my toilet paper in tobacco got wet, gripes a soldier. pfc. howard brown junior, crouched, tense, awaits. the rant falls and brings enemy gunfire. brown feels something tropic as his leg. he reaches down. somebody's pack. it is no pack. it is sergeant redeout shot to the head. fuller's generation reminds me of certain traumas, the way he

deals with them of the big red one and anticipates the black representation of death and injury in "saving private ryan." it is very unsentimental, directly with meta-textbook full or in both prose and cinematic forms. this is day for night shooting in it doesn't look very bright. when you look at the images, but the men encounter dead soldiers all around him and fuller cuts to some wider shots to close-ups of the men on the squadron as we follow the experience over the anrse of this scene this is example of one of the more ambitious scale shots in the film. this is relatively low-budget. it is nowhere near the scale of the other films they will be talking about. the scene plays out with audience tension in mind as the soldiers try to lay down the bangalor, with each man cut down the german fire.

extreme close-ups like you see on the bottom of the screen from the characters in the squad we follow throughout the film who are watching anxiously from an apparently protected spot on the beach. in saving private ryan, there is no safe spot. fuller gives us a little pause to follow the action that takes us away from the more realistic situation. i think it is noting you don't see a single image of the enemy in the big red one's d-day scene, where in the longest day and saving private mine you see it from their perspective. zanuck was a good friend and ally and supporter of fuller. i think you protected him in many ways when his politics are being questioned in the early 1950's. fuller worked with fox for a while. it may be based on historical character, for the guy who leads the mission is named fuller in

the longest day. spielberg was also in admire and used fuller in a cameo role in his strange 1979 post-pearl harbor bombing comedy, "1941." in the big red one, soldier after soldier makes his way up the beach with a piece of the bangalor. is not in the protected area, unlike the scene in "saving private ryan." i leave it to the military historians to tell me if that would have ever happened or not. top,hamill, pictured up comes face-to-face with a dead soldier and is so stunned that the sergeant has the fire his fight with him several times to get him to push on. this is lee marvin as the sergeant firing around him to try to get him out of his stunned state. there is a series of extreme close-ups between the two of them. at one point it seems like he has been taken out by

incoming enemy fire but he manages to recover and puts the piece in place that allows them to blow the whole and the wire and gives the scene a sense of closure. this scene, like most everything in the big red one, has some aspects of personal elements. if you remember the letter from on, full or landed with an initial assault late and begin living about the beach in an effort to aid wounded and ring about some control. commended him for notifying regimental command of the eventual preach that was finally blown in the wire, which meant full or in the movie "along 100 yards of open beach under constant heavy fire by the enemy and then voluntarily returned to communicate the successful delivery of the message that affection -- that a section of the wire is open." in the reconstruction version, there is a scene where zab, fuller's stand-in played by

robert carey performs this delivery of news across the dangerous body-strong beach -- body-strewn beach. he ends up on a body of a fellow soldier, and only when he pulls back as he realized all the guts are exposed. this representation of something very graphic is an important building block to getting to "saving private ryan." fuller's d-day sequence concludes with an especially poetic gesture, which earlier in the scene fuller stayed on the dead soldier's arm. he returns to it at the midpoint of the scene and again at the end of the water becomes increasingly bloody. hopefully you can discern that from the images, which signals both the duration of the battle and the escalating carnage. the longest day is black and white, as well as relatively bloodless. is lots of death but

not of it explicit. fuller's bloody images are part of this differentiation. that can be traced forward to spielberg he makes very impactful use of the color red in this landing scene, and also the kind of graphic representations o deathf and injury in the film. prior to moving on from the d-day section and the theretructed version, is a short but important speech. i suspect many of the in the room are familiar with the speech that is delivered to vote the soldiers on the beach and us in the audience. just after zab delivers his message about the successful loenl -- the co onel declares there are those

that are dead and those about to die so let's get off this god land.d beach and i ina fuller's credits the speech the colonel george taylor at omaha. nearly 30 years prior to making big red one, sergeant zach, played by lee evans, excellent film if you never seen it, the steel helmet, a similar version of the same beach when he is reminiscing about world war ii would set a moral clarity to him that he felt was lacking in korea. even more interesting and i think suggestive of the influence for head on his buddy darrell's and that darrell za nuch, it is also in the longest day with robert mitchum. we can trace an art from the longest day to the big red one

to send private ryan, the latter film spends this nailbiting 25 or so minutes on the beach landing scene. like all great storytellers, spielberg knows the power of keep characters in the audience identifies with. that this d-day landing happens at the beginning of saving private ryan. is an introduction to those characters which is very different than the others i have been talking about. a dramatic and sustained opening it is, showing a strong commitment to picturing a protester rick -- grotesque realities of combat, the vomiting, the surprise death before the men even get into the water, the unsparing look at bodies torn apart by enemy fire. i'm a little envious of it. he died the year before send private line was released. he did not see it. spielberg is so masterfully

creating a sense of identification with his characters. and it landing scene, the way the camera bobs up and down so we are in the water with the soldiers. a kind of simulation style. that is all i have to say. thank you very much and now attend the floor over to my colleague. [applause] >> thank you. good morning. i don't have a presentation, but we can keep the slider. that is fine. my presentation is going to be about all -- is going to be about "the longest day." i was looking at what i prepared and it occurred to me that there is a parallel to "saving private because sometimes the mission is a man and the man really is called ryan and he really is lost in the chaos of

