Jesse Bradford: The Good Soldier

Moving Pictures Magazine: Your character's name is Rene Gagnon. Is he French?
Jesse Bradford: He's from New Hampshire, and I believe he has French Canadian roots. Oddly enough, he pronounced it RAY-nee GAG-nun. We're looking at a time in history when you didn't get as far ahead in life if you sounded like a foreigner. It was better to Americanize yourself.

MPM: What was your approach to playing a historical figure?
Bradford: I read the book, and I also spoke quite a few times with the son of the guy I played - Rene Gagnon Jr. I spoke to him just to hear the way he spoke and hear some stories about his father. The book creates the impression that Rene Gagnon was the one who, when the picture gets taken and they all get scooped off the island, is really glad. Like, "Thank God I'm not on that island anymore," rather than, "I should still be on that island protecting my buddies. Why do I deserve this?" So my biggest concern was to make sure that this guy was represented for what he really was, which was a 20-year-old kid just trying to do the best he could with the mess he was handed and the awesome responsibility he had to shoulder. Of course you're going to make some mistakes, but anybody in their right mind would be happy to get taken off an island where you might get shot, and put into a place where, all of the sudden, you are a national hero.

MPM: Your sense of responsibility was to the individual character rather than to presenting history as it was written?
Bradford: My loyalty has to go to my character, because that's all you've got in life. That's all he had, and that's all I have, and that's all you have. All you have is yourself, and you've got to stay as true to that as you can, and if you're trying to pretend to be someone else, you have to stay as true to them as you can.

MPM: Did you go to boot camp to prepare for the film?
Bradford: I would have loved to have done boot camp, frankly, but Clint didn't want us to. I think he wanted there to be a degree to which we all felt like we were being thrown head first into this with very little prep, much like the guys themselves must have felt. I did all kinds of stuff in my own way to prepare.

MPM: What did you do?
Bradford: I read up a lot. Specifically, I got to read a couple of books that were first-hand accounts of people's experiences on Iwo Jima. That, plus I tried to learn a lot of terminology so that if I found myself in a position where I needed to improv a little I wouldn't start throwing out, "This is whack." I didn't want to get caught with a modernism, so I learned some old slang that these guys might have said.

MPM: Any particularly good terms?
Bradford: The one that I liked the most is the term "scuttlebutt." Scuttlebutt's a great word. It means hearsay, it means rumors. Which is a great concept in the army, because nobody knows [what's going on]. These guys who went to Iwo Jima didn't know where they were going until a couple days before they got there. They're out on a boat for two months and nobody's even telling them which direction they're sailing in. You can obviously figure those things out from where the sun rises and sets, and that's where scuttlebutt comes from. People try to put together what they can, and then it spreads on down the line.

MPM: Clint Eastwood is known for working efficiently. What it was like trying to be quick while dealing with such emotionally charged subject matter?
Bradford: I heard rumors that he only really does two takes, but if I had a friend who was going into a Clint Eastwood movie, I wouldn't say he does two takes - I would say he does one. The average is probably two, but the amount of times that we only did one was overwhelming. It's kind of cool because, as an actor, it forces you to be on your game. With this movie, I learned really quickly to be very clear on what I thought were the most important aspects of the scene and how I wanted those aspects to come off, and then practice how I was going to make sure they did, because if I only got one shot, I didn't want to be the guy who was always asking for another take. I didn't want to waste my bullets in that department.

MPM: Did the six of you who played the soldiers in the picture have a special bond?
Bradford: Absolutely... I'm still pretty friendly with most of these guys. Spielberg produced the movie, and he showed up once, to my knowledge, but I happened to not be there that night. Ryan was there, and I asked Ryan, "How was Spielberg?" And he said that Spielberg said, "You know, you do a war movie, and it changes you a little." That resonated with me. You just develop this intense appreciation for these guys who really went through this stuff - and are going through this stuff right now, let's not forget.

MPM: Did doing this movie change your opinion about wars going on now?
Bradford: I've always said that the soldier and the war are two very separate things. The solider is a guy who ran out of options in life, or always wanted to join the Army or the Marines, and now he's doing his job. Nothing can be held against them whatsoever. That's the mistake that people made with Vietnam. That was just a tragedy that Vietnam vets got treated the way they did upon their return, when they were just doing what they had to do; they were just avoiding getting court-martialed. The soldiers deserve all the respect in the world. And I would have said that if I had never done this movie, but something does change when you go through a mock version of it. When you're wearing the uniform and you're humping - well, these guys were carrying 40-pound packs, and we were carrying 20 pounds worth of guns and crap on us. Something hits you on a more profound level. You can taste it that much more. It's still not remotely close to an understanding of actually being there, but nonetheless you get a deeper, more profound appreciation for what these guys have to put up with. And the risk. It's the last full measure. It's the greatest sacrifice you can make for your country.

MPM: Did you find that, in putting yourself back into that time period, there was a different sense of morality than there is today?
Bradford: I would say that the term "The Greatest Generation" holds a lot of water. These were guys - and women; everybody - who, at a pivotal moment in American history, stepped up to the plate and made every sacrifice they could, in every different way you can imagine, in order to try to solidify our place on the world stage. I wish more people were doing that right now. We should all be driving hybrid cars and using CLF light bulbs and recycling. There are a million ways that we could make these sacrifices in order to ensure the security of the next generation and 10 past that. We don't want to make those sacrifices anymore. We want to be able to drive our SUVs and order our Happy Meals, and it's too bad. And I'm one of them. I have an SUV. I'm getting ready to get rid of it. I can't wait to get a hybrid. I'm working on it. We all get there at our own pace.

MPM: Do you think that the moral code then was more humane than it is now?
Bradford: That might be true, but we also have to factor in this: It was a more innocent time. We didn't know as much about stuff, so therefore it was easier to have that higher ground or make the right decision because we didn't know as much about what the wrong decision is. Ignorance is easier than the lack thereof.

MPM: But it wasn't a completely innocent time.
Bradford: This movie asks the question: How do you sell a war? How do you make it something people are willing to make sacrifices for? That's where the picture comes in. We were getting ready to lose. We were getting ready to run out of money, to run out of bullets, to run out of everything and have to give up - until this picture got taken, and the subsequent bond drive was the most successful attempt to get money out of the American public for a war that has ever happened. They called it the Mighty Seventh. It was the seventh bond drive that they had done and it made more money than the first six combined. The three gentlemen still surviving from the picture were the centerpiece of the whole bond drive. They were plucked out of battle and sent around the country to shake hands and kiss babies and give speeches about how important it is to donate money. I hope that seeing this movie makes people say, "Hey, wait a minute. There is a degree to which these things have to be sold to us and shoved down our throats, and we can either accept them or not."