64 COURAGE UNDER FIRE
Ridley Scott’s Black Hawk Down, 2001). Duncan’s script recounts an investigation
into the Gulf War combat death of a female Medevac he li cop ter pi lot being con-
sidered for the Medal of Honor. On 27 January 1995 Patrick Duncan’s agent, Mary
Kimmel, sold his spec script to 20th Century Fox for $1 million— $2 million if
it got produced, which it immediately was. Bud geting for a $50 million produc-
tion, the studio considered Tom Hanks and Harrison Ford before hiring Denzel
Washington to play the lead male role. Meg Ryan was hired to play the female
lead, and the two actors were paid $10 and $6 million, respectively. Washington
persuaded the studio to hire Edward Zwick (with whom he worked on Glory) to
direct, and frequent Coen brothers’ director of photography Roger Deakins was
hired to shoot the picture.Production
In the nine- month pre- production lead-up to the start of the shoot on 16 Octo-
ber 1995, the studio sought script approval from the Department of Defense (DOD)
so as to be allowed to rent Abrams tanks, Bradley Fighting Vehicles (BFVs), and a
fleet of Apache and Blackhawk helicopters— and thereby save $1 million in pro-
duction costs. Five successive revisions of the script were submitted to the Army’s
Public Affairs Office in L.A. between March and September 1995, but all were
rejected for putting the military in an unfavorable light (e.g., depictions of a small
unit mutiny, the de facto murder of an officer, cover- ups, etc.). Denied U.S. mili-
tary support, Zwick had to import 11 surplus British Centurion tanks (shipped to
Vancouver from Australia and then trucked to Texas), where sheet metal was added
to make them resemble M1A1 Abrams tanks. To prepare for his role, Denzel
Washington visited with members of the 1st Battalion, 12th Cavalry Regiment,
an armored unit stationed at Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Matt Damon, then 25
and still a relative unknown, went to far greater Method Acting lengths to nail his
on- screen transformation from a healthy combat medic to an anguished vet suf-
fering from post- traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and heroin addiction (depicted
in just one scene, albeit a crucial one, late in the film). In order to look sufficiently
gaunt and wasted, Damon put himself on a near- starvation diet and ran 13 miles
a day. He lost 50 pounds and suffered adrenal gland damage and other health
prob lems that took months of medi cation to repair.Plot Summary
During the First Gulf War (1991), Lt. Col. Nat Serling (Denzel Washington) acci-
dentally takes out one of his own tanks in the midst of a chaotic nighttime battle,
killing his friend Capt. Boylar (Tim Ransom). The U.S. Army covers up the incident
and transfers a remorseful and alcoholic Serling to a desk job. Later, Serling has to
relive his own “friendly fire” event when he is tasked with deciding whether or
not Capt. Karen Emma Walden (Meg Ryan) deserved to be the first woman to
receive a (posthumous) Medal of Honor for valor in combat (the Medal of Honor
had been awarded to a woman, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, 1832–1919, an Ameri-
can Civil War doctor— but not for combat heroics). Walden commanded a crew
on a Medevac Huey called in to save the injured soldiers from a shot- down Black