d-day. ryane case of my remarks, is cornelius ryan, the journalist who wrote the book "the longest day." which was adapted into the motion picture. , for my remarks, to cut -- to recover something which i think is the strength of that book and use it as the fixed point and when i am doing. for me, the point of thinking is not tostory film use that film -- that film as a way to understand the moment it depicts. in this case, i am not trying to understand 1944. but rather the moment in which the film was made. in the case of "the longest day ," 1962, in the case of "saving 1998.e ryan,"

i have fascinated by the way in the fixed point of history or the fixed point of the source material is changed in order to suit the needs of the time in which the film was made. a number of points in my remarks, that is what i will be doing. sourcesrnelius ryan's texts as a fixed point for the adaptation to see, what was it that they kept from the source text and what did they change? sometimes, tiny details of changed. i want to get it, why might that have been altered? first of all, cornelius ryan. how many of you -- i am sure you have all seen "the longest day," right? how many of you have read the book? have you also read his other books like "a bridge too the far," "the last battle."

he was originally, he was born in ireland in 1920. this is very significant because ireland was neutral in world war ii. he did not have to be involved. he chose to be involved. as a young journalist, he moved to the united kingdom, he took a job with the daily telegraph which was interested in young men who did not have an obligation to fight in the armed forces. and he particularly had a coverage in the air were. his training was not a formal academic training. we knew he trained as a violinist as a mute -- at a music academy in dublin. and had -- he is not been to university or anything. came to know his craft the hard way, through experience.

was -- he only deployed to the continent after d-day. he was assigned to general patton's army. and wrote about that. war, he joinedhe time magazine and became a bureau chief for them in jerusalem where they covered the war of independence of israel. it was that experience that reminded him of the need in creating a historical account of a moment to bring in multiple perspectives. no one perspective, he felt, could capture the offering. he was growing up in island, he always said, starting to read irish history, he became so aware that history is dependent upon who is telling the story. seemo irish history books

to be able to agree with each other, let alone once a british book was brought into the picture. he came at the whole question of history from this point of view, you need to have multiple perspectives. from my point of view as a historian, i think this has been one of his great contributions. to insist on having multiple perspectives. having every side of the story and trying to emphasize with all of the people, even the so-called bad guys. in the 1950's, he came to work for colliers magazine, was working in journalism. particularly did well with a treatment of the and reader i'll ocean line of sinking. which he adapted into a book. suddenly when everything was going well, disaster struck. because colliers magazine went bust. he lost basically his meal

ticket. in 1956, he revisited normandy. and became injured -- became interested in writing a full-scale treatment of what had happened there. the question that he asked when he was walking up and down -- when he was looking down onto the beach from the atlantic emplacements is what connected the germans who were here to defend and the allies who were here to attack? what was it that connected them? he came to the conclusion, the cable that joined those men together, was fear. he wanted to try and explore what it felt like to be in that situation. he formed the idea of writing a massive treatment of the one-day d-day. he planned the book to be

released on the 15th anniversary of d-day which was going to be in 1959. and began touting the proposal around new york publishers. fits was the least fashionable publisher at the moment, the readers digest, who said they would publish short articles but also they would pay for the research of the whole thing. this was a great breakthrough. move was to place an advertisement in american newspapers, asking for veterans to get in contact and share stories. he then repeated this exercise and france, britain, and germany. veterans coming he sent out a questionnaire. then he used the questionnaire to hone in on the people he wanted to do in-depth interviews with. also did parallel archive

work going through regimental war diaries, and message logs to pinpoint the time and place that different things have happened. he is going over his notes, he is incredibly careful with recording what people said. his notesg back over with president kennedy and says mr. president, i don't understand why when the news came through that you had won, you told me you felt angry. why did you feel angry? said, no, what i

actually said was i feel on great -- hungry. [laughter] i think it is typical of ryan that you would want to get a quote absolutely right. he is a writer on the way out. he collides with a hollywood who is on the way down the is been in hollywood for a long time. his credits go back to the 1920's. bogged down in the project to film the story of cleopatra. he had worked in world war ii with the u.s. army. saw the cinema as being a way of actually changing people's attitudes to world affairs. as a filmere my work historian collides with my work as a scholar of public diplomacy and somebody who is interested in how individuals can be involved in international affairs. because he believed as a

filmmaker, he could change people's attitudes to world affairs. 1944, he made a film called "wilson," which emphasized the values of internationalism and world war i. he is looking for ways to revive an interest in a collective enterprise, allies working together to make the world a better place. he sees a d-day as being a thing that could tell that story, and also a surefire box office success to revive the fortunes of his movie studios which is 21st century fox. he buys the rights to the longest day four $175,000, and sets about getting the film made. there are three key decisions in creating "the longest day." the first is to allow contributing countries to the story to have their own film directors direct the relevant

sequences. he hires a german to direct the german sequences. the german was annexed communist. he had been jailed by the nazis. then in the german army as an occupier in france. he had come to prominence with an amazing german warfel called -- about a small group of boys who defend the bridge from the american advance. it came out in 1959. the u.k. external theme for who, who was a filmmaker worked with documentaries and world war ii, and the u.s. directed by andrew martin, the second unit director from hollywood. he had done a lot of work on ben professional great reputation. second key decision was to use an all-star cast. this is maybe one of the most remembered aspects of "the longest day."

