Band of Brothers Miniseries Premiere, May 2001, Claire W.
From MemoryArchive
Who: Claire W. What: "Band of Brothers" TV Miniseries Premiere When: May, 2001 Where: Paris & Normandy, France
My story is not so much one of an important historical event, as a series of observations, through experience, on the attitudes of various groups in the year 2000, towards history. It is a snapshot of how we looked back on history, the dead, our own memories and how we related to the future, past and present.
Early in the year 2000 my grandmother, living in Los Angeles, received a phone call from the offices of HBO. The woman on the other end of the line was asking my grandmother’s permission for a young actor to visit her in order to research a new role he was to act in later that year. As my grandmother immediately knew, the character he was researching was that of my grandfather, my grandmother’s long dead husband.
Before he was a writer, my grandfather, Webster, had been a student at Harvard. When the US entered WWII he could have easily avoided the draft through his upper middle class family’s connections, but instead he volunteered for service. At Harvard he was an English major, hoping to someday write novels or be a journalist. My mother speculates that he resented his priviledge as an upper middle class man, and that his interest in journalism, in adventure and in being with the romanticized version of “normal folk” he imagined were really “his people” lead him to feel restless at Harvard. Not only did he leave Harvard, not only did he join the Army, but he volunteered for the most dangerous and adventuresome type of service possible. At the time paratroopers were a new military invention. Parachuting into enemy fire, behind enemy lines, ahead of the main invasion, often during the complete pitch black blankness of night broken only by the spiratic and uncomfortably close bursts of upward machine gun fire. He did not fully understand what he was getting himself into, but he knew it was closer to the romanticized life he envisioned for himself than Harvard could ever be. As an aspiring writer, I cannot imagine many things more conducive to description than the fear and boldness and subtleties of war. Like many soldiers he kept a journal and made sketches as he went from training to battle to the completion of the war. Dave was a cynical man, probably born so, and as such his perspective on the war and the men he served with was not forgiving. I suspect he told it to himself in his journals as he really felt, not wanting to lie to himself. When the war ended he returned from his ordeals with wounds and his journals. He married my grandmother in 1952 and they moved to the West Coast, to Santa Monica for a more bohemian lifestyle than their families on the right coast would allow. He wrote a manuscript for a book from his notes and journals from the war as he and my grandmother grew a family of three children.
Dave worked in Public Relations, as a journalist and as a writer on various subjects, including some material on the sea. The same physicality that made him a good candidate for special forces drew him to the budding surfer culture of the Santa Monica and Venice beaches. He loved the sea. Having written one book about sharks, researching in his typically physical and adventurous way: in his sailboat among the sharks, he decided to begin another. One day he went out in his small sailboat and never returned. Though his friends, the authorities, and the coast guard conducted an extensive search only his boat was found. Dave died young, and as happens in that case, is frozen forever in the minds of his wife, family and friends as the athletic, young, adventurous man he was on his last day.
Years went by and my grandmother remarried. She worked at her own career but also took on the cause of shopping my grandfather’s unfinished, unedited book around to publishers. First, she tried in the 1970s and found no publisher. My family attributes the initial rejection to the relative freshness of war in so many people’s minds that his account, though well written, was not exceptional or unique enough to warrant attention. Again, in the late 1980s and early 1990s she wrote letters and made phone calls around to publishers and anyone who might be interested in the book. Louisiana State Press was interested, but wanted it to be more polished, more finished and above all, more edited. A young man, about the age my grandfather had been at the time of his death, expressed interest in editing the book and readying it for publication. He too had been a paratrooper, in fact, in the very same 101st Airborne as my grandfather. Also, the young man was a veteran of more recent wars and operations. Through their similar experiences, their common love of writing and the young man’s allegiance to the brotherhood of the 101st Airborne, he took on my grandfather’s book. It was published in the early 1990s for the first time, after all those years since the war. Although it had not been published since the war, the content was written when the memories were still very raw in my grandfather’s memory. Unlike many memoirs which aren’t written until the experiences detailed are proven of historical interest by the test of time, his was written because of personal import and perhaps as therapy. His observations and opinions are not mellowed, yellowed or otherwise edited. They were unapologetically real to him. Rather than a methodical “thinking” sort of memoir, his is a “feeling” one. He wrote what he felt.
