Black Hawk Down (2001) [Audio]

Blackhawk Down, as the opening first title says, is based on an actual event, and really during the process of directing, making, putting together this story, I kept being reminded of that. the fact that it was recent history, it was nineteen ninety two to ninety three, and of the seriousness of the occasion. So I couldn't go down the conventional route of

Uh, you know, for want of better description, and this isn't derogatory at all, but Hollywood dramatization of a war movie. In fact the one of the most difficult things was actually finally pinning down the beginning of the film. because I'd shot this footage on the last two days of Principal Photography in Morocco. thinking that I would add to that with still photographs and other tricky, you know, graphic design, montage Uh to tell the story.

And we went in circles on that. Eventually I decided to give up and simply go with what I shot because I felt at the end of the day this was certainly powerful enough and got any audience's attention with that very compelling opening image. particularly when it was accompanied by the voice of the Senegal singer Baba Ma. And so the film opens with a lament, which is singing about the condition of Africa in in brief.

And clearly even if you can't understand what he's singing, you get the gist of what he's singing when it's actually, you know, run with these images. At this juncture in the film, which really was the end of principal photography, I almost felt I'd been a war photographer and uh a journalist, and therefore that's why these opening titles are Quite dry, statement of fact, almost like extracts from a newspaper. It's worth noting that um the figures on the ground in fact

you know, were not real, if that passes through your mind. Uh the figures, the dying or dead, were in fact um made by the special effects department and so it was with good makeup and these figures of rubber, actually, where I managed to put a pipe inside one so you could see his solar plexus actually moving as he breathed. So rest easy, they aren't real people.

The only thing I knew about uh Somalia back in in October of ninety-three uh was what I saw on CNN, which was um these bodies being dragged through the streets, these young American servicemen uh who had been killed. And that's about it. That's all I I had r any recollection uh about. um Somalia. I I do remember Durant and his interview by uh Adid's Men that was also broadcast on CNN. And then I remember that um he was eventually released. But that's it until I read uh Mark Bowden's book.

This reconstruction of A series of actually months, even years, of the process of trying to distribute food and get food in an efficient in a humane manner to the people who are actually in need of it and in fact many are starving because the food was systematically distributed and then withheld. It was taken back. Which is really why the Americans started to intervene in the first place under the

George Bush Senior regime. This is just prior to this particular story commencing,'cause this particular story took place in October nineteen ninety three. We went in for all the right reasons. You have to understand that three hundred thousand people have already died of starvation. We sent in twenty thousand marines to distribute the food.

Uh what was happening is when the Red Cross went in there and started handing food out, the uh various warlords uh would steal the food in order to buy ammunition and uh feed their armies and everybody else was starving. So we went in and created order. Got food distributed, saved 200,000 lives. Then we negotiated or the UN negotiated a truce between a number of the warring tribes. Uh and we left. Unfortunately, um one of the

Uh, the warlords decided that he was going to take over the country, uh started stealing the food again, and it was right back being back in business again the way he was uh before we got there. Uh his name was Muhammad Adid. Uh the United Nations um wanted to create a peace, which they were unsuccessful in doing. Uh Deed went out and targeted American personnel and killed some US Marines and then he

killed and skinned twenty four Pakistani UN peacekeepers. Uh that enraged the UN. The UN went to passed a resolution um in the United Nations. to bring a deed to justice. Um and the UN went to Bill Clinton, our president at the time, and said, uh we want your military to go in and extract the deed. Clinton agreed, sent in a force of uh U.S. Delta and Rangers and the Night Stalkers to disrupt Adid's operation and bring him to justice. Uh they'd been there approximately six weeks.

uh had some very limited success, uh because of poor intelligence, but had captured one of his key lieutenants, Osman Otto, and uh had some c information on his other key lieutenants and a meeting that they were having, uh, that they assumed was accurate, but they never they never know what's accurate or not because of who they're dealing with, even though they

withhold the money until the operation is successful, uh you just don't know if they're being set up for an ambush. Uh so this is how I guess the the lead in to October third happened. The whole film was actually shot I would say no further than twenty minutes radius of Saleh. So whilst this looks like it's in the middle of the Mogadishian Desert, it's actually less than probably half a mile from the building site where we actually shot the end run.

I think this is a pretty good uh representation of what you'd call scrub desert and heat, um which is fairly accurate for both Somalia and the Sudan. So the first sequence um where we see the arrest of Osmond Atto Osman Arto, who is the character you see in the scene, is uh being interviewed by General Garrison, who was the commander in charge in Mokadishu at this point.

And Osman Arto is uh a real character who at this particular moment in Mogadishu, we believe it's reported and s um all of this stuff is reported, so The hundred percent accuracy of it is maybe questionable. But Osman Ato at the moment actually is in Mogadishu. Um at this point in time he's really having a go for premiership because if you'd constitute anyone as the premier in Somalia that would be uh Farah Adid's son.

who was a American trained marine who ended up working in the state of California before his father was assassinated and then the son was then taken back to Somalia where he became the leader. By the documentary I saw me looked fairly reluctant. Six weeks you are trying to catch the general.

Both with the opening sequence, we're giving getting a state of play and the scene with Osmanato we're being told that it's fundamentally none of our business and we should keep our noses out of this. And uh this is our war, not your war. And the upshot is that General Garrison simply says that uh Three hundred thousand dead and counting is not a war, mister Arto. It's genocide. And they intend to stop it. W whoever it takes to arrest, they will stop this particular Yeah, yeah. Sam.

I've never worked with before. Sam Shepherd was playing John Garrison. Never worked with him. Um it was a real pleasure, uh, in that I fully expected one of the great American playwrights to come in and alter everything. And he didn't. He was actually as good as gold and um uh was always very much involved and so I considered it a really interesting and pleasant partnership. In fact, this gentleman Otto was cast out of London to

In fact after this was going to New York to play in a Harold Pinter play. So that just shows the magic of uh movie making and uh casting because he certainly looks the business. Here we have more information between Garrison and Cribbs. Cribbs in fact was Lee Van Arsdale, but uh Lee was m less comfortable with actually having his name used in the process of the movie and therefore we give him the name Cribbs.

Lee Van Asde was uh g uh Delta who was in charge of Delta Force uh ground force at this particular moment and um And therefore was, you know, seconded, I guess, to and under General Garrison. Lee Van Osdale was Colonel Lee Van Osdale, so this this would be Colonel Cribbs.

We hired Bonnie Timmerman as our casting director and um she brought in such a variety of young actors from all over the world because she felt that some of the European faces uh were were even more interesting than the American face. So we had a combination of both uh foreign talent and American talent.

Yeah, the cast in this is actually mixed in the sense of we have uh American, of course, we have Australian in Eric Banner who's hoot in the film, and we have English, um and one of the delta is Danish. Uh so it was a very mixed cast, um Uh there was no real reason for that. So mixed and I said uh basically, you know, the best man got the job. All these guys were fluent in English.

And in today's world any actor who decides to adopt an accent, uh, they v they usually, you know, really take it to heart and they go to s they go to school. They go to school just with a dialogue coach. And um it's uh it's a matter of work to get it down to where you want it to be and uh you know you can even decide which state you want to choose to take on as an accent.

So it it's quite a refined process, whereas twenty five years ago people would say, Yes I have no problem doing an American accent or yes I have no problem doing an English accent and of course that's where we always heard awful American accents and awful English accents.

Ewan McGregor is somebody that um Bonnie said we should try to get him and I think his agent was was pushing for him to to to be in the picture'cause Ridley was directing it and he was somewhere in South America and we'd sent him the script and never heard a word and then we sent him the book and once he read the book Uh he said I want to be in this picture. And Eric Bana is somebody that our company had spotted when he did a movie called Chopper.

sat down with him and talked to him and felt he'd be he'd be great for the the character called Hoot. Um and, you know, Ridley saw Chopper too, remembered him and and said, You're you know, let's get involved with him, let's do it. And then the rest of the the cast kinda came together with discussion with Ridley and Bonnie um um

You know, Sam Shepherd is somebody that was our first choice and we wanted him. Um and and the rest of the kids Uh just came in and gave great readings or had unique looks. Uh Ewan Bremner is somebody that was in Pearl Harbor and I knew he was just a terrific actor and Ridley loved him. Uh Tom Sizemore is such a great personality, is perfect for McKnight. Again, Ridley was aware of his work and and liked him when he came in.

Um and you know, then he had some people that I c I guess were h were hold out from some of his other pictures that he wanted to use. So um we sat for months really, uh screening actors, talking to actors, and trying to put together a really interesting cast that was unique and I think we accomplished that. Shit, that's a shame that that was a nice Jeep!

While I was making Pearl Harbor I had uh given the book to Josh Harden and said, I really think that this character of Eversman, if we can get it right in the script is something you should play. He called me after he read the book and said, Oh God, I love the book.

And he said, When you get a script, why don't you just send it to me? And when I met with Ridley, I said, We have this kid in Pearl Harbor, chances are you haven't seen him. But you really should A look at a piece of the movie, because the picture hadn't been released yet, and then sit down and talk to him. And

But then Ridley and I took a meeting with Josh and and sat and talked to him and and Ridley said this is really an earnest kid and um somebody I think is is talented and we should work with him. Uh so then we had convinced Josh that this was the right thing for him to do'cause Josh is kinda worried of becoming a movie star.

uh and just wants to be an actor and not have all the notoriety, but I think Pearl Harbor once once that opened kinda changed his life. But and coming back with another uh movie that has the potential of being success'cause of of Ridley being involved. uh scares a young actor. But fortunately for us, we were able to convince him to do the film and and he got involved.

One of the deal breakers initially dealing with the Defense Department who were rather embarrassed about the fact that we revealed that Delta might hunt wild pigs with rifles. Uh particularly as they're using taxpayers gasoline and one taxpayer's bullet.

But my argument was that if these guys have been there six weeks they've been eating nothing but fish out of the Indian Ocean and that any form of meat was gonna be really welcome. So we I finally won with this one. When they saw it in context they'd they accepted the fact it was quite relevant. Thank you. Hey man, there's a line. I know. This isn't the back of it. Yeah, I know. Shorn. Short.

So here on screen you have an Australian on the right, Eric Barner, and you have Jason on the left who is paying Captain Steele, who's English. But I think both sets of accents are fairly foolproof. They're both playing seven characters. The guy hasn't eaten in a couple of days. You delta boys are a bunch of undisciplined cows. Place that they're in right now is the hangar and uh the hangar was their meeting place, food place, uh recreation place.

They slept on cots as you'll see, and what you see is absolutely accurate and is based on what we saw from uh photographs from Bogadish and how in fact they survived. Everything was kind of coordinated but an really a lasher. in terms of they would supply them as many things as they could, like table tennis tables, recreational um uh pursuits. But for the most part they were there all anxious to actually get started and do the job.

These two characters are Sugart and Gordon, who uh Uh I'm not sure were chess players but um what I thought was actually interesting that uh we decided to caracterize and Steve Zillion anyway, caracterized these two guys as chess players the same Way as you have the two pilots arguing about Scrabble. So if you think about that kind of information it means that they're on hold, they're really waiting and when it's now got reduced to drawing pictures, writing books, playing chess

and then later breaking arms, playing table tennis, then it means the table tennis game's pretty rough. Uh and so obviously this all expresses a form of frustration and And uh you know, when are we gonna s get started? You know, we're here to do a job and we're not able to do the job. So I think there's a certain amount of frustration attached to all of them. They w they're a little bit I think on a wire. Can you count? One, two, ten. Okay. Where am I going to do that?