it turns the film into a collective act of remembrance that suddenly, it seems like hollywood is remembering world war ii by having all of these stars pop up. steiger at comes on for two minutes, says his line, then you don't see him later in the movie. i am told no actor worked longer than four days on "the longest day." people were just rotating income or rotating up. some doing it as volunteers. this helped with the marketing. it made the film interesting and relevant to a diverse range of people. in thebeen used before bible story, the greatest story ever told her to we have these tiny cameos from major people. also the cast had symbolic value. the french actors who were selected are people who were known from the french movies made during the war. there was a way in which the film was working with people who

potential audiences had emotional investment in the four americans, there was a special meaning for john wayne. casting john wayne as benjamin vande fort, colonel vandervoort, -- i thinkave been the person was younger than john wayne. john wayne is ridiculously old to be playing this character. he is in his miss -- mid 50's. vandervoort was 27 on d-day. there has to be a reason why a john wayne was calloused. you see a generational split as they seek to cass young actors in the role of the a listed men. robert wagner, a teen star at that point, plays one of the rangers. is in it.ehmer paul anchor. all of these people had great meaning and came out of the team culture from the 1950's.

i think this was more than just marketing the film and making it relevant to young people. it was about building a generational recognition and also starting to show a generational dynamics, as if the teens of the 1950's could be led by the father figures of the 1940's. "the longest day even in -- even it ise longest day," about connecting to the father figure. bits ofuestion of what the stories were told, there is emphasis on the competence of american leaders. and the courage that they show, exposing themselves under fire, and how we can have confidence in this generation going forward. the key decision is to use it veterans, multiple advisors to focus on military to emphasize authenticity of locations in

action. amazing things they did was to rebuild the gliders that did not exist anymore. and use them to re-create the landing sequences. from the book, what is retained, there is a multiple perspective format. lots of small stories brought together. some of them quirky, some of them sad, to create a collective mood. i think it is particularly interesting the way in which it focuses on soldiers superstition and the stories soldiers tell themselves to try and find a way of getting through the day and rationalizing a random experience. both the film and book are honest about the role of error and random death from the nasty things that happened, ranges have shown shooting, the germang germans, story emphasizes german attempts to guess what their allies are

doing. it goes into the reasons for ther failure to repulse invasion. there is an emphasis on hitler's poor management. he is shown as being asleep and unable to respond. and insistent that the real invasion will take part -- take place at the part of catalase. normandy must be a diversion. you don't have an actor playing hitler, but he dominates as an absent presence. it is very interestingly done. this human -- and there is humor in the film. actually, in the film, the germans tend to be the characters that generate the humor. the scene where the only two aircraft available is basically played for laughs with an air -- he isonel giving

very angry on the telephone and flies down the beach. in the book, ryan reports people actually saying allies -- analyzing they admired that somebody would do this. despite the opposition, somebody would attempt to fly and repel the invasion. one of the criticisms that is put against "the longest day," especially from the vantage that the1989, is violence is so sanitized. -- for thespite time, it did as much as it could. the producers guild tried -- the production code administration, the pca, tried to tone down the violence. to have fewer dead bodies at the scene. he refused. they also try to take out the ambiguity, they did not want to have american troops shown

shooting people as they tried to surrender. zanuck refused. what they do cut out from the book is they cut down on the rs beingf parachute killed. it would be very painful to watch people drowning in full kit. is removed. they don't really deal with canadians. they cut out a scene where canadian troops revealed to have cut the throats of surrendered german prisoners. they don't show the british submarines leaving a pathway to -- for the ships to follow which is an important scene in the book. they leave out the intelligence panic. they leave out -- one of the things that amazes me about d-day is the associated press accidentally announced d-day two days early. luckily, nobody noticed her thought it was an error.

-- noticed or thought it was an error. significantly, it cuts out the stories of ordinary germans. much longer seems in the germ -- and the books were small groups of germans are introduced and placed under fire. there is one scene where a captain will not let them surrender and as conditions get worse and worse, they are desperate to surrender and in the and, they are able to surrender. that is cut out. some new material is added in. particularly there is a french resistance character based on genuine historical resistance. she is a female, played by arena demo. you might ask, why have it -- why have a young female lead? this is the less attractive side of daryl zanuck.

he was interested in starlet. it was said that every day 4:00, a new perspective starlet would be brought to his rooms in hollywood for the casting couch. --e we are in the years of the post harvey weinstein's. but the aerosonic was the original hollywood sexual predator. he was casting in france for the longest day, met and began a with the actors. once she was his girlfriend, she needed to have a big part in the film. so she did. there is a little bit of historical sleight of hand. a historical role was actually after d-day, the character worked after d-day. but she is brought into the build up before d-day as a way of introducing the french resistance. the -- some other things i may

like to talk about, maybe they will come up in questioning. ofooked at the marketing which placesday," emphasis on the scale of the film, how much money had been spent, how authentic uniforms and weapons were. and on the stars. zanuck pushed forward his own role. he actually and compared himself to eisenhower. but added, when eisenhower did it, he already had the men and the planes whereas i had to find the men and the planes. he actually placed himself somewhere in advance of eisenhower in having restaged the day. the studio put out a study guide to encourage people to think in an"the longest day" educational way. the final set of questions asked students to think about the value of war.

