thedrifter
09-17-06, 08:13 AM
Article Last Updated: 9/15/2006 12:22 PM
Going to war
Saulteaux Indian Adam Beach fought hard for "Flags" role
By Glenn Whipp, Film Writer
When Adam Beach heard Clint Eastwood was making "Flags of Our Fathers," the story of the men who famously — and in their minds, regrettably — became heroes for raising the American flag during the bloody battle of Iwo Jima, he called his agent.
Beach, a member of the Saulteaux tribe, wanted to play the tragic American Indian Ira Hayes, one of the six men seen in what became history's most reproduced photograph.
Word got back to Beach. No go. Eastwood wanted to cast age-appropriate actors and the 33-year-old Beach was a good decade too old.
"I thought, 'That's a bum rap,' " Beach says. "Then a few weeks before the shoot, I'm coming out of a bout with the flu and I'm not answering my phone. I get a message. 'You better call Clint Eastwood.' So I did. 'Put yourself on tape.' I made a tape and sent it in. And I think because I was coming out of the flu, it gave me such a tortured feeling that Eastwood couldn't resist. 'Whoa, this guy looks terrible. He's perfect.' "
"Flags" is Beach's second World War II movie. He starred in John Woo's 2002 "Windtalkers," about the Navajo Marines deployed in the Pacific to use their language as an unbreakable code. That film tanked, but it did give Beach a taste of forthe preparation he'd need to make "Flags."
"But 'Flags' digs a lot deeper," Beach says. "These guys were tortured. They couldn't forget all the horrors that they saw and all the buddies that died while they were on that island."
Beach connected most with Hayes' feelings when he and castmates Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford shot a scene where the surviving flag-raisers re-enacted the historic moment at Chicago Stadium during a bond-raising tour.
"You're climbing up this fake mountain and it's so ... ridiculous," Beach says.
"No wonder these guys felt like (garbage). They weren't even close to wanting all this adulation. They just finished watching their friends die and now they're on this fake mountain wishing they were anywhere else, wishing nobody knew who they were.
"As actors, we were just looking at each other, totally comprehending how surreal and sad it must have been for them."
Ellie
Going to war
Saulteaux Indian Adam Beach fought hard for "Flags" role
By Glenn Whipp, Film Writer
When Adam Beach heard Clint Eastwood was making "Flags of Our Fathers," the story of the men who famously — and in their minds, regrettably — became heroes for raising the American flag during the bloody battle of Iwo Jima, he called his agent.
Beach, a member of the Saulteaux tribe, wanted to play the tragic American Indian Ira Hayes, one of the six men seen in what became history's most reproduced photograph.
Word got back to Beach. No go. Eastwood wanted to cast age-appropriate actors and the 33-year-old Beach was a good decade too old.
"I thought, 'That's a bum rap,' " Beach says. "Then a few weeks before the shoot, I'm coming out of a bout with the flu and I'm not answering my phone. I get a message. 'You better call Clint Eastwood.' So I did. 'Put yourself on tape.' I made a tape and sent it in. And I think because I was coming out of the flu, it gave me such a tortured feeling that Eastwood couldn't resist. 'Whoa, this guy looks terrible. He's perfect.' "
"Flags" is Beach's second World War II movie. He starred in John Woo's 2002 "Windtalkers," about the Navajo Marines deployed in the Pacific to use their language as an unbreakable code. That film tanked, but it did give Beach a taste of forthe preparation he'd need to make "Flags."
"But 'Flags' digs a lot deeper," Beach says. "These guys were tortured. They couldn't forget all the horrors that they saw and all the buddies that died while they were on that island."
Beach connected most with Hayes' feelings when he and castmates Ryan Phillippe and Jesse Bradford shot a scene where the surviving flag-raisers re-enacted the historic moment at Chicago Stadium during a bond-raising tour.
"You're climbing up this fake mountain and it's so ... ridiculous," Beach says.
"No wonder these guys felt like (garbage). They weren't even close to wanting all this adulation. They just finished watching their friends die and now they're on this fake mountain wishing they were anywhere else, wishing nobody knew who they were.
"As actors, we were just looking at each other, totally comprehending how surreal and sad it must have been for them."
Ellie