Black Hawk Down (film) - Background and Production

Background and Production

Black Hawk Down was originally the idea of director Simon West who suggested to Jerry Bruckheimer that he should buy the film rights to the book Black Hawk Down: a Story of Modern War by Mark Bowden and let him (West) direct; but West moved on to direct Lara Croft: Tomb Raider (2001) instead.

Despite Ken Nolan being credited as screenwriter, others contributed to it uncredited; Mark Bowden did an adaptation of his own book; Steven Gaghan was hired to do a rewrite; Steven Zaillian rewrote the majority of the Gaghan and Nolan's work; Sam Shepard (MGen. Garrison) wrote some of his dialogue; Eric Roth wrote Josh Hartnett and Eric Bana's concluding speeches. Ken Nolan was on set for four months rewriting his own script and the previous work by Gaghan, Zaillian, and Bowden, and was finally given sole screenwriting credit by a WGA committee. Composed mostly of participant accounts, SPC John Stebbins became the fictional "John Grimes", because Stebbins was convicted by court martial, in 1999, for sexually assaulting his daughter. Reporter Bowden said the Pentagon requested the change. He wrote early screenplay drafts, before Bruckheimer gave it to screenwriter Nolan; the PoW-Captor conversation, between pilot Mike Durant and militiaman Firimbi, is from a Bowden script draft.

For military verisimilitude, the Ranger actors took a crash, one-week Ranger familiarization course at Fort Benning, Ga.; the Delta Force actors took a two-week commando course, from the 1st Special Warfare Training Group, at Ft. Bragg, N.C.; Ron Eldard and the actors playing 160th SOAR helicopter pilots were lectured by captured aviator Michael Durant at Fort Campbell, Ky. The U.S. Army supplied the matériel and the helicopters from the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment; most pilots (e.g., Keith Jones, who speaks some dialogue) participated in the battle on October 3–4, 1993. On the last day of their week long Army Ranger orientation at Fort Benning, the actors who portrayed the Rangers received a letter which had been anonymously slipped under their door. The letter thanked them for all their hard work, and asked them to "tell our story true", signed with the names of the men who died in the Mogadishu firefight. Moreover, a platoon of Rangers from B-3/75 did the fast-roping scenes and were extras; John Collette, a Ranger Specialist during the actual battle served as a stunt performer. Many of the actors bonded with the soldiers who trained them for their roles. Actor Tom Sizemore said,"What really got me at training camp was the Ranger Creed. I don't think most of us can understand that kind of mutual devotion. It's like having 200 best friends and every single one of them would die for you".

Although the filmmakers originally considered filming in Jordan, they found the city of Amman too built up and landlocked. Scott and production designer Arthur Max turned instead to Morocco, where they had previously worked on Gladiator. Scott preferred the urban