The movie “Gettysburg” seemed doomed from the start. Overcoming the obstacles was almost as difficult as planning the assault on Little Round Top.
It took 15 years to realize the absorbing epic about three scorching days 130 years ago that caused 51,000 casualties, including 7,000 dead, and marked the turning point of the Civil War.
The film violates every rule that Hollywood has imprinted on the public: It’s four hours and eight minutes long, it features no women, no mega-stars and-though it was a bloody battle-the violence is minimal.
Virtually every actor rejected the roles they eventually played in the movie.
Martin Sheen, who portrays Gen. Robert E. Lee with a Southern grace, says, “I turned the role down several times. I certainly wasn’t their first choice. Finally they got to within 10 days of shooting and, thanks to my wife, I finally decided I should play it.”
George C. Scott was the filmmakers’ first choice. “I went to see George,” Sheen said. “He’d studied Lee. When he played Patton (he found out Lee) was one of Patton’s heroes. George turned it down because he didn’t want to play another general. He thought it was a good idea that I play it.”
Sheen knew little about Lee. He was concerned about wearing a false beard, his poor horsemanship and wearing the woolen Confederate uniforms in Pennsylvania’s sultry summer.
“Also the accent worried me. Up until the time I uttered the first word I did not believe it could be done.”
But Sheen thinks his ignorance about the esteemed general may have been a blessing. “I didn’t see Lee as an icon. I kind of do now. But I didn’t realize at that time that he was so revered. And I didn’t have a great care about these proceedings, didn’t realize their importance at the time.
“So, in the long run, it served me well. Everyone in the world knows what Gettysburg was. But they didn’t know it at the time. As an actor you’ve got to pretend you don’t know the outcome. That’s art, isn’t it. Art is going to reflect the truth of a moment, not change it.”
Jeff Daniels, though, realized from the start that “Gettysburg” was more than another popcorn seller.
“We’re not going to beat `Jurassic Park’ for numbers, but it matters,” he says. “It’s something that matters. There’s no reason why, with patience in an audience, this will not deliver.”
The director-writer, Ronald Maxwell, spent years trying to sell the cinematic version of the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, “The Killer Angels,” to a studio system with a “RoboCop” mentality.
“They talked about what they call `the upside potential.’ They thought there was no audience for the American Civil War,” says Maxwell. “The book just gripped me at some deep place . . . the same way as when you hear a piece of music it grips you.”
For a while, it looked like the only way that Maxwell could finance the motion picture would be to film it in Eastern Europe. But then something happened to change everything.
Ken Burns’ documentary on the Civil War aired on public television and suddenly people deserted their pizzerias, forsook “Monday Night Football” and stayed glued to their sets to watch a series of still-lifes about the war that divided the states but united a country.
Television magnate Ted Turner, who marks his feature film producing debut with “Gettysburg,” backed the project originally as a mini-series.
“I knew because of the outdoor scenes, all the cannon and the size of the armies and everything, that it should be theatrical if it was going to be done well,” says Turner. “Television was a backup for us. But I said, `Shoot it as a theatrical.’ I green-lighted the project against the advice of a lot of my key people.”
Turner budgeted the movie at a $13 million loss, assuring his board that it didn’t necessarily mean the film would slip into the red.
Re-enactors, Civil War buffs who re-enact the various battles of the Civil War who outfit themselves in authentic clothes and who are experts on the conflict, joined the project.
Part of the filming took place in Gettysburg National Military Park, the site on which the battle raged. Most of the re-enactors worked free because $100,000 was allocated to historical preservation.
The film cost $20 million and would have cost more than twice that without them, says Turner. At one point, 5,000 of these re-enactors took part in the battle. They came from all over the United States, says Maxwell.
Because of the re-enactors and historical adviser Brian Pohanka, the film is accurate down to the particular part of the body where each officer was wounded. “We had details like, did we have the exact flag which crossed the field at a certain point?” says Pohanka, the senior researcher for Time-Life Books on their Civil War volumes.
“The director would ask, `What color horse did General Garnett ride?’ I’d say, `Well the best evidence is that it was a brown horse whose name was Ol’ Red Eye.’ When you put in those little bits of historic ephemera, that enough people out there know, it lends credibility as a whole.”
America’s fascination with the Civil War is “visceral,” says Pohanka. “More than any other event in our history, the Civil War is the crucial event of our story as a people. Whether your family and its descendants came after the Civil War or not, the America they found, and the America they have to live in-to this day-feels the effects of that war.”