Now that his book had been published, it was being read by a variety of people. It was well written and rather unique. To my knowledge, it is the only first hand account of a WWII paratrooper written less than five years after the war. Historians and historical writers are always looking for the best, most vivid and real first hand accounts of the times they write about. Steven Ambrose, known for his writings on American History, especially wartime history, was looking to write a book about WWII. Likely, he wanted to write one not pieced together from many different actor’s perspectives, jumping across time from event to event or jumping geographically from one battle to another and back again. He probably did not want to write a thematic book, but rather one that is unified by common characters. He chose to write a book about one particular company of men. Having read my grandfather’s book, he knew there was enough first hand material to reference. He also knew enough of the veterans of my grandfather’s company were still alive that he could have historical perspectives on the events while keeping the accounts first hand. He chose to write a book, later titled Band of Brothers about the experiences of the men—the brothers—of the 101st Airborne’s E Company. “Easy” Company would be immortalized on the pages of the book and so in the minds of nearly every military history buff in America, if not the world. The book my grandmother had worked so hard to promote had not only been published, but was well enough received to be used by a famous historian as a primary source. My grandmother was satisfied and considered her work done. We thought that was as far as the legacy of my grandfather’s experiences would extend.
Band of Brothers became popular enough that it caught the attention of the moviestar and sometimes executive producer Tom Hanks. His role in the movie Saving Private Ryan sparked an ongoing interest in the history of WWII. He liked the idea of producing a miniseries based around the events and men of “Easy”Company as described in Band of Brothers. He and Steven Spielberg, along with Steven Ambrose pitched the idea to what must have been receptive ears at HBO. They began planning, writing, casting and general production. Each one of the men featured prominently in Band of Brothers became a character in Band of Brothers. This included my grandfather. As a character, he had an actor to portray him. The young man that was to visit my grandmother was that actor. Eion Bailey was a fairly obscure (though very handsome) actor who had previously had minor roles in such films as Fight Club. His blue eyes, light skin, dark hai, stature and general "Scottishness" were probably the reasons he was cast to be my grandfather. He visited my grandmother, asked her questions about her Dave’s personality, mannerisms, and attitudes. The character he crafted was inspired by the interview with my grandmother, the descriptions of Dave by the remaining living veterans who had served with him, and Dave’s own written descriptions of himself through his descriptions of others and his environment. After the interview my grandmother sent my mother and I a picture of she and the actor, Eion standing in front of my grandmother’s house. The lawn is green, the sky is blue and Eion is young as he is about to set off to re-live the most drab and dark years of my grandfather’s life. It is as if Dave has returned, young and well dressed, unwounded and uncynical from wherever he disappeared to in the ocean those many years ago. The surreality only unfolds further from there…
In early 2001 my grandmother recieved another phone call. This time it was HBO's office thanking her for her help in the production of Band of Brothers and inviting her to attend the premiere of the miniseries in Normandy, France. The premiere, I suspect was also somewhat of a goodbye to the process of promoting my grandfather's memory. He would now be engraved for the forseeable future in (sometimes inaccurate ways) the semi-fame of mass culture.
Next enters my fourteen year old self. My mother, grandmother, aunt, uncle and his son (my younger cousin) all planned our trip to the premiere. After a week in New York unrelated to the miniseries we would fly to Paris, spend about a week there with the living veterans from Easy Company, the HBO employees and the cast of the miniseries before taking a day trip out to Normandy where the premiere would be. It is hard to talk about a trip to New York in Summer 2001 without also talking about the attacks later that summer on September 11th, 2001. Obviously, we had no idea what would happen only a few months later in New York, so there is an eerie feeling to the photographs my mother and I took in New York, the two most noteable being one of the Twin Towers from the Statue of Liberty and the other being a series of photographs I took of firetrucks and fire stations. At the time I took the photographs of the firemen becuase the noise of sirens in that city was, to me, a novelty that showed just how big the big city was. Looking back on the photographs and the things I remember about New York in the context of the trip, the overlay between Pearl Harbor and the attacks on 9/11. I personally think the attacks on 9/11 are not similar with Pearl Harbor for their content, but for America’s reaction to the event, both as Americans the people and as America the foreign policy force. Whatever my views on the ties between the two attacks, being in New York just before 9/11 on a trip to witness a re-enactment of the consequences of a similar event has definitely made me reflect on the similarities and differences in our reactions as a nation and how the nature of the world America lives in has changed from state-to-state conflicts of the past to the borderless, stateless conflicts of today.