Steele who's Captain Steele um who basically was in charge of chalks, um that would be Lee Van Arsdale would be above him, but Steele once they're on the ground And in battle, Captain Steele would be in charge of ground forces in battle. So uh Lee Vanasda would be watching their progress uh from the what they call the JOC which is the operations center where the whole insertion and then which which then of course deteriored into battle

Uh would be photographed and watched from the air. And once you're in process then Captain Steele would be in charge because he's he's with the guys on the ground. Steele wasn't necessarily a popular man. played it by the book. Um he had his rule book and he stuck to it. Um Didn't bend the rules and uh

Ha had a habit of using a lot of football and sporting expressions and uh discussions in terms of how he was gonna function, how his boys were gonna function when they hit the ground running. So there was definitely a kind of Tension between the And that would be the Delta, the slightly older guys who are had been fundamentally shot at and had shot at people and therefore had had battle experience. But most of these other guys, these rangers, had no battle experience whatsoever.

But we're super trained. And of course prepared as much as you can be prepared to know what it's like when you get shot at.'Cause as Hoot says, once that first bullet goes past your ear, all politics and all that shit goes right out the window. It's all about the man next to you. Join the fights early. Well I think I'm not sure. I would guess is the um character in the film that would be in terms of normal movies. classified as the leading character even though uh he's on an off screen uh

At fairly regular intervals. This film was not conventional in the sense of having conventional characterization where, you know, the film is subsequent to the good guy and the bad guy and everybody else revolves around those two characters. This was very much a film which was a team effort.

Because as it was we were taking a hundred functionaries, protagonists, and we were distilling them down as far as we could get to tell a cohesive story, and uh where we got to was the I couldn't get it much below about thirty seven characters, which by normal standards is about thirty two characters more than you ought to have.

And so that was tricky, that was something I was always concerned about. That would people be prepared or would they want to follow these guys who are coming and going and then r you know, reemerging during the process of the story, would they eventually be able to hang their hat on you know, sympathetically, the sympathetic heart or curiosity or interest.

on these characters when there was a large team rather than specific individuals. But I think Josh did a great job and actually he does stand out as to what he's I think probably predestined to be and that I would think is probably a big star. Big movie star. elements about him in terms of his uh dignity and thinking process as a person, not just as an actor, um, that is oddly reminiscent of uh

the behavior of uh Gary Cooper. Um so can you learn that or are you just born with it? That's always the eternal question. I think you're born with it actually. Thank you. This guy, again, whilst he looks great, looks local, isn't. He's from London. And uh we have in the film in GRC when Garrison says refers to this level of unreliable intelligence. He describes the guy he'd actually had Until a month ago, who had actually blown his brains out playing Russian roulette in a bar.

Well clearly he'd been drunk and had been challenged and he'd killed himself. That was the quality of intelligence and uh these guys are here to do a job and they're being pressed by the government to say get on with it'cause you're it's expensive to have you there. And his argument is yeah, but there's nothing to get on with. But they are being put through the press and have to do something. So Garrison eventually I guess is pressured in making decisions

Maybe quicker and uh maybe taking a view on chances that he would not normally take. I don't know. I mean I'm only speculating on that one because I never talked to General Garrison. or as to what he felt about the event or this film. Tom Seismok playing Colonel McKnight, uh head of the Humvee column and the trucks that will be moved into pickup.

And take away the prisoners and the rest of the team. That's all the chalk four guys, all hopefully untouched, all hopefully unwounded. And of course that was not to me. So now we're getting the plan in what would be called the J O. C this is the basic the Ops Room Operations Center. He's briefing key personnel which are Delta and some officers. Um With his hopes, fears and expectations. of what's gonna go down. Um he has the air recon maps and uh

they know to a certain extent where the building is at the moment. They don't know specifically which one it's gonna be, but it's s gonna be somewhere along the street within about two or three blocks of where they hope it'll happen. So everybody is prime for that target. Matthew.

coordinate the There's a predetermination in the scene with the guys who are uneasy about the mention of the Bacara market. The Bacara market was the center of the old city of uh Mugadishu, which had basically was the sanctuary for let's say the worst of the enemy, the most organized of that group, and the most armed or overarmed. of that particular group. Going into the Bukharam market was like going into the wild west frontier town. It was really dangerous and uh no law and no order.

underestimate their capabilities. Now we'll be going through friendly neighborhoods before we hit the market. So we remember the rules of engagement. No one fires unless fired upon. Let's go get this thing done. Good luck gentlemen. We took over the actual base in Morocco which is the military base, which you know a lot of these North African hangers are very standard and very part of code of the these hangers could have been in California.

Looked exactly the same. I think we were probably built by American engineers maybe in the fifties for the Moroccan army. Um and were quite well maintained and uh so it was perfect for us. Amen. I figure if you're gonna follow a car, all you need is two or three cars with ratty old white roofs. From the A you're gonna lose him. So I thought a very simple symbol on the top of the kind gaffer tape would be fine. All these black hawks are, of course, military. They came over on these giant

a buses that were sent over and came over from Kentucky when we finally finished a rather prolonged uh negotiation between us and the Defence Department. In fact I'd been shooting for a month. by the time I actually got full permission to actually you know, I have the use of the black hawks and uh so in that time I was shooting stuff which didn't require black hawk or helicopter work.

But it was getting more and more anxious as we approached the point where I suddenly would say, Okay, tomorrow I need four black hawks and four little birds. But we'd had German aircraft standing by, we had Hueys in Germany, and we had all our spray paint poised to start spraying them of this kind of dark bottle green colour. But fortunately we never had to go that far.

When we were getting ready to commit to Pearl Harbor, what we had to do is get the assistance of the US military, both the army and the navy who controlled Pearl Harbor. Uh so we went to the Secretary of the Defense um under Clinton and William Cohn.

Uh and we started talking about Pearl Harbor. And then he turns to me and he says, I understand you bought the book Blackhawk Down. And I said, Yes, I did. And he said, I love that book. Okay, so we knew we had the Secretary of Defense who loved the book.

Um we talked to a number of other military men at the at the at the Pentagon and we were tipped to the fact that U Shelton, who was the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was also a fan of the book. Uh so we had two advocates already in very high places. um to help us with the acquisition of of the helicopters and the rangers that we needed.

Uh but unfortunately for us that administration had changed uh and William Cohn was gone and Donald Rumsville was in. But Shelton was still in in in power at the at the time. And uh we arranged a meeting with him and some of his lieutenants. and um told him exactly what we needed and he said, look, I'll do whatever I can to help you get this picture made because I feel uh it shows um the courage and bravery of the young man who was stuck in this terrible situation.

Uh so that's how it began. It it kinda disintegrated from there, but uh that's where it began. We had a number of meetings with Phil Strube who's you know the the liaison for film with the with the Pentagon and he they were very helpful in in you know going through our screenplay and showing us uh certain errors that we made um i as far as referring to officers and men, enlisted men, just, you know, simple protocol that uh anybody in the military would know that we got wrong.

Once Phil Strube approves it, um it starts going up the chain of command. And since we knew we had the top covered, we weren't sure about Rumsfield, but um I think Shelton being a fan of it, uh I'm sure uh helped with Rumsfield. So that part of it was working fine. It's when we got to Morocco and said we're bringing in A hundred US Rangers and we're bringing in uh eight helicopters. Uh that things got real sticky.

We felt we had all the documentation to present to the Pentagon and the State Department that they needed. Uh but there was a woman in the um embassy in Morocco who had other ideas. and uh she was a charge A and uh the ambassador had l had recently left because of a change administration and Bush hadn't put anybody new in there. And she really didn't want anything to go wrong on her watch and the last thing she needed was a movie uh to disrupt her moment of power.

So in a very nice way she said she would help us but um kept demanding more and more paperwork. Uh once we got one piece of paperwork there was always something else that she needed to do. uh but never told us that in advance. And you know, when you work with a um with a foreign government like Morocco, things move move very slowly since the king is at the head of it and kinda has to filter to him and goes through a lot of hands before it gets to him.

Uh so we he first she asked for a a piece of paper from the head of the military. Uh we had a number of military signatures already on our documents, but that wasn't good enough. She had to have the head of it. Uh it took us two weeks. Uh through the help of our friends in Morocco we got it.

Uh then she came to us and said, Well there's really no agreement between Morocco and the United States, which is called the SOFA agreement, which if you bring American troops onto foreign soil Um there has to be some agreement of who has jurisdiction over these truths.

Uh w what happens if something goes wrong with one of the soldiers? What what courts? Is it the American courts he goes to or the Moroccan courts? Who protects the helicopters and the men while they're there? Um since you're not supposed to be armed in Morocco, they're not supposed to have any guns. So that started. Then the lawyers got into it. You know, when lawyers get into things things get really messy.

Um and you know, thanks to the pressure from Tom Matthews who kept walking it desk by desk through the Pentagon and the help of um Sony's uh I guess government relations. Uh we got an enormous support from Jesse Helms. who s who sent letters to the Moroccan government on our behalf and to um the State Department on our behalf and a congressman from California who actually called the woman and got her out of bed at two in the morning and said

This is gonna happen or you're not gonna be there. And that all of a sudden the next morning we get a call and let's have a meeting. So things started to progress. But still, you know, there was always sticking points. So we we had so many false alarms that the containers were packed, the men were on their way and then there was some something that had to be signed that wasn't signed that uh

had to get done. And and all this is going on while Ridley's filming. So he had to wait four weeks before he got the helicopters and and the A D's that scheduled the helicopters I think in the second week. So we kept pushing things forward to shoot prior to the helicopters and I'm sure I put a lot of unfortunate stress and and strain on Ridley and the production. But you know, there's such professionals, the people that Ridley works with and himself that

You know, they know how to roll with the punches. They know how to you know, uh they know what's important and the production team had already gotten a number of UEs out of Germany. They're already painted black. just in case we couldn't get the Blackhawks and I guess we're gonna change the name of the movie to Yui Down. But fortunately that didn't happen.

after this long wait of for me it was almost five months working on getting this thing um accomplished with the with the Pentagon and the State Department and Moroccan government that the h helicopters arrive and You know, they're on the tarmac there and and one of the pilots who I guess knew who I was kind of points at the two choppers and says, Take a look at their names.

And uh one was called Armageddon, the other one was called Gladiator. And I honestly thought it was a joke. I thought that they d painted them on there uh uh for our benefit, but that's n it's not true. There's uh the names that they named the helicopters when they got'em. So um it's kind of that was a good luck charm. Once that first bullet goes past your head, politics and all that

During one of the meetings I met a uh a young colonel and he was very articulate and had been in Somalia. He was head of the air operations uh in Somalia was up in the air for eighteen hours. During the battle, and his name was Tom Matthews. And he um

was helpful on our side explaining to one of the other officers in the special forces that what we had in the screenplay was actually accurate. And I asked him, What do you can you get out of the military? He says, Well, I'm retiring in in a month. And I said, Would you consider Uh being an advisor on this movie and coming to Morocco with us. Uh during the filming too.

to show us um the accuracy of uh help ridley with the accuracy of of the picture. And he said, Let me think about it and he wasn't sure if he wanted to get involved with Hollywood. Uh it's it's it wasn't really he's a real straight shooter and it's not something that he thought uh he would fit in very well and hadn't heard great stories about uh about the process. He went home to his wife and his wife said, Are you kidding? You better go and do this.

Um uh so he joined us and um we also contacted the head of the uh the Delta Force who was who was responsible for his men in s in Somalia and so between the two of them Ridley had two bookends. uh one who was on the ground for the battle and one who was in the air for the battle to make sure we got everything right.

