TV: Going to war in 'The Pacific'

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For 10 straight months, Joe Mazzello and the rest of the cast of HBO's "The Pacific" crawled through the mud and muck with 50-pound packs and the sun beating down on them, similar conditions to what American soldiers endured in the brutal Pacific campaign of World War II.

But there was one glaring difference: Mazzello and his fellow actors got to go home each night to a plush hotel in Melbourne near where they filmed the 10-part miniseries.

"At the end of the day, you feel kind of silly because of what these guys had to go through," said the young actor who plays one of the U.S. Marines in the sprawling miniseries followup to 2001's "Band of Brothers." "I would end up every night in a bed and a shower."

Still, it wasn't a filming paradise for the cast who portrayed real-life soldiers during one of World War II's most bloody conflicts.

First, to familiarize themselves with soldiering, the actors suffered through a rigorous 10-day boot camp where they hardly slept, ate real rations and took weapons training. Then they were shipped off to Australia, where they filmed in the mud and heat of the jungle.

"This was the most physically and emotionally taxing experience of my life," said Mazzello, notable for his role as the boy, Tim Murphy, in 1993's "Jurassic Park." "I never did a job as difficult as this one. But because of that, I don't think I'll do a job as rewarding as this."

Mazzello portrays Pvt. Eugene Sledge, a young man from Mobile, Ala., whose 1981 memoir, With the Old Breed , was one of four books the miniseries is based on.

The epic tale spans more than three years in the war against the Japanese, covering the conflicts on Guadalcanal, Cape Gloucester, Peleliu, Iwo Jima and Okinawa. The miniseries, which like "Band of Brothers" was executive produced by Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks and Gary Goetzman, cost $200 million to produce vs. $120 million for "Band."

Instead of focusing on one company, as "Band of Brothers" did with the 101st Airborne infantry in Europe, "The Pacific" tells the story of three Marines from different units.

In addition to Sledge, "The Pacific" follows Pvt. Robert Leckie (James Badge Dale), who fought at Guadalcanal, and John Basilone (John Seda), a veteran of Guadalcanal who was awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor and returned home as a celebrity to push war bonds.

"These men were not professional warriors," Mazzello said. "They were plumbers and mechanics and teachers. These were just regular guys who went off and did this tremendous thing. It's almost unthinkable what we asked of them -- 'Here's this rifle and go save the world.' "

The soldiers who fought in the Pacific campaign not only had to face off against a largely unseen enemy hiding in the jungles, they also had to battle disease, thirst, dysentery and uncontrollable elements.

"It was rain and mud and just a sense of total despair that permeates throughout," said Graham Yost, one of the miniseries' co-executive producers who also wrote and directed an episode.

There was unfathomable brutality and madness in the thick jungles of the Pacific, he said. In one true-life incident, Sledge hears the plop-plop sound of a fellow soldier throwing pebbles into the skull of a Japanese gunner whose head was blown open, a passage in Sledge's memoir that Yost insisted be included in the miniseries.

"Everyone was on board with the fact this is how the miniseries is going to be -- that it's going to be that brutal and that real," said Yost, who also worked on "Band of Brothers." "When you have that license [to show all the horrors of the war], you feel you're doing the right thing. It might be hard for people to watch at times, but that's what happened."

For Mazzello and the rest of the cast of "The Pacific," all of the long days sloshing around in the rain and muddy soup with a heavy pack were worth it as long as they remained true to the memory of those ordinary men who performed under extraordinary circumstances.

"I felt a responsibility not only to [Sledge] but to all veterans," Mazzello said. "My grandfather served in the Pacific, and I felt I had a responsibility to him too. It was the most motivating factor. If the mud was too thick or the rain was too strong [while filming] ... you would think about them and all those people you had a responsibility to, and that would keep your legs going."

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