Anyway, after a week in New York we flew to Paris. With all my memories, keep in mind that I was fourteen. I didn’t have the greatest comprehension of what was going on nor the history behind it. In a way, I think my naivite make my memories of the event a nearly bias-free resource to draw from because I did not have any preconceptions or cynicism about the events or people involved. So my fourteen year-old self flew across the Atlantic. I was too excited about arriving in Paris to sleep on the flight so for the hours and hours of flying I watched the sunset and sunrise and thought about the Paris in my mind. When we landed it was raining a light, warm, misty rain. The incubator-like weather and my restlessness on the plane caught up with me on the public bus ride to the hotel. The incubator-like weather, the diffused, soft light like one might see in an old-school Hollywood movie with starlets and detectives, my drowsiness and my excitement all made my first hours in Paris dreamy and surreal. Most people involved with the premiere stayed in the Embassador Hotel near the Paris Opera. The lobby and hallways were themed red and gold and decorated with the same golden age of Hollywood sort of feeling that Paris had to me. The room my mother and I had faced an inner courtyard on what seemed like a very high floor for such an old building. It might have been the ninth or tenth floor. It seemed very high and the hotel was very grand and certainly fancier than any I have stayed in since then.
There really must be a lot of money circulating around Hollywood if HBO could afford to set my mother and I up in such an expensive hotel. Everyone in our HBO/Veterans group had a name tag that let us in to the side lobby and conference facilities of the hotel.The name badge had our name on one side in plain font and on the other side was a stylized graphic of a photograph of the sillohuettes of all the main characters from the miniseries posing at sunset ontop of a grassy, drab hill.Their black outlines conveyed fatigue, honor and historical importance as only a graphic designer could convey. As I will mention again and again the contrast between the dark, dirty, ugly gritiness of war and the veteran's experiences was so odd to see portrayed by the beautiful, clean, young, healthy, happy and glowing hollywood people. The to be celebrating their experiences in this beautiful city their army liberated was also so odd. It has been said before, but it really is strange how it is war, the most horrible, dirty moments of history, that we glorify, beautify and honor most. Every morning there was a mid morning breakfast provided in the lobby. I was a rather chubby young teenager and breakfast was my favorite meal. Whether my mom wanted to come along or not I was always down in the grand breakfast room early every morning. There was a spread of all sorts of brunch and breakfast foods that one would expect at a hollywood reception. In the breakfast room there was a little sea of white, round tableclothed tables that could seat maybe six or eight people. I have always looked older than I am by a good few years, so the people I happened to sit at the same table with for breakfast often treated me like an eighteen or nineteen year old college student in their conversations. Sometimes I sat with veterans and their families, sometimes with HBO employees, sometimes with supporting employees and sometimes with members of the cast.
It was interesting to hear about how each group started conversations. All the veterans and the hollywood people had in common initially was the miniseries project. Afterall, that is why we were all there. Everyone had a different way they spoke to the veterans. Some people treated them like celebrities, some people treated them like they were just accessories to the whole "Band of Brothers" TV phenomenon. A week or so of breakfasts and little sight seeing journies with everyone went by, my grandmother worked her socializing magic with everyone, getting and giving autographs of books and networking with the families of the other veterans. For the actual premiere of the miniseries we were all to go to Normandy.