The uh two characters that I was very happy to have who went through the process of the Battle Muggett issue were played by uh Stephen Ford, who played the character Cribs, who that in fact was Colonel Ivan Arsdale. And the pilot, the man in the air in charge of air to ground was Colonel Tom Matthews. was played by uh I think Glenn Moshoer. They were representing Matthews and Lee Van Arsdale. But I had the two the two guys the real thing all always with me.

Um w during processing what I call m video village, which is all my monitors. If there's eleven cameras I've got eleven monitors and of course on playing back I would include uh Lee Van Arsdale and Tom Matthews to give their opinion.

And uh it was interesting because it was all process, all procedure. They never encroached of course dramatically. It was it w great dealing with the real thing. I think it definitely contributed toward the authenticity of it all. And um, you know, of course in there we've uh got a gentleman I've worked with before, Harry Humphreys, who also was the real thing, not at Mogadishu but in fact was a veteran of quite a few experiences in Vietnam.

as a navy SEAL. And uh he does films for me as an ad military advisor and for Jerry Brookheimer. Part of it's his knowledge and part of it he's very Good man. So between the three of them I used to have a fairly good view o as to whether I was right or wrong.'Cause what I didn't want to do was to present these guys in any dramatized shape or form. I wanted to keep it as real and as documentary as I could make.

So I think what was really interesting was to gradually realize that this low tech taxi is connected with a high tech helicopter that is receiving him And GOC, uh where they're relaying the information and uh on that basis they c they can then plan to make their next move. And so I it was almost became like a peculiar video game. 'Cause there's all the players out there, all playing towards the centre and um

you know, the end of the day there is a target and a winner and a loser. So it's becomes this kind of really awful game. Um but these guys are here to risk their lives. and risk their lives on behalf of a group of people who clearly even at this juncture really don't want them. They'll still say, well, I have no answers to that, which I think is strange because I think there's a very clear and concise answer when you see that you know, such behaviour being practiced.

in a very conscious m way, conscious manner, that you have to do something about it. You have to if you're a community you can step up and be counted, you gotta step in and do something. I have no problem about intervention, particularly when you're seeing uh, you know the results of what I saw in a book called um Inferno. is a report by a ph photographer, a war photographer, uh, which he covers India Somalia and the Balkans. And uh it is the most dismaying book, um, I think.

it i i i i it's as dismaying as it gets. It's really upsetting to think that and what's fascinating about it is to see people who are in a most critical and pitiful stage of of starvation and therefore clearly dying, that you're still getting people moving behind them, obviously with some um other occupation going on.

So when I see a person carrying a bag or a briefcase walking behind this person who's melting away into the earth, it's very strange and it's does it need exploring? Absolutely. Does it really need looking closely at? Yes. Because clearly there's factions in here who are trying to kill other factions. And all this political correctness of saying, Well w should we intervene or should we not intervene, in my opinion is rubbish. I think we should intervene without any question.

and particularly in cases like this now, particularly where the world is going, where the actual upside of this for the Americans Coming out of here, there's no upside. There's only downside. Downside being you're gonna lose lives, you're you're gonna take a bashing from the international community, none of

them have stepped in and actually joined you in the process, other than the UN, right? And I think uh it's wrong. I think it should be obligatory, but put it in the hands of the most practiced. And um by being multinational then I guess we then one way or another do the most we can to avoid abuse of a process and an opportunity. There's always this fear of You're generating what essentially is two steps from a fascist or police state.

But there's a moment when you're dealing with certain groups that you have to really think about how can I deal with this because my enemy aren't a normal enemy and uh the scariest thing about them is there's no fear about dying. Um, they're here to make a demonstration uh to the rest of the world as to who they are and what they represent. The uh airport in Mogadishu actually was about three miles from the center of town. Uh so that was had been originally an American base.

And had been built by the Americans in I think probably The s uh seventies, early eighties, uh. I'd also been the international airport in Mogadishu at a point when M Mogadishu was kind of called a holiday resort, which uh took a lot of particularly Italians would go to visit Mogadeshu and actually in the I think f late fifties and maybe early sixties it was a rather pleasant place to go onto the Indian Ocean. Providing you kept an eye open for the

sharks which in fact were prevalent at that particular point. In brief the history was the Russians came in of course as communists took over'cause there was c association with Italian communism, came in and were in Mogadishu for Somalia for some time, and when they decided to leave They left behind them what was supposed to be approximately a billion dollars worth of arms, firearms, bullets

And so essentially this this could be perceived as being one of the most overarmed communities in the world. Where you'd have marketplaces in fact not selling food but selling rocket propelled grenades and missiles. Um so it was a formidable place to take on board because against their lack of accuracy or specific training uh they made up for numbers. And clearly a lot of these Somalian group were really very efficient.

Just because somebody's running around in a bandana and uh hasn't got on a formal khaki uniform doesn't mean to say that you can not take him seriously. And I think Garrison had the good sense and intuition to know that. Right. He knew that every minute they were on the ground was one minute closer to the simile was actually picking up a wasp nest and shaking it and then holding onto it to see how many times you could get stung before you dropped it.

Whilst all of this looks very difficult, um in fact the coordination of these choppers was made that much easier because I'm dealing with probably the best armed flight crews in the army. Um, th we walked the street with these guys. They checked it out for half an hour, said no problem. Where do you want the helicopter? I said, right here and here.

And where do you want each f of the fortr flying fortresses which are constitute the Black Hawks, given the position in the corner, direction they must be and action, they were there. And there was a lot of rehearsal with actual rangers. So those guys you actually seen going down the ropes. Not in close up but in long shots are actual rangers. Let's go, let's go. Lot of very good CGI work here. Some of it enhancement.

Like the dust on the right here is all enhanced'cause I had to to have some kind of order and semblance of order. I knew a helicopters coming in would have tremendous amount of dust, but for me to shoot with a tremendous amount of duff you just don't see anything. You're like in a white out or or yellow out or you know, dirt out and uh Uh so I had to wet the ground so I can control the dirt and then later, CGI wise we put in dirt.

'Cause once those choppers come over that ground, I mean the whole ground melts for about a foot. You lose about a foot of dirt. From the last thirty years. And of course there's a lot of dog dirt and a lot of ev you're breathing all kinds of stuff in. So there was a lot of care and attention taken on that.

There's a lot of funny problems of uh you know, chest complaints and things like that, but I think we all survived. We put all the dust in here. We had to. You can't put that in have people shooting on the ground.

This is what Edmonds said he froze for a second when he saw his man fall, which was not in the plan. And um Uh and you know, so you can gather the and experience that any general who actually has got a plan of s of you know reasonable nature, when this starts to fall down, collapse, then he's looking for other solutions already.

Of course a lot of the problem was also communication. Hearing very clearly what's going on. That's why Garrison said what did he say?'Cause he doesn't know yet there's there's a man on the ground. The order of the day is do not fire unless you sh fired at. Reason for that being there was a lot of Somalian civilians they knew would be less prudent in terms of common sense

in getting off the street when the soldiers arrived and therefore they had a feeling that there'd be a lot of civilian Somalians hanging around observing what the hell was going on. Of course that's precisely what happened. So it believed that uh a lot of the Somalian soldiers would use civilian groups as shields to run behind them and shoot through them and over them. and therefore making it very tricky and very difficult for the Americans to shoot back.

Eventually, after a couple of Americans got hit, I think that all went out the window and I think they all just let flight anything that moved. The surprising thing is how many people stayed on the street and just s simply did get off the street and get into the house. But there was so much high curiosity that it was like a war with an audience. Doc Smith's Hugh Dancy is an English actor. Who I'd seen on BBC I think 18 months prior, I'd seen him do, I think David Copperfield.

That's what Garrison says, what'd he say? So he doesn't quite know what the heck's going down. He doesn't see everything from the air. And also of course you are insulated from the real event from the air because you're not hearing any of the sound effects. You're not getting the flying bullets, the flying pieces of lead and just the aggressive behaviour of the crowd on the ground. You're seeing a lot of people running around but you don't quite know absolutely know what's going on.

Any general is obviously got half an eye on the possibility of not just failure, but losing a man, losing men, maybe losing a helicopter. And if he doesn't then he's a fool. Uh because i once you go to war then Murphy's Law kicks in and you have a constant process of deterioration the longer you're there. And uh of course any good general or any good leader would know that. And so time is of the essence here. So now they're in the captive building.

Uh which is what I'd call in simple terms the town hall, where they caught a meeting not of just three guys, but caught a meeting of twenty two guys, so they didn't have good intelligence pictures of who they want, so they took the lot. And slung'em on board the the trucks and then uh so that automatically spoke for a lot of places so the guys couldn't get out later.

If there'd been two guys that they had full recognition on, then they could have just stuck'em on you know, you'd have had more room in the trucks basically. One of my biggest problems in casting was it suddenly dawned on me that as a crew cut or a s you know a buzzcut and then they put on a helmet

and goggles and chin strap, you're starting to look the same. So that became very much a big concern and uh but at that moment there's not much you can do about it. So you all do is clarify as much as possible. Um so I said, Well let's put names on helmets, front and back and they said, We don't do that and I said, But you did in Vietnam, I saw it. I think there's even more warfare, there's even more reason to r acknowledge and recognise your teammate.

And also from my point of view on the floor, I'd have been shouting, you know, O you U rather than I could never would never get his name'cause I may not be able to recognise him. But I think little by little during the film through about into this beginning of the second act, you gradually start to get who is who, which I think is fine. You don't need any more backstory. This is about the event then, that night. Y you know what else is there to be told? That is what the story's about.

Also this clarification of when you get a black hole coming in and he's he's spewing Four and a half thousand shell casings a minute. And you're underneath. There's th I've heard of unlucky fellow getting a red hot shell kiss down his shirt. So he's leaping around trying to get his shirt off to get the shell casing out, which is what I I I couldn't resist that kind of detail, so I had Josh do that for us. I saw two children standing watching.

And I thought that was irresistible, um, because that's what would happen. You have two kids w got trapped in that particular corner in that morning as American Delta r come through the arch doorway and seemed to take over everyone, right? I thought it was rather interesting. First three vehicles mount up. We're moving back to base. Yeah, that's very good. Come on, don't find it now, Colonel! Here we have the first death.

Pila was a r a gunner and was a popular man who uh would w as shown in the um hangar earlier you see Pila basically doing a pretty good satirical view of uh Captain Steele and the commanding officer, which of course is a very standard procedure. They all do that. Um but Peeler, unfortunately, is the first guy to get shot. All c communication on the radio stops.

for almost twenty s thirty seconds which sounded like an eternity till somebody called back in as to where they are now and you know broke the silence. But the silence was uh he said was absolutely explosive and uh that's when garrison from that moment on garrison felt he was in real trouble. He felt he'd now gone past the allotted time and things are gonna go downhill. This is the traditional sense of the hero returns and uh fundamentally gives as good as he got. He's lost the man but uh

I couldn't really resist the response. And uh but then right on top of this response, you've got this efficient character coming through who is in the book characterizes sunglasses because they remember this man who seemed to be everywhere, who was always seen with a pair of, you know, fashionable uh whether they're fashionable, whether they're just cheap sunglasses, knockoffs, uh he was always in the sunglasses.

