Mel Gibson’s secret contribution to the most iconic moment in ‘Saving Private Ryan’
Before he hit the self-destruct button on his career and was effectively exiled from mainstream Hollywood, Mel Gibson was one of the biggest and highest-paid stars in the business, and many of his biggest successes came through the art of combat.
From his early roles in World War II drama Attack Force Z and Peter Weir’s stirring Gallipoli to the Vietnam-era action comedy Air America and boots-on-the-ground epic, We Were Soldiers via the blood-soaked battlefields of ‘Best Picture’ and ‘Best Director’ winner Braveheart, Gibson was never too far away from the throes of war during his decades as a viable commodity.
Even when he was cast out in the wake of his numerous scandals, he edged his way back into the awards season conversation when Hacksaw Ridge won two Academy Awards from six nominations and earned acclaim for its harrowing, unflinching, and wince-inducing depictions of what it was like to live life on the front lines.
Two decades beforehand, Gibson could have played the lead role in another wartime classic that did much the same thing, although he was ultimately overlooked for the part of John Miller when Steven Spielberg opted to give the job to Tom Hanks instead, a decision that’s hard to argue with when he’s the anchor of the film and delivers an Oscar-nominated performance.
However, that wasn’t the end of Gibson’s involvement with Saving Private Ryan, and his conversation with Spielberg before production had a massive impact on its most iconic scene. Opening with one of the most unforgettable introductions in cinema history, the D-Day landing sequence stunned audiences into silence with its hauntingly visceral levels of immersion.
The entire thing was filmed on location at Ballinesker Beach in Ireland, standing in for Normandy’s Omaha Beach. Not only was the real-life backdrop deemed impractical as a place to deploy hundreds of cast and crew members for weeks on end, but Spielberg was also cognisant of the fact using a place where thousands of people had died to shoot a movie may have been interpreted as disrespectful.
The filmmaker needed a beach, local authorities who were open to the idea of having a massive Hollywood production descend on their turf, and hundreds – if not thousands – of extras and trained personnel to ensure everything went off without a hitch. Fortunately, Gibson knew just the place.
Having been suitably impressed with the assistance lent to Braveheart by the Irish military, which not only opened its doors for the period piece to shoot on location but offered 1,600 members of its reserve army for Gibson’s use as extras should he require them, the Lethal Weapon star told Spielberg that Ireland was his best bet to give him everything he wanted and needed for Saving Private Ryan.
Spielberg took it on board, and on June 27th, 1997, he called action for the first time on the movie that would win him his second Oscar for ‘Best Director’.