The train out to the coast was really novel for me. Everyone from our group was seated in a few cars. Everyone in each car got up and mingled with one another for the few hours we were on the train. There were military men, even a few current 101st airborne paratroopers. The military people had not been out in force for the Paris part of the trip, if at all. So now to the mix of hollywood and the veterans was added the current military members. People who decades after the veterans had left the service were doing the same kind of job in Kosovo and other special missions.(Note this is pre-9/11 by three months) Many of those same soldiers who were brought to Normandy for the premiere probably went to Iraq or Afghanistan a few months later. Some of them probably died. After the premiere some of the veterans themselves died of old age. That, like the contrast between hollywood and war, is something odd to think about.
Some of the veterans who survived a world war died at the same time as their thirty or fourty year younger counterparts did in combat. The train arrived in a small French town (I'm sorry, I don't remember the names of many of the places in this portion of the story). At the train station, when we were about to leave the station, is where I caught my first glimpse of Tom Hanks. He was involved in the promotion and production of the miniseries. From inside the train I heard a ruckus outside and saw the flash of photographs being taken by journalists and the general public. Tom Hanks was walking down the length of the platform, past cars and cars of people with their faces practically pressed to the glass of their windows. He was wearing a suit and was accompanied by some other men and women in suits, probably his HBO escorts and security and other such people. I imagine he rode in one of the very front cars of the train.
Once we arrived in Normandy we were put onto tour buses and driven from the train station to another small French town that had decorated their town center to welcome the veterans. The older generation of that town, including the mayor who was likely a young civilian man himself during the war, came out to greet the tour buses. With all the talk these days of American Foreign Policy being appreciated or hated in different parts of the world it was unexpected, though upon reflection logical, for this town to be so enthusiastic to thank these veterans who had helped to liberate them from Nazi occupation. The archetypal small French town in Normandy is also significant in that it was into those kinds of towns that the veterans and their comrades had fallen and drifted from the sky into during the invasion. The night before D-Day they had parachuted behind enemy lines to establish certain strategic advantages like securing bridges and testing the accuracy of maps. In my grandfather's book he describes the confusion of that night. I can't imagine how disorienting and frightening it would be to be lost behind enemy lines. That is what they were assigned to do, though. It's their job to be surrounded.
Anyway, we were finally in the town. The tour buses unloaded us a few yards from the beginning of a red carpet. I walked the red carpet with my mom. The townspeople waved but obviously the press wasn't too interested in people with only a secondary or farther removed relationship to the miniseries. As we walked down the red carpet, on one side of us was a line of flag poles and the ocean. On the other side of the carpet was the crowd of townspeople and the press. All the veterans had been given special yellow windbreakers. The night before the group was to go to Normandy the HBO officials had made a point of ensuring that all the veterans had a yellow windbreaker and knew to wear it at the premiere so that they could be easily identified and moved in one group to and at the premiere. The veterans walked separately from the rest of us. The cameras' flash bulbs that were silent for us were almost as alive when the veterans passed as when Tom Hanks passed by. The group of yellow windbreaker-clad veterans moved slowly, maybe because of their age and maybe to savour the moment of recognition, down the carpet. At the end of the carpet was a reception area outside of a huge white tent. The tent reflected so much light inside and out that it almost glowed. There was a grand entrance with several big but lower openings in the fabric for us to pass into and out of the tent through. Above the entrances was one huge emblem. It was the 101st Airborne "Screaming Eagle". The emblem has a white-feathered eagle's head with a yellow beak. The eagle is looking upwards and forwards with its head slightly tilted back as it has an open beak and I guess is supposed to be in the act of screeching an agressive battle cry. Above this eagle head is a banner with the word "airborne". There were bleachers facing the ocean outside the tent's entrance and we later were seated there. The worst sunburn of my life I got that day. It wasn't a blatantly sunny day. It was deceptively bright and yet overcast. Everyone was seated closer or further from the stage and podiums and microphones depending on their importance. My mom and I were seated farther away from the focal point.