zanuck argued in one of his interviews that war was a terrible waste. what about the value of tricks? how were tricks and deception "?ed in "the longest day how does it compare to other war movies? as with "saving private ryan," part of the marketing of "the theest day" was the fact of young actors involved had gone through training and were admired by the veterans who were on the set. there were a number of newspaper the rangesut how were terribly impressed that robert wagner could get up. the actual pointer hawk in the way they had done it in world war ii. was a great success. it became -- it made a lot of

money for 20th century fox and redeemed darrell zanuck's career. the historian and great friend of this institution, stephen ambrose, recalls that he just gave up on talking about d-day without talking about "the longest day." introducingto norman culture as coming you know, robert mitcham in "the longest day." board, --n vande indervoort as john wayne "the longest day." cornelius ryan, realized he had been on a great formula. he went on to write "the last battle." and "a bridge too far." in 1974.f cancer he sold the rights to "the last battle" which was never made and the rights to "a bridge to the

oo far" whiche t was made. it came out in 1976. the multiple perspective narrative has been taken up by other writers and was also used in other forms of motion pictures. i-watching "the longest day" realized it anticipates the disaster movies of the 1970's. the idea of having multiple vignettes was a way of showing how an event happens to many people at the same time. theck and double downs on war pictures and is involved in the development of a number of classics, including patton. but he is burned by -- he puts a lot of effort into that in the film drops at the box office. now, looking back on that film that has become part of remembrance, it is watched and replayed on tv as a way of

recalling d-day, and i think that we now revisit the film as part of remembering remembering, if you like. it is interesting that the older stars have endured. the younger stars are forgotten. like at the time, somebody paul anchor was known and recognized, now you have to go to wikipedia to find out what it was he did. somehow, there is certain anonymity for the younger cast that they did not haven't the time. it is amazing looking at the film how our ideas of acting have changed, what realism looks like has changed, and how the emphasis of hollywood has changed too. the things hollywood wants to talk about has changed. i think the biggest change is in the representation of the enemy. in 19 622 itich

was necessary because the germans were the allies of the west to talk about germany in a compassionate way. and make an attempt to understand the german position. if you compare that to "saving private ryan," i would say the germans in "saving private ryan" have more in common with the orcs and lord of the rings than the germans you see in "the longest day." i also think it is important that in "the longest day," there's an emphasis on allies. but the french and british are given equal standing in the telling of the story. more british troops used in d-day then u.s. troops. this is not -- this is one of the absences in "saving private ryan." there's not an attempt to talk about the british experience. there's just this line about how whole -- how horrible the general is. saving private ryan was serving the united that

states had in the mid-90's which did not include acknowledging and affirming alliances. it was more about going alone. , the longestto me day looks outward and forward " looksving private ryan backward and inward. both of those are valid directions to look at they both have consequences and shape the way in which a film is put together. in 1962, the u.s. needed to remember corporation. it needed to assert the wisdom of the father and maybe find a way of taming young people in going forward into the 1960's. it needed to reconcile with the germany and i think this is probably the high water approach of films about implying an understanding of germany. another film like this would be "the enemy below."

the summary and hunt movie. i think there is great value today in cornelius ryan's reporting. i wish more stories were told from all sides. i hope that at some point in the future, people will go back to his perspective and more historical movies will have this kind of multi-perspective. to me, to anticipate a question about the best of the best d-day movie, to be honest, it is the one in my head when i'm reading "the longest day." that has everything. it has the colored, realism, and i find it terribly moving. thank you for your attention. i look forward to our discussion. [applause] >> thank you both, marcia and neck. floor to wandering the serve as the moderator from the floor. before we get to rick with a question here in the front,

there is a question from online and it is for nick. those are all darrell zanuck's films. i guess either one of you could answer this specifically. differences, favorites, your own personal favorite, what was annexed's favorite? could you elaborate on these three classics? nick: i like the longest day best because it has british people in it. one of them plays the bagpipes. [laughter] marsha: good answer. i am a fan of "the longest day." i don't know which one zanuck felt strongly about. i'm assuming it was "the longest day." have been. i wonder if before we could get to questions, i did think of one thing while the quiz talking to you said something about what realism looks like and how it changes over time. i agree. that is very interesting. it is also what it sounds like.

if you ever want to really experience that d-day landing scene in "saving private ryan," close your eyes and listen to it. the sound is extraordinary. it sounds a different than these other landing scenes. obviously, this is a matter of technology. but also really refining what it would have sounded like. nick: i think that is a very good point. each generation has a different thing that it emphasizes in terms of realism. moreewers, we become attuned. i don't know if you have had the experience of watching "jurassic park." you can now see the joints in the original movie. the effects were 100% convincing whenever it was -- 1992? it is no longer compensable in our eyes get better. our ears get better.

