"Hey, Miller, you're back in Los Angeles?"
Matthew had just landed in Paris on a flight from L.A. and hadn't even left the terminal when Jonny Lee Miller called. "Videotape? What videotape? Oh—right, that one. Sorry, Miller, rotten timing. I'm not in L.A.; I just touched down in Paris—still inside the airport."
He lifted the phone toward the ceiling so the boarding announcements could carry over, then brought it back. "Hear that? I'm a man of my word. No, no… I'm not dodging you. You know I shot band of brothers? I met Tom Hardy on set. The company's holding the premiere in Normandy…"
Same old tactic: stall and invent. "DreamWorks sent me an invitation signed by both Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg—can't say no. Bear with me, Miller. Soon as I'm back in L.A., I'll call."
"What?" He faked static. "Hello… hello… can't hear you. Let's pick this up later."
With that, Matthew ended the call.
He collected his bags, left Charles de Gaulle, hired a rental car, and headed straight for Normandy. black hawk down had just wrapped, and tax paperwork had kept him in L.A.; he could only arrive the day before the premiere.
By the TIME he reached Carentan and the hotel near Utah Beach, night had fallen. He collapsed into bed—days of events still ahead.
Next morning in the dining Room he spotted James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender; they'd received invitations as well.
More familiar faces appeared: Michael Cudlitz, Eion Bailey, Scott Grimes, and others.
Matthew greeted them all with hugs. They'd once stood shoulder-to-shoulder against a common enemy; any friction had stayed small and manageable.
The shoot had been brief, yet none of them—Matthew included—would ever forget it.
Without that shared war against the calculating Devil Instructor, he'd never have grown so close to James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.
After breakfast they changed into black formalwear, boarded a production coach, and drove to the Normandy cemetery: a memorial in the morning, the premiere that afternoon.
Reporters swarmed the site. DreamWorks and HBO had mounted a major production: D-Day veterans, an American honor guard—everything solemn and official.
As they stepped off the bus, each actor took a single white rose from a basket, erased every smile, and walked in grave silence through the flashing cameras toward the monument plaza.
Matthew had arrived late in Carentan and hadn't seen the schedule, but staying in formation kept him from mistakes.
At an occasion like this, a misstep could do real damage.
The plaza in front of the memorial was packed; honor guards lined the steps leading up.
On the left, a battery of Ceremonial Guns—Matthew assumed a salute would follow.
He climbed with the others, face set in solemn grief, laid his flower at the base, and slowly withdrew.
Passing the side of the monument he spotted Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg fielding press questions.
Back in the plaza they all kept quiet, briefed in advance; the entire square remained hushed and reverent.
After a wait, a star-studded U.S. general spoke briefly, a lone Scottish piper played, and the guns fired. Matthew simply stayed with the group; the ceremony felt less like remembrance than marketing.
Yet having taken part, he had to admire Hollywood's ingenuity—its stunts reached far beyond show-business pages.
An event like this transcended entertainment news entirely.
Back at the hotel at noon for a rest, Matthew changed into another dark-gray suit before setting off in the afternoon, carefully packing away the black tuxedo. Just like the red-carpet premiere of Gladiator, this one was also rented; he'd originally planned to rent only a single outfit, but Helen Herman objected so strongly that he gave in. Even if he was still just an actor, turning up to two different events in the same suit was out of the question.
In this regard, men have to be every bit as particular as women.
Matthew finally understood why Los Angeles was full of formal-wear rental companies; if you had to buy a new outfit for every appearance, plenty of stars would go bankrupt.
band of brothers held its premiere at the Utah Beach Memorial Plaza, where DreamWorks and HBO had spent a fortune erecting a gigantic tent that functioned like a cinema. In front of the tent stretched the usual long red carpet, with hundreds of reporters flanking it—an even bigger scene than the Gladiator premiere.
The media's attention, however, was fixed on Tom Hanks, Spielberg, Damian Lewis, and the rest of the main cast and crew, along with the World War II veterans. The actors who had trained with Matthew walked the carpet unimpeded all the way to the tent's entrance.
A designated interview area waited there. As more of the cast gathered, reporters began to glance over; when Damian Lewis arrived, the entire company lined up at the doorway, arms around one another like the real Easy Company, and posed for a group photo.
Unable to find a chance to grab the spotlight, Matthew simply followed the others inside the tent. After a wait the event finally concluded and band of brothers began its cinematic roll-out on the big screen.
HBO screened the first two episodes plus selected clips from the remaining eight. Matthew watched intently—not only because he appeared in them, but because this style of war television felt completely fresh to him.
Although he'd taken part in the shoot, witnessing the raw production and watching the finished product were two entirely different experiences.
After the two episodes and the montage, Matthew was quietly surprised: so a TV series could be made like this. Leaving aside battle scenes that rivaled any film, the camerawork, costumes, and sets were almost flawless; through the screen he could almost smell the trench dirt and the reek of blood.
The show delivered no slogans and no preaching; just as on set and in the script, it tried only to reproduce the everyday joys and sorrows of ordinary soldiers.
When the screening ended, Tom Hanks took the stage to field reporters' questions. All the answers sounded like stock phrases, and Matthew soon grew bored. Staring at the episode posters, he suddenly realized band of brothers wasn't flawless: though strikingly realistic and serious, judged by the standards of earlier war dramas it still had shortcomings.
For instance, there wasn't a single shot of generals or White House big-wigs moving pins across a huge map; it was all squads of grunts running around, retreating when things got tough—utterly undisciplined, devoid of strategic vision or lofty perspective.
And none of the American Soldiers seemed to possess a pure, self-sacrificing spirit of dying for the people of Europe. Whenever a new combat mission came down, they greeted it with sullen silence; no one enthusiastically volunteered, and most were plainly terrified of battle.
The soldiers even had independent thoughts and personal standards of judgment; if they believed something was right, they didn't need anyone else's approval, and they especially scorned those meaningless medals from above. Shouldn't the officers shout a rousing call and have the men cheer in response?
They even dared to admire the enemy, and the series dared to show Germans in a positive light, depicting their courage and tenacity. In this kind of show, weren't the enemy supposed to be ugly, dull-witted, timid mice?
Worse, it was out of touch with the TIMEs. During filming he hadn't felt it, but now, watching the premiere, he noticed there was almost no male-female romance. In every military drama he'd seen before, how could it end without at least a couple of love triangles?
And Americans were too delicate. Richard Winters was fine as a commander, Ronald Speirs suitably hard-boiled, but overall they were hardly model soldiers: when the crunch came they cared most about staying alive; some officers even suffered mental breakdowns—what kind of troops were these? They should splice in shots of GIs clutching satchel charges and shouting "Get Hitler!" backed by a red sun and emerald pines; that would move the audience and give them a proper main-theme education.
He glanced at Tom Hanks, then at Steven Spielberg below the stage. Clearly the problem lay with these two producers—their thinking was backward and needed serious updating… "What are you thinking about?" Michael Fassbender beside him asked. "You're miles away."
Matthew shook his head. "Just letting my imagination run wild—entertaining myself."