When Band of Brothers debuted on HBO in 2001, it saluted the men and women who had given their lives for their country on the battlefields of the European theatre during the Second World War.
The mini-series captured six Emmy awards and one Golden Globe, and was nominated for countless other kudos. It was critically acclaimed and brought life to the countless books written about the campaign, including that of author Stephen Ambrose, who wrote the book on which Band of Brothers was based.
Band’s team of executive producers, including Tom Hanks and Stephen Spielberg, are likely to have the same success with The Pacific, their follow-up mini-series that explores the lesser-known Pacific theatre, where Allied countries – including the U.S. – waged war with the Japanese.
Like Band of Brothers, The Pacific is epic in its scale. Wide panned shots fly over beaches turned into battlegrounds as Allied boats dump soldiers into a crossfire of enemy bullets. Screams ring out, orders are barked, expletives fly and blood gouts and sprays. Palm trees shimmer and metal helmets sizzle in the unbearable heat.
Like Band, The Pacific is based on real-life soldiers, in this case three U.S. marines – Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale, Rubicon), Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello, The Sensation of Sight) and John Basilone (Jon Seda, Close to Home) – whose stories intertwine their first clash with the Japanese in Guadalcanal, through the sands of Iwo Jima, the horror of Okinawa and their return home after V-J Day.
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And like Band, Hanks and Spielberg’s sprawling project stars lesser-known actors, including Canadian Scott Gibson. The Vancouver actor portrays the late Andrew (Ack Ack) Haldane, who was killed by a sniper on Oct. 12, 1944, during a battle on Peleliu, one of the Palau islands east of the Philippines.
Gibson says he was sent books written by Leckie and Sledge in order to research for the mammoth project, but it was Haldane’s letters, written to the dean of his college during his time overseas, that shed the most light on his character. |
The cast endured punishing conditions |
“He wrote the dean of his college right from when he arrived in Guatalcanal and all the way up to the end at Peleliu,” Gibson says from Los Angeles, where he’s in the midst of pilot season.
“There were 30 or 40 letters there where he’s not describing battles because he can’t, but the tone of the letters and the penmanship changes. Things that he says that you can’t get in any book.”
Gibson admits that he felt pressure to get Haldane just right, and told the late soldier’s nephew, Steve Moore, that he was intimidated. “I called Steve up and had a good little chat with him. I told him at the end of our chat that … I had some big shoes to fill. And he said, ‘Andy wouldn’t have said that, though. Just be yourself; I’m sure you’ll be great.’”
Gibson as Haldane |
Unlike Band of Brothers, however, The Pacific deals with battles and circumstances that haven’t gotten as much press, or books written or movies made about it. It was a learning experience, recalls Gibson, a thought echoed by Canadian director Jeremy Podeswa (Rome, Six Feet Under), who helmed three of The Pacific’s 10 parts.
“It was a very different war that was going in there,” Podeswa says on the line from Los Angeles.
“It was on tiny little islands that no one had ever heard of before, and fighting an unseen enemy. It was a very different conflict. It was a real education for me to bone up on what this series was dealing with.
This isn’t an encyclopaedic view of the war either. It’s very much the Pacific as seen through the eyes of three different and real marines in three different circumstances.” |
Gibson recalls the seven-month shoot in Australia, which included a boot camp similar to the one the Band of Brothers cast went through in preparation for that production, and the oppressive heat that the cast and crew had to endure, similar to what the marines dealt with back in the war.
“When those guys landed on Peleliu, it would have been close to 100 degrees Fahrenheit, and they had no water,” he says with wonder. “You … can’t imagine how these guys went through (it).”
Hundreds didn’t make it, and both men hope The Pacific – awards and accolades that are sure to come notwithstanding – informs the public about the sacrifice those soldiers made on some little islands a world away.
“I hope that everyone sees the commitment that we all made to these guys,” Gibson says quietly. “That’s the biggest reason for doing it.”
The Pacific debuts Sunday, March 14, at 9 p.m. ET/MT on HBO Canada.
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Video: a trailer for The Pacific
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