Bonus: Forecasting D-Day with PRESSURE Filmmaker Anthony Maras

Filmmaker Anthony Maras’ (Hotel Mumbai), new film PRESSURE https://www.focusfeatures.com/pressure tells the incredible story of the tense 72 hours before D-Day and how one weather forecast and the free world hangs in the balance. PRESSURE follows General Dwight D. Eisenhower and meteorologist Captain James Stagg as they face an impossible choice—launch the largest and most dangerous seaborne invasion in history or risk losing the war altogether. The film stars Andrew Scott, Brendan Fraser, Kerry Condon, Chris Messina, and Damian Lewis. Connect with us on HTDSpodcast.com http://HTDSpodcast.com and go deep into episode bibliographies https://www.htdspodcast.com/bibliography and book recommendations https://www.htdspodcast.com/book-recommendationsjoin discussions in our Facebook community https://www.facebook.com/groups/257926761619618/get news and discounts from The HTDS Gazette https://www.htdspodcast.com/newsletters-1 come see a live show https://www.htdspodcast.com/live-showsget HTDS merch https://htds-team-shop.fourthwall.com/or become an HTDS premium https://htds.supercast.com/ member for bonus episodes and other perks. HTDS is part ofAudacy media network. https://www.audacy.com/ Interested in advertising on the History That Doesn't Suck? Contacthttps://audacyinc.com/contactAudacyinc.com http://Audacyinc.com

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is supported by Vistaprint. This podcast is a small business passion project, and seeing our vision come to life offline is cool, too, thanks to our expert partner, Vistaprint. On my recent book tour, we were able to order custom, high-quality banners for book readings. It also added a nice professional polish. It also made the events more memorable because readers and I could pose together in front of the banner for selfies to post online. And that's just one of the countless premium products Vistaprint offers to elevate your brand identity. From postcards and posters to tumblers and t-shirts, Vistaprint makes high-end, custom printing accessible to everyone, giving you exceptional quality and results that make every single dollar go further. With real people on standby and seamless tools, Vistaprint guides you through every

• 0:43Greg Jackson?

  step of the process so you always look completely polished. There's a reason over 17 million small businesses trust Vistaprint to elevate their vision. Vistaprint: Print Your Possible. Right now, new customers get 20% off with code NEW20 at Vistaprint.com. That's 20% off at Vistaprint.com using code NEW20. History That Doesn't Suck is supported by Indeed. I'm not afraid to say this. As HTDS has grown, the business requires skills I know I don't naturally possess. If I need to hire, I think this is a job for sponsored jobs. When you sponsor your job on Indeed, you'll find the candidates with the skills you're looking for. Indeed is genuinely all you need to find quality talent.

• 1:28Greg Jackson?

  Instead of putting a post out there and praying the right people see it, Indeed Sponsored Jobs proactively connects you with candidates who match your precise criteria, whether that's location, software experience, or industry experience. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Less stress, less time, more results. When you need the right person to cut through the chaos, this is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com/podcast. Just go to indeed.com/podcast right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com/podcast. Need to hire?

• 2:10Greg Jackson?

  This is a job for Indeed Sponsored Jobs. Welcome to History That Doesn't Suck. I'm your professor, Greg Jackson. As a follow-up to our D-Day narrative episodes, HTDS executive editor Riley Neubauer and I interviewed filmmaker Anthony Morris about his new film, Pressure. It dramatizes the tense 72 hours before D-Day, when General Dwight D. Eisenhower relied on meteorologists led by Royal Air Force Group Captain James Stagg. Stagg is rarely portrayed in drama films outside of a few scenes in 1962's The Longest Day, as far as I know. Let me know if you know otherwise.

• 2:54Greg Jackson?

  Either way, Pressure is an excellent new addition to the World War II movie genre. You'll want to check it out. I very much enjoyed it. Anthony directed, co-wrote, edited, and executive-produced Pressure, adapting it from the play of the same name. He spent years researching the project to ensure historical accuracy, and we get into all that during the interview, including how they restored and hand-colorized real 35-millimeter Allied wartime footage, which was incorporated into the final cut. The film stars Andrew Scott as Captain Stagg, Brendan Fraser as Eisenhower, Carrie Condon as Eisenhower's assistant, Kay Summersby, Chris Messina as American Army meteorologist Colonel Crick, and Damian Lewis as General Montgomery.

• 3:38Greg Jackson?

  Some listeners will recognize Damian as having played Major Dick Winters in HBO's miniseries Band of Brothers. In other words, it's an all-star, talented cast. Some quick updates, though, before the interview. Upcoming HTDS episodes will continue to tell the stories of the Allied march across France, the liberation of Paris, and the push into Germany. In between those episodes, I invite you to check out our new show, Government That Doesn't Suck, hosted by me and Professor Lindsay Cormack. It has its own feed, which you can search for wherever you listen to HTDS. In this new show, we use history for perspective on the often depressing "everything is broken" headlines today. Some things are broken. That's true. But GTDS searches for solutions rather than cynicism.

• 4:20Greg Jackson?

  Speaking of perspective, I also invite you to check out my new book, Been There, Done That: How Our History Shows What We Can Overcome. Because I'm not giving in to the cynicism, which in itself is a threat to the republic. To quote Abraham Lincoln, "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of free men, we must live throughout all time or die by suicide." You can find more information about episodes, the book, and new dates for live shows at htdspodcast.com.

• 5:00Speaker 01

  Group Captain Dr. James Stagg, here at the express request of General Eisenhower.

• 5:04Speaker 02

  Do we have a date yet for the invasion, sir?

• 5:06Speaker 03

  D-Day is in 61 hours from now. This is the largest seaborne invasion in history. Fate of the war, thousands of lives hinge on this. I need a forecast. Churchill tells me you're the best meteorologist in the country.

• 5:24Speaker 04

  Get me the latest readings from every single base within 2,000 miles of Normandy. The invasion is confirmed from Monday, Monday, Monday.

• 5:51Greg Jackson?

  So Riley and Anthony, it's such a pleasure to be with both of you here. Anthony, you've directed and you've created a brilliant film, and I'm not just trying to suck up to you. I really enjoyed Pressure. It was phenomenal.

• 6:05Speaker 05

  Thank you.

• 6:07Greg Jackson?

  Yeah. So let's go ahead and dive in.

• 6:10Speaker 05

  Let's do it.

• 6:11Speaker 06

  First things first, would you consider yourself a history buff?

• 6:14Speaker 05

  Yeah, I would, actually. I've always been fascinated by history in school and just movies and all sorts of things like that, so it's definitely a fascination of mine, for sure.

• 6:25Speaker 06

  And then what first drew you to this particular story of World War II? Have you always had an interest in World War II history, or was it something particular about this story?

• 6:34Speaker 05

  I have always had a really strong interest in World War II. It played a pretty big part, I guess, in my immediate family's life, in that they were refugees from World War II. They left Greece and came to Australia as a result. So I kind of grew up hearing a lot about it, I guess, through the perspective of Greek villagers who kind of went through a whole lot of stuff over there. Although it was the last thing, to be honest, I was looking to make a film about. After having done Hotel Mumbai, I wasn't really interested in doing anything terror or war-related or anything like that. But then I came across the stage play and the early draft of the screenplay for Pressure,

• 7:16Speaker 05

  and I guess I was just, I was captivated by how different it was, at least to me, from a lot of other World War II and war films generally. Obviously, it's not set in the teeth of the battle. It's sort of more based in the kind of strategy rooms and the war rooms, looking at things that in many cases kind of get glossed over but can be extraordinarily important. But even that kind of, to be honest, historical angle, I know we're on a history podcast, but the historical angle wasn't actually what kind of pulled me into the story. It was more just this idea of the awesome power of nature, and awesome not in the sense of, hey, that's awesome, but in the sense of...

• 7:55Greg Jackson?

  Yes. Overwhelming. Godly.

• 7:58Speaker 05

  Yeah. It's just, you know, it's all around us, the weather, obviously, and for that reason, it's kind of invisible, and it dictates pretty much all of human life. And I kind of got thinking, I guess, in short, a lot about that because there were a whole lot of bushfires, wildfires, in America and then in Australia soon after I read the script. Like, more than, I don't know, a massive chunk of our country was incinerated by these wildfires, and it got me thinking about the power of nature and where scientists sit into that and the importance of kind of rational thought in times of crisis. And that kind of all came about at the time I read Pressure. And yeah, it kind of got me hooked a little bit.

• 8:41Speaker 01

  Do you know that weathermen are traditionally a little boring?

• 8:49Speaker 05

  How dare you say that?

• 8:54Speaker 05

  Weathermen, maybe, but how can the weather be boring?

• 8:59Speaker 05

  It feeds us. The weather can destroy us. Controls our daily life.

• 9:11Speaker 05

  I don't think that's boring.

• 9:14Greg Jackson?

  I really like how you put that there, Anthony, because like it is a war movie for those who are listening and want a war movie, but it's not a war movie at the same time that and I love that as we've done episodes, whether it's been World War Two that we're in the depth of now or Civil War, World War One, I always find it interesting doing the episodes where we are talking about the supply lines or we're, you know, what we're talking about messages being sent, the hello girls from World War One, these vital individuals who aren't on the front lines, which doesn't lessen, of course, the courage. And I mean, I love at, I don't think I'm giving anything away here. I love at the end of the film where you're using actual.

• 9:57Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 9:58Greg Jackson?

  It's just, it's stirring. I thought that was so tastefully imperfectly done as we just get these small glimpses of, of those young boys going out on D-Day. But, you know, the, we're now getting that small glimpse of what we all imagine, right? The Saving Private Ryan, if you will, moment. But we've followed these crucial figures who stay in the room, you know, the whole time that they're back, quote unquote, in the safety of, of Britain. And yet I found myself thinking, who has it worse? I mean, the pressure, right? I know there's such a play on words here, barometric, pressure of, of command, the absolute anxiety of knowing that these decisions that they've made are going to either lead to

• 10:43Greg Jackson?

  the slaughter of these young men or the success. It's.

• 10:48Speaker 05

  Or failure of the mission. And it's, you know, it is that idea of the weight of hundreds of thousands, potentially millions of lives resting on the shoulders of largely, yeah, unseen figures. And there was, there was something about the dynamic between, you know, the scientists and the military men and a whole lot of other great minds also who were, who were kind of clashing at this really critical time. And out of that clash, out of these great arguments that clashed against one another, you know, these powerful truths kind of emerged. And it brings back that, you know, Lincoln idea of a team of rivals where it's like, if we've, if everyone's going to agree, then, you know, some of them

• 11:31Speaker 05

  aren't needed. And I think what you found in, in the historical record and definitely in our film is you've got a cast of characters, historical figures who all wanted to do the right thing in the sense that they wanted victory. They wanted this war to end. They just had really different ideas of how to get there. And so there's not a traditional antagonist in the film insofar as we don't really see Nazis shooting at our men. That weight hangs over the production, but it's really about these competing ideas of trying to answer the question of how do we bring our best selves to the table when we've got this really epic decision to make? And how do we know we're making the right decision?

• 12:13Speaker 05

  And for me, that's where it becomes more than a war film. It's not just a tactical thing of, as important as it is, how do we get over that hill? Or how do we take that straight or whatever? It's more about the decision making and it's more about how to really brilliant minds operate when they're under extreme pressure. And it could apply to many facets of life. In this instance, you know, it's a war room. And I thought that was kind of compelling.

• 12:39Greg Jackson?

  If by kind of you mean deeply, then I agree with you. I mean, the, the tension between our group captain and, yes, yes. And, and Crick, the way that was teased out, the, the disagreement to then the, well, I won't give away too much, but you know, the, seeing the tension in the midst of disagreement over these very important decisions to the collaboration, you know, that nonetheless is, you're reminded as the film goes on, as we develop, yes, these guys are, they share the same goal. They just, they don't share the same perspective.

• 13:16Speaker 05

  Yeah. And one small error can bring the whole Jenga stack down, you know?

• 13:20Greg Jackson?

  Exactly.

• 13:20Speaker 05

  Literally an ISO bar may be drawn incorrectly or a few data points get missed. And, you know, that tiny little thing like the chaos thing, butterfly flaps, it swings over here and a hurricane happens over there, which obviously a meteorological metaphor. The same thing happens, or was seen to have happened in, you know, in organizing this massive logistics chain of ultimately trying to get a million men and some women across the channel over this four day period, starting obviously with the critical first day being D-Day. It's a really tough thing to do. And yeah, and seeing how they accomplish this without computers or internet or AI or anything like this. This is hand drawn. All of this

• 14:03Speaker 05

  stuff is held in these people's brains as they're having to compute all of this stuff. The algorithms that they were doing then were by hand, you know?

• 14:12Greg Jackson?

  Right.

• 14:12Speaker 05

  And, you know, there's that old saying, there's more sort of technology in your phone than what we took to go to the moon. And there's probably 10 times that compared to what they had in the 40s. And yet they'll manage to achieve this gargantuan thing. And it's, it's funny. You mentioned Crick and Stag because, and the archival footage, because we had this other really strange thing happen. There's a lot of weird coincidences on this film, but one in particular just sort of blew the socks off everyone where we had that archival footage. We had more than what we needed. Initially, I didn't even, I wasn't even thinking of using it because I wasn't sure about using black and white. Then we looked at this sort of interesting colorization technique pioneered by Peter Jackson. Thought, okay, look, let's look at that. And, but ultimately we needed to

• 14:55Speaker 05

  go through dozens of hours of footage. I think there was over 48 hours or thereabouts of footage that we had to go through so that we could determine what stuff we needed to shoot ourselves and what we could use the archival footage for. We didn't have enough personnel for this. And so, you know, on like the second day, my team of researchers who were also editing this footage and sort of showing me different clips and categorizing it, like, there's no way we can make our deadline with the team that we have. We need to get more people. And so urgently we put out this call in London. Okay, anyone's got editing, editing experience and they're sort of good historical stuff, come on in. A friend asked a friend, we got a few people the next day. On the third day, another guy came in

• 15:36Speaker 05

  who was a friend of a friend of the original guy, big towering six foot, six, seven foot guy. And they said, okay, what's your name? He goes, oh, I'm a friend of Joe's, let's say. And I'm here for this job. I'm not really sure what it is, but it's to cut some archival footage. And they said, oh, it's for pressure. He goes, okay, yeah, it's for pressure. They said, what's your name? He said, James. What's your last name? Stag. And they were, oh my God, how about that? That's the same name as the protagonist in our film. And he goes, oh, is the film set in World War Two? And I go, yeah. And he goes, about a meteorologist? He goes, yep. He goes, yep, that was my granddad. So he walked into our offices 81 years later, the grandson of the protagonist of our film and helped cut the archival footage that

• 16:18Speaker 05

  ended up in the film that was about his grandfather. So if that is not a one in a million or billion or whatever thing, I don't know what is, but kind of nuts.

• 16:27Greg Jackson?

  Yeah, that's special. That is, wow. I don't know how to top that. My gosh. I think that's amazing. I love that personal connection.

• 16:38Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's crazy. But yeah, you know, we had a lot of stories like that. The other, you know, the other thing, I guess with the film weirdly was just contending with the weather, like for the plot to work. I don't think I'm giving anything away, but it's it had to be sunny and, and bright and cheery, you know, for a good portion of the film. If it weren't like that, and if it were how England is for the majority of the time, it would be pretty bad because it's always cloudy and dark and not always, but a lot of the time. And that was completely freaking the bejesus out of me because of cast, actor availability, we weren't able to film in the peak of summer, which is when we wanted to film to have a buffer zone that if we didn't get the footage we needed, we'd at

• 17:22Speaker 05

  least have some leeway. We didn't get to start filming until autumn, going into winter. And miraculously somehow, every day that we needed, whether it was sunny weather, we got sunny weather. We needed cloudy weather, we got cloudy weather for 41 days on the trot. The weather we needed was the weather we got, even to the point that some days we needed cloudy weather in the morning and sun in the afternoon. And that's how it came. So, you know, there's some, some weird stuff going on, I can tell you.

• 17:50Greg Jackson?

  Well, that is either deeply ironic or just perfectly appropriate. It gives you just a subtle sense of what Ike must have felt on occasion.

• 17:59Speaker 05

  Oh my God, I can't even imagine how, we're just trying to shoot a movie, man. Like they were doing the real thing, but yeah.

• 18:05Greg Jackson?

  Yeah.

• 18:06Speaker 06

  I'd like to go back for a second to what you mentioned about the many hours of archival footage that you and the team were sifting through. How do you ultimately decide what pieces you wanted to include in the film and what was appropriate to share on a big screen like that?

• 18:20Speaker 05

  Well, the core reason for obtaining this footage, one, it was, I'll be frank, it was necessity. We didn't have the budget to get thousands of tanks and trucks and boats and all this sort of stuff. We had a decent budget. We got some, but to try and achieve the scale of D-Day, it was a fork in the road. It was we either use, you know, a hell of a lot of visual effects footage or pull back on the VFX and look at archival. Again, initially I wasn't really interested in archival footage, frankly, because it was black and white. And I thought it would pull people out of the movie, cutting to that and back again, because I, you know, too jarring and the audience are going to be hyper aware that when we particularly cut out of the black and white back to our film, it's this

• 19:04Speaker 05

  reminder, okay, well, this is not real life now. This is a movie. This is a reenactment. And so I was kind of against it, even though I've used this technique in a lot of other films, they've all been set more recently. So the footage has been color footage. And yeah, then I saw Peter Jackson's incredible documentary, Thou Shall Not Grow Old. I've mentioned it that many times. I should get a cut of, cut of the profits for that. But I, I've mentioned a lot because I love that film and I loved what he did with it. And that opened my eyes to another thing, which wasn't just the scale and the logistics and all that sort of stuff. Really it was the faces. It was this idea of like bringing history to life, ironically by making it not feel like history, which is to say, what he had done with that footage, took it from a format that we're used to seeing on documentaries,

• 19:49Speaker 05

  History Channel, whatever, and it looks like something that happened long ago, far away. And there's a kind of distance to it. But with the image kind of, you know, upresed and upgraded and colorized, and you could start to see the details in the faces, the bloodshot eyes, the creases, the sunburn and all this sort of stuff. And just literally just the looks on the faces of these young soldiers. It just started looking like people that you knew and there was an immediacy there. And so the directive kind of changed the more footage we looked at. Where it was like, okay, initially, we're just looking for scale and ships and boats. But now, you know, let's look for odd other, just little stolen moments that you can't really manufacture.

• 20:32Speaker 05

  And so because a lot of this footage was shot by, you know, professional cinematographers, some of them were Hollywood cinematographers from the 40s who got drafted into the war effort. Were extremely heroic in going out, you know, into D-Day and other places, no guns. They just had bloody camera. Some of them got their heads blown off, many died, but those who lived gave us this footage that, you know, is, is kind of sacrosanct in a way. So we wanted to treat it with respect, but we wanted to bring an immediacy to our film. And because the footage just came in different odds and ends, it was just all over the place. If you got 48 hours of a, if your audience can try and imagine, okay, you're only going

• 21:15Speaker 05

  to use a few minutes maximum, maybe, you know, maybe a minute or two in the, in a 95 minute movie. What parts do you select? There was a massive process that involved, okay, let's get all this jumbled footage and let's start categorizing it. So it was like, let's put all the plane shots over here, the planes flying over here, the planes taxiing on the runway over here, the soldiers loading the planes over here, making the bullets over there. And, you know, it's an infinite number of categories. I think we had like 200 categories, some cross referenced. We brought it into our edit room and you don't know the state of what the footage is going to be until you officially order it because what you see as a preview may not even exist in negative anymore.

• 22:00Speaker 05

  So we had to get more than what we needed, knowing that we wouldn't get all of it. But ultimately it was first about just sort of categorizing it so that we could compare and contrast. But then really it's an emotional thing. It's you're cutting the film, you're trying to tell a story and you rely on instinct to figure out what feels right here or there or whatever it may be. And that's a very general thing to say, but that's, it's a rhythm, it's an instinctual thing.

• 22:31Greg Jackson?

  I, I understand what you mean by general and yet it's not that different in ways from what we do as we go through primary sources to put together a historical narrative. You're, you're making selections that will help tell the story, that will make it, right, understandable, discernible to, in this case, the viewer, in our case, the listener.

• 22:52Speaker 05

  Of course.

• 22:53Greg Jackson?

  Yeah, it's, you're, you're doing historian's work there, Anthony.

• 22:56Speaker 05

  Well, you actually do that through the whole process. So the archival thing is the tip of the iceberg. You know, whatever character you choose to focus on, whatever portion of the story you choose to tell, et cetera, et cetera. It's, it's always decision-making and you have to keep your audience in mind. You have to look at assumed knowledge. What is it that they do know? What is it that they don't know? What will play? What do you have to reiterate? How do you not hold their hand too much so it doesn't seem dumb and overbearing? But how do you give them enough to be able to understand the context? And that was, that was the really difficult part in terms of you're trying to get across a story which in its bones is extremely tense for the people living it.

• 23:38Speaker 05

  But it's tense because they're so invested, obviously, the generals and the soldiers and all that, they know what's at stake. An audience coming in don't know all of those details. If it's a visceral gunfight, it's easier in one sense in that, okay, someone's shooting at me, every audience member immediately knows if I stick my head up and get blown off. You might not understand the details of the weather forecast or the logistics chain, things that are inherently, we're not kind of evolved to fear. The job of the filmmaker in that case, that's why I wanted, one of the reasons I wanted to do the movie, was to try and make dry systemic things like logistics or like reading

• 24:19Speaker 05

  the weather terrifying, because I think those systemic problems and collapses are our biggest threat. You know, it's a bigger threat to humanity, these kind of systemic issues. And that's what our characters are dealing with.

• 24:33Greg Jackson?

  And you have some wonderful, quiet conversations that are nonetheless conveying that in profound ways. I think, I don't think I'm giving anything away to, I think about Stag and Crick and having this conversation and the certainty of a certain day and Crick saying, well, you would make this call typically. Well, yeah, but D-Day, I'm slaughtering the wonderful way that you've written the scene.

• 24:58Speaker 05

  No, no, yeah, yeah.

• 24:59Greg Jackson?

  You know, like this isn't a typical day, it's D-Day, right? The certainty that just you can feel the burden on their shoulders.

• 25:07Speaker 02

  So if this was a normal forecast, would you call it? Yeah. I don't know. Probably. Yeah. The only difference is it's D-Day. Big difference. Call lies in the air.

• 25:31Speaker 05

  It's interesting you bring that up because we talked a lot about how, you know, how that would be performed frankly. And one of the sort of metaphors that I kept coming back to was, you know, if you have a plank of wood and you put it on two bricks and the wood is half a foot wide, can you walk three meters on it? If it's a half a foot, no problems. You take the exact same plank of wood, you know, the same length, but now put it up between two buildings that are, you know, 200 feet high. Can you walk across it? And it's that kind of idea of where the stakes are literally the fate of the free world, you know, depending on which historical argument you take, at least the fate of many, many, many hundreds of thousands of men and maybe prolonged the war and the other things.

• 26:12Speaker 05

  You take those stakes and then you say, now attach your decisions to that. Yeah, it's causing them to think twice.

• 26:19Greg Jackson?

  Yeah. History That Doesn't Suck is sponsored by Quince. Quince makes high-quality staples from premium materials. My wardrobe now has Quince linen shirts for summer, commuter pants for year-round comfort, and of course, my Mongolian cashmere shawl collared cardigan, which is perfect for crisp fall weather. And increasingly, Quince is taking over my wife's wardrobe. Just last night, she opened up her latest order and showed me a beautifully crafted sweater. She was thrilled to see it was every bit as professional and sharp as it looked online. More than that, it's durable, yet soft. She was thrilled.

• 27:01Greg Jackson?

  Everything is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands because Quince works directly with ethical factories to cut out the middleman. And it's not just clothes, fine jewelry, leather bags, hotel-quality bedding, chef-grade cookware, and five-star luggage. Give the gift of quality this holiday season. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Now available in Canada and the UK too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was History That Doesn't Suck. It's the best way to support the show. HTDS is sponsored by BetterHelp. Thanksgiving looks different for everyone. For some, it's travel, turkey, family and football. For others, it's just another Thursday.

• 27:46Greg Jackson?

  Whatever your tradition or none at all, I think it's worth pausing to make a little room for gratitude in our busy lives and maybe giving ourselves permission to rewrite a few of the holiday rules that may actually add to your stress. If the season's expectations and emotions are weighing on you, talking it through with a professional can help. BetterHelp therapists are licensed, experienced professionals with at least three years and 1,000 hours of hands-on experience. A short questionnaire helps BetterHelp match you with a therapist who fits your needs and preferences. And if you're not happy with your match, you can switch to a different therapist at any time. BetterHelp is now in-network with more than 125 health plans with many copays as low as $15 for eligible members.

• 28:31Greg Jackson?

  And if you don't have eligible insurance or live outside the US, you can still get 10% off your first month. Sign up and get 10% off at betterhelp.com/htds. That's better H E L P dot com slash HTDS.

• 28:48Speaker 07

  Greetings from Breeze Airways, your hometown carrier for non-stop flights from Richmond to Sarasota, Bradenton and more. Your getaway to Florida's west coast is closer than you think. Breeze makes it easy to snag a getaway with non-stop lights, flexible change policies, and a seriously nice onboard experience. Enjoy premium seating with Breeze Ascent, plus high-speed Wi-Fi and tasty snacks. Book today at flybreeze.com. Breeze Airways, seriously nice. In partnership with Visit Sarasota.

• 29:29Speaker 06

  We've talked a lot about the importance of engaging the public, but also remaining historically accurate. What are some of the details you were really careful not to alter in some of these scenes? And then where might you have taken some liberties in order to make the story more engaging for the public?

• 29:45Speaker 05

  Well, I think the, you know, in terms of what we didn't want to mess with at all was, you know, a lot of filmmakers will say this, but was the kind of deeper truth, which is this idea of frankly, of science and rational thought pitting itself against emotion. And what is abundantly apparent, you know, in the historical record and the transcripts and all the information that you can find, you know, is this idea of a shorthand of trust that is born from familiarity. So Eisenhower relied on Crick because Crick had been with him for, you know, a number of years in North Africa and other places.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  And he had served him well. And then you had another series of meteorologists who came into the picture as they were looking to do D-Day, who had very different ideas to, you know, to the method that Crick was using. And that is one of the areas that we did compress, which is both the number of meteorologists that were on the side that, you know, layman's terms will call Stag's side, the modern kind of data-driven side of meteorology. There was a Norwegian meteorologist called Peterson, who kind of pioneered this method and was very much in sync with Stag, who Stag's job was kind of to collate the different meteorological

• 31:09Speaker 05

  opinions and forecasts of different teams working under him and basically develop a consensus view. And so we couldn't, in the 95-minute film, you know, show the many different meteorologists in the different places that were all working on this. It was important to capture the spirit of the argument between them, but the number of people and also the timeline was compressed. So in reality, Stag came into Southwark House, I think in November of 1943, and they had spent many months doing dry runs, basically predicting the weather. And that was a big part of gaining Eisenhower's trust. And so the contours of that relationship that you see between Stag and Eisenhower didn't happen

• 31:53Speaker 05

  over a four-day window in its entirety, as it is in our film. It was compressed from a longer period to what you see in our film, because, you know, you only have so many minutes in a film to sort of make the point. So, you know, that was kind of one thing. The other really key thing that I hope to sort of achieve with the film is, again, I know it's weird because we're on a history podcast, but is to not make it feel like history. You know, I hope we succeeded, but we didn't want it to feel like cosplay. We don't want to make it feel like, okay, these are squeaky clean, all good people, sort of in this kind of, I don't know, in a fake way. I'm not, I'm not using the best words

• 32:35Speaker 05

  right now. But we didn't want to seem like a movie. We want it to feel like real life with real people and very immediate and that sort of thing. So that was a big part of it.

• 32:44Greg Jackson?

  Anthony, if I may, I think you're, in a way, you're driving to what, what part of why I even started this podcast. What you're describing is that textbook, dry history, where people turn into two-dimensional characters. History is interesting when it is three-dimensional, when there's good storytelling, when we can see that they have flaws and that they don't know what tomorrow brings. They're facing a blank page.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Exactly. Yes.

• 33:07Greg Jackson?

  As much as you and I are today, right? I would actually just say you're, look, I realize compressed timeline, composite characters. This is film. You're not trying to make a documentary. But in terms of the storytelling that makes history come to life, yeah, you're doing it. And I thought it was brilliant.

• 33:25Speaker 05

  And what you just sort of brought up then, this idea that it's, history is not a foregone conclusion while history is happening. Like, people, you know, might be aware, I guess, that they're making history if they're a president or whatever. But in many cases, Stag, for instance, was going there to do a job. And his job was do the forecast. And, you know, we just, yeah, we're very interested in the immediacy of the moment and to try and, you know, just make them feel like regular people that you and I know, because they were regular people, which just happened to be 80 years ago. And so we're trying to look at it philosophically more through that lens and hagiography.

• 34:02Greg Jackson?

  And all of these, you know, pivotal moments in history, D-Day, of course, being the example we're talking about today. But, you know, we could be talking about, pick any other war, we could be talking about the tension at Bay of Pigs, you name it. All of these figures that loom so large in our heads, they were regular people in extraordinary moments. And we sometimes confuse the extraordinary moments for, for superhumans. To me, all the history only becomes more fascinating when I realize, oh, my gosh, you know, poor George Washington doesn't know what's going to happen tomorrow. And he has a temper and he's thinking about, you know, his family as well. And, and that's part of, again, I don't want to give anything away, but you know, as we're following Stag, oh, my gosh,

• 34:43Greg Jackson?

  this guy's got a personal life. And he's got to somehow just, you know, it's cooking in the back of his head, but he's got to keep his focus. It's, these are the things we can relate to, right? Because even if it, yeah, I'm not trying to figure out an invasion into occupied France, but I've got my professional life to think about. And I've got my, my kids are always in the back of my mind. My life's always in the back of my mind, right? This is where we connect with those historical figures. I'm sorry, you just got me excited. So now I'm just firing away at you.

• 35:11Speaker 06

  Yeah, we've talked so much about how the story is in the people, right? In these historical characters. So could you walk us through your approach to assembling your cast? How did you approach kind of finding your people? And then how were they able to conduct their own research and be informed by all of the research that you've done to create this film?

• 35:29Speaker 05

  Well, you know, obviously, we'll start with the key protagonist, James Stag. And it was a tricky role because on the surface, he is a character who may not be likable by all people, who's kind of gruff, who's no nonsense, and, you know, just wants to do his job and get out of there. And, you know, there can be, when you're developing films, this sort of pressure to sort of make the character likable. Save the cat is one book that was written. Have him save a cat, you know, have him do something nice. And what we're really trying to hone in on with his character was this idea of someone who

• 36:10Speaker 05

  is inherently good, who may not be nice. And it's, there's a difference between the two things. And who also, in the story, is coming into an environment where he's an outsider. He's a meteorologist brought into a team that, you know, is already kind of humming and running along well. And he becomes very well aware that he's about to tell them something that they really don't want to hear. And he ain't going to be too popular, you know, for doing that. And that means that he can't really, as a character, kind of get across what it is that he really thinks and feels to any of these people. Like, there are some moments that he does as the film progresses to Kay Summersby and others. But for the most part, he's, he's holding his cards really close to his chest.

• 36:52Speaker 01

  Good afternoon, sir.

• 36:55Speaker 05

  This is Group Captain Stack. He's just transferred from Dunstable. We've been very much looking forward to his, him joining us here.

• 37:04Speaker 01

  Lieutenant Kay Summersby, Motor Transport Corps. Welcome to Southwark House.

• 37:09Speaker 02

  Are we sharing an office or what?

• 37:11Speaker 01

  No, I was just using it temporarily.

• 37:15Speaker 02

  Good, because I'll need it exclusively.

• 37:18Speaker 05

  And so from a performance point of view, we needed an actor who could do a hell of a lot by seemingly doing very little, and who could convey a lot with stillness, with movement, you know, who could give a sense that beneath this exterior, there's a whole interior life under there that's bubbling away. And I think one of the great triumphs that Andrew Scott brought to the table in this role is having us not sure how we're feeling about this guy at the start, but by the end, I think we come to really admire and respect him and kind of love him for his choices. And it's a really delicate thing to do that and keep it interesting. And I'd always loved Andrew Scott from literally everything I've seen him in. I think he's one of the best actors working in the world

• 38:02Speaker 05

  today. And I think he brings a really fierce intelligence, but also a mystery to the role. And so when the opportunity came up to work with him, we jumped at it. And, you know, that, you know, really got us on our way. With Eisenhower, we were very conscious, or I was very conscious of, again, trying to play against this idea of Eisenhower, the, you know, because he wasn't then the famous president or the heroic war general. By this stage, he was, you know, by the time of D-Day, he was a largely untested, at least in terms of the public's eyes, military figure, who, if D-Day had gone badly, he might be

• 38:42Speaker 05

  swept up in the dustbin of history. It was a huge gamble for him. Exorcise Tiger was a rehearsal for D-Day, which had gone horrifically badly. It was the largest, or one of the largest friendly fire incidents involving the highest fatalities of Allied soldiers, I think, in American history. And it kind of looked pretty grim in some respects, you know, when you look at it in that context. And anyway, so sort of the more I read about Eisenhower and how much pressure he was under, what this job was doing to his body, you know, he's smoking many packets of cigarettes a day, he's kind of drinking at night. He had an ulcer that, you know, from the stress on his back, like, not a, not an esophageal

• 39:23Speaker 05

  ulcer, like literally an ulcer on his skin that was opening up. But he was kind of pretty bruised and busted. And, you know, there's this idea of this vulnerability where in his private moments, he is regretting what happened in Exorcise Tiger. He is wondering, you know, are we going to screw this whole thing up? Like, it's, again, D-Day's a foregone conclusion now. It was anything but that when they were attempting it. They tried in DEEP, not Americans, but out of Canadian and British forces, had tried getting on the continent in 1942, a few years earlier. It was an abysmal failure. They got their asses handed to them. And that was really fresh in everyone's minds. And anyway, it's a very long-winded way of saying, wanted someone who had, I guess, the courage and

• 40:06Speaker 05

  the accessibility to show a vulnerability in private and a strength in public. And that's what interested me about Brendan Fraser. And also this idea of like Eisenhower being a figure who people came to really trust and love in this folksy kind of Midwestern kind of way. You know, that's Eisenhower. I feel in many ways Brendan Fraser is like that. He's someone that we implicitly love and trust and is very kind of likable. And so it was those qualities that we kind of went out on a limb and, you know, went a little bit against type. He's not an exact physical match, obviously, in terms of his size. I think his eyes are the same. But that was some of the thinking behind the two key protagonists. And then just in short, always loved Damien Lewis. I think he made an incredible Montgomery.

• 40:49Speaker 05

  He had a lot to say about the role. We expanded the role for him. Carrie Condon has been incredible in many things. I loved her in Banshees of Inisherin. Thought she brought a real dignity to the role. And I think it's important for a role like the Kay Summersby role, where it's a woman who's playing at the edges of history, who was there for all these key moments, but you haven't really seen, you know, portrayed that often. And I think she just brought a real intelligence and a strength to her. And then you got Chris Messina, who if your audience haven't seen Air, there's a movie called Air with Chris Messina, where he plays Michael Jordan's agent. And he's got this foul-mouthed tirade as an agent where he's just going apoplectic at someone about Michael Jordan.

• 41:32Speaker 05

  As soon as I saw him do this monologue, I was like, holy moly, we're gonna get him for crick. And, you know, he was happy to do it and we got into it.

• 41:39Greg Jackson?

  A few things are going through my mind as you went through that, Anthony. And first of all, wonderful cast. Oh, my gosh. I almost wanted to jump in a few times, but I know we've got a slight lag and you say, yes, I can't agree more. But one thing I'd love to highlight for, because I know my listeners are gonna notice this when they watch the film. And I mean, it's subtle, but those who know their history will get it. The picture of Ulysses S. Grant that hangs on the wall, right? Oh, yes. Oh, the second I saw it. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. Ike admired Grant.

• 42:15Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 42:15Greg Jackson?

  And of course, you can see why. When you compare their two lives, their trajectory, and why Ike would hone in on Grant, this commander who slowly rises up through the ranks and shoulders such burden in the Civil War. And I can only imagine him thinking about, I'm entering imagination here, but I can just picture him in those final days before D-Day, thinking, what would Ulysses S. Grant do? What would he do in this moment? Yeah.

• 42:43Speaker 05

  You're the first person to bring that up.

• 42:46Greg Jackson?

  We're honored to do it. Yeah.

• 42:49Speaker 05

  Our production design team will be very happy because we debated a long time, should it be Lincoln or should it be Grant? But everyone knows Lincoln and, you know, Ike was a fan of both of them. But yeah, we went with Ulysses S. Grant.

• 43:02Greg Jackson?

  Yeah. Well, I think it was the right choice. I adore Lincoln. And yes, as did Ike, but that was absolutely the right choice for this film.

• 43:11Speaker 05

  But there are a lot of those little historical details peppered throughout the film. Our production design team were really fantastic in that regard. And I think because they're English and because they had, not just our production designer, but many members of the team had grandparents and uncles and aunties and stuff heavily involved in the war effort. You know, they went over and above to just get every little detail right. You know, even the paper that they printed the maps on, they went and tracked down the same paper mills that they used so that when you held the paper up to the light, it would have the same translucent quality. The big D-Day map in the operations room, they not only copied it, but they copied its imperfections as well. And those imperfections came about as a result

• 43:53Speaker 05

  because the Allies didn't want any one particular model maker, in this case it was toy makers, to make the D-Day map. Because if that said toymaker was compromised or had passed that on to, you know, to anyone else, the Nazis, then they would know how many boats and ships and all this. So they divided up the making of that map to many different toymakers across England so that, you know, a number of them would make this many ships and a number would make this many tanks and this and that and the other. And so when you see the full map, it's from different wood, some of it's at different levels, doesn't quite fit perfectly in all bits. And they copied that like exactly so that when it all came together, it was like a one-for-one, almost like a 3D model replica.

• 44:35Speaker 05

  And we're actually donating that to a museum now, you know, so that they can have it up as a, as like a one-for-one replica of the D-Day map.

• 44:43Greg Jackson?

  That's brilliant. Well, and since we're just highlighting some of these beautiful little details, let me just say, as a huge Cab Calloway fan, I love your music choice.

• 44:51Speaker 06

  Yes.

• 44:51Speaker 05

  Yeah, that was awesome. I love that song. I'm gonna tell you still about that because no one's asked about that. So I always loved that song, but I was also basically just looking for a song that the soldiers could sing, where they could just forget where they were for a minute. And it's just young dudes coming together, maybe for the last time. But I also wanted something which was kind of cool, you know, that audiences would like, that didn't sound like too old timey. We already had, you know, the song that they sing around the piano.

• 45:23Speaker 05

  I shouldn't know. Oh, my God.

• 45:24Greg Jackson?

  Yeah, I know. I remember. What was that one?

• 45:26Speaker 06

  Boogie Woogie Beagle Boy, right?

• 45:30Speaker 05

  That's what you'd imagine, you know, it was great for that scene. We didn't want something else like that. And then when I heard the Cab Calloway thing, I was like, man, that sounds weirdly, it was first written in the 30s. It sounds so modern. And it's actually really cool.

• 45:44Greg Jackson?

  Oh, yeah. Heidi, Heidi, Heidi, hi. I mean.

• 45:46Speaker 05

  Heidi, Heidi, Heidi. But we couldn't get the rights and we couldn't get the rights because whoever wrote it, Cab Calloway and the other people who were involved in having the rights, they all had kids who had grandkids and it just all got kind of split up. And, you know, they came to me a few, about a week before we were filming and said, look, we haven't tracked down all the rights holders. We might not be able to get the rights for this, so we need to have a backup song in case we don't get it. So we had this other backup song ready. When it came to time to film it, we only got through filming it with one version. And I'm like, if we're filming it with any version, we're filming with Cab Calloway, we're gonna figure it out. We'll film it with both if we've got time, but we didn't because the rain came like, you know, at this particular point. We got enough to do one song.

• 46:31Speaker 05

  And, you know, our amazing team at Studio Canal and, you know, and our amazing music supervisor, Sarah Bridge, basically tracked down all these far-flung members of Cab Calloway's family and basically got them on the phone and got the rights and were able to use it. So good for them.

• 46:48Greg Jackson?

  Fantastic. We did an episode on the Harlem Renaissance where we told the story of Cab Calloway. We unfortunately weren't able to get the rights, so we, you know, we went with some generic sounds that kind of went Cab-esque. I was so thrilled. And in part because we kind of understood on some small micro level, as soon as the movie kicked on, my first thought, having done that episode, is oh, my gosh, they got the rights.

• 47:16Greg Jackson?

  I'm sure you probably did expect that there'd be viewers having that thought process, but I.

• 47:20Speaker 05

  No, I did not.

• 47:22Greg Jackson?

  Yeah, it was, it was just such a great scene. And I guess with that particular background in our own episode making. Yeah, you very much had my attention when, when Cab came on, so.

• 47:33Speaker 05

  That's cool.

• 47:40Greg Jackson?

  History that Doesn't Suck is sponsored by Cash App. Benjamin Franklin usually gets credit for the expression, "A penny saved is a penny earned." What he actually wrote in Poor Richard's Almanack was clunkier. "A penny saved is two pence clear." Either way, the lesson holds up. Getting a teenager to believe it, that's its own historical campaign. My wife and I have been using Cash App to teach our teenagers how to manage money through the Cash App card for teens aged 13 to 17. It gives them real financial independence while we manage their activity directly from our own account. Every transaction triggers a real-time notification for you to see, empowering your teen to practice independence while giving you peace of mind by keeping track of their spending. It's never too early for your kids to start saving.

• 48:25Greg Jackson?

  Small steps today can build strong habits tomorrow. A Benjamin saved is, after all, a hundred bucks. That's a lesson my teenagers understand. Right now, new Cash App customers can earn $10 if they use FAMILY10 in their profile at signup and send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Download Cash App today and open a managed account for your teen. Cash App is a financial services platform, not a bank. Banking services provided by Cash App's bank partners. Prepaid debit cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC. Cash App Visa Debit Flex Cards issued by Sutton Bank, Member FDIC, and the Bancorp Bank, N.A. To a license from Visa USA Inc. See terms and conditions for the Sutton prepaid card, Sutton debit flex card and Bancorp debit flex card.

• 49:10Greg Jackson?

  Savings provided by Cash App, a Block Inc. brand. Visit cash.app/legal/podcast for full disclosures.

• 49:17Greg Jackson?

  History that Doesn't Suck is sponsored by Square. In 1883, a small business owner in Dayton, Ohio, James Ritty patented the first mechanical cash register. As the legend goes, while traveling to Europe a few years earlier, he grew fascinated by a device measuring the propellers revolutions onboard. Watching the mechanism in action, Ritty considered whether a similar device could record cash transactions. Logging every sale mechanically would allow both the owner and the patron to review and verify each transaction. Small businesses have come a long way since then, and in fact, History that Doesn't Suck uses Square at the merch table for our live shows.

• 49:56Greg Jackson?

  No clunky cash register, just a small iconic Square tap and pay device and a smartphone. Square keeps innovating with new tools, so businesses spend less time managing the day to day and more time growing. Their AI turns your sales data into answers you can actually use. What's selling, where you might be losing time or money. If you're ready to sell smarter, run faster and stress less, right now, you can get up to $200 off Square hardware at square.com/go/htds. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash G-O slash H-T-D-S. Run your business smarter with Square. Get started today.

• 50:38Speaker 01

  At California Closets, we design for the little things. Take this moment of a woman getting dressed for an early meeting while her husband's still asleep.

• 50:50Speaker 01

  Ah, sorry. And now, the California Closets version of that moment, featuring custom soft closed drawers.

• 51:00Speaker 01

  Bedroom and home storage solutions by designers who get you. California Closets, more room for what matters.

• 51:18Speaker 06

  I'd like to go back to something you said earlier about working and researching in the UK and with a very international team. I moved to London about a year ago, and though I'm generalizing a little bit here, I've seen some big differences in how this history is remembered and felt between Americans and British people. And so I'm wondering if you've seen any of these differences within your research process and the filming and the people you've interacted with, or even in the questions and the way you're approaching the history?

• 51:47Speaker 05

  I can speak, I guess, to some extent specifically about D-Day, because we've lived it, you know, for a while and we had, you know, many Americans and many British people involved. You know, this is just instinctual, this is not, this is just my opinion, man, as Big Lebaski would say, but D-Day was existential for the British in the sense that, you know, it was their continent, not that they control Europe, but the continent that they're ultimately a part of. It's home. The Channel in the middle, it's home. And the war was really close to home, and the British were getting bombed as much of Europe was. And in the history and in, just in daily life, like you drive around England and there

• 52:32Speaker 05

  are all of these black silhouettes in different country towns of soldiers from World War II, some from World War I, as a reminder of basically what had gone on. And it's really present in their lives because it was obviously on their doorstep. And there's almost, you know, you always get this idea of a sense of relief that they got through it. Now, a lot of their country was smashed, their empire was, had collapsed shortly afterwards, but they kind of got through it. There's this sort of sense of relief almost that they made it. Whereas, you know, the story of World War II is kind of the story of American ascendancy, where in, from the American point of view, it's like, we came in and we did it. And they did, they saved the world.

• 53:16Speaker 05

  And, you know, and that's not to discount anything that many other parties played in it, you know, the massive sacrifices the Russian people made, losing, you know, 20 million on that front. But, you know, the Americans really came to the fore between World War I and World War II, and particularly after World War II, it was, it was America's era. And just in a general sense, I think you feel that in the movies and in the media, you know, in terms of what the, what the literature kind of talks about in terms of the perspectives on, on these two wars, you know, we did feel that. I know with, you know, having grown up in Australia, there's a third aspect to that

• 53:57Speaker 05

  because America and Australia are both, you know, colonies in some respects of, of Britain. And, you know, one of the founding myths of, of the Australian identity is the Anzac identity. So that's the Australian and New Zealand soldiers that fought in World War I and particularly in Gallipoli. Like for Australia, that's a massive thing. It's, you hear about it ad nauseam. You know, for the British and the Americans, Gallipoli was a minor footnote. So it's, well, maybe not minor footnote, but it's, it wasn't nation building.

• 54:31Greg Jackson?

  Anthony, I'll just tell you, as a, as a, as an American, US-based academic, my students don't even know about Gallipoli until I mention it in class. I'm teaching at the university level, right? So these are adults, and if they don't take my class, they're going to get, for the most, most of them, yeah, it's, so you're not overstating. It's, it is a footnote.

• 54:53Speaker 05

  Yeah, and it's the defining, in Australia, it's at least, you know, for a traditional part of Australia, which is changing now, but it was the defining ethos. And then you had films like Peter Weir's Gallipoli, which kind of immortalized it. But anyway, a lot of water's gone under the bridge since then, and Australia's more than about just, you know, what happened in World War I. But yeah, it's obviously different perspectives, right?

• 55:14Greg Jackson?

  Sure.

• 55:15Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think that kind of covers the, the differences between them.

• 55:20Speaker 06

  I'd like to then return to something you mentioned about Kay Summersby, because I think when you were talking about her characterization, how she comes off as both quietly confident, yet still powerful in this, in this unassuming way. There was a great line when she responds to Ike, when she says that men are too fond of the word genius. It's one of my favorites in the film.

• 55:43Speaker 03

  What do you make of Stag?

• 55:49Speaker 01

  Scottish.

• 55:52Speaker 03

  Churchill says he's a genius.

• 55:56Speaker 01

  Yeah, well, men are too fond of that word.

• 56:02Speaker 06

  I want to ask you what you learned about her real-life personality and then how she interacts then with these larger figures.

• 56:09Speaker 05

  Well, you know, some of my fascination with her character has found its way into the film in a conversation that she has with Stag. And that's this idea of a woman who was widowed in World War II, or, you know, had a fiance who's due to marry, who died in the service. And, you know, she didn't sort of recede quietly into the night. She went and found herself an ambulance and started driving around, you know, dead, you know, sort of corpses and very injured people through the Blitz. And she became, you know, somewhat distinguished in that and started driving military figures. And she went from that ultimately to having the ear of the most powerful man in the theater

• 56:51Speaker 05

  of war, at least in Europe, which is, which was Eisenhower. And I was kind of fascinated by how that occurred, how a woman who's driving ambulances for the Blitz, you know, within a few years, you know, is in all these key historic moments. Like, if you look at, you know, if people go on the internet and you search Kay Summersby historic photos, you'll see her in the background there with Churchill and Stalin and Eisenhower and all of these like grand figures in the back. And she kind of had a front row seat to all of this. There is conjecture, which, which, you know, in many cases came from her second book, that she and Eisenhower had a relationship that was closer than just, you know, closer than

• 57:34Speaker 05

  just being friends, that, you know, she claims they were intimate in her second book that she wrote slightly before she died. And that was something that the play actually delved into, you know, a little bit more. For the film, it was something that, you know, I felt that if we were to do a film about Kay and Ike's relationship, and if it were really about that.

• 57:59Speaker 05

  I don't think that bookending it between the three days leading up to D-Day is the best way to tell that story. You know, if you said, tell that story, it might start the day they met, or maybe three days before they never saw each other again and go back, you know. Whereas, you know, in the 72 hours leading up to D-Day, there was kind of one thing on their mind, which was, how do we not screw this up? And yet, we wanted, or I wanted, you know, to tip our hats to the fact that there may be more to this relationship than what meets the eye. So when you first meet her, she comes across in a particular way, very professional and in a functional role, basically. But then you come to see, well, hang on a minute, why is it that this one woman is there at the end of the night

• 58:44Speaker 05

  having a drink with Eisenhower? Why is she speaking to him, you know, so frankly, in a way that many other far more superior people than her, in terms of their rank, you know, wouldn't speak to him? How is it that at times she can yell at him? And so there's this other dynamic going on between them that's kind of beneath the surface, but I think is there. And, you know, I hope it encourages people to, yeah, to read more into the history and into their lives. Because, yeah, she's a fascinating figure in her own right, for sure.

• 59:14Speaker 06

  Yeah. In another interview, you described one of the themes of the film as speaking truth to power, and Kay speaking truth to power, right? And the courage to stand by your convictions. Did we get that right? And if so, can you tell us a little bit more about it, especially in the context of these high stakes decisions being made by leaders?

• 59:32Speaker 05

  Well, you know, in terms of speaking truth to power, in many instances, you know, I was actually referring to Stag and to the meteorological team basically telling their superiors something that they do not want to hear, which is, I know you've planned for a long time to do this invasion, but if you're planning to do it on Monday, you know, there's going to be problems. And the truth to power part, I guess, is an extension of that, though, because to really pass what they're saying, you got in one camp, meteorologists like Crick, who are saying, it's gonna be okay. We've looked at the historical analogs,

• 1:00:12Speaker 05

  we've looked at the conditions now, they're a match, you can go. Stag, for a lot of the time, is not saying it will be bad weather. He's saying, based on the evidence that we have now, we think it's going to be bad weather, but we can't give you that one thing that you want, which is certainty. And it's-

• 1:00:33Greg Jackson?

  Anthony, if I may, I mean, that is, that's so often the case. Historians, we feel that, where people want a clear narrative. Well, no, it's the primary sources leave ambiguity, or even into the sciences, right? It's, we use the word theory, and for some people, that feels like we're saying, oh, we don't really know. No, we use the word theory because that's a very precise way to articulate-

• 1:00:57Speaker 05

  Exactly.

• 1:00:58Greg Jackson?

  It is the truth as we understand it, but we are open to the fact that new data, new facts that are there that we just don't know yet, that we're ready to change our position, should the evidence indicate it, right? And that is terrifying.

• 1:01:12Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's terrifying for people. What the hell else would you do? Like, you either have ultimately two choices, it's kind of binary. It's, if you don't know the full picture, which we never know the full picture of anything, really, it's either, you know, admit what you don't know, and there's a probabilistic element, A or B may happen, which is, you know, which is one option, or the other is just fudge it and pretend that you've got certainty. And you can go ahead, but I'm not articulating it exactly the way I want to. But, yeah, it's a, it's a dance between making friends with uncertainty, or being able to tolerate uncertainty, and psychologically not being able to do that,

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  and then having to paste over that with, you know, insert your theory, idea, whatever it is here. You know, I'm not really articulating it the way exactly that I'd want to, but yeah, it's that idea of how we deal with uncertainty. And it is, it is inherently terrifying. It's why, it's why, you know, you used to be afraid when it was dark, you know. You were afraid of the dark because you didn't know what was out there. You know, it's, it's the uncertainty aspect of it. So, yeah.

• 1:02:23Speaker 06

  I think, Anthony, I will say what you've mentioned about the different British towns who have these really clear war memorials, it was something that I never realized until I moved here. And so your reflections are exactly, exactly the same.

• 1:02:36Speaker 05

  You noticed that?

• 1:02:37Speaker 06

  Yeah, I have. And especially in the fall, when we were talking about World War One history and Remembrance Day, everything is just felt so, so much more strongly here. Especially when I watched the film, I mean, I watched it with a friend who's British, and we had similar reactions, both emotionally and to the material. But he had a much kind of greater emotional reaction to, to some of the, yeah.

• 1:03:01Speaker 05

  Yeah, yeah, that's, it's implicit in what they're, what they've lived.

• 1:03:05Speaker 06

  It is. So, we've talked a lot about some of these bigger themes that you hope viewers will get from the story and from the film. But if you had to say, what is one thing that you hope audiences take away from the film?

• 1:03:17Speaker 05

  You know, I think it's some of those key themes that we were talking about, like this idea of, well, I'm gonna say two, not one. The importance of standing by your convictions in the face of overwhelming pressure to do the opposite, which I think Stag did really admirably. And the other is, you know, is just this idea of celebrating the heroism of people who are willing to do the hard work of, I know it sounds crazy, but of a rational thought, of weighing up really difficult choices, having the humility to be able to

• 1:03:58Speaker 05

  say, I don't know, and to going out and trying to find the answer. And that can sound boring, but in the, you know, right context, it's the difference between life and this. And I like the fact that this is a story about something which really does seem mundane, predicting the weather, and how basically the biggest war in our history, or a huge part of it was decided by that. And, yeah, I think this respect for nature, and the power of nature, and the power of the natural world, is something I hope audiences also appreciate it for. It's why we ended the film with Eisenhower's quote, when he was

• 1:04:40Speaker 05

  asked by JFK about D-Day. JFK was a soldier in World War II and asked Eisenhower on his inauguration, what gave us the edge on D-Day? And in a very Eisenhower-esque kind of way, he just said, well, we had better meteorologists than the Germans. And the fact that 20 years later, or whatever, many years later, that was at the forefront of his mind. And in many interviews since he finished, since World War II ended, you know, Eisenhower kept coming back to the weather, and kept coming back to this awesome force. So, yeah, all those things were in the blender of, of my thoughts when we're making this movie.

• 1:05:14Speaker 06

  Yeah, no, that makes a lot of sense. And then we have two kind of rapid fire questions for you. The first is, do you have a favorite World War II film?

• 1:05:21Speaker 05

  I, you know, I don't. I've got so many World War II films I love. Recently, I just saw Downfall Again with Bruno Ganz, which I thought was spectacular, and, and felt very realistic, was amazing. I love Inglourious Basterds 2, which is a genre, you know, mashup. And, yeah, no, there's, I can't just put that down to one.

• 1:05:45Speaker 06

  That's, that's reasonable. And then the, the final question is, if you could ask the real James Stag a question, what would it be?

• 1:05:53Speaker 05

  That is a really good question. That is a very good question. I'd ask him this. I would say, would you ever imagine, James, that 80 something years after you did all this, your grandson would have walked in our doors and helped cut the film about your life? I'd ask him that. And I reckon he'd say, I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 1:06:14Greg Jackson?

  I love that. Anthony, I know I could talk with you indefinitely, but I suppose all good things must come to an end. Let me just say again, thank you so much for joining us, for filling HTDS listeners in on everything that, that went in. Well, not everything, right? But giving us a glimpse behind the curtain on this wonderful work of art.

• 1:06:33Speaker 05

  No, Greg, Riley, thank you for having us. It's been a lot of fun talking about it. So, you know, fellow history buffs, it's, it's good to have a yak about it. So, thank you.

• 1:06:42Greg Jackson?

  Pressure is now streaming on Peacock and available for rent on demand. My thanks again to Anthony for this conversation and this excellent film as a strong addition to the World War II movie genre. If you liked that conversation, don't forget to check out Government That Doesn't Suck. We've got two episodes of GTDS that go deep on how the federal government gathers weather data for military operations and everyday life. Spoiler alert, the forecast on your phone's weather app is built on taxpayer-funded data. Search for and follow Government That Doesn't Suck wherever you listen.

• 1:07:20Greg Jackson?

  History That Doesn't Suck is created and hosted by me, Greg Jackson. This episode is researched and co-hosted by Riley Newbauer, produced by Dawson McCroft, production by Airship, sound design by Molly Bach, theme music composed by Greg Jackson, arrangement and additional composition by Lindsey Graham of Airship. Please visit HTDS Podcasts to learn more about us, and thanks for listening.

• 1:07:51Greg Jackson?

  HTDS is supported by fans at htdspodcast.com/membership. My gratitude to you kind souls providing funding to help us keep going. Thank you. And a special thanks to our patrons whose monthly gift puts them at producer status. Adam Goran, Ahmed Chapman, Amy and Ross Hensman, Andrew Nissen, Andrew Sherwin, Anna M. Huta, Art Lang, Baby Nico, Bob Stinney, Bonnie Brooks, Ryan Gavigan, Ryan Boils, Ryan Goodson, Bruce Hibbert, Kayden Howitz, Charles Clendenin, Charles Starkey, Charlie Majes, Christopher Merchant, Christopher Lyle, Christopher Pullman, Christopher Young, Cody Brown, Colleen Martin, Colin Ferris Pennington, Connor Hogan, Craig Burhost, Dan G, Daniel Beecham, Daniel Lucana, Darren Chambers,

• 1:08:35Greg Jackson?

  Daryl the Kid Lovell, David Rifkin, Dean Heiser, Donte Spencer, Donald Moore, Eli Edwards, Elizabeth Chris Janson, Ellen Stewart, Ernesto Franco, Ernie Lomaster, Ethan Lowery, Ethan Thompson, G2303, Jeffrey Nelson, George J. Sherwood, Gareth Griffin, Gina Johnson, Gordon Garwood, Henry Brunges, Holly Hamilton, Jake Gilbreth, James Bledsoe, James Blue, James Schlender, Jarrett Zungora, Jeffrey Moots, Jennifer Minjioni, Jennifer Ruth, Jessica Poppin, Joe Dobis, John Booby, John Frugal Dugal, John Huber, John Messmer, John Oliveros, John Radlavich, John Schaefer, Jonathan Schaaf, Jordan Corbett, Joseph Curry, Joshua Steiner, Julian Wright, Justin Tolman, Karen Bartholomew, Carl Friedman,

• 1:09:20Greg Jackson?

  Carl Romer, Ken Culver, Kim R., Kimberly Pruitt, Kristen Pratt, Kyle Decker, L. Paul Goringer, Laura Norman, Lawrence Newbauer, Linda Cunningham, Mark D. Worrell, Mark Ellis, Marsha Smith, Mason Glenn, Matt Siegel, Michael Longus, Michael Sullivan, Mick Caprell, Nicholas Powell, Owen W. Sedlak, Paul Huguenroth, Philip May, Randy Keane, Rich Ruck, Rick Brown, Rob Dravovich, Robert Shelton, Rock Gay, Ryan Fogelman, Sam Holtzman, Sarah Prescott, Sarah Traywood, Scott Hurst, Shane Smith, Shannon Hoagland, Sharon Feasen, Sean Baines, Sean Collins, Stacy Ritter, Steve Williams, The Creepy Girl, Thomas Churchill, Thomas Matthew Edwards, Thomas Sabbath, Tim and Sarah Turner, Todd Curran, Tom Bostovka,

• 1:10:05Greg Jackson?

  Travis Cox, Walter M. Ames, Wesley McKee, William Durham, William Curry, William Thompson, and Zach Jackson. Join me in two weeks, or I'd like to tell you a story.