our expectations change. income,the effects especially the back projection in "the longest day" seems incredibly obvious and unconvincing. >> a question of the front to your right. clicked, i have a two-part question about "the longest day ." can you tell us about the critical acclaim the movie had? the second, can you talk about the german actors? were they participants in world war ii? the: first thing to say is critics were divided. some thought it was stagey and corny. ironically, some of them complained about incidents that were real incidents. i think what they disliked was the motion picture. in terms of the germans, yes, a number of the germans have been veterans and world war ii. i think the most -- the most moving thing i found researching

this is that kernel that hickey andbeen a german occupier was famously climbed -- kind to the french are in the french people were arrested, he would try to cheer them up while they were waiting to find out if they were going to be shot or not. he had trained as a clown. he would do these clown routines. frenchman wrote a novel remembering this kind german who would try to cheer them up while they were waiting for their debt. he looks through the binoculars coming over ships and turns and says, oh, my god, they are coming. they are coming for me. he has scars on his face. he was a veteran of the eastern front. thatse the german soldiers we get too low in -- get to know in "the longest day" are older, because they are hiring in the

ranks, they tend to be people in worlddelisted men war ii now playing senior officers. they are not actually playing themselves. a are playing -- they are playing or trying to re-create the people who were in charge. i think that gives it a certain authenticity that you have these people playing themselves. it had happened before. a lot of the extras in "all quiet on the western front" were veterans of world war i. but wearing different uniforms. they had americans playing germans. germans playing americans. french plane germans. part of the novelty of being in the film. it gives these films -- i think they should have a special draw on our authenticity, on our participants are involved and were present while scenes were being shot. there are examples of french

people coming forward and saying, no, you can't show that the that did not happen. please change it around. and zanuck going with requests from participants observing the filmmaking to make it more as it was. marsha: correct me if i am wrong, but the reviews i have read are by and large incredibly positive. especially emphasizing the realism aspect. i always wonder, every studio, when they release a found, they send out press releases. i wonder how much of that comes from -- we spend $10 million on this picture, and this was very authentic. and how much of it is really critical reaction that is not drawing from the press releases. that had a power more so than they do now. nick: here is an interesting thing. the reviews of "a bridge too far" really go after ryan o'neal being cast.

they say, it is ridiculous that a man that young would be in command of trips. he was exactly the right age. he was exactly the right age. that the war movie starts to give the public the idea that the battlefield commander should be some result old john wayne type like sergeant. like benjamin vandervoort in "the longest day." hollywood undercuts reality. hollywood's realism undercuts the right -- the reality of actual life and makes people doubt. a thing that is actually completely accurate. it is a strange relationship between realism and audience expectation. reality and audience expectation. marsha: i like to that phrase ethnic used of people watching to remember day"

remembering. i think that gets at that. this idea that hollywood can supplant history in some places. that is how we imagine and think of some of these things as opposed -- because it is so powerful. it is easy to wrap when you see it on a big screen as opposed to reading about it. >> question in the back table to your left, please. >> a couple of points i would like a comment on. isn't one of the reasons that "t is thea tora" did poorly japanese attacked pearl harbor and even resenting his sympathetic view of the japanese washeir preparations for it a reason it elicited a -- an adverse reaction. -- was not anyone in the japanese command that was known to americans back then. the factongest day,"

that at that time, you were literally at the height of the cold war, released the same year as the cuban missile crisis that you have presented any kind of an event like that negatively than would have been something where they would not have gotten much cooperation. whereas private ryan comes along war, weave won the cold have had the 40th and 50th anniversary celebrations, and people can more easily -- more easily except the darker side of it later on. -- zanuck could not have known that the berlin crisis was going to happen. that the cuban missile crisis would be going on when "the longest day" was released. it certainly met an emotional reassurance to

audiences and are minded them of what underlying values were. the flipside is "tora! tora! tora!" came out at a difficult moment in the relationship between the united states and asia because of the vietnam war. i don't want to get bogged down in "tora! tora! tora!" because it is a long time since i looked for thought -- looked at or thought about the film. i think "saving private ryan," i see it as being part of this reevaluation of what has been known as the greatest generation. i think you have to think about the filmmakers as being people who have fathers and those fathers were passing away in the 1990's. the person they have been trying to rebel against in the 1970's was not the person they were trying to understand in the 1990's. the films i look at to that where you"star wars,"

see george lucas casting the dark father figure, darth vader in the 1970's. theby the late 1990's, when generation had pushed those feelings are now leaving life behind, it is suddenly sympathetic. trying to understand this people. you have the second cycle of star wars films where it is about how a good person could do bad things. reestablishing the generation as a heroic generation. " ise "saving private ryan being part of that process, revisiting with affection and admiration the people of the 1940's, from the perspective of the 1990's. the problem of "saving private ryan" is that it does so using the language of the 1990's. to me, so many things in "saving private ryan" are realistic. it is like a train driven i a great locomotive of realism.

then the actors open their mouths. and they are bantering like they are in a tarantino film. to me, the script is not worthy of the visuals and , the amazing stuff that goes on. i think the script in "saving private ryan" is dated very badly. i would rather watch it with the sound off. [laughter] think to support your argument about the idea of the greatest generation and understanding is a framing device of the film. revisiting normandy as full or talked about. one person's memory of what happened. i am actually going to have moderators preference here. you brought up star wars. [laughter] i am a child of star wars marsha, one month prior to the

big red one being released was "empire strikes back." how did for her feel about one of his stars may be outshining his film? was this good? did they ride the coattails of the second star wars film? marsha: it is good anytime you have someone in your film come to prominence in another film. one" did terrible at the box office. it was not a great success. as i told you, it was also a greatly diminished version of release.ler wanted to having mark hamill in that role at the time when it would have been hard to predict what , prior to its release, was a casting thing. he spent his career finding actors like jean evans in giving them roles in films and seeing something in them that other directors and producers have not yet seen and starting many careers. marsha, do you think he

cast mark hamill deliberately? in all these films comedic and see an attempt to have generational casting, to have an iconic father figure, but also a symbolic younger generation figure. marsha: absolutely. nick: the casting of mark hamill -- you see a crossgenerational message within the film. marsha: robert caro dean, etc. " took place at the end of world war i. fuller was interested in soldiers that came back to fight in subsequent wars. that was another one -- not only that history repeats itself, and here we are again, but they run into a big red one monument from world war i in "big red one." the young guys go look come a while, they have a monument. no, that was from the last war. >> the front table right here.