They never never knew what his name was. But they think he was certainly responsible for one black hawk getting hit. So we now have the first helicopter going down. Um and uh All of this is actual flying with CGI added, the black oily smoke, um is out of a CGI house and of course Bush struggling to hold himself in position inside is a uh it's basically a CGI blue screen background. But all the flying is live. The i he's doing this for real. Uh this is now beginning to have

CGI mixed into it. Those distant shots of helicopters going across the roofs is the little shots are CGI. From now on when it hits the building is CGI. the whole thing was replaced w'cause we shot this using a m mock up dummy. on a cable on thick heavy cables. Um but really I was gonna get nowhere near what I wanted. I wasn't gonna get the harshness or the the reality that kind of visceral reality which happens on a eight ton machine's out of control. So all the image that was captured on film

from the minute was hitting the top of the building to when it comes to rest on the ground was essentially replaced with the CGI. So they used the maquette or the the fake chopper as a kind of dummy to copy. And then they basically r removed it, got rid of it. Star four one come inbound and see if you can land at the crash site. Roger that star four one inbound. I didn't want to forget Osmanato. I couldn't really resist covering that that not so much that he knew or that

He may have known that something had happened because he didn't. But simply to put him in there after the first helicopter goes down is kind of interesting because it almost infers that He knows that these guys are gonna be in trouble. Six four I can't see the crash side over. Two pirates, too east of you, you will f Let's get it. Slavomir Idzyak was a cameraman who worked quite often with Kozlowski, the Polish director.

And uh I'd seen a lot of the stuff and had been both very impressed by the director's work and Slav. And so I approached him very simply and said, Uh, y you I'm doing this film about Mogadishu, are you interested? And he said, Yes, please and uh we met and we got on with the film. Um But you know, we a lot of discussion in terms of the look and how Obviously, this takes no real second thought, um, that the film should take on the shape and form of a kind of documentary.

And that in there there would be anywhere between two to eleven cameras on a regular basis. Very often there'd be six cameras. You get used to being able to position pre-position cameras. Um, like I used to at B B C I used to do live television broadcasts sort of plays, not just outside broadcasts which is basically covering a sporting event, but actually pre planning, pre thinking

as many as three hundred and fifty shots to in an hour's show and then literally writing your camera plot and camera plan. That was a r marvellous process because it made me imagine way before I got there what I was actually gonna shoot and how I was gonna cover it and who was gonna say what at what moment in close up. And that has always come very easy.

to me and I think that's probably because of early days in television, live T V and plays, drama. Then, you know, later into television commercials where for 18 years I op operated camera uh through to the first four features and so you know quite obviously I know lenses inside out so I know what I'm gonna get.

And with the advent of video assist All the days when I was told by producers, even on Duelist Cena, I shouldn't be operating because I need to keep my eye on the actors, of course, is absolute rubbish. Because I never felt that was ever a problem anyway. And now every director sits

Usually fifty feet from the actor or actress watching a video of what's coming through the viewfinder. Which is a very poor man's version of a viewfinder actually because When you're operating the camera, I am less than three or four feet from the actor, so I have a much more

Close communication. I always found that actors really liked the fact that all I've got to do is unblink my left eye and I can look straight at him in the eye and talk to them. And so I've always thought that's a very logical process and of course After twenty-five years of doing it now I can say that's the right thing to do and not the wrong thing to do. And I still believe that. So first thoughts were always the best one.

So yes, it was a hard film for Slav, who for the most part was uh as he said, I'm used to small personal movies and uh this was large and I think not impersonal. At the end of the day I think what comes down is a very personal movie and you know where I'm doing my best to reflect uh what it's like for these guys to be in the field, that became for me the order of the day. That's what my story was.

I wanted people to know what these guys do and what they g these guys do for a living uh for the most part on our behalf. I guess at the end of the day the film is anti war, which anyone in the right mind making a film about war, I hope is gonna be a serious film about war, is gonna be anti war. He's har he can hardly be pro war. But oddly enough Anti war, but this is pro military. Uh it's pro what these individuals do.

In present circumstances today, in this present world, in this present situation, um, what they used to do before was there an abuse of this process? Probably. Uh probably frequently. Are they less liable to be able to get away with that now? Abuse or atrocity? Yeah. You're probably far less l liable to get away with that if you if your heart takes you in that direction or if your

If you're as a soldier you react in a barbaric fashion, will it be reported? Probably it will. Um so in this very politically correct and searching world I support these guys to what they do. Given the circumstances. And I know there'll be many people, you know, listening to that with um raised eyebrows or rolling eyeballs, but um I keep asking them when I s asked continually by usually actually press and foreign press saying

But do you approve of what happened here? I said, uh well of course I do. Um they said, but do you fundamentally approve of intervention? I said, Of course I do. And they said, But why? There's gotta be another way And I said, Well there isn't another way. If these guys hadn't gone in or if if Bush hadn't gone in earlier that's

senior, gone in earlier with all those troops. This would have deteriorated way earlier and just by Bush's intervention temporarily or otherwise probably stopped the death of between two and three hundred thousand people. Um when these guys then pull out because the the the g the government is embarrassed, they pull out immediately after this event and ten months later you get Rwanda. So

What do you do about that? Well any well meaning journalist saying there must be another way. I said well there isn't another way'cause if you don't do something, you're gonna get a million get hacked to pieces ten months later. If we had an intervention somewhere like Rwanda which isn't sophisticated on a weapons and military level. Certainly at that m moment it was like a civil war with Machetis.

you know, maybe two thousand troops could have stopped it all, right? And become the governing factor, become the sh temporary sheriffs. As long as that is maintained, you're maintaining order. Always the biggest question, the biggest problem is how long do we stay in? Uh we can't stay forever, you know. Do we leave some of these communities to it? To fundamentally destroy each other. I think the answer is I don't think so. Even though there's many mistakes made, uh we lose lives.

We wonder why, as they keep saying, putting our children in foreign soil where you know, for the most part we couldn't even you know, write its name on a on a on a map. Uh we wouldn't know where it was. I think two things to be said about that is these guys are not children. They are men who actually volunteer for this process. It's their passion and it's their life. They know what the score is and they know what they're doing.

And I think for the most part a lot of them particularly have a sense of their own You know dedication to a process where they believe they are making a difference, however small they believe they're making a difference. And that's what I feel that the these young kids went over there. They went over there and they're not politicians.

They don't make policy, they enforce it. And when you use the military, it's the last resort. And what you have to understand and I think some one of the mistakes we made is that when you go into a a foreign country and you you station your troops and you put'em in harm's way You have to prepare the public.

for um body bags coming back. Uh it's inevitable in in the military that when you go on these dangerous missions, if we don't shoot each other or helicopter doesn't go down, somebody will do it for you. And you're gonna lose men. And you know, if you're not prepared for it

then what happened with Clinton will happen again, where he you go on a mission, it's dangerous, you accomplish the mission, and that's what the military did. They went in to get these top lieutenants from Adid. They got those lieutenants, unfortunately got caught in a hellish firefight for eighteen and a half hours, but did get those men out and brought to justice. Um and you know, two weeks later that they were pulled out and those men and everybody else was released.

Uh so the the parents of these young soldiers uh felt that their sons and and husbands had died in vain because it wasn't serious enough mission to to continue it. Romeo says four on hidden! Production designer Arthur Max, who I've worked with on several occasions, notwithstanding, Gladiator, then this Black Hawk Down, then d way earlier G. I. Jane.

Arthur's one of the great creative production designers who can handle big scale projects with two to three you know art directors and Arthur as production designer as well boss over quite a large department. Um pr in fact probably the single most expensive factor in this movie was the art department in terms of what they were doing.

When Arthur and I entered Saleh, uh which is uh to remind you is just of suburb of Rabat, which is the capital of Morocco, is the financial capital of Morocco, um we saw the Nali working class district, which is a great you know, version of Mogadishu and said, okay, let's go, let's walk through the streets. So we walked the streets, notched the street corners, notched the crossroads, and then found a literally a dirt, dirt football field. Nothing on it but two posts and dirt.

And it's there we decided to build the Moorish Target building because one thing I didn't have on the street was an important enough building to make it look like a town hall.

y mae'r infrastruteur yn ymwneud. Felly rydym wedi'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i'i' But um other than that Arthur went around on the areas on the streets, making them even more East African, adding arches and moorish

Arches where we didn't have them, adding some Moorish arcades to the street'cause the s these streets that I was shooting in were probably actually in fact no older than the fifties, although the original foundations probably were way earlier. It was a tricky film because I was on a fast track. I'd finished Hannibal, I was putting Hannibal out on February the 14th. Uh but shortly after Christmas I was kind of doing my

you know, selling process and journey, travelling with Hannibal, t talking to journalists, et cetera, et cetera. At the same time we were casting this film um Black Hawk and I was due to going to Mogadishu actually less than a month before pr start principal photography. But because I think of good organization because I can read I was a designer, so I can read

elevations I can then contribute on an elevation, an architectural drawing, and make marks and notation as to what's this, what that. I think this is too small, I think that's too large. So best part of my brain is the visual side where I I'm already seeing what I'm gonna get before it's up. And th that does enable me to plan at a distance, particularly with someone like Arthur Max, who's a good friend and was is a very good architect and th and also a great designer.

Terry Needham's a great organizer, planner, uh, with Branco Lustig. Uh Branco was the line producer. Those are really the three cornerstones of my set up before the other unit really starts to come,'cause at this moment you've got months before finding these this say this building site, which is the the c we call it the Alamo. This is a building site that was with all those upright concrete structures with had never been finished.

So it was I was starting with a like a two million dollar start. They just run out of money and moved out. So my permission was think I need the crossroads. There's no blacktop, it's all dirt. So it really looks like the real thing. It's incredibly gnarly. And it was great. It was like having a giant building site all to myself.

Those RPGs became my favorite toy. Um I shouldn't really call a weapon a toy, but it was a toy. Um I think Austin Wells said it's the best train set a boy could ever have. Which was the process of making movies And of course here, without question, I get to play soldier and general. and literally um reconstruct the Battle of Mongadishu. And, you know, during that process it's my job to gradually put myself into the position. And therefore when you're on the street under tremendously heavy fire

With all the magazines belching, brass and and uh the only thing missing are the actual missiles, it's entirely real. You are actually part of a battle. and therefore the planning process becomes really stringent. But the RPG which you're about to see is basically a rocket propelled grenade launcher. with a lethal little rock in it, which is got a grenade in his nose, which is Coming up now nearly. Um this one. That's a RPG. Um that actually is on a wire. And I just stuck this

Sliding along it, which is triggered by a radio control. So the guy standing there he's not doing it. He's just looking like he's firing from the rocket. And then later the CGI puts in the back firing, which is the exhaust. And a lot of those things in the in the film were done that way. Fire your weapon, Happy!

This was extraordinary in the sense of it's it was in the book. Both these events were in the book. He was the guy who did the paintings and was writing the children's book. That's all that's not cute, that's real. He was a good illustrator. He was trying to complete the last act of the children's book that he hoped to have published. His ambition when he got back to the United States was to have a bookstore in his home state, which I think was Massachusetts.

And this was never to happen because this was his last day. Ironically he actually lasted for another two and a half hours. At the same time a man saw the hand on the ground. And and knew it was army by definition of fact the w wrist watch. And Corporal who picked it up, his name was Corporal Hand. So that's very strange. Maybe he was predestined to always do that in his life is to pick up this hand on the battlefield.

And he the only thing he could think of was to pick it up and put it in the bag and hope that it could be grafted back on and go back to the hospital. So there was a kind of crazy logic to it. So if viewers think this is extreme, it is extreme. Warfare is extreme and that's exactly what I was trying to illustrate. This is what these guys do. Oh, almost comic relief, or certainly a relief, you know, that they are literally forgotten about. In the heat of the moment.

