The myth and the men

LOS ANGELES -- Clint Eastwood was 15 years old when he picked up his local newspaper on a February morning in 1945 and first saw the famous photograph of six American GIs raising the flag on Iwo Jima. The iconic image galvanized the nation, and in the decades that followed came to symbolize the United States's triumph.

So when Steven Spielberg invited Eastwood two years ago to adapt the best-selling 2000 book ``Flags of Our Fathers" for the big screen, the filmmaker, now 76, jumped at the chance to take a closer look at the picture's faceless men, both on the battlefield and off.

`` `Flags of our Fathers' wasn't intended to be simply a war movie," says the rail-thin Eastwood. ``I wanted to pay homage to these soldiers but I also wanted to explore the whole marketing of the war, how the government sort of used these guys in the Iwo Jima photo, manipulated the information to fit its needs, and had these men doing all these show biz-y kinds of things."

As he delved into Iwo Jima's horrific particulars to re-create battle sequences, Eastwood became intrigued by Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi , in charge of the 22,000 soldiers defending the island. The result: a follow-up movie titled ``Letters from Iwo Jima," set for release next year. ``I don't think of it in terms of taking sides," Eastwood says. ``As we were going over the first draft of ``Flags of Our Father," I wanted to learn more about this brilliant general. So then we got more stories and more stories, and kept deciphering them and found some of these other characters are just terribly fascinating."

For ``Flags of Our Fathers," Eastwood, aided by his longtime casting director, the late Phyllis Huffman, assembled his cast by reviewing videotaped auditions. ``You try to find the right faces, the right mood, whatever looks right, sounds right, feels right. And then you make sure the actors have a certain technical ability. From there, I figure I can set the atmosphere and they'll do the rest."

Eastwood picked three actors with contrasting styles to portray the trio of soldiers shown in the photograph who toured the States to raise money for the war effort.

Fresh off his ensemble role in Paul Haggis's ``Crash," Phillippe gained insight into his character, the taciturn John ``Doc" Bradley, by speaking extensively with ``Flags" author James Bradley. The writer's father never discussed his wartime experience and concealed from his family the fact that he'd won the Navy Cross honoring his bravery on the field of battle.

`` `Doc' Bradley epitomized this Greatest Generation mentality in a lot of ways, where a man cannot cry or be weak," Phillippe reasons. ``There was no post-traumatic-stress syndrome diagnosis, no medicine for depression -- men of that time kind of had to deal with their pain internally. John Bradley came home from the war, raised a great family, ran a successful business -- that was something John Bradley was able to do and the other men were not."

To approximate his character's skills as a medic, Phillippe rehearsed procedures with a life-size dummy in his hotel room until he'd mastered the vintage World War II first-aid kit that would have been used by Doc Bradley.

``Doc knew his equipment so well he could find absolutely anything with his eyes closed, within seconds, so I'd practice on that dummy every night." Referring to Eastwood's legendarily efficient preference for first-take performances, Phillippe says, ``Learning how to use the bandages and tourniquets and splints was huge for me because I knew we wouldn't do more than two takes at the most."

A Native American actor who lives in Ottawa, Beach previously appeared as a Navajo code-breaker in John Woo's 2002 World War II drama ``Windtalkers," so he'd already steeped himself in that chapter of American history. The challenge, Beach says, came as he struggled with Eastwood to understand his character, Marine Ira Hayes.

Haunted by the memories of friends who'd died in combat, Hayes drank and behaved erratically at the fund-raising events and was sent back to the war midway through the tour.

Describing his character's breakdown scene, Beach says, ``Usually you only do one take with Clint, and this time, I did the scene and he says. `Nice. Again.' So I step back and wonder, he wants something but I don't know what. So I thought, `OK, I'll give him a little more juice.' After that take, I heard him say, `Yeah. Another.' Almost like, Adam, I loved it, but let me see it again. So I went for a walk in the corner and thought: `What does he want, what does he want?' And I said, `Don't hold back Adam. Let him see it all.' So I went into that room and bam! When that scene was over, I looked around and everybody was crying. It's amazing how much confidence you gain from Clint."

Beach himself was unnerved by the elaborate battle sequences that were staged on the black sand beaches of Iceland. ``You see 500 extras in uniform, and then hear them say, `We're going to put a thousand more dead bodies here.' I can hardly believe [the soldiers] did that, amongst all these bodies, having to push farther to claim that mountain."

A former child actor (Steven Soderbergh's ``King of the Hill"), Bradford spent hours interviewing Rene Gagnon Jr., the son of the character he plays.

Unlike the other soldiers in the picture who fought on the front lines, Gagnon was a ``runner" who relayed messages between the command post and the soldiers in the field. While his two comrades seemed ambivalent about being hailed as ``heroes," Gagnon appeared to bask in the limelight. ``I talked to Rene's son many times and decided my most important job was to make this guy a sympathetic character. He was just a kid trying to do right. He did the best he could and made some mistakes and learned from some of them.

``At Soldier Field in Chicago, all these people cheered for him; he's thinking `Maybe I'm on easy street from here on out.' He had hopes about how this sudden celebrity was going to affect him, and life served him the exact opposite. He died a janitor. Rene was just trying to make good under extraordinary circumstances."

Hugh Hart can be reached at hughhart6@hotmail.com.