dr. cull, for question for dr. gordon. you left that question hanging as to why john wayne in his late i will suggest that perhaps it was an attempt to redeem the fact that as i understand it, wayne used his status to stay out of combat in second world war. none has always bugged me. the more sensitive question, for dr. gordon, is it seems to me that by the 1978 them at the beginning of the film, the fuller and lee marvin were about the same age when asked about their connection. they were both combat veterans. marvin in the specific -- and the pacific, fuller in europe. i wonder about having a marvin-old sergeant, lee has that wonderful ravaged face.

i am curious as to what the connection was between marvin and how fuller made a decision to use someone so much older than his sergeant would have been? marsha: that is a great question. i don't really have a definitive answer to that. i don't know precisely why fuller -- i know he really wanted marvin. he had to talk them into the role. marvinmember correctly, was hesitant because of his age to play that role. fuller really loved working with veterans. he loved working with people who he did not have to basically sense -- since her basic training in order to understand what it was like. that idea of aunt -- of authenticity. that would've appealed to him. as time went on come it would have been different casting. to the lateyou get 1970's, if you are looking for a combat veteran, people are getting older. that's a reality. >> back to your left. a little bit of a preamble.

as someone who is watched probably dozens of war for two movies, i am fascinated how the ark of the movies changes. in particular, the quality. you got the story of g.i. joe, you get battleground come in my opinion, good movies made right after. and then in the 1950's, there is not a lot come in my opinion, except for an underrated movie which has jack poland's an idiot albert, and whatnot. is a movie where the army does not cooperate at all because it shows caret us and so forth. it seems to me -- this is just a comment, however these movies made? in other words, my understanding is hollywood is famous for copycats. if someone comes out with a great movie, i have to get mine. with "the the 1960's

great escape," then you see a huge flop in the -- in "the battle of the bulge." it is like a mother who is the lunatic making this in spain during the middle of winter? and in the closing scene you don't see snow or anything. just a comment maybe about how does hollywood look at making world war ii movies? factors of why they make what they make when they make it, that kind of thing. what were the last 40 years -- is there an architect? you are the folks -- is there an arc? you are the folks who study this. answer how you want. thanks. marsha: that is a book length answer, my friend. that is a big question. fascinating -- it a fascinating question. i think part of the answer is what do people want to get out of world war ii? his world war ii there to stand for itself?

four is it there to stand for some kind of proxy for the moral purpose of the country? i think once the united states was involved in vietnam, it became difficult to represent world war ii. how the film -- world war ii has -- is changed becomenam and the films more realistic. also, more morally ambiguous. i am fascinated by the presence of water or two in star wars. in some ways, star wars is used as a way to have the moral certainties of the first wave of world war ii films, without the complexity of a post-vietnam world war ii film. to a situation where we are looking at world war -- instead of star wars being about world war ii, for many young

people, want more to star wars. they are looking at it as a badies. goodies, it is very distant from something we would recognize as history. marsha: but to me also say one of the things i talk about extensively in the book is full or's dealings with the department of defense and department of the army on all of his films. dod often refused cooperation with fuller for a number of reasons that are too lengthy to go into. this is to say that if you wanted military cooperation, your script had to be approved. you had to have certain things in it and not have other things in it. might have tarnished the image of the army or the american military. what is acceptable in terms of that representation is always changing. very different during the war than after the war and 10 years after the war. that certainly shaped the nature

inwhat you can end cannot do a film that has any kind of stamp of approval from our participation. nick: that still affects things today. you have a situation with wind talkers where the pentagon insisted on scenes of marines taking trophies, being cut out of the film. that is correct? it is not in the film? i think so. >> in the middle row to your right. >> i am by far not an expert on john wayne, i wish my wife was here because she is the local expert where we live on john wayne. thatt is my understanding he tried to join the military, he went to the army, went to the navy, i don't recall the reason

why he was turned down. but he was turned down from serving. there is even a story that he was oss trying to recruit him. that they sent the letter to the house of his ex-wife who, just to mess with the john wayne, did not ask the letter to him. but he did get a certificate for participation in the oss. i think you was very guilty about it afterwards. desireainly affected his to be supportive and patriotic. he was a super patriot because he had not served and was in the way that he would've hoped and felt badly about it. a think there's something to that however, john wayne was not taking on the longest -- on "the " as a charity case. he was paid a lot of money to do it.

paid 10sted on being times as much as much as the other members of the cast because he wanted to get revenge zanuck onfor -- on a comment he made on "the alamo." i think it was $250,000 he was paid for being in the film. there must've been a reason wise and it really wanted to have john wayne in the middle of the all rather than william holden who was casted in that part. >> question to your right at the same table. >> i would like to bring up something that we might all keep in mind as this goes on. i am a combat veteran from vietnam and my father was killed in normandy. i have done a lot of research and have written articles. tom also in years past just discover things with the civil war reenactment. i know we think that is ridiculous but you learn quickly what not to carry when you're hiking on a hot day.

