Trivia / Saving Private Ryan

• Actor-Inspired Element: Mellish was supposed to originally just get shot in the final battle. Dale Dye however noticed that Adam Goldberg had been quite adept at using the bayonet in boot camp, and suggested the character die in hand-to-hand combat.
• Actor-Shared Background:
  • Mellish is Jewish. His actor Adam Goldberg is half-Jewish on his father's side.
  • Edward Burns is from New York, just like Reiben, although he's from Queens and Reiben from Brooklyn.
• Awesome, Dear Boy:
  • To quote Matt Damon, "When Spielberg says 'jump', bitches say 'how high?'"
  • Spielberg himself opted to direct because of his interest in World War II, and because he wanted to work with Tom Hanks.
• Banned in China: Originally banned in Malaysia, though it was released on DVD afterwards.
• Blooper: Even though Parker says he's out of 30-caliber during the Final Battle, the machine gun he's using clearly has a belt of ammunition attached to it.
• California Doubling: The D-Day invasion scene was shot in Ireland (precisely Ballinesker Beach, Curracloe, Wexford). Also, most of the town scenes (Neville-au-Plain and Ramelle) were shot on a single (and quite small) set in Hatfield, England. The same zone was also used in Band of Brothers, but the set was 10 times bigger.
• Career Resurrection: This film resurrected Ted Danson's career as Cheers had been off the air for nearly a decade but he had been in a number of commercial and critical flops since then. His short cameo appearance proved he could do drama every bit as well as comedy and he's worked steadily ever since.
• Cast the Runner-Up: The Mellish character didn't exist in the script at the time of auditions, and was created specifically for Adam Goldberg after they cast him. In the movie itself as a possible reference, Mellish was only picked for the mission when Miller is informed that a different soldier he selected had been killed.
• Darkhorse Casting: Steven Spielberg cast Matt Damon as Private Ryan because he wanted an unknown actor with an All-American look. He did not know Damon would win an Oscar for Good Will Hunting and become an overnight star before the film was released.
• Dawson Casting: Sort of. By the time of Normandy, most officers (in battle and combat) were in their late twenties to early thirties at most, with everyone under them being younger, even if only by a couple years. Tom Hanks was in his early 40s when this was filmed. All of the other actors were (for the most part) older than their characters, save Horvath (whose relative age is left untouched entirely). Furthermore, the stress of combat causes accelerated aging, which a lot of the soldiers on the battlefields of World War II would have faced.
• Disabled Character, Disabled Actor: In the opening scene, a soldier who had just had his legs blown off was played by an actor who had lost his legs years before. A number of the other soldiers on the beach are also played by amputees with prosthetic limbs to simulate having arms or legs blown off.
• Doing It for the Art: Spielberg has gone on record saying he would’ve still released the movie unchanged had it gotten an NC-17 rating.
• Dueling Movies: This film and The Thin Red Line; they were pitted against each other at the Oscars and amongst war movie buffs. This was more a function of marketing than anything else — The Thin Red Line was significantly slower-paced and more philosophical as compared to Ryan's traditional war movie feel. (not to mention one is about the Pacific War, the other the European Theater).
• Enforced Method Acting:
  • The actors portraying the rest of the eponymous Ryan's platoon had to go through very realistic, difficult military training. The eponymous Ryan… didn't. Which actually doubles this trope: Damon's exemption was planned to create resentment on the part of the rest of the cast, which mirrored their characters' feelings.
  • Spielberg also wanted to make sure the actors got "little rest" so as to believably look like they were in a strenuous combat situation. The film was also shot in chronological order, meaning the actors would leave after their characters died, and therefore adding to the sadness.
• Fake American: Daniel Jackson (the sniper)'s actor Barry Pepper is Canadian, and likewise Nathan Fillion, who portrayed Pvt. James Frederick Ryan.
• Playing Against Type:
  • Robert Rodat is the credited screenwriter of the film. His previous credit was for co-writing the family film Fly Away Home.
  • Tom Hanks mostly plays comedic roles and nice guys. Playing a tough military man is not what you'd expect from him, which helps imbue the character with depth.
• Referenced by...: Has its own page.
• Separated-at-Birth Casting: Harrison Young was cast as the elder Ryan due to his striking resemblance to Matt Damon.
• Stunt Casting: The elderly Ryan's wife was played by Kathleen Byron - who had starred in a number of Powell and Pressberger films in the 40s and 50s (most notably Black Narcissus). She was cast because Steven Spielberg was a fan of those films.
• Throw It In!:
  • Halfway through shooting, Spielberg got the idea to start showing more scenes from Upham's perspective, feeling he was the Audience Surrogate. Some scenes, such as Upham freezing and being unable to help Mellish as he's killed were thought up on the day they were filmed.
  • Matt Damon ad-libbed Ryan's entire monologue about spying on his brother in the farmhouse with the ugly girl (Tom Hanks even gives an Aside Glance to show his surprise). Although the improv was neither particularly funny nor interesting, filmmakers decided that was why it worked and chose to leave the whole thing in.
• Uncredited Role: Scott Frank and Frank Darabont did uncredited script doctor work on the screenplay. Scott Frank's work, according to claims, is the most prominent.
• Underage Casting: 68-year-old Harrison Young played a character in the contemporary era, who being old to have served in WW2 would have to be at least in his 70s. At the time of the Normandy invasion in 1944, Young was only 14.
• What Could Have Been:
  • Steven Spielberg envisioned the film as a more straightforward adventure, akin to the stories published in Boys Own magazine. Once he interviewed real World War II veterans, he realised that would be inappropriate.
  • Michael Bay once reflected on this film being one of several that he turned down.
    I had gotten movie offers and turned them down. I took my time. They sent me Saving Private Ryan, but I wouldn't have known what to do with it.
  • Michael Madsen was offered the role of Sgt. Horvath. He declined the role and recommended Tom Sizemore for the part. Pete Postlethwaite was also offered the role. Billy Bob Thornton turned it down because of his water phobia.
  • Neil Patrick Harris and Edward Norton were considered for Private Ryan.
  • Before Tom Hanks was tapped for the role of Captain Miller, Mel Gibson and Harrison Ford were both considered for the role.
  • Christopher Eccleston turned down a role.
  • In an earlier draft of the script, Miller's squad takes Steamboat Willie with them and camps out for the night in a foxhole. That night, a German Panzer division arrives and camps out right next to the squad's foxhole. When a German soldier named Weiter approaches the foxhole asking for cigarettes, the squad forces Willie at gunpoint to converse with Weiter so their cover is not blown. (Weiter never sees the Americans due to the darkness of the night.) Through Willie, the squad ends up trading Reiben's Mickey Mouse lighter and Mellish's Hitler Youth Knife for food from Weiter, much to Mellish's displeasure.
  • A draft of the screenplay had Miller survive and Upham die.
  • Miller's speech about what he did before the war was much longer in the original script. Tom Hanks however felt that Miller would never say that much about himself. Steven Spielberg agreed and it was shortened.
  • Early ideas included having the film be Deliberately Monochrome, like Schindler's List, but they scrapped that out of fear it would make the movie seem "pretentious". They instead opted to emulate the coloured World War II footage from their research.
  • According to Matt Damon, he only got the role of Private Ryan because Robin Williams took him to meet Spielberg when the filming of Amistad was taking place in Boston at the same time as Good Will Hunting. Spielberg had recognized Damon from Courage Under Fire and thought he was too skinny for Ryan because of his emaciated appearance in that film. It was only because of that meeting where Damon was at his natural weight that he changed his mind.

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