Fox Entertainment - The Making of 'Tora! Tora! Tora!' (2001) Part 2 Hollywood Backstory Tora! Tora! Tora!

This dramatic retelling of the Pearl Harbor attack details everything in the days that led up to that tragic moment in American history. The year is 1941 and diplomatic relations between the United States and Japan are at an all-time low. Diplomatic means are attempted through Washington, but they fail. Isoroku Yamamoto is named commander of the Japanese Navy and is to execute a surprise attack on the United States. The attack is planned for the U.S. base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. Some Intel about the coming attack is decoded by the U.S., but they do not believe it. Plus they have no idea where the Japanese will attack. The days leading up to the attack are depicted along with the actual attack that brought the U.S. into World War II. More than 30 years before Clint Eastwood told the story of Iwo Jima from both the American and Japanese points of view in “Flags of Our Fathers” and “Letters From Iwo Jima”, Twentieth Century Fox studio head Darryl F. Zanuck followed a similar impulse to explore the bombing of Pearl Harbor. “Tora! Tora! Tora!” was Zanuck’s attempt to recapture the cinematic alchemy of his earlier hit “The Longest Day”, which explored the events of D-Day from multiple perspectives and met with monumental commercial success. Deciding to apply the same approach to Dec. 7, 1941, Zanuck enlisted producer Elmo Williams to assemble two crews, one American and one Japanese, to tell their respective countries' sides of the event. Fox stalwart Richard Fleischer was placed in charge of the American team, and the legendary Akira Kurosawa was assigned to direct the Japanese sequences. Unfortunately, Kurosawa clashed with studio executives and found it impossible to adapt to the American way of making pictures; he was quickly replaced by Kinji Fukasaku, who directed the action scenes, and Toshio Masuda, who helmed the more dialogue-driven character material. The film's journalistic attention to detail, combined with the sheer scope of the project, quickly led to a ballooning budget, and at a final cost of S25 million, “Tora! Tora! Tora!” was one of the most expensive films ever made at the time of its release.

Part 2 Hollywood Backstory Tora! Tora! Tora!

A 22-minute episode of AMC's “Backstory” series provides an additional take on the movie's production, an intriguing featurette condensing all the most sensational aspects of the production. These include details of Kurosawa's alleged “nervous breakdown”. Apparently crewmembers blew the whistle on him when he decided to beat the clapper boy senseless with a rolled up copy of the script! On the other side of the Pacific, actor Jason Robards was also having a tough time psychologically since he'd actually been at Pearl Harbor on that fateful day in December 1941. His co-star Richard Anderson reflects on this, but adds that it was “the tone of shock” - the very fact that this film exposed the “debacle” of the Americans' emergency response - that attracted him to the project. Elmo Williams says that he was under unusual stress too, receiving daily death threats after hiring the Japanese officer who orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor as a technical advisor on the film.

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