They were meant to get picked up by the trucks instead they take a trucks take a right hand turning earlier than where they are and therefore they now believe that they're gonna be cut off. So their little journey became a they were supposed to c very useful one because it was about the only part where we could take a little bit of time out during the movie for a little bit of humor. But uh these two guys worked out absolutely great. 'Cause you and Bremner does become deaf. Um

Uh because what do you do? You fire a gun or save a guy's eardrums. Um you gotta fire your gun and uh He became very hard of hearing. I think he recovered though. But when you're that close to the muzzle of a gun, it can literally blow your ear eardrums. You okay? Nelson. You alright? What? This was the second chopper to get hit here was uh Goffina Went in under tremendous fire, dropped the medic.

And he had to hold position and get shot at while the guys go to the ground and get into the crashed helicopter. Then he is told to get out of there because he's got smoke coming from the top of his rotor. And he does. He has to leave. I added the fact that I wanted to put him under tremendous pressure and by now the RPG was uh definitely one of my swiftest and most available piece of threatening weaponry. So we rigged this. To say does he have enough time?

Turn the chopper, bring to bear the gun, because that mini gun, which is very efficient gatling, only has just over a 90 degree sweep. So beyond that sweep you've got to then turn the chopper. Otherwise you can't get it. You can't get your target. And that's what that was about. But in the process of firing the Gatling I thought it'd be great if the Somalian had just fired the rocket so i it nearly gets the man on the ground, nearly blows up the uh

2-5. We can't move these guys, Maddie. We'll kill them just carrying them. Stabilizing here. Roger! Stabilizing the burn. Repeat. At this point in the story, they're beginning to realize that um this isn't gonna be anything like The plan they thought it was gonna be, already they're getting behind and already they're anticipating problems.

And uh here's Durant going in to actually take over in that position of where Gaffino was meant to be. Cause he got hit. And the unthinkable, they get hit twice. Now, you know, these rockets are pretty simple to to um fire. And I believe they're um accurate up to a hundred meters.

So that's scarily accurate because if you're on the ground that chopper's up the you know, three hundred feet, you just gotta point it. If you hit it anywhere on the chopper the chances are you're gonna d damage the rotors. Once you damage the rotors, the chopper's out of control. And that tail rotor is a real target because if you hit that spindle or a blade and scrack it with a rifle bullet, you're in trouble. You've got to get out of there and get down the ground as fast as possible.

Besides, it doesn't take a genius to fire an RPG, right? I could trend you have to use an RPG in about half an hour. W you got an a aiming device, a sight and you pull the trigger. And the the trick is to make sure you've got nobody standing behind you.'Cause the exhaust would literally kill'em, right? You know, when you're doing a film like this, this is uh you know, you're halfway in of a sixteen week impossible schedule. This film normally would be

Mm, twenty five weeks, right. But I don't like taking my time like that. I think it it's endless, it draws itself out. I like to be under pressure. Sixteen weeks for this was fine for me. And um But it means you can't you can't mess about. You have to get on with it. You gotta make decisions fast, you gotta let people do things um you know, which is uh All down to a good team, reliable team. If you haven't got a reliable team, you'll end up redoing things. And that's when it gets expensive.

So Ruiz who was worried about being hit on this particular day was. That's all true. Um At the end of it all, I think Wuiz died, um uh because he lost so much blood. Again this is one of those apartment buildings nearly finished but still look at that that's that's not a bomb that building that's half stages of getting it built and they just walk away from it when they run out of money. Oh Slav's shot there was great, Slav Was it on that camera and when

The the RPG went off and exploded. He panned the guy, but while he panned the guy he saw the rifle standing on end, which started to fall over, and so it was a great shot where he managed to include the rifle falling as well. He's very happy about that. So we have a perpetuation here of the uh The unpopular Mr Steele. saying I'm not moving on. I've got so many wounded and potential dead that I'm gonna set up hospital here and the convoy can come pick us up later. So he's already kind of

got into a delaying factor of not exactly giving up'cause they have the two prisoners. So they got that. They've now got to get picked up, right? And it's gonna get worse. You're gonna go into the night and the night is gonna be hell. This was uh Durant crash where at first there was no one moving down there. Durant I believe was dead. But there's no way he could communicate to the black hawk above.

So we know that um Durant is now isolated down there and they will not risk another chopper going in. Because if they do, he could lose one more chopper and lose guys. Um even though Shugart and Gordon, who are Delta, asked to go in three times before Garrison says to them, You know what you're asking? ac mae'n llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer i'w llawer

So there would be no guarantee as to their chances. And nevertheless, even despite that conversation, Shugart and Gordon still requested to be put down there and they were and they died. And um Because of that that was obviously considered as uh you know, above and beyond the call of duty and therefore their valour was rewarded. by Congressional Medals of Honor and they were the highest decorated troops since Vietnam. And their names were put on the front each of two American frigates.

So that was they were really honored, but it was a expensive price to pay. Later on with Slavomir who thought that we would have at least two weeks of pickups at the end of this um I said, No we haven't. We'll ha we have it. We have the movie. Because I felt I was so covered in many different ways. I knew somewhere in here we had it. Even though the way it was shot was pretty frenetic and frantic. I still believe in classical positions for classical cameras.

And you know, even though they're handheld or their wobbly camera or their forty five degree angle shutters or whatever we're doing with them at that moment, I'm covering, covering, covering. It's all about coverage.'Cause then if I'm supplying Pietro with coverage, then whilst it may drive him crazy, there's nothing worse than being undercovered. And I know I was fully covered.

So I took a bet and then I still say, Fun a minute, I'll bet you a thousand bucks, mate, we're not back here and we weren't we we had it all. The only things I picked up way down the line and one little clarification to show that there was a friendly zone and a hostile zone in Mogadishu. Other than that we had the whole thing. Which, considering the complexity of the peace,

was not a miracle, it's just professionalism, you know. People say, my God, it was m it wasn't a miracle. It was we knew what we were doing. There's no luck in this process. You have to know what you're doing. You have to predetermine where you're going. And you have to pre plan and you have to allow for Murphy's Law. It will happen at least twelve times an hour every day. And if you don't plan for that then you're you're again like a military operation, then you're a fool. Yeah.

Uh also a lot of it is about predetermining the likelihood of something that might go wrong and therefore you avoid it. The the thing is about avoiding problem. The donkey was my homage to Victoria De Sica and uh I thought what a perfect situation to bring these two characters back together that somewhere mysteriously the donkey has just taken off or the driver got shot.

So the donkey's just basically going home. So th this little donkey has its own little story to tell. It's ironic because it brings the three soldiers back together who in in the process of doing that they nearly m shoot each other. Which must happen often. Friendly fire they reckon was as high as forty percent in Vietnam. You know, not knowing who was who and just letting fly in the dark or round a corner or worse in a jungle in foliage, God, with nothing to stop it.

So a movement with the trigger happy soldiers enough to Bring a whole platoon down. Right. But again perpetuating the Very amusing three characters. Um but also the reality check where he uh does his report and they're asking where the heck is the crash site and they d of course they don't know. This project was first brought to us by um an agent who represented Simon West, who we just finished Conair with.

And Simon wanted to work at our company again and found this piece of material through his agent and packaged Simon in the project. Um we started developing the project. Uh we hired a writer that we we'd been after for a number of years, Ken Nolan, who's a very young screenwriter in Hollywood. And he worked um a couple of years on various versions of the movie. We tried every possible

combination of characters. And every time we read the script, we found that we still had too many characters. Because the book is so rich. You hate to cut things out. Uh so we finally got to a place where we felt we had something that Um was coherent, exciting. Even though we knew it wasn't finished, we knew it was at a place where we could involve another creative mind because we'd been working on this sort of thing for over three years.

And uh we brought uh Ian Ridley. He's just a consummate filmmaker. He's one of the greatest directors, um, living and dead. You know, he's gonna go down in history is is with the greats, with the David Leans and and the John Fords and all the great directors, you know, around the world. So you always want to work with the best and he's the best. And unfortunately in my career the timing just doesn't quite work.

uh to always get the greatest directors to work with you. So you have to bring up new directors and we've been very successful as a company bringing up young kids and and showing how talented they can be. But it's always great to work with the with the masters and he's the master. We've been friends for years. We did a commercial together thirty years ago in San Francisco for B. F. Goodrich and I'd worked with his brother four or five times and always wanted to work with Ridley.

Unfortunately, whenever we had a project that was ready to go, he was off somewhere in the world shooting another movie. So the timing never quite worked out. Uh I had lunch with him and I told him about this book we bought and sent him the book and about a couple months later uh the screenplay finding came in that we were comfortable with and sent it over to him and he said, Look, I'll do it and uh we were in business.

Ridley was in the process of still finishing Hannibal, so he was in um editing and doing post-production on it, doing the music and and uh sound and uh so his time was split a little bit. October it was 2001 last year October 2000 I'm editing and mixing Hannibal Jerry comes to me saying, I have this book you should look at. I think this is for you. And of course it was.

Jerry Bruckheimer, who's been a friend of mine for a long time, twenty five years actually. We've worked together once before was I did a commercial with Jerry when I was a commercial director and Jerry was a producer at an advertising agency. And um the commercial went fine and at the end of the shoot we were I think we were either driving to the airport or coming away from the location and uh Jerry informed me that he was actually going to Leave the business and I said oh yeah doing what?

And uh he said, I'm gonna make feature films and I th always thought, Yeah, sure you know,'cause in those days to get into feature films was really difficult and particularly from television commercials where we're only regarded as doing short form And therefore was impossible. Now of course commercials and rock videos tend to be the main source of talent, directing talent. So twenty five years later, Jerry comes to me saying I have this

script in this book you should look at. I think this is for you. And of course the whole process was v very nice and great fun and um really a uh very adventurous and challenging project to do. So I'm glad it was with him. It was it was great. I'll do it again the flash. Here again they request to go in. Garrison's basically saying put em on. Uh and basically saying do you realize what you're asking for?

In other words, he is saying the chances of me coming back to help you are unlikely any time in the next foreseeable future. So you're going in to defend a position, but you're putting yourself in danger. They say they understand. That black Labrador that runs across the shot did it four times on four takes. So I can only think he either once again the movies or yeah a death wish.

But it was an old Labrador that every time I called action, he'd gone to that side of the street and he would s run across the street. Moroccan Labrador. I think the guy falling out of the truck there wasn't meant to do that, he wasn't paying attention. I think he must have been leaning on the door and as it turned in the door flew open and he took a header out of the door. That was the reason I used the take'cause it was so funny. I thought he was well he wasn't paying attention.

This is all true. He took an RPG through the door of the truck which didn't explode it. Went through his rib cage and of course killing him instantly. Blew his arm off, killed him in instantly, and that was the end of him. The book was um clearly the thing that got me on board because I hadn't actually been down the route before of what could come under the heading of uh you know, current affairs. I mean current in the sense that this was

Nine years old, but still was very relevant today. And of course, that proved to be totally right with September and that occurrence. And now we are exactly where these guys were in Mogadishu were now in the same position in in Afghanistan and other places, rapidly opening up. So it was very much

with a view to illuminating just what these guys do for a living, which I th thought was very interesting. And uh because uh y you know, there was a Political preamble to all of this which you can explore in the book and you because you know you've got you've got somebody who's reading a book which maybe three, four hundred pages, but they can put it up and you know pick it up and put it down.

films you've got to somehow distill that into the two hours or the two twenty-three that this was. And I'd better be accurate but brief about the reason why because the film would really be about how does half an hour deteriorate into eighteen and a half hours of really hideous behaviour, right? And that process to me w was what was really fascinating. And that process very much led me down the path of thinking, well let's not come up with answers, you know, let's only just come up with

as it and see it as it was, as it happened, and therefore there'll be lots of questions and that's good.'Cause questions create discussion and discussion usually creates Uh you know, illuminates things and uh clarifies things or at least makes you think about it, which is uh enough really. Feels kinda weird.

