Rescue Dawn - Trivia, Questions and Fun Facts

[discussimdb]

Fan of Rescue Dawn or just want to share your movie knowledge? This topic is dedicated to all trivia and questions related to Rescue Dawn

[sara]

Steve Zahn lost 40 pounds for his role.

[camila]

Dieter Dengler was captured not once but twice in real life. The scene where he was captured while drinking from a river is based on his second capture.

[kyle]

Christian Bale lost 55 pounds for his role.

[maureen]

Those are real worms Christian Bale is eating.

[francisco]

To prepare for his role, Jeremy Davies read the book "Man's Search for Meaning" by Viktor Frankl. Frankl was a psychiatrist and a Holocaust survivor who wrote about the psychological reactions experienced by prisoners.

[jesus]

All the guards in the POW camp were based on true characters from Dieter Dengler's story except for 'Walkie Talkie' who is a fictional creation of the director.

[bryan]

Dengler remained in the military for another year, being promoted to lieutenant and receiving jet training. Some years later, during a pilot furlough at TWA, he returned to Laos where he was treated as a celebrity and visited the POW camp. He discovered that during the escape he had accidentally looped around to a point within a mile and a half of the camp.

[ray]

Shot in 44 days, including the different locations and stunt scenes.

[elmer]

Herzog's film is starkly at odds with Dieter Dengler's own book "Escape From Laos," and Dengler's statements in the documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) , when it comes to the character of Gene DeBruin. The real Gene DeBruin (played in the movie by Jeremy Davies ) was spoken of highly by Dengler: He described DeBruin as a strong leader and peacemaker when differences threatened their escape plan. Phisit Indradat - the last living survivor of the camp - called DeBruin "The finest man I have ever met." He believes that Dengler would be appalled by Rescue Dawn (2006), had he lived to see it, because of the character assassination of Gene Deburin. Indradat had high praise for the filming location but otherwise he said it technically showed a great lack of research.Indradat and DeBruin's family repeatedly tried to reach out to Herzog in pre-production to get a balanced representation of the events, but no one could reach him. Key events in "Rescue Dawn" that present Dengler as the mastermind, were in fact the work of DeBruin, who spent 2.5 years in the prison before Dengler arrived. He and fellow prisoners spent that time formulating an escape plane and storing rice in bamboo tubes in preparation. In the movie version, DeBruin is not only against any escape, but it is Dengler who comes up with the idea to store rice in the tubes (and DeBruin who tries to eat it beforehand).According to Dieter Dengler it was DeBruin who got the important nail, long before Dengler even arrived. And DeBruin was part of the attack on the guards, not a no-show like in the film. Debruin chose to stay back and care for a sick POW, who was not able to escape with the others through the jungle. This heroic, selfless act lead ultimately to his death. Herzog's screenplay and Davies' performance made basically a 'movie villain' out of the real-life hero DeBruin, but still used his real name in a movie, that claims to be based on fact. Herzog apparently regretted this misrepresentation later.

[fred]

Based on the true story of Dieter Dengler, a US Naval Aviator shot down over Laos during the Vietnam War.

[claude]

In a show of solidarity, as many of his actors lost weight for their roles, the director lost almost 30 pounds.

[jessie]

First cut was almost 3 hours.

[fred]

At nearly $5.5 million in the United States, this is the highest grossing film to date (March 2008) for Werner Herzog (his films have generally played in art-houses in the US).

[jim]

The film was independently financed. According to Werner Herzog, basketball player Elton Brand provided most of the financing. This film is Brand's first producer credit.

[harry]

In the POW camp where Dieter Dengler was held, there were altogether 7 POWs. For story-telling purposes, this was cut down to 6. This is explained by Werner Herzog in his commentary.

[brent]

Dengler was actually carrying an old (West) German passport and had planned to wear civilian clothes under his flight suit so he could pose as a German journalist if shot down. This caused a bit of an international incident when he was captured, as it led to his captors claiming that German forces were involved in the conflict. Herzog changed this to a US passport for the film to avoid derailing the narrative, although it now raises the question of why Dengler would be carrying his current US passport on a covert mission.

[jim]

According to Steve Zahn, there were no trailers for the cast and crew on set.