Revealing mistake: There are several scenes (most notably when the group is ambushed at Mt. Suribachi) where the bayonets attached to the guns bend back and forth showing them to actually be rubber instead of metal.
Flags of Our Fathers (2006)
1 revealing mistake
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Starring: Robert Patrick, Ryan Phillippe, Barry Pepper, Jesse Bradford, Adam Beach, John Benjamin Hickey
Deliberate mistake: During the scene on the train in lounge car, a picture on the wall prominently shows an ALCO PA locomotive. The movie was set in 1945, but this locomotive was first produced in 1947.
Bud Gerber: Hey, you know what? I don't give a shit. You're in the picture, you raised the flag, that's the story we're selling, boys.
Ira Hayes: Are you deaf? Hank isn't in the picture. Harlon is in the picture.
Bud Gerber: Well, who the fuck is Harlon?
Ira Hayes: Harlon Block. That's whose mother who should be here if anyone's should be. You know, I think this whole damn thing is a farce, you ask me.
Trivia: This movie was filmed back-to-back with Letters from Iwo Jima, a fictional account of the battle of Iwo Jima that looks at it from the Japanese soldier's perspective.
More questions & answers from Flags of Our Fathers
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Answer: Following WWII, Ira Hayes hated the fame and sensational publicity associated the flag-raising at Iwo Jima. Deeply depressed, Hayes descended into alcoholism over the next few years, and it eventually killed him. Director Clint Eastwood actually underplayed the true extent of Hayes' sad decline, and the scene you mention was no doubt dramatized for the screen. In real life, Hayes was arrested 52 times for public intoxication and disorderly conduct at various places across the country before his death.
Would that be a yes, or no? I've got autism.
It's yes, but he/she is saying that the incident was probably exaggerated for the purpose of the movie, to make it more dramatic. It likely combined a number of similar drunken incidents into the one scene.
raywest