MORE FYI:

In addition to working toward the release of Flags of Our Fathers in the summer of 2006, Eastwood will shoot a companion piece about the invasion from the Japanese point of view. Lamps Before the Wind

“It will be like a documentary, telling the story of the men who defended the island, their tenacity, and what it was like to have this armada coming at them.”

Both films will have the same purpose, he said: To be true to the history of an heroic — and desperately tragic — era.

“I just want the people who end up seeing these pictures to feel how the story happened, how these skinny kids were affected, and how they were a lot tougher than we are today.”

So, beginning next February 2006, Eastwood will start shooting the companion movie, tentatively called Lamps Before the Wind, scheduled for simultaneous release with Flags next fall. Typically, Eastwood is not able to articulate fully his rationale for this ambitious enterprise:

“I don’t know — sometimes you get a feeling about something. You have a premonition that you can get something decent out of it,” he says. “You just have to trust your gut.” He asked Paul Haggis, who wrote Flags, if he would like to write the Japanese version as well. The writer of Million Dollar Baby and director of Crash, Haggis was overbooked but thought an aspiring young Japanese-American screenwriter, Iris Yamashita, who had helped him research Flags, might be able to do it. She met with Eastwood, and once again his gut spoke; he gave her the job and liked her first draft so much that he bought it. It was she who insisted on giving him a few rewrites she thought her script still needed.

Taken together, the two screenplays show that the battle of Iwo Jima — and by implication, the whole war in the Pacific — as not just a clash of arms but a clash of cultures. The Japanese officer class, imbued with the quasi-religious fervor of their Bushido code, believed that surrender was dishonor, that they were all obliged to die in defense of their small island. That, of course, was not true of the attacking Americans. As Eastwood puts it, “They knew they were going into harm’s way, but you can’t tell an American he’s absolutely fated to die. He will work hard to get the job done, but he’ll also work hard to stay alive.”

And to protect his comrades-in-arms. As Haggis’ script puts it, the Americans “may have fought for their country, but they died for their friends, for the man in front, for the man beside ‘em.”

The Ira Hayes mentioned in the first comment was a full-blooded Native American from the Pima tribe. He hated the limelight that came with his fame and felt guilty that he came out alive and was being treated as a celebrity when, in his words, better men than he died at Iwo Jima and other places. His tragic life and death are the subject of a moving song sung by Johnny Cash.

I know this may seem like it has little reference to the topic at hand, but my point is that war is hell, and a lot of the people who make it home don’t always really make it home. I’m looking forward to seeing both these films by Eastwood.

It would be interesting if later, when the films are released on DVD, if the package included both films on the DVDs inside.

And this project has amazing pedigree, too, with Oscar winner Paul Haggis and superproducer Stevie S. involved, not to mention Clint Eastwood:

Steven Spielberg is a producer on both films, which tell the story of the famous WWII battle from each side. DreamWorks and Warner Bros. are partnering on the pics, which will have a staggered release later this year. Eastwood, who is in post with “Flags,” will shoot the companion entirely in Japanese.

“Red Sun” revolves around the real-life Japanese General Tadamichi Kuribayashi, played by Watanabe, who battled American troops for 40 days on the small island of Iwo Jima. Kazunari Ninomiya, Tsuyoshi Ihara, Ryo Kase and Shido Nakamura also star.

Japanese-American scribe Iris Yamashita penned the script, from a story by her and Oscar-winner Paul Haggis, who adapted “Flags.”