54 Fun Facts About Saving Private Ryan

Which war film rivalled Saving Private Ryan for Best Picture?

The Thin Red Line. It marked Terrence Malick's return to directing, twenty years after his previous film, Days of Heaven.

Which actor plays Private James Francis Ryan?

Matt Damon. Spielberg wanted a relative unknown, but Good Will Hunting made Damon famous before Saving Private Ryan opened.

On what date does the opening battle of Saving Private Ryan take place?

June 6, 1944. Irish Army reservists played many of the GIs storming the beach that morning.

What civilian job does Captain Miller finally reveal to his men?

Schoolteacher. His men had a company betting pool of more than $300 on his civilian job before he told them he taught English in Pennsylvania.

Which film beat Saving Private Ryan to the Best Picture Oscar?

Shakespeare in Love. When The Hollywood Reporter re-polled Academy members in 2015, Saving Private Ryan won the recount instead.

Which composer wrote the score for Saving Private Ryan?

John Williams. Spielberg kept much of the film free of music so that the real sounds of battle and death would be heard.

By what nickname is the German soldier captured at the machine-gun nest known in Saving Private Ryan?

Steamboat Willie: pleading for his life, he rattles off American pop-culture references; freed by Miller, he later returns to fight at the bridge.

Which real set of siblings was the main inspiration for the four fictional Ryans?

The Niland brothers: with two killed in Normandy and a third presumed dead, the military sent the fourth, Fritz, home to finish the war in the United States.

In Saving Private Ryan, what does the dying Captain Miller tell Private Ryan?

Earn this: decades later, standing at Miller's grave, the elderly Ryan says he hopes he has earned what the men did for him.

Ryan is a paratrooper in which division?

101st Airborne: its paratroopers landed scattered and off course, which is why Miller's squad has to hunt for Ryan among misdropped units.

From which U.S. state does Private Ryan hail?

Iowa, also home to the five Sullivan brothers, whose deaths aboard one ship in 1942 left the military wary of letting a family lose every son.

Which sitcom star plays Captain Fred Hamill of the Pathfinders?

Ted Danson's Captain Hamill trades a riff with Miller: take Caen to take St. Lo, and on through Cherbourg, Paris and Berlin to 'that big boat home'.

Which HBO miniseries did Saving Private Ryan's director and star go on to executive-produce in 2001?

Band of Brothers premiered on the Normandy coast at Utah Beach, where 47 men of the real Easy Company were flown in to watch it.

Who was the cinematographer on Saving Private Ryan?

Janusz Kaminski drained much of the color from the image so the film would look like 1940s color newsreel footage.

Who wrote Saving Private Ryan's original screenplay?

Robert Rodat got the idea from a war monument, where he noticed that some of the soldiers killed were brothers.

Which historian, whose D-Day book inspired the script, served as historical consultant?

The book was a gift from the screenwriter's wife; the historian later admitted sending eight men after one soldier was 'a stretch'.

Which telemarketer-turned-actor was cast after Spielberg saw his short film Multi-Facial?

Vin Diesel's Caparzo is the first of Miller's squad to die, shot by a German sniper while trying to rescue a young girl.

Which town does Miller's squad reach first, where a sniper kills one of them?

Neuville-au-Plain is a real Normandy village, and the Private Ryan the squad finds there turns out to be the wrong man.

What is the name of the town where Saving Private Ryan's final bridge battle takes place?

Ramelle is invented: when French river towns kept raising environmental problems, designer Tom Sanders built his own village from scratch.

Which future Firefly star plays the wrong Private Ryan?

Nathan Fillion's James Frederick Ryan breaks down on hearing his three brothers are dead, then learns he's the wrong Ryan: his brothers are still in grammar school.

Which star was considered for the role of Captain Miller before Tom Hanks was cast?

Harrison Ford was considered, as was Mel Gibson; Tom Hanks got the part, and in 2006 the Ranger Hall of Fame inducted him for it.

Which director was attached to Saving Private Ryan before Spielberg took it on?

Michael Bay: the script then reached Tom Hanks and Spielberg through a CAA agent, and both men signed on.

Which actor was considered for the role of Private Ryan?

Edward Norton turned the part down, and his American History X then put him up against Tom Hanks for the Best Actor Oscar.

Who plays the Bible-quoting sniper Private Jackson?

Barry Pepper's Jackson prays before each shot and boasts that with a clear line of sight within a mile of Hitler, the war would be over.

Which future Breaking Bad star plays a colonel in the War Department?

Bryan Cranston later co-created the Amazon series Sneaky Pete, which starred his Saving Private Ryan castmate Giovanni Ribisi.

General Marshall reads aloud a condolence letter sent by which U.S. president?

Abraham Lincoln sent it in 1864 to a widow believed to have lost five sons, and Marshall quotes it as his reason to bring Ryan home.

Retired members of which service helped run the Saving Private Ryan cast's boot camp?

U.S. Marines ran it in cold rain on little sleep; when the actors voted to quit, Tom Hanks was the one vote to stay, and they stayed.

Why was the star playing Ryan kept out of boot camp?