it also leads you to appreciation of authenticity. i would like to make a point about world war ii movies in general. that civil war reenacting is easy to do. you have a few canons, a few horses, and a bunch of guys marching along. you are real. -- from vietnam, you can't get a perspective just how huge war is. the tanks, the trucks, the artillery, the masses of planes, even small human stuff in vietnam. you almost can't capture it. what do you do? world war ii comey you have to reduce it down to a small unit. and you are trying to create the feel of a huge, huge operation. and you are in the military and you are in one of these things

come a don't have the sense that you are by yourself. even special units don't. in order to try to put world war ii on the screen, you have got small ---- focusing on on a small unit. that is very hard to do. because small units do not operate by themselves. these --p with all of what was the movie where they -- there were -- "the dirty dozen." the second best movie ever made also did that come a was one where clint eastwood, they had -- it was ae brilliant movie for the purposes of war. that fromed to get something big and turn it into something small. -- ing private ryan,"

disagree with you about the banter. it is exactly what people do in small units. marsha: about the what? >> the banter. about the script. nick: no, no. i'm saying the things they were saying are using lines from tarantino films. like 1940'snter banter. it is 1990's banter. this was 1965 banter when i was in vietnam. nick: i thought we were talking about d-day. heroes," the banter in there was very -- >> "kelly's heroes." is an example of how world war ii movies are dealing with the present. i don't think donald sutherland would make sense as a character in world war ii. he is basically a hippie. it is a great invention. -- but it is part

of a film having a double existence. existing in its own time and the time that is being represented. sure, there will be banter. interested -- it makes sense for the banter to reflect the time that is being represented, rather than -- the film is going to date if it is very much of the moment in which it was made. marsha: i think it is -- think you for bringing that up. an important reminder. there is war and war movies. that includes deck raise. even if you think about something with a documentary that is very focused. you have to be able to tell a story that people can digest and understand. to tell a story of a war or of one day in the war. that is what "the longest day" is trying to do. it is telling this much even though it has an ambition of the wide-angle perspective. you have to be able to create a

narrative. otherwise, people would not watch it. and would not understand it. >> we have an online question that is along the lines of what the gentleman was just speaking to. this is open to either of you. hopefully both. do you believe there are any more unique or original ways that d-day can be presented in just, instead of maybe following the squad or just following one day? are there any unique or original ways id days can be presented in film moving forward? thata: i actually think the answer to that has more to do with technology. even 20 yearsk down the line, what still berg does is so heightened. i can barely breathe during that on the big screen. holding my breath. have,he technology we virtual reality, i think eventually somebody is going to do something quite interesting

with that. i don't know exactly what that will be like. but it will be more experiential. isn't that while -- what all of these directors are trying to do? this goes back to the fuller quote of firing behind the screen to his audience behind the film. the more you can immerse someone in the film of being there, with all of their senses, all the senses you can activate in this way. i think we will see that at some point, maybe even here. nick: i would agree that each generation will look for its own retelling to find the things that are meaningful to that generation. i know that captain dyer's is working on a project at the moment that returns to d-day. that will have a special authenticity and a special meaning because of the people who were involved in it. our collective memory does not include all of the

tellings of the day. it may be that there are new ways of thinking about it that are already out there of which you are unaware. early 1990's, there was a british tv movie called "foreign field." written by a talented writer. this movie includes alec veteran returning to d-day who has a mental disability, coming out of the was brain-damaged. and lauren bacall as an older woman looking to return to the grave of her brother and veterans meet each other, they interact, it is funny but sad. just ona of focusing the returning veterans it's into way of thinking about importantd-day in an way. it occurred to me that there are enough stories in "the longest day" to tell the whole thing

over again from the same source material. and have a compelling movie. but without repeating any of the material that is in the motion picture. the story of the midget submarines on d-day is particularly -- i find particularly interesting. the polish involvement. there were polls on both side of d-day's. polls who were forced to be manning the defenses by the germans. and polls who were part of the invasion army. i would be fascinated to see what does it feel like to be and trying to repel the ally invasion or be polish and being part of the allied invasion? how does that play out? youick: we have about -- >> have about 10 minutes before the break. i think we will get to most of the questions. >> to mention there was a 4.5 hour original directors version ."ur -- for "big red one marsha: it is lost.

that is why they over -- they attended to reconstruct that, based on full or's materials. there was a discovery in the archives of some of the material that had been cut out. that is literally an attempt to kind of stitch it back together as close as is possible. that clocks in a little under three hours. it adds one hour to the released version. to my knowledge, that does not exist. >> in the back to your left. i have a question for both of you. have talked about these movies that we all love and enjoy. and the context at the time that they came out. last year, there were two big books i came out. was called "we will always have casablanca." inwas a story of bogart casablanca. and then all the actors that

were basically refugees from europe. another book had come out about climate with gary cooper that talked about the mccarthy hearings and how that worked with the movie. of you,tion to the two have either of you written any books or have thought about writing any books about some of these fantastic war movies in the context of the times that they came out? i have not. but, it certainly is very interesting. because this is still on my -- so on my mind, the behind-the-scenes stories are so fascinating. like with the "big red one." to think about making a film in the 40's cap -- 1940's, 1950's, 1960's, doesn't come until until 1980, that shifts over time. it's an incredible story.