I was very proud of this insertion and uh getting into the back of the wash house. They crashed into a wash house, getting him out of there and then dealing with his dealing with their demise and his. They were very fast running out of ammunition. In the back of the wash house Durant. assumes that the the convoy is on its way and he actually said, uh, Where's the rescue squad? And uh Sugar oh God and said, We're it So Durant had to then be part of the team and defend his own position.

I'm running low on ammo. I got many wounded, including me. Vehicles that are barely running. Okay, Danny, I need a no VS. Can you get to the cra All these helicopter shots which were all predestined to actually do is blue screen, I just couldn't face blue screen because I I I don't favor blue screen, particularly in something which is so Realistic. And um so Roger in frustration I got Alex Witt, my second unit director.

in there with the sheaths of pages of what these actors are gonna have to Say to each other during the process of the hours in the air. And I figured, you know, this is where you get to a pragmatic point on very large movies particularly. This is where it's called being uh totally pragmatic. And if you don't you can get buried alive in a film like this.

Um I said to Alex, You know what? Go up. Here's the pages. I'll talk to the guys, talk to the actors about it. And I said I wanna two wide shots from left and right and two close ups from left and right. If you get 60% of it. I'm sixty percent better off on the day than having to go out, shoot them acting against blue screen and then put in the blue screen, which is always a nightmare, right? And in fact, ironically, everything he shot I used, so I didn't have to do any blue screen.

So it's all to do with, you know, your image and view of what you want. And I don't mind if it faces a silhouette against a black exterior'cause that's what you'd see. And people get terribly hooked on the fight that I must see the landscape behind it. But I don't think it matters because particularly in this kind of movie, right? And you still see enough. See where you are.

We interviewed a number of the of the Rangers and and um other personnel that were over in Somalia during the battle. Um and some of them were actually working for us. One was a stunt man. uh and helped us out. Um and then we had the two uh advisors who were with us and and also we we brought over Matt Eversman at a certain point and he arrives on a set and uh the driver pulls him up to a huge like semi small hill and He walks up to the top of the hill.

is uh our set and it just scared him to death. He thought he was right back in Mogadishu all over again. It was real deja vu for him and he kinda took his breath away and said the color drained from his face when he saw what was going on in the streets'cause it looked so real.

Um and that's another thing that's really amazing about the movie is the fact that The military uh or the military personnel who have seen the picture say this is the one of the best war movies or the best war movie that they've ever seen.

'cause it it really gets it right. We've got so many letters from soldiers and parents around the world who have um had either their kids involved in Somalia or just fans o of the movie and and talking about the accuracy and I think three of the most scary screenings that I went to with Ridley were when we took the film to the various

military bases. We took it to Fort Bragg, Fort Benning and Fort Campbell, uh where the various men uh were trained and for Somalia and some of them are still uh posted there and and um we had a whole group had just come back from Afghanistan fighting over there. And we showed them the movie and they came up and thanked us uh with tears in their eyes for making the picture and for um I guess the attention to detail uh that Ridley put into the picture. So the fact that two hundred of'em lined up

uh after the screen just to shake our hands and thank us. Uh felt great. We went to another fort and This were s were the surviving parents or uh spouses or children of the men who died over there. And that was a very tough screen because uh there were a lot of tears, a lot of handkerchiefs in the audience and uh one of the wives came up to me afterwards and uh her husband had died over there and and just w with tears in her eyes hugged me and said, God, thank you so much.

for making this film, my husband will never be forgotten. Um another woman who was really skeptical about us making the movie, very upset about it before she went into the screening and was angry, uh came out and said, I'm I'm really happy you made the film. You know, I changed my mind.

Um you know, my husband uh you know now will go down in history as somebody who tried it to to do the right thing. I would say ninety percent of the critics we're very much in favor of the movie and gave it rave reviews and we're talking about Shickle, we're talking about uh Time magazine, we're talking about Travis at Rolling Stone. you know, the list goes on and on of of major critics, the two television critics, um, Epert and Roper, who were also fans of the movie. So we had a

uh a real strong following for the film. Of course you always have your detractors, you know. I think it was one the New York Times was one of'em. And I don't know what movie he saw, I really don't, because his comments really

I felt weren't valid for this particular movie and and you know, when you have comments uh what about the other side, what about the Somali people? You know, you always from a movie you try to tell it from a point of view, not every point of view. It's not a documentary on the subject. Uh Mark um certainly got s had some things in his book about the Somalis, but you have to focus on your characters and your lead characters, and they weren't going to be the Somalis.

And we give you a real sense of how they felt about the Americans from two very powerful scenes with them, that they're very intelligent, um, they have a purpose, they know what they're doing, and um they're not gonna let us interfere. So you got that point of view. You know, and we felt that we covered that very well. No Durant never figured whether he was saved for humanitarian reasons by Farimbi.

Or whether he was saved because he might be a useful negotiating tool. And I I think probably the latter is the most relevant. Because they took him on a cot and kept in the on that cot for eleven days his Femur was snapped and the bone was sticking through his trousers and through hit the cloth of the trousers. And therefore he was convinced he was gonna get gangrene, lose his leg first and then his life, because no one did anything about it.

They just didn't touch it. And uh which is pretty brutal. But then of course they probably thought we were brutal, yeah. But it's not exactly a good way of looking after somebody who may be valuable later. Uh there was this discussion with Frembi though as to whether or not you should take him in the hospital and it was decided not to take him to the hospital, which would have been very imprudent'cause Durant would've probably been torn apart. is all the way around

Roger that Kalo six four this is Kalo one one. Request permission to move to crash site number two on foot over. Green light, Kalo one one, green light. We're now heading towards the evening. This again is true as Hoot, or the gentleman that's called Hoot was Eric Barner. Uh Hoot's real name we didn't use because Hoot requested that we didn't use his real name.

I didn't want any information about himself revealed whatsoever. And uh at the moment he he I think is in Afghanistan doing his own special kind of work what quite what he's up to, I don't you know. So the convoy can't get directly to the crash site. So who'd figures it better to go on foot?

And get in there, otherwise he's gonna be l too late for everything. And th in fact that's what they did. With the damage seismol still had his plaster cast on. So this is where you start to get things kicking in which are above and beyond the call of duty. None of these guys have to do this. Once they go back in the base and they're wounded or you know exhausted, they don't have to come back out. Every one of them came back out. Nobody swung the ladder. Every small commitment.

Now you have the formation come together what we now call the Alamo, which they favored the word Alamo because that's what it was they were held there all night. They now know they got a pretty good s idea that there will be no going home this evening. And they know they have limited supplies of medical, limited IVs and you can only replace

blood to a certain extent with IV before the entire body is running on IV. And you know, once that's happening then you're gonna die. Um but because also once the heart Doesn't have enough blood to function on, the pump simply gives out'cause there's nothing to work on it, right? So the situation was very scary for all of them, and f particularly for those who were the wounded. In the helicopters there's two medics working on the

pilots and the one of the deltas who was still alive from the crash. People don't really mention or talk about medics so much, you know. And that that's why I wanted the sequence that's about to happen. Where we have uh Corporal Smith Is uh hit in the leg, just a in the groin. By a bullet. And um Doc Schmidt, who is the medic, has to do this operation which I was told was the equivalent of like trying to do open heart surgery on a kitchen table.

with no equipment or backup or anesthetic or oxygen, nothing. You're gonna put your hand in the wound, you're gonna try and grab the femoral artery. If you don't, his whole lifeblood is just gonna run out. Which is unfortunate what happened. But people say why that sequence? I said, Well why not? This is what happens. This is what happened. And I had a medic standing right by me advising me on every move. And that's what I wanted to do. I wanted to show what happens when this occurs.

And I people are odd because you know, they'll sit and watch a birth on PBS or brain surgery on PBS. What's the difference? Right? Uh and here we're showing what these guys do. That's what this film's about. Can you cover us, Sergeant? We gotcha. Thank you. Nelson! They misjudged the time of the uh prayer, which is the evening prayer, like our even song. The prayer ended and he got shot. The guy wh whose bag goes up, he's got what we call the stun grenades in, which are phosphorus.

'Cause what you do is you lob'em into a room, they go off with a stunning bang and blinding white light and that's why they call a stun grenade.'Cause that will give you moments to go in and do whatever you have to do. Before you have people recover in the room. My leg! My leg! Come on!

All of this stuff was built and production designed by Arthur. All this interior was made up, an old dentist waiting room, which oddly enough did exist. Uh and we thought that was a good idea, so let's you know m expand on that. The outside had been uh hairdressers. and different shops, low level shops, and they'd come in to actually try and uh, you know, b make something better in this particular area as a building site and they just stopped, they just ran out of money.

But you know when you living in communities like this you get used to it and you get used to the order of the day and the used to how people live. So when you come back home or you come to particularly Hollywood or Beverly Hills, it's a real culture show. You'cause you get used to the process of going home at night through hundreds and hundreds of Muslims walking all over the road, you know. There's no real order or traffic order. Um kids going home from school. Um it's a m huge Muslim society.

And it's fine, it's a community. And in fact in the Saleh district I felt a tremendous sense of community, house to house. Kids kids roaming in bands. Five, six, seven year old kids, all roaming in bands, looking after each other. You know, and all curious, all grinning and all great. I mean it was a really really a pleasant experience. Although it would look at us with great curiosity, as if we'd come from outer space.

So that's where they call in because Doc Smith knows that his femoral artery is absolutely shot. He's gotta get him out of there. And he's gonna have limited IV. I got him. Come on, direct pressure on the wound. Yeah. It's gonna be alright. It's gonna be okay. Funny if this part of the set was part of the Medina. This wasn't the set, this was the Medina.

Where we start the film off when we first see Eric Bana watching Asmanato coming out of the cafe before he gets arrested. So this is how you use two sets in one. You just remove the dressing and you got this great you know, rather ominous remains of a marketplace. The chopper, the crash chopper I saw enough times on photographs to realise that it became a bit of an icon. It became a bit of a symbol. And therefore, you know, it's uh of course the symbol of American potency, American dominance.

And uh you know the unbeatable Um and there it is sitting on the ground where already kids are starting to play games on it like a climbing frame. And that's why Hoot o w came along that twilight and said already they were playing on it. They were tearing it apart with Whatever they had, pliers and of course those things are actually incredibly strong.

And so they were trying to tear it apart and take pieces away and that's why he cleared the area and he blew up the chopper because he you know there was classified equipment on board which I doubt would be any use to these people but they didn't want anything to survive. And and basically it's a phosphorus bomb which burns through into the petrol tank and then takes it up.

Here we have Garrison saying basically we gotta get them out of there. Otherwise I'm gonna have a hundred body bags in the morning. And this is we also have the tricky side of the of the discussion which was basically the Tenth Mountain and the UN commanders were really irritated that they hadn't been told that this was happening. And uh now they were being asked to go out into a community which was already enraged and uh so they were less than happy about that.

And uh except Garrison had kept it to himself because he felt it was necessary to keep to himself. Uh because there's always a way of leaking. There's always a leak. The more people know you're gonna have a leak. I think I think Garrison felt very vulnerable about the very Risky, uh unreliable uh intelligence. No one was reliable.'Cause you've got to take guys who are on the ground in Mogadishu. You can't take an American saying go land Mogadishian

Come back in three months and we're gonna put you in demogadishu, he'd last a day. So you're gonna have to go for the real thing on the ground. And uh that's hard. How reliable are they, you know? I'm not in charge. It's f active f for me he's from London. Or North London. In Somalia, killing is negotiation. Now what's interesting using sets, this whole set is the actual entrance of the town hall.