I had been charged with recording all this trip on my step-dad's digital camcorder. I had the camera bag, camera and plenty of tapes at my side. I had recorded our fun in Paris but now was the real moment of truth for my cinematic abilities. The kind of opening ceremony for the day was quite an affair. I filmed various speakers from the American military, the local French government and from HBO. Jets did a flyby in formation over the crowd and contemporary soldiers of the 101st Airborne who I seem to remember were on leave or had returned or were going to or from Kosovo were a part of the ceremony. I was distracted by taking the footage of the ceremony so I only remember it vaguely. Later in the day, when I began to feel the sunburn on the back of my neck burning, we were all ushered and invited into the tent. There were more round tables and more buffet food. The tent seemed huge to me and the light inside of it was very reflective and bright. Everything was very beautiful from the reflected light inside the tent to the way the catered food was arranged to the place settings at the table. I got a platefull of quiche and fruit salad and a glass of sparkling cider. It felt fancy like the rest of the trip had. The 101st Airborne soldiers milled around in the tent with the veterans and ate at the buffet. The actor who had played my grandfather sat with us along with his girlfriend named Nikki. She was blonde and cute and small. I remember she chatted with my grandmother about how she tries to eat healthfully and really limit herself to one small portion of everything. I was a little bit of a chunky 14 year old. I had at least two quiches. Later on we were again all herded into the back half of the tent. I think it was after the lunch in the tent that my mom and I made our way down the bank of the beach to the water. I put my foot in the water but it was cold so I didn't want to wade. There were tiny seashells all along the beach and the tide was low so the sand was wet and easier to walk on.
It made me very uncomfortable to know that someone had certainly died on the very spot I stood on, no matter where I was on the beach. The sun was going down or had gone down by the time we were herded into the back half of the tent for the showing of the first episode of the series. It would have taken hours upon hours to show the entire series so thy chose to do a montage of the rest of the episodes, like an extended preview and then to show the first episode. A few rows away from us everyone was making a fuss and staring at Steven Speilberg and Tom Hanks. Speilberg seemed completely used to the staring and was just chatting with whomever was next to him. It was hard to believe that the tent was just temporary. It must have taken a long time to put together. The same 101st Airborne emblem that was over the door was projected on the blank screen. The lights were dim like in a movie theater. There were some brief speeches by people involved in the making of the series and then nearly all the lights went out. It was as dark in the tent as any movie theater. I had no idea what to expect as this was the first showing ever of the promotional clips and certainly the first showing of an episode. It was a widescreen presentation and the few images my mind remembers, it does as stills. I remember a shot of my grandfather in the introductory credits. I remember a frame or two of the soldiers contemplating their jump from the plane as it flew in complete darkness.
I think all the anticipation of this moment when I was to see the episode for the first time made me especially remember that same feeling of anticipation and uncertainty of the soldiers. It was odd to see the same actors I had met and seen in Paris and earlier in the day in person now twenty times life size on the screen. I do remember being shocked by the style of the series. Artistically the director must have chosen a style and lighting scheme as close to real and gritty as he could get. The colors make the series seem like it is an old photograph come to life. They're drab as reality is but also somehow seem aged. The camera is not always steady and not always moving. Explosions shake the frame and the frame rocks with the steps of running soldiers and the thuds of characters falling or diving to the ground. I was so involved in watching the episode that I don't know that I remember any of it. In a way I was so curious that I didn't think to remember with emotion or consciousness that half an hour or so. The rest of that evening is the same way. I don't think I remember anything in particular besides snapshots of the dark train ride home and the tiredness of my feet when we were dropped off at the front of the hotel back in Paris. It was almost anticlimactic how suddenly the premiere was over. There was nearly a week of build up to watch a single hour or film. All the talk and hype and anticipation of the trip and then arrival and then meeting everyone and then of the premiere itself did not end with an equally grand goodbye.
After the premiere my mom and I split from the HBO and Band of Brothers group and went on our own to a different, much less expensive hotel to see the rest of Paris at our own, actually faster pace. I really never think about the premiere or about Band of Brothers very often. It was all so surreal to begin with and then so strange to be there and then so suddenly to end. The trickles of what my family calls the B.O.B. (Band of Brothers) phenomenon continue to crawl in. Every once in a while there's a new development or a new letter or e-mail from a fan of the show in the Netherlands or France or somewhere more unexpected, but for the most part it seems like something I imagined. I guess it's that it doesn't seem like something I experienced, more like something I watched. And it's true, I was in no way important in the Band of Brothers happening. At all. I was just an observer. I was just there to watch it, record it and remember it.
