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Joined: Sep 29, 2008 Posts: 18593 Location: Albany, GA
Posted: Sat Mar 13, 2010 11:35 pm Post subject: HBO's 'The Pacific's Real-life stories
'The Pacific': Real-life stories mean extra 'weight' for actors By Rick Porter
March 12, 2010 7:51 PM ET
The stars of "The Pacific" had to endure a grueling boot camp before they started filming, then spent 10 months in brutal heat, rain and humidity while shooting the 10-part miniseries.
James Badge Dale, Joe Mazzello and Jon Seda also had one extra burden: They all played real-life U.S. Marines who served in the Pacific theater of World War II. Memoirs by Robert Leckie (whom Dale plays) and Eugene Sledge (Mazzello) are part of the source material for "The Pacific," and John Basilone (Seda) was a Medal of Honor winner who became well-known back home.
"It's interesting. Actors, we sit around and create these characters -- most of them are fictional, and you have a lot of room to play," Dale tells Zap2it. "You concentrate on the story you're creating. But now you have this other element of, this is a real man who lived through extraordinary circumstances, and we're telling a story of cultural significance. And it's also based on his words. ... As an actor, I felt a tremendous amount of responsibility. I talked to Jon Seda and Joe Mazzello about it, and they felt it too. There's a certain weight we had to carry."
"In regard to Basilone and his story, it's just so emotional," Seda adds. "The responsibility is huge. Basilone is looked at as a pretty big hero amongst the Marines. ... I just took everything I researched and learned about him and kind of stored it, and just tried to find the humanity in him."
Mazzello uses the word "responsibility" too in talking about Sledge -- something that hit home for him after he met with Sledge's family.
"You always want to please the director, the producers, the people who are making the movie," he says. "But when you speak to the man you're playing's son, you speak to his wife, it's a whole other sense of obligation. They put a lot of trust in me. They said, We'll let you tell the story of our father, the greatest man we've ever known and our personal hero, and we're going to let you show everyone who he was. When that's put on you, you feel it every single day."
"The Pacific" premieres at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (March 14) on HBO.
Joined: Sep 29, 2008 Posts: 18593 Location: Albany, GA
Posted: Sun Mar 14, 2010 10:49 pm Post subject:
'The Pacific' review: Brutal, epic, remarkable By Rick Porter on Zap2it.com
March 13, 2010 10:03 PM ET
Like "Band of Brothers" nine years ago, HBO's World War II miniseries "The Pacific" is a massive achievement. And like its Europe-set predecessor, it's at its best when it focuses on the small things as a way of reflecting the huge story it's telling.
The 10-part miniseries, which premieres at 9 p.m. ET Sunday (March 14), follows U.S. Marines as they advance across the Pacific theater of World War II, beginning with the landing on Guadalcanal in 1942 and continuing until the war's end in 1945. It's told principally through the eyes of three enlisted men: John Basilone (Jon Seda), Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale) and Eugene Sledge (Joe Mazzello), whose paths crossed during the campaign. The series is based in part on memoirs by Leckie ("Helmet for My Pillow") and Sledge ("With the Old Breed").
On the large scale, "The Pacific" does a frighteningly good job at depicting the brutal conditions not just in battle, but also in day-to-day life in locations like Guadalcanal, New Britain, Peleliu and Okinawa. Intense heat, unrelenting rain, inadequate ammunition and supplies and the fatigue and illness that come with it -- to say nothing of a dug-in, relentless enemy -- wore these soldiers down to the point that they became shadows of their former selves.
It's in depicting those things that writers Bruce McKenna, Michelle Ashford, Robert Schenkkan, George Pelecanos, Graham Yost and Laurence Andries, along with Dale, Mazzello, Seda and the rest of the cast really shine. Mazzello in particular undergoes an amazing transformation as Sledge turns from an eager enlistee to a hardened soldier. It's an incredible sustained performance, and a somewhat chilling one too.
Dale and Seda are equally good. Basilone, a Medal of Honor winner who's shipped back the United States to help the war effort at home, comes to feel as though he's neglected his fellow soldiers and looks for a way to return to the front; as Seda plays it, it's a fairly stoic performance, but the regret he feels in leaving his comrades behind plays out in his eyes.
Dale's Leckie, meanwhile, fights to maintain a link to his former life through frequent letters to a woman. He also suffers physical and emotional wounds; an episode midway through the miniseries finds Leckie recovering from illness at a hospital, where he spars with a psychologist (played by Matt Craven) about whether he's sane enough to return to his unit. There are echoes of "Catch-22" in their conversations, and it's a fascinating look at the mental toll the war took on its combatants.
What's all the more impressive about "The Pacific" is that because it's staying true to the stories of its central characters, it can't focus on the same group of soldiers all the time, the way "Band of Brothers" did with Easy Company. Leckie and Sledge did in fact serve together in the 1st Marine Division, along with Sledge's childhood friend Sid Phillips (played by Ashton Holmes), but they were in different regiments and didn't fight side-by-side. Basilone was in a different regiment as well and spent a good portion of the war stateside before returning to battle in early 1945.
Despite that, though, the miniseries doesn't meander. Though there are more than a few breaks from the fighting -- episode three deals primarily with a post-Guadalcanal respite in Australia -- "The Pacific" never feels like anything less than a cohesive whole. It's really a remarkable piece of television. I know what I'm doing for the next 10 Sunday nights.
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Listen to Seda tell part of Basilone's story, and you'll understand why:
