The Pacific

Dwight also brings, I love this, also brings a performance background to his work.

He spent years as a professional actor and musician and appeared in HBO's The Pacific.

Today, His focus is helping leaders turn useful ideas into everyday behaviors that strengthen their team.

So once again, Dwight, I'm so grateful.

Do you have family in the military or did your career just kind of happen to be in some of the greatest military films and franchises there is?

Well, my dad was a tank captain in World War II, and he served in the Pacific Liberation of the Philippines.

And he was a printer at the Chicago Sun-Times when he got drafted three days before Pearl Harbor.

And because his typing was so fast and it was a regular, like a typewriter keyboard on a line of type machine.

I mean, I get kind of claustrophobic on boats and elevators.

I mean, I like swimming, so I'll dive off and swim, but I feel freer that than being on a boat.

Well, Magellan crossed the Pacific.

I don't know if I'd recommend swimming that unless you're doing it just from like Russia to Alaska.

I'm a big fan of the pod and I wanted to write in to share some thoughts on your industrialization conversation during the Safe and Private Ryan pod.

As impressive as the European campaign was, I think the Pacific campaign is often overlooked as a real showcase of fully industrialized war.

The U.S. created and operated two fully independent attack forces across thousands of miles of ocean.

Each force had multiple carrier groups, battleship groups, and their support forces, as well as transports, supply ships, landing craft, and infantry forces, as they conducted two completely separate campaigns of island hopping towards Japan.

Parentheses, one of the reasons HBO's The Pacific miniseries isn't as good as Band of Brothers... is that it requires multiple main characters and POVs in order to cover the material because no one unit participated in the whole campaign like they did in Northwest Europe.

Ian W.

Toll wrote an excellent three-volume series on the war in the Pacific, and the second volume, The Conquering Tide, discusses the vast amounts of material, infrastructure, and coordination everything took.

As impressive as the battles were, the buildup necessary to move ever closer to Japan was incredible.

of the things that's successful about Band of Brothers too is that there's a cast of characters that you can hold on to throughout.

Whereas in the Pacific and what was the airplane one that we...

Masters of the Air.

Yeah, it's really hard to follow those.

Rowley's journey through the art department is nothing short of extraordinary, from those smaller local productions where everyone knew everyone's name and probably even their coffee order too, right through to massive international productions with sprawling crews, giant budgets and even moving parts to make your head spin.

He's worked on beloved Australian classics like The Flying Doctors and Blue Heelers and gone on to major productions like The Thin Red Line, Charlotte's Web and The Pacific.

And yes, even an Emmy-winning Spielberg project.

Not bad for a man who started out making sure actors like me didn't walk on set without the right handbag, shoes, spectacles or keys.

So if it's channeled through one person who guides that team under the direction of the director and the designer, it simplifies the process of time and information flow.

So that's the reason for it, especially on a bigger project.

I worked on the Pacific miniseries, which was the big Spielberg show.

And one day in my set deck department, I think my record day was 62 people in the department.

All right, this one's funny.

What are you talking about watching on HBO Max? Are you kidding me? Succession, Game of Thrones, Band of Brothers, The Pacific, Chernobyl, that's just off the top of my head.

And then finally, John and Everett, you're trying to give show advice to someone who voluntarily watches The Big Bang Theory.

I kind of agree with you on that one, John.

as you'd say in this movie a gold brick a proper yeah

um sergeant reicher 68 uh and in the same year ice station zebra as well William Bendix appears as Corporal Taxi Potts and he last got mentioned on the show when we covered Wake Island 1942 a couple of months ago now another wartime movie made about the Pacific and He also appeared in Lifeboat, 1944, Submarine Command, 1951, Battle Stations, 1956, and The Deep Six, 1958.

And then the award for most Thompson firing while on the move goes to Richard Conti, who plays Captain Don Davis.

um who at the end of the film kind of like just walks firing that thompson great and then it'll cut to like a shot shot reverse shot of a japanese soldier getting killed um great stuff um he appeared in pebble har 1944 captain eddie 45 uh a bell for adano 1945 a walk in the sun which is one that we've talked about doing fairly recently um as a possible um patron pick choice but we It didn't win.

But no, I think so.

I mean, I think it's one of those movies, if you've seen it, you've seen it.

It's not... it's in that pantheon of Pacific war films that kind of gets lost.

I don't know.

And I, I'm sure you're familiar with, um, the, uh, I think it was Spielberg who did it.

The, um, uh, s-somewhat of a documentary called "The Pacific." It was his Pacific...

World War II Pacific equivalent of, um, uh, "Band of Brothers," which of course was the war in Europe, and it's based on a book by a guy from Alabama named E.B. Sledge.

E.B. Sledge is now dead, but he was a professor emeritus at a, uh, private liberal arts college called Montevallo.

And his, uh, his memoir that that, that, uh, documentary series is based on is called "With the Old Breed." He got drunk with some friends in, say, 1942, drove over to Atlanta.

They're all punching on each other and giggling, and they join the Marine Corps.

And, um, as they're going through the line, getting, you know, handed their uniform and their boots and so on, they come down to this grizzled old veteran, you know, who's back from the Pacific, and he hands them dog tags.

And again, they're drunk and think all of this is comedic, and they look at it and they say, "What is this?" And the guy says, "Well, son, that's so when you get blown to pieces on some godforsaken rock in the Pacific, we can identify your remains." And Sledge says that it was in that moment that he realized this wasn't a game.