i've already done my fuller book. nick: i worked on a jenerrie so i did a film on how films about the british empire reflect the times in which they were made. looking at pictures like john huston's "man who would be king" or "indiana jones," what's going on in there as it reflects on the emempire. i also looked at images of the future and how we think the future will change. i had a chapter on what "robocop" tells us about 1989 and things like that. so i think pretty much everything i do is trying to look for the moment, using film as a window on historical moment in which the film is made rather than as a sort of textbook on the past.

marsha: and we just recorded a podcast yesterday. world war ii museum started this podcast of movies and we did it on "best years of our lives. qust." a lot of it was about how that film was really looking forward and trying to figure out how to not dismiss the past but to move of om it, to kind o-- reindependent grate. especially war films, it's always changing in terms of that perspective and i think it's one of the most interesting. nick: here's a question. not every war gets a film made about it. what if you're the people of my generation who went to the fauk lands? they don't really have a at this point to -- film to revisit their experiences. they have to look at other people's films that rhyme in

some way with something they recognize. there's a great luxury in being a country that has enough of a film industry to tell these sorts of stories. marsha: but i think it's also very telling. if you look proportionately how many films are made about war ii and drea and vietnam immediately after, it tells you how those wars were perceived in the culture. nick: the reality of filmmaking is a business and you have to think that enough people worldwide now will be interested in the story to make it worth telling. marsha: when fuller made his second war film. his first two were korean conflict war films. it was apt a very difficult time in that conflict and it was really hard for him to convince his producers that he could make

a second film that people would want to go and see because it was depressing news and are people going to want to see that on screen is this there's always a challenge of box office. nick: one thing i want to get to that hasn't come up so far, in "longest day," there's a moments where a line is pretty much repeated but once by an american and once by a german and it raises a really interesting philosophical point. early in the film where they're getting ready for -- trying to choose are we going to go on the sixth of june, is the weather going to be right? the john wayne character says all this problem with the weather makes me wonder whose side is god really on. in the con texts of the film, an hour and a half later, curtjurgen is commenting on what's happening. he said this is so disastrous,

it makes me wonder whose side is god really on? that idea that both sides in the conflict believed that they were doing something right. that the germens had on their buckle "god with us." that could be troubling because just because we think we're doing good in the world doing what's right shouldn't stop us really reflecting on that and considering are we sure this is the right thing to do? i thought that was really interesting that they would include that kind of moral tension and perspective in "longest day." >> to your far right, please? >> thank you. it's been a fabulous presentation. but i wonder what fuller would have done if he'd have had the ability that we saw take place in "band of brothers."

and the ability to do convention is rble presentations of this subject. marsha: yeah. >> which is coming out again with more productions of other matters. the scenes from d-day and "band of brothers," for example. marsha: yeah, it pains me that he didn't get to make multiple versions of this story, actually, and that certainly could have been the case. i mean, he actually agreed to do "merrill's marauders," because he was told this is practice for making your big war film and it took another 18 years but yes, i think fuller was someone who was so invested in all -- and he was part -- he has one of those trajectories where resaw so many different fronts that he could

have told so many more stories. and, in fact, his journals and his let's -- there's a lot un accomplished writing that i believe some of -- unpublished writing that i believe some of it will be coming out with california perez in a year or two. journals and letters. there's a richness to that term -- material. it would have been wonderful had he not been so constrained by financial matters. nick: i was really taken by "band of brothers" and it does a better job of representing the -- something -- it seems like a more authentic story in the superb special -- interpersonal admission than save save and it's an amazing art form that has emerged. what is now called peak tv. the in-depth telling of a story with a high budget on cable

television platforms. that's an amazing tool and it's terrific to see what is now being done and i'm sure that brothers" band of was really at the opening of this new era of television, "the sopranos" and these other long-format shows that are really rewriting the book on visual storytelling. marsha: fuller had a real disdain for the kind of stroogeteck higher level stories. he thought the story should always be about the men on the ground. there are so many of those stories and so many that he really want told tell. >> we'll go over our time just a little bit. maybe one last question? >> sorry, two last questions. i was going to ask -- four hours. fuller must have known that was

t going to make it so i'd be curious to know what you think he was thinking and it seems like a real go for broke kind of , and the h the studio question i have in general because you were talking about how we make a movie for our time. i think "saving private ryan," -- it seemed to me we really want to focus on the veterans, get their stories while we can. and then you have stories right after the war, like you mentioned "best years of our lives," and i think "go for broke" was really trying to get a particular story out to soldiers. hose is that kind of a fashion too? do we go from focusing on the soldiers and getting their

stories to oh, let's use world war ii as a backdrop for a lighter social political message and do you think there are different -- is that a fashion? nick: i'd just say yes. marsha: let me answer the fuller question. i have such empathy for this situation because i'm trying to image what it would feel like to be him and to have this attachment to this experience and to this story and to take 35 years to get to final littell it the way he's wanted to tell it all these years. you know what, i don't think i could have turned in a two-hour version of that. how do you do that? it's been building up. i think it would have been easier for him to to that in 1956 than in 1980 when he knows this is his one shot at it.

striegetically it was probably not a good move because he lost control of what was really his but i don't know how you can be as draconian as you have to be when you're editing a film when it's so personal and it's been building up in you for so long. nick: ashamed they couldn't have multiple versions like they did "boot," that exists in multiple lengths. >> thank you very much. that's the conclusion of our first session, and i think it's a great start. martin? [applause] >> up next, we interview university of california history professor lisbeth haas regarding the impact of the spanish missions on the native people in california