So the other actors would resent him: keeping him out of training stopped the squad bonding with the man they resent in the story.

Which Irish beach stood in for the Normandy coast?

Curracloe: a producer who had scouted Irish locations for Braveheart remembered its long strand after French and English beaches fell through.

Why does Private Ryan refuse to go home when Miller's squad finally finds him?

He won't abandon his unit: the men beside him are the only brothers he has left, he says, so Miller's squad stays and fights beside him.

Saving Private Ryan's opening weekend knocked which film, the previous weekend's champion, from number one?

The Mask of Zorro, which Spielberg himself had executive-produced, so his war film took the top spot from one of his own productions.

Which film beat Saving Private Ryan at the worldwide box office in its release year?

Armageddon, though the tables turned at the Oscars, where Saving Private Ryan beat it for both Best Sound and Best Sound Effects Editing.

What did Spielberg worry Saving Private Ryan's violence would bring?

An NC-17 rating: he counted on the film's historical importance to win it an R instead, so younger viewers could still see it with an adult.

Which orchestra recorded the score for Saving Private Ryan?

Boston Symphony Orchestra: the score was recorded in Symphony Hall, which the filmmakers had used for Schindler's List and chose for its warm sound.

What is the title of the choral piece that plays over Saving Private Ryan's closing credits?

Hymn to the Fallen: Spielberg kept it for the end credits, hoping it would stand the test of time as a tribute to the fallen of that war and possibly all wars.

How did DreamWorks and Paramount decide who would release Saving Private Ryan in North America?

A coin toss: Viacom chief Sumner Redstone had Spielberg flip the coin himself, and DreamWorks won the North American release.

After Miller frees the German prisoner who killed Wade, which soldier announces he's done with the mission?

Private Reiben: as he and Horvath square off, Miller ends the standoff by finally telling the men about his life back home.

What did Saving Private Ryan's cinematographer do to some lenses to mimic WWII-era footage?

Removed the protective coating: without it the lenses gave a flatter, lower-contrast image, closer to what cameras of the 1940s produced.

The set for Saving Private Ryan's final battle town was built on the grounds of what?

A former aerodrome: at Hatfield the crew dug a 900-foot trench and lined it to make the town's river, so they could control the water level.

In Saving Private Ryan, the two surrendering 'German' soldiers shot after the beach assault are actually speaking which language?

Czech: the pleading men were likely conscripts from German-occupied Czechoslovakia, and the GIs shoot them anyway.

Why did dozens of ABC stations skip Saving Private Ryan in November 2004?

Fear of FCC fines: after the Super Bowl halftime furor, stations balked at a film ABC had already aired twice in prime time.

Which government agency set up a dedicated phone line for viewers distressed by Saving Private Ryan?

The Department of Veterans Affairs set it up as more veterans sought counseling for post-traumatic stress after the film revived memories of combat.

Which video game did Spielberg's DreamWorks Interactive develop to carry Saving Private Ryan's realism into gaming?

Medal of Honor grew into a series, and the team behind its Allied Assault chapter went on to found Infinity Ward and make Call of Duty.

As the medic Wade lies dying after the machine-gun nest attack, whom does he call for?

His mother: in a quiet moment earlier, Wade had recalled lying awake as a boy, waiting for her to come home from late shifts.

Where did the eldest real-life brother behind Saving Private Ryan, presumed dead, turn out to be alive?

A Japanese POW camp in Burma: his plane had been shot down, and he spent about a year as a prisoner before being freed.

Who got the real paratrooper behind Private Ryan sent home, a role the film turns into an eight-man squad?

A Catholic chaplain, the Rev. Francis Sampson, tracked the soldier down and filed the paperwork to send him home; the film turns that one priest into a squad.

Spielberg filmed Saving Private Ryan without which usual planning tool?

Storyboards: Spielberg improvised the combat scenes, deciding where the camera went in reaction to whatever was happening.

Which Saving Private Ryan actor kept his role on condition that he pass every drug test during the shoot?

Tom Sizemore, cast as Sergeant Horvath, was warned that one failed test would get him fired and his scenes reshot with another actor.

What does Captain Miller privately admit to Sergeant Horvath about himself?

His hand shakes: it began before the invasion, he says, and Horvath replies that he may need to find a new line of work.

How does Captain Miller justify the 94 men he has lost?

Lives saved: each death saved ten or twenty others, Miller reasons, but Horvath points out that this time the mission is a man.

What do Miller's men sort through, looking for Private Ryan's name?

Dead soldiers' dog tags: the medic Wade scolds the men for joking over them as if they were poker chips.

Why does Captain Miller recruit the untested Corporal Upham for the mission?

He's a skilled translator, fluent in French and German, but he has never seen combat, and he later freezes as Mellish is killed.

Spielberg said Saving Private Ryan was his way of paying tribute to whose war service?

His father's: a WWII radio operator whose war talk so absorbed his son that Spielberg was making amateur war films as a teenager.

How did Spielberg shoot most of Saving Private Ryan?

Handheld: when sand and blood splattered the lens, Spielberg kept the shot instead of treating it as ruined.