LONGEST DAY, THE 221
real ity is that there was no attack and ensuing firefight; to scare the villa gers, the
Taliban merely fired into the air because they couldn’t afford to lose their sup-
port. In the film, during the final (mythical) battle in the village, Marcus Luttrell
stabs a Taliban attacker with a knife. In a radio interview with NPR host Rachel
Martin, Luttrell admitted that he “ didn’t kill anybody with a knife. And I remem-
ber sitting back and laughing. I go why did you put that in there? What does that
have to do with anything? I mean, the story itself, I think, is enough to where you
wouldn’t have to embellish anything” (NPR’s Weekend Edition Sunday, 12 Jan. 2014).
In the scene melding with the attack on the village, the American military arrives
with gunships routing the Taliban and airborne troopers descending from he li -
cop ters. In real ity, Luttrell’s rescue was far less cinematic; U.S. Army Rangers
found him in the forest, walking back to the village with Gulab.
Longest Day, The (1962)
Synopsis
The Longest Day is a war epic based on Cornelius Ryan’s book The Longest Day (1959),
a comprehensive account of the D- Day landings at Normandy on 6 June 1944, dur-
ing World War II. Produced by Darryl F. Zanuck and adapted from his own book
by Ryan, the film recounts the events of D- Day from a variety of perspectives.
Background
Cornelius Ryan (1920–1974), Irish- born correspondent for London’s Daily Telegraph,
was one of the many war reporters who covered Operation Overlord, the crucial
Normandy landings on 6 June 1944. In 1949, on the fifth anniversary of D- Day,
after attending a press reunion, Ryan was inspired to try and construct a compre-
hensive, minute- by- minute account of the invasion. Over most of the next de cade
Ryan read all 240 books published about D- Day, and he and his researchers con-
ducted 700 interviews with survivors in North Amer i ca and Eu rope, of which 383
accounts of D- Day were used in the text of the book. Ryan’s book— The Longest
Day: 6 June 1944 D- Day— first appeared in a condensed Reader’s Digest version.
Published by Simon & Schuster in November 1959, the big book drew excellent
reviews, became a bestseller, and established Ryan as a popu lar historian of inter-
national stature. French producer Raoul Lévy purchased the film rights to Ryan’s
book on 23 March 1960 then signed a deal with Associated British Picture Corpo-
ration (ABPC) to make the movie. Ryan’s pay: $100,000 for the film rights, plus
$35,000 to write the screenplay. Lévy intended to start production in March 1961.
Unfortunately, the proj ect had to be aborted when ABPC could not come up with
the $6 million needed. In December 1961 Hollywood mogul Darryl F. Zanuck
stepped in and purchased Lévy’s option for $175,000 as a last chance gamble for
20th Century Fox, which was hemorrhaging millions on its runaway production
of Cleopatra. Zanuck’s friend, Elmo Williams, wrote a film treatment, so Zanuck
made him associate producer and coordinator of battle episodes. Ryan commenced
on his screen adaptation but often clashed with Zanuck, forcing Williams to