60 Fun Facts About Saving Private Ryan

In what year was Saving Private Ryan released in cinemas?

It opened on July 24, 1998, a serious drama dropped into a summer of big-budget blockbusters, and still took the number-one spot.

Which actor plays Private James Francis Ryan?

Spielberg wanted a relative unknown for the part and did not foresee how much Good Will Hunting would raise the actor's profile.

On what date does the film's opening battle take place?

The landing depicted is the assault on the Omaha sector of the Normandy invasion.

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

He also coached baseball, and jokes that back home people used to guess his job easily, whereas his men could not.

How many Academy Awards did the film win?

Its wins were for Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound and Sound Effects Editing, from eleven nominations.

Which film beat it to the Best Picture Oscar?

The loss is still counted among the biggest upsets in Oscar history, and a 2015 poll suggested Academy voters would reverse it given the chance.

Which composer wrote the film's score?

The score deliberately stays out of the combat scenes, playing instead over the long quiet stretches between them.

What nickname do the squad give the German soldier they capture at the machine-gun nest?

Miller frees him with orders to surrender to the next Allied patrol; he later returns with the German assault on the bridge.

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

Two of the four were killed in Normandy and a third was presumed dead; the fourth was sent home from the war.

In which country was the Omaha Beach sequence filmed?

The real Normandy coast was judged too built-up, and Irish Army contacts from Braveheart led the crew to County Wexford.

Ryan is a paratrooper in which division?

The squad first hunts for him among scattered paratroopers who had landed off course.

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

The farmhouse where his mother receives the news was built for the film in the English countryside.

Which sitcom star plays Captain Fred Hamill of the Pathfinders?

It is a brief role, one of several familiar faces the squad meets on the road, alongside Paul Giamatti and Dennis Farina.

Which HBO miniseries did the film's director and star go on to executive-produce in 2001?

It borrowed many of the film's visual cues and crew members, and its cast went through another boot camp under the same adviser.

Who was the film's cinematographer?

He wanted the footage to look as if combat cameramen had shot it on 16 mm, and the result earned one of the film's five Oscars.

Who wrote the original screenplay?

He conceived the story within a few weeks of a 1995 meeting with producer Mark Gordon, and later created the TV series Falling Skies.

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?

His character is the first of the squad to die, shot by a sniper while trying to help a French girl.

Which town does the squad reach first, where a sniper kills one of them?

One of the real brothers who inspired the film was killed on D-Day covering his company's retreat from that same village.

What is the name of the fictional town where the final bridge battle takes place?

The town does not exist; the set was built on an old airfield in Hertfordshire and modelled on five real towns where fighting took place.

Which future Firefly and Castle star plays the wrong Private Ryan?

The credits list him as 'Minnesota Ryan'; his soldier shares a surname and first name but a different middle name.

Which of the following actors was considered for the role of Captain Miller?

Spielberg said his eventual star was the only actor he could picture who would not want to pull a grenade pin with his teeth.

Which director was originally hired before leaving the project?

He departed because he could not resolve how to approach the material; the script then reached Spielberg through Tom Hanks's agent.

Which actor turned down the role of Ryan to make American History X?

Neil Patrick Harris was also considered, and Noah Wyle had to decline because of ER.

Who plays the Bible-quoting sniper Private Jackson?

Critics singled out his performance alongside those of Giovanni Ribisi and Tom Sizemore.

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

His officer helps deliver the news about the Ryan brothers to General Marshall.

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

The 1864 letter consoled a Massachusetts widow believed to have lost five sons; at least two of them actually survived the war.

Retired members of which service ran the cast's pre-shoot boot camp?

The actors got three hours of sleep a night in cold rain and wanted to quit, until Tom Hanks talked them into staying.

Why did Spielberg keep the actor playing Ryan out of the boot camp?

The resentment was meant to carry into the squad's grumbling about risking their lives for one man.

Which Irish beach stood in for the Normandy coast?

The village had no three-phase electricity until the production arrived and had it connected.

Roughly how much did the Omaha Beach sequence cost to film?

It was shot over three to four weeks with about 1,500 people, roughly a thousand of them Irish reservists and soldiers.

What was used to make the soldiers vomit convincingly on the landing craft?

A crane shot rising from beneath the waves was managed by backing the crane into the sea on a flatbed trailer.

