Episode 628-Interview w/ Anthony Maras: Director of Pressure

Hello everyone, Ray here. Welcome to the History of World War Two podcast. With me today is Anthony Maurus, director, editor and co-writer of the movie Pressure out on May 29th. Covering the incredible story of how D-Day, one of the most important events of World War Two, could have been a disaster.

Mr. Maras, thank you very much for sharing your time with us today. Thank you, great to be here, Ray. Absolutely.

So first of all, congratulations on the film. I loved it. I had a great time. The sets, the costumes, the equipment,

I geek out and stuff like that. But also the emotional roller coaster that you took us on. I was all over the place by the time the movie was over, I was spent.

But it reminded me of that's exactly what the people in this story went through themselves. And so it kind of reminded me that, and I don't know which way this goes,

you're making this movie must have been almost like a metaphor for combat because it is a team effort. And unless the team is working together,

things aren't gonna go very well in combat or trying to make this complex story. Yeah, that's, look, that's really true. Far be it from me to say that it's anywhere near as hard

or for the stakes are far lower, like no one's really gonna live or die. There are definitely similarities. You've got to work with the team

and you get sort of into the unknown. And strangely, I've learned very much, very much dependent on weather. And we had some very strange, weird,

sort of uncanny similarities between, the characters went through in our film and in a very small way, what we had to go through to try and make a film about

what they were going through. So yeah. Right. Speaking of that, I'm not sure where you're at right now,

but I'm in central Virginia. Most of this week it's been, there we go. Well, most of this week here, it's been in the mid 90s, it's been grueling.

Obviously now I'm wearing a turtleneck. It's now 53 degrees. So again, we have to bow to Mother Nature. That's one of the lessons of your film.

Well, it's funny because I just got a message from one of my producers saying, he just got a travel alert. There's a sinkhole on the runway at LaGuardia.

And there are like, you know, here, woman alighting basket swept away by currents during New York flooding. And I had to double check.

I thought, is this old note? It's happening right now. Yeah. So it's kind of crazy.

Like, yeah. Well, one of the things we're gonna get into with certain characters in the film, the weather has to be respected.

There's no such thing as bluffing your way through. So we'll get to that, but I did want to ask. So if you wanted to set up the film for us and get us started on it, just give us a background.

But one of the things that I was wondering as I'm sitting there, the lights go down, the film's about to come on. I've got my popcorn, I've got my drink, I'm happy. And I'm like, how is he going to open the film?

because are you going to do shots of the rolling greens of England? Are you going to do the Atlantic Ocean? Are you going to do a weather station in Iceland? But what you chose to do to open up that film immediately got everybody's attention.

And it was a warning of what could happen if they don't get this right. Yeah, exactly. It's, you know, we effectively start in an ocean full of blood because that was the color of the water after Exercise Tiger.

it was a dress rehearsal for D-Day. It was only six weeks out from the attacks or from the invasion themselves. And I think it was very important to Allied leadership, but to Eisenhower in particular, that the men get a proper taste of what they're in for. A lot of those soldiers were draftees. They had never seen combat. And Eisenhower also had never seen actual combat as a soldier.

He was too young for World War I, obviously too old for World War II, and was very keenly aware that before they send these young men into the buzzsaw, that would be the Normandy coasts that they should have at least some experience, at least of the sights and the sounds and the feeling of an invasion. So he'd authorised live ammunition to be used. There was a mix-up and as a result of some

some delays that had happened that didn't quite get to all the members in this training exercise. And basically, it resulted in a friendly fire incident where many of them died. That together with another incident at the same dress rehearsal as part of the same, you know, exercises for the lead up to the day, where some e-boats discovered

them after some of the ships were using the Bronn communication channels. These tiny little errors meant hundreds of deaths. In fact, there were more people that died in Exercise Tiger in the dress rehearsal for D-Day than died on Utah Beach. Those groups that were at Exercise Tiger went on to Utah Beach. Eisenhower felt a great sense of responsibility, obviously,

for the lives of these men. But this shadow of this catastrophe hangs over all of their heads and is a constant reminder leading up to D-Day, which we know is said with history. We know that they won. We know it was greatly victorious. But in the lead-up to it, it could have gone any way. And there was this constant threat, this constant sense of if we couldn't

even land our men in a training exercise, if there was such calamity at a rehearsal, how the hell are we going to land hundreds of thousands of men in an entrenched defensive Nazi position that was the Normandy Coast. And so, you know, that's, that's, you know, the pressing question, you know, are they going to be able to make it or aren't they? And the

pressure builds as they get closer to deciding do they or don't they? Right. And I'm glad you put it like that, because for the rest of the film now, because of Tiger, Eisenhower has got his more than enough reasons to get everything right or to get it it is right as he can. I mean, the pressure starts from right there. 749 minimum people

died on that day. So, so he's got this incredible pressure. And as he has to remind Monty, I think at least once, if not more than once, this decision is mine. So the good of it