 udiences that have seen the trailer for “Pearl Harbor”
haven’t seen a thing. The Japanese bomb spinning down toward the USS
Arizona doesn’t stop when it reaches the battleship. It bores through
its decks, finally coming to rest in a room full of weaponry. There’s a
horrific pause, and then—blam!—the mighty Arizona is lifted clear out
of the water, blown in two as more than a thousand sailors perish. It’s
a staggering piece of Hollywood moviemaking, and, ironically, it’s a
scene from a film Hollywood once didn’t even want to make.
NEWSWEEK has had a first, exclusive look at “Pearl Harbor,” the
most anticipated movie of the summer. It’s a blockbuster to be sure, a
big, juicy slice of Americana that audiences will flock to when it opens
on Memorial Day weekend. But the battle scars incurred in its making are
evident, too. Michael Bay’s movie scores big-time in the action
department, but its love story between two dashing pilots and a beautiful
nurse may be a casualty of war (click here
for David Ansen’s review). As a historic document, it hews to the major
facts, and even some of the tiniest details. Critics and historians will
surely debate whether the film sanitizes the role of the Japanese and
obscures the un-preparedness of Navy commanders that fateful December
morning (click here for
Evan Thomas’s story). In the end, “Pearl Harbor” may be truer to
Hollywood’s rules than history’s ravages. If moviemaking is a battle,
the story behind it unfolds as a bloody, take-no-prisoners war.
From Disney chairman Michael Eisner’s stubbornness on costs to an
ugly casting brawl with Miramax’s Harvey Weinstein, the World War II
spectacle dodged nearly as many torpedoes as devastated the Pacific Fleet.
Worried that the nearly three-hour epic would break the bank, Eisner
rejected several initial budgets for the film. And director Bay quit the
movie in protest four times. The movie was saved from capsizing only when
the filmmakers agreed to trim scenes and special effects, while the actors
and the crew—all the way up to producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Bay
and star Ben Affleck—slashed their upfront salaries. “Every day there
was something that stopped you from getting the movie made,” Bruckheimer
says. “It was a tough fight.” Once begun, the movie faced the double
challenge of not vandalizing history in its bid to wow moviegoers. Let
fiction trump facts, and you have a public-relations fiasco like “The
Hurricane.” Add too much History Channel solemnity, and you’ve got a
docu-drama.
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