Which film did it outrank on opening weekend to take the number-one spot?

It earned $30.6 million from 2,463 theaters and held the top spot for four straight weekends.

Which film finished ahead of it at that year's worldwide box office?

In North America the order flipped: it finished the year as the top domestic earner with $216.5 million.

What is the running time of the finished film?

The editor trimmed Mellish's death after Spielberg's projectionist said it was too painful to watch.

The film was added to the U.S. National Film Registry in which year?

The Library of Congress selects 25 titles a year as culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.

Which ensemble performed the score at its three-day recording session in February 1998?

The sessions cost about $100,000 an hour, and Tom Hanks read the Bixby letter to the players at Williams's request.

What is the title of the choral piece that plays over the closing credits?

It still gets radio play on Veterans Day and Memorial Day and won a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition.

How was the split of distribution rights between DreamWorks and Paramount decided?

Spielberg won, taking North American rights for DreamWorks; Paramount got the overseas rights plus North America on Deep Impact.

Instead of big salaries, Spielberg and Hanks each took what share of the gross?

The deal reportedly earned each of them $30-40 million from the box office.

Which Shawshank Redemption writer's uncredited rewrites included the idea to open on the second wave landing?

Scott Frank also did uncredited passes, working from transcripts of Spielberg's recorded ideas.

What did the effects team mix into the fake blood so it would read correctly on desaturated film?

The lab's ENR process bleached out colour, so untreated blood risked looking pink and artificial.

What did the crew do to some lenses to make the image look like WWII-era footage?

The cinematographer also mismatched lenses between cameras and desynchronised the shutter to create streaking, a gamble that could not be undone in post.

The set for the final battle town was built on the grounds of what?

Hatfield Aerodrome in Hertfordshire got nearly three city blocks of buildings and a custom river whose height had to be controlled carefully.

The two surrendering 'German' soldiers shot after the beach assault are actually speaking which language?

The detail hints they were conscripts from occupied Czechoslovakia, one of many ways the film refuses to make the Allies spotless.

Whose on-set suggestion turned Mellish's death from a shooting into a knife fight?

The technical adviser also talked Spielberg into halving his explosions, telling him real ones 'were never that big'.

How many of ABC's 225 affiliates refused to air the uncut film on Veterans Day 2004?

The FCC later ruled unanimously that the profanity and violence were not indecent in the context of a war film.

Which government agency set up a dedicated phone line for viewers distressed by the film?

More veterans sought counselling for post-traumatic stress, and some said they could not sit through the opening.

Which 1999 video game did Spielberg and DreamWorks develop to carry the film's realism into gaming?

Its success launched a series that in turn helped give rise to Call of Duty.

The U.S. Sole Survivor Policy, which the film's premise evokes, has been in effect since which year?

The Sullivan, Borgstrom and Butehorn family losses in the Second World War all helped bring it about.

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

The eldest brother had bailed out of a B-25 and wandered the jungle before capture; he was liberated in May 1945.

After being sent home, the paratrooper who inspired Ryan finished the war doing what?

Fritz was a friend of Band of Brothers' Warren Muck and Donald Malarkey and earned a Bronze Star.

The one-kilometre stretch of Irish beach used for the landing is known by what name?

Spielberg thought it narrower than the real Omaha and used wide-angle lenses to stretch the flats before the shingle.

Which German actor plays the released prisoner who later shoots Captain Miller?

Upham, who argued for sparing him earlier, is the one who finally executes him at the bridge.

Where in England was the German machine-gun nest scene filmed?

The estate's chapel doubled as the interior where the squad rests and Miller admits his hand shakes.

How many men does Miller say have died under his command?

He rationalises each loss as saving ten or twenty more lives, a sum that stops working when eight men are risked for one.

Who plays the elderly Ryan in the cemetery bookends?

The scenes were shot at the Normandy American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, next to the real Omaha Beach.

The screenwriter's idea crystallised at a war memorial listing brothers in which town?

He said losing one son to war was 'painful beyond description' and losing more than one 'inconceivable'.

Roughly how many prosthetic-fitted amputees took part in the beach sequence to portray maimed soldiers?

Their numbers were bulked out with more than a thousand detailed mannequins scattered across the sand.

In what aspect ratio was the film shot?

Spielberg found widescreen artificial and thought the flatter frame closer to how the human eye sees.