So rather than going to find another location, why don't we just put in windows or or grills in the doorway where Tom Seizemore was standing and you light it from the ground you got another place. So cost of the grills I didn't have to move the unit. This is a true. The helicopter's saying, Durant, we're not gonna leave you behind, we will not leave you behind. And they broadcast that by flying over Mogadishu with loudspeakers. Gotta take over from both hands.

And then we have Doc Schmidth requesting that uh he's warning him actually, warning him that it's gonna be heavy and says I need your help. And uh It's pretty well what they did. They held him on a table and went for the artery. And then he thought they had it and he said you get it and I I guess, you know. Josh's Josh says um there's no future in saying no we didn't get it. So he just says yes we've got it. But they know he's gonna die.

Right now he's half full of you know, the saline solution, really. And they couldn't to give him morphine, so he was in bloody agony. Um because the morphine slowed down his heart pound. It was interesting that when I went to one of the bases to run the film, I ran the film in three bases, military bases. for really showing them what we'd done and their approval, of which we really got fairly actually in fact unanimous approval from both Delta and from uh Special Forces Rangers.

Um I met some parents. And I met the parents of Smith. And uh I warned the mum and the dad, I took the dad and one side looked, he said, Look the sequence w in here is v is as accurate as I can make it. I want you to be aware of that. So what you're about to see at a certain point in the movie is going to be very distressing.

Um particularly for your wife or for you. So I'm I have to warn you of that. And uh they said nope, they wanted to see it. And uh they did and at the end of it they were very relieved that they'd seen the whole movie. Um because they said, you know, at the end of it when they were withdrawn so quickly, we felt that we'd lost our son for nothing. and uh we wanted to see what he did and how he behaved and how he

You know, that it what he did to a certain extent, they wanted to feel that it was worthwhile and therefore it hadn't been wasted. You know, but the end of the day is always the question about any engagement, about any war, is it uh i you know, is it ever worthwhile? Giving Yuan a through line. I mean I just came up with coffee and'cause I'm a coffee fanatic and so I know that coffee is buying it's funny how life works.

Uh I once sat down with Harrison Ford when I first met him, I was doing Blade Runner, and Harrison was making I was sitting in his kitchen, and I'll never forget he was showing me how to make coffee. And uh he was saying it's all in the measure. It's all it's absolute. You can't fake it. Don't guess. It's the measure of coffee against the measure of water. And that always sank in and I always followed that advice. So I can actually make

You know, decent coffee. And I thought, why not make the guy from the office has the same obsession? Because actually there's nothing else for him to do except type the stuff up You know, read a couple of novellas or Playboy magazine and make coffee and smoke cigarettes. And I just thought that was amusing to carry it as a through line. Of course in a place that used to be a ratty old hotel here he found some old maybe Rhodesian coffee.

And uh used some of his flask water and made himself a coffee. Yan McGregor's character was Grimes, um, who of course was the man who was in the front office, although trained originally as a ranger, had gradually through Gulf War and other actions. never ventured outside the office and therefore he'd become part of his

you know, make up that he thought that uh he would think how exciting it would be to go outside and test himself, but he was never asked to go. So gradually he got used to the process of not going. So that finally when he w was asked to fill in on this particular day, the irony was he became like a catalyst for bullets and RPGs, houses falling on him, walls falling on him, and yet he survived the whole process. Like any beginner, you got beginner's luck involved.

This is a Russian recoiless rifle, which is a Pretty giant millimeter shell. It's ironically called a rifle, but it's a gun that has to be mounted on a vehicle and uh is quite lethal. Arthur built all the moorish stuff you see and he put in the whole old city gate. We figured that we need to make it look more, you know, kind of

the remains of the ancient part of Africa. So we put in the big old um Moorish gate, which really paid off very well. That gate, that was all put in by Arthur. So we had plenty of practice on that because of gladiator. I always thought that at this moment we were a bit under scheduled for the night shooting. Night shooting is really tricky and I also thought it was slightly under i underconceived. And that danger for me here always was

the fact that, you know, it whatever you do, you're starting to look like action heroes, right? And um So but the guys did it so well that I think it actually worked out very well. Yeah. And but I was very quite nervous about this. really particularly well planned, so it was all b and mainly because it was just about action.

But I think Eric dealt with it really well. They all they all did it really well. In fact Eric said the favourite shot in the movie is when he's standing there by that recordless rifle and that he and the sunglasses eyeball each other and he just does the p pulls the trigger. Which fundamentally means that we're all essentially bloodthirsty, really.

We don't hold back this city. Here we are at the uh late evening and uh he wants all the ground forces to go in there because he thinks he's gonna lose everyone. reveal to the UN and to uh the tenth Manon that uh they need the help and here they are. Between Chance Mount and UN. personnel, okay? You guys do not have to go back.

We built this gate and the wall here. It was a a ratty old soccer stadium which had never been finished. Again, part of the process of building in Morocco. And so we decided it was perfect for us being the The uh what they call the Pakistani Olympic Stadium in Mogadishi was really on the edge of a safe zone and also of course it was defensible. You saved Tuambli. You did perfect.

So now in story terms um There's probably a view from the audience and you have to think about these things when you're constructing script, that maybe or maybe not there is some kind of hope. in terms of the uh convoy reaching them and thereby taking Smithy. Away with him and saving his life. But I never really tried to go for that because I thought it was Invalid and I thought it was kind of again very traditional.

structural would they, will they, won't they? I didn't want to do that with this movie. I just wanted to show it as it was. Um so that's why don't deliberately don't crank up the possibilities of the will they won't they get there in time, which is very traditional and you know that's why people in this film say, Well they haven't got many backstories. I said, What's the relevance of backstories and side stories? The only thing that's relevant is the experience.

So I absolutely stand my ground on that one and uh I know th the more discerning and harder, you know, nosed individuals about story and structure m are very supportive of the film, particularly from that direction. There there's no

you know, milking the characters. The characters are part of the process. The process was meant to take half an hour and ended up taking eighteen and a half hours. That is the story. Now we're not doing a a You know, anything but the target being a uh a war incident that um was very much acknowledged as very much part of American military history uh um as one of the most important parts of the last f uh really forty years. This is the longest ground offensive since Vietnam.

Because normally these skirmishes which are on the ground, street fighting can be forty five seconds to three minutes. This lasted eighteen and a half hours. Never really stopped. So it was like these boys were almost thrown back into Blitzkrieg of um Second World War. Yeah. I needed the voice. of the movie. And um it should come in t two forms. This was never predetermined. This was gradually distilled while I was making the film

Gradually realising I had no voice and the voice should be a mature one and the voice of experience. So The scenes with Eric Barner were gradually put together during the process of making the movie. And um the advice was always uh philosophical, um and uh the the undercurrent of cynicism s being cynical um as to the reason why they're really there doing a job was always present and I think that's why he says

You know, once a bullet goes past your ear all the politics and that shit goes out the window. And it's all about the guy next to you. And he gives them this I think very good pep talk. here saying, you know, you've done okay so far. Y you've just lost somebody, but your job right now is to get the rest of you live men back home, safe, and that's your job. That is war now for you at this moment.

And um in in a sense m you know, assisting by metaphorically pulling Eversman together. You got your men these four. Good advice. You did it right. Today. And the last exchange of course will be when we get to the stadium, which we'll deal with when we get there. So now we have the full onslaught of bringing to bed the little birds who do this, they fly by night. They are called Night Stalkers. Their motto is ironically, Night Stalkers don't quit.

Um and they fly and try and keep their eyes open for protruding objects, wires, cables, uh but it's a pretty hair-raising job and these uh pilots are the best in the business I think. And uh these these aircraft on CGI that you see right here, that's real. That's at night and that's real. So the same goes for my helicopter pilots who actually film helicopter pilots, they did a pretty good job as well. Pictures of course are night vision, which are essential in helicopter flying.

Do all all by night vision and Delta and ranges normally on the ground now at this time of the night would ha all have these uh night vision goggles which are actually quite valuable. And it's it was startling what you can see in real darkness. The problem about movie making is you've gotta dramatize darkness to the point that of course the audience have to see, otherwise there's n there's no point in watching the movie. You'll be watching radio.

And so we have to cheat and um do what we call movie darkness. Shooting at night is never my favorite time because I think first of all it's exhausting and once you get past twelve thirty in at night. Where it's usually dinner break, so everybody has dinner. And then f filled with dinner at one thirty in the morning, you really l get only forty percent out of everybody who are fading away and dying on their feet.

And so it's economically and creatively a bad solution, whichever way you look at it. So what we did on this is split nights where we'd only work up to twelve o'clock at night. And then we could start later again. Twelve hour turn round. So you could start twelve o'clock the next day. So you gradually work your way through the night as opposed to investing your entire time from six tonight till six in the morning, which is absolutely a killer. Again, where am I?

You know, where am I? Oh am I at the at the uh the Alamo? No I'm not. I'm with Captain Steele. All these characters hopefully by now are getting recognized. also, apart from anything else, they're h helping me geographically understand where everyone is.'Cause that was one of the hardest things to discern Choose locations that look entirely different. But the problem is once you get at night in a certain kind of location, you it all starts to look the same, right?

The montage or passing of the Where I suddenly realized that the coming of the truck is not a large event because it will be a false event, it will not be their saving. It will be a perpetuation of the disaster. And therefore I shouldn't spend too much importance or laying too much importance creatively on the arrival of a convoy. They were basically arriving about the speed that a foot soldier could jog.

'Cause they had the tenth mountain running alongside the vehicles, can you believe? And uh therefore it's purely seeing as best they can be efficient is their efficiency at getting everyone out.'Cause they wouldn't leave. The whole point is that they would not leave until they had extricated the body of Walcott. And then what follows is the real ending or the real final solution. Uh which it wasn't a solution, it was a mile run.

Got you. Yeah, I got you. It's okay. I wanna walk. Yeah, I would too. Walcott's body uh was as far as they were concerned on the under the creed of leave no man behind. That's their creed. Um it's not a piece of Hollywood screenwriting. Uh it's a creed that uh really in a funny kind of way is part of the it could be almost written in Latin. It's so stringent and so fervently believed in and maintained. And um

they would not leave until they got out, uh Walker. And yet people still say, but what's the point of that? You're risking guys who are alive with a body. And um I'm saying I I can't explain it. It it it is what it is. And that's what it is and that's what they do.

Even though at this point Grimes was freaking out because sitting inside these tin cans, as he calls them, which were like, you know, wood tag, you put an RPG at that would go straight through it would ricochet around the inside and making hamburger of everyone. So they're really scary things to be trapped in. Basically Garrison here is saying we can't wait forty five minutes. We gotta go. You gotta do what you gotta do. And they did. They did what they had to do to extricate.

Talking about that and going back to the continual questioning I had from various journalists saying why didn't you show delta and or and um pilot? Of Durant's aircraft being dragged through the streets as it was seen on CNN. And I said very simply because that w occurred the next day, anyway, so it was out of the time zone of the event. But most of all I knew that the wives and families were

Wives are young women still. And uh the families, the mother and fathers. I mean, I I didn't feel it was necessary. I knew exactly w everybody should know what would happen next. and what occurred and therefore they should put two and two together. So that's the answer for that. But most of all, um, it didn't make sense in the time slot. In the time, you know, that it occurred.

This is where they get to realizing that all the trucks have filled up with wounded and stretches have taken up the interiors and there's no room. And so the driver's telling them to get on the route. And they know that's they they wouldn't last five seconds on the roof, so they decide to stick together and run out.

You have to remember that this is the biggest firefight the Americans have been in um since the Vietnam War. And very few people know that. We've had um, you know, minor incursions into places like Grenada and but again this still i is is the event that um went on for eighteen and a half hours.

Uh and cost nineteen men men's lives and and about a thousand of the Somalis. So it was a major event. Nobody knew about it. So this is the kind of picture that not only um engrosses you and insults you and makes you feel something, but it also informs you. informs you of a a certain period of time, uh what, why, when and where. Oh this was also interesting. It stuck in my mind in the book the little child in the arms of a grandfather, the child was bathed in blood, had been hit.

And the grandfather had walked across in front of the convoy And the convoy had rammed its brakes on and let the old man cross. And I could never forget that and that was the last shot of the movie. I figured I had to do it. There's another dog. See that dog? That these dogs kept running in shot. I didn't put them in shot. There's millions of little pet dogs there, which is great.

The Moroccans love dogs but unfortunately they don't really care for'em. They're running around the streets, living under, you know, wreckage and and r ruined houses and And in fact there were eight dogs ended up in our art department. Eight dogs came back to the United States. Thank you. Interesting here one soldier Kurth couldn't shoot. So I thought Why not have a Um our man who gets um nearly killed by the boy and his father.

Um b you know, somehow that made sense that he would um by hesitating, he could die again, right? And so at that moment all's fair and war and war. Especially when you have ten year old boys carrying a kid. And women having RPG launchers under their cloaks. The transition from the danger zone, the hostiles, to the friendlies, um wasn't an exact line or wasn't an exact piece of geography, but there was a moment where the firing stopped. and they seem to run

For a while in silence. And uh I always thought what would be great would be to introduce the friendlies by having kids who really think this is all a bit of a game and they're starting to be welcomed like the hero returns or the w of welcome and uh until they arrived in the stadium. In the stadium they were faced with the wounded and the dead and

Of course they weren't being paid attention to because they were standing on their own two feet and therefore needed no attention. Until you have some Pakistani Um corporals come forward with clean uniforms, clean turbans, a tray of water and Lee Van Arsdale still claims curry. They offered him curry and water. He said, I'll take the I'll take the water, mate, not the curry.

Then we have a film which turns round into something which is not really triumphant because it isn't. The outcome of the film is only questioned. You know, did we win? No. Did we lose? No. Did we lose some of our men? Yes. Does that constitute failure or or loss, is that loss classified as losing a battle?

If that's gonna be the demarcation of winning or losing, then these guys won by far because they lost nineteen against somewhere between five hundred and a thousand. So if you're gonna compare a head count and a body count with as to who wins and who isn't gonna win or who hasn't won, which of course is ludicrous, right? So that question shouldn't arise. And it's reflected m very much here on on Eversman's face who's starting to look bewildered.

Shit. And of course we'll soon come to what I think is the voice of the movie, which is uh You know, Eric Bonner saying um Well there's two voices. Eric's saying, uh there's still men out there and uh I gotta go back out and do my job, do what I'm meant to do. It's all about duty and your fellow men, um This was added as an afterthought, but I love this where again there is no triumph to this kind of

Uh excursion. Um there's only loss. And um I love this idea of the general uh being the spare part in the operating theatre and essentially almost being in the way. You know, Garrison as a practitioner, as a practical man, without thinking does it. It's nothing heroic in it, it's just his r reaction to what he has to do. Hey, short. Right. Captain. Lorenzo. How you doing?

This is what Ruiz actually said. He said don't go out there without me. Which I always thought was interesting uh even though Ruiz actually finally died. Lost so much blood. Um but he was cl he clung on to steel with a vice like grip and said, Do not go out without me. I'm ready to go. you know, I need to rest and then we'll go out again tomorrow. And it was so powerful that I figured we must do that, we must reflect that. And then finally to the

the meeting of Eversman and Hoot who literally did this. This is not making it up. He went in got some food, replenished water, replenished s explosives and supplies, and literally disappeared out of the stadium for three days. came back having marked up his own ordnance survey of the city and it said and pinpointed the position of three bodies, saying they're here. And they went out and got them. Um Uh he felt that was his responsibility to do that. They just wouldn't understand, he says.

Yeah, it's what we do, it's you know, about the man next to you. So one c wonders if um be what I used to call have a calling. Why would anybody be in the nursing profession, right? There has to be a calling, whatever the word is for it. It's not for the money, right? It's not I mean is it Adrenalizing, is it exciting? Is it on the edge, certainly, whether you're in any one of these forces, militia or police or firemen or nursing profession, they're all underpaid. They all do

a very aggressive and uh job, which is a hard job to do, clearly they must feel they're making a difference. So and I like to believe that. Um And um here we are now w where the aircraft has a fully fledged play frame where it will remain so it probably is still there actually in parts. Um I and I wanted Eversman to be talking to his buddies as if he was having a Coke or a cup of coffee and a cigarette in the bar or in the canteen. And you have no real idea what he's t or who he's talking to.

I hope, right? You didn't expect it, no. So uh so the talking and in fact becomes about what are you, some ki think you c kind of war junkie, some kind of hero? Uh no nobody wants to be a hero. It just turns out that way sometimes. And of course he's talking to his uh dead friend Smithy. And I think it's a perfect epitaph for uh film which supports this kind of militia and these kind of soldiers and these kind of characters. And I mean and I mean characters with the capital C, right?

Okay, at the end here um obviously with the closing of the the freighter with the casket Um we had because of September the eleventh uh had to address what do we do with the film? Do we push it back, do we bring it forward? And i the upshot was we we decided to bring it forward because it was entirely relevant

and would be relevant to what we felt would now happen, which would be these guys, these special forces, would certainly be used in Afghanistan, of course, which they are and they were and are still there. And um The only question that really that arose was should we make the audience aware that had closing they been perceived as being successful in Somalia at the particular time in ninety three, uh and that would have been by the geopolitical community

if they'd had a nod of approval as to the success of the operation, then maybe um UN would have stayed in there in force and maybe a few American soldiers, preferably UN would have stayed in there.

We had this bright idea about adding two cards or three cards at the end of the movie that basically said that this was considered a failure in American foreign policy and showed weakness. That's what one card said. Um Since then it was Rwanda, Bosnia, Kosovo, Washington, New York, and the next card said um that the special forces were now deployed in Afghanistan. So we have these three cards that kind of

um laid laid out um and and referred to nine eleven. Uh but in the end after we showed it to a number of journalists and a number of uh of civilians who half the people liked the cards and felt the cards were made it more emotional, the other half of the people said, look, the movie says it. Don't do it. And we erred on the side of caution and took it out. You know, nine eleven was a horrific event for the world and changed the way we lived forever, uh, unfortunately for for all of us.

Um so, you know, you're devastated by it and you you you have no idea if there's something else coming. Uh it creates enormous amount of tension. But, you know, when you look at what the firemen and the police and um these really heroic individuals. Um you knew were gonna come out of it and we're gonna get

um get back to a normality, uh which is I think we're getting to now, even though the threat is constant, it's always there. You've got to be vigilant and that's what's so important about having a military and a very strong military, because if you have a strong military and you use it decisively It kind of says to your detractors or your enemies, um, if you're gonna do something, you're gonna we're gonna punch you right back. And for years we didn't send that message out.

Uh and I think now with uh what Bush is doing in Afghanistan, even though it's gonna be a long, drawn-out affair, um he's he's making a dent in these terrorist networks. On uh September eleventh I was actually having my breakfast and talking to London. Um or trying to get through to London. My son, who was living in New York, in fact was living two blocks from the uh South Tower, where the debris had fallen onto his apartment block and so he was never able to go return to the apartment block.

And only allowed to go back in two months later to actually get his belongings. He called me up and saying, You better watch television because there's something quite unthinkable has occurred and um I switched on the T V and was stunned to see you know, the images and the constant constant replaying and replaying of what had just happened and then to the collapsing of the buildings and uh

the whole hideous spectacle. You know, I think that we didn't know initially how it was gonna affect the movie or what was gonna happen. you're in too much of a shock over over th that event and you're also you're not sure what's gonna come next. You don't know if the the um there are more planes that are gonna be hijacked or um bombs going off or Uh more anthrax letters, which was the next threat.

So people were were uh in a in a state of unease. Uh but as far as the movie's concerned, you know, Ridley has a sense to drudge on. Of course nobody came in the day at nine eleventh, but uh we knew we had to um get the picture finished and get it ready re for release and Ridley was always an advocate after we l we screened the picture to get the picture out for awards. He really felt he had a shot.

the exhibitor always wants to go out with as many prints as possible because if you go out in two or three theaters and the picture doesn't work, by the time you go in a wide release you got, you know, three people showing up. Uh so y they were nervous. But What they did is Joe looked at the movies, I think we got something really powerful here but when you see enough movies you never really know.

Uh so he called up his his friends at Sony and brought them in and they said, God, this is a really powerful film. We decided that maybe come out in a couple of theaters in December to qualify the picture in Ridley for Academy Awards and hopefully to take advantage of some of the top ten lists that were um, you know, there during the end of the year. Unfortunately for us we got and we're number three of the films that were listed in the top ten of all the films.

Uh so that worked out well and and then we got nominated for four Academy Awards. When we decided then to get together

which would be Jerry and I talking and then talking to the studio revolution. I thought initially the worst, that we might have the film pulled and it would have to sit on a shelf somewhere until a distant future because of the general tone and you know, of America at that particular point.'Cause the studio had seen the film and then within about two days I thought, Well, wh why aren't we showing the film as soon as possible?

And uh I got onto Jerry and we all seemed to have the same idea. So we in fact decided to go out sooner and therefore pull the film forward to as quickly as possible. So the meeting was how fast can we get music done, the film mixed, etcetera, etcetera and therefore Uh if I'm gonna do that then I may as well really stretch it and get the film out for Academy nomination, which means you gotta get three prints out before December the twenty eighth, twenty ninth. That's what we did.

It put tremendous pressure on everybody, but I think it was worth it. And uh it was a call that we had to make. It was a dangerous decision, but I think it was the right decision'cause I think people were ready for this kind of film which was clearly uh you know, a a rather s very stressful film to watch, but it actually is a film which is very much out of an in respect for what these guys do.

The reaction to the film was varied and um in the United States we've it's bec actually by definition of this kind of budget and this kind of movie is really classified as very successful of both financially and I think critically. The film wasn't acknowledged for Academy, but I was acknowledged for Academy as a director for the third time.

Which often makes me wonder what do they think the director's doing when he's making the movie and vice versa, where you get best film and not best director or best director and not best film, it doesn't actually make sense, right? Um but that's the way the ballot box works and goes, so there's nothing you can do about that. But the film is played

overseas less well, although it's rattled a lot of cages. Um Uh hugely and uh was taken on board in the White House where President Bush was running it. for guests, various carefully chosen guests, as a kind of real illustration and approval for American military what they can do. But it's not a jingoistic

you know, flag waving film. And um it's a film about r the realities of war and the realities of potential loss. And I think even so abroad There's still a lot of metaphorical eyeball rolling saying, Oh God, here go the Americans again with their jingoistic view on what they do, which of course

infuriates me'cause I'm English and uh And I made the movie and so this is my view on it and so what I say to them, even to journalists abroad who say, you know, here's the American thing again, w you know, we're gonna go in there and we're gonna kick butt. And I'm saying, Well m mate, I didn't notice you going in there afterwards. I didn't I haven't seen the Spanish in the uh there. I haven't seen much of the French, I haven't seen much of the

support from other the other nations, uh a bit from the English, uh a bit of UN, but essentially the Americans are doing it all. And uh that's what I've seen happened time and time again over the years. And I just think it is the lot of the community, of those who can afford to, should.