A Tough `Boot Camp' Helped Tom Hanks Get Ready For His Role

SAN FRANCISCO - Ordinarily Tom Hanks doesn't do this kind of heavy research. But to prepare himself for Steven Spielberg's D-Day drama, "Saving Private Ryan," he felt he needed to know how it felt to be a soldier on Omaha beach during the Normandy invasion of June 6, 1944.

"We didn't want to be faking this stuff," said Hanks, who became part of a boot camp in preparation for his role as the enigmatic Capt. Miller, who leads several D-Day survivors on a bizarre mission of mercy. They're asked to risk their own lives to save Pvt. James Ryan (Matt Damon), an isolated soldier whose three brothers have just been killed in combat.

Capt. Dale Dye, a former Marine who worked as a military consultant on "Platoon" and "Born on the Fourth of July," was hired to make Hanks and his "squad" crawl and sleep in the mud, eat rations and otherwise prepare for combat.

"Dye was invaluable," said Hanks, who had worked with him on the Vietnam War sequences of his biggest hit, "Forrest Gump," and found his military advice just as useful for World War II.

Just before shooting began, "we were exhausted, and still sleeping in the grass." Often his hands were so raw it was difficult to tie his frozen shoelaces in the morning.

At the same time, Hanks wants to make it clear that he and his fellow actors, including Ed Burns, Adam Goldberg, Barry Pepper and Giovanni Ribisi, didn't suffer that much. Some of the publicity for the film has been exaggerated.

"It's funny, this thing gets longer with each magazine piece," he says, smiling. "It was actually six days. But it was a very `guys week,' and demanding of your body to go through. I gotta tell you, we all felt that we went through something."

Although Hanks was immediately taken with Robert Rodat's screenplay, little of it was left by the time filming was completed.

"We kept trying to make it better and more interesting," he said. "The original script had a lot more dialogue, wry comments and funny jokes. We changed probably every word of the screenplay, with (co-producer) Mark (Gordon) and Robert and Steven and everyone else, but the story was very strong.

"In the draft that I read, Capt. Miller had already won the Congressional Medal of Honor, which was just ridiculous. They wanted him to be a guy who was scoffing at the mission.

"But I said I can't do that; a guy who won that would be home selling war bonds. No way he'd still be there. You can't just pass that out to characters willy nilly, to make them cooler or more heroic."

Spielberg came up with a scene in which Miller tells the wrong Pvt. Ryan that his brothers are dead. Scott Frank ("Out of Sight") and other writers made contributions.

"Robert himself just wanted to make as good a movie as possible," said Hanks. "When you make a script, there's two times you have to write it: the time you sell it and the time you make it."

Hanks was particularly enthusiatic about Rodat's final take on Miller, who had lived through the Italian bloodbath and doesn't want to become close to anyone.

"He's doing it in self-defense mainly," said Hanks. "There is no one more terrified than a combat veteran. It's not just a question of what's going to happen to him. He fears what he's going to witness, what he's going to have to do."

Miller cries and shakes uncontrollably at times, and that was always part of the script: "The human psyche can only take so much stress."

The film also expresses Miller's state of mind by slowing down the action and the sound effects, presenting them subjectively, as Miller seems lost in a battle fog.

"It's a physiological occurrence," said Hanks. "Literally, a huge explosion goes off and knocks him momentarily senseless. And it's not hard to envision what he's seeing.

"Despite the fact that it's totally false, that the camera crew is there and half the guys are in rain jackets drinking coffee, it's terrifying. It's a very surrealistic sort of thing, and not that hard to be stunned.

"Usually you do that in movies and you're looking at a blue screen: OK, the aliens are coming down and they're hideous and you're stunned. It's a little easier doing it on a beach in Ireland."

On the same days he was playing this wartime hero on Irish locations, Hanks was on the phone putting finishing touches on his American cable miniseries about the Apollo space missions, "From the Earth to the Moon," which he had started prior to his 1996 directorial debut, "That Thing You Do!"

It's been a nonstop year. Last month he finished "You've Got Mail," a romantic comedy that reunites him with his "Sleepless in Seattle" co-star, Meg Ryan, and director, Nora Ephron. This week he's starting Frank Darabont's film of Stephen King's "The Green Mile."

He said it's premature to confirm reports that he will be playing Dean Martin in a Martin Scorsese biography.

"There have been a couple of things that have moved in the trade papers, and that's one of them," he said. "I mean, I hope so, but it's years away. At least a year away. There's a lot of things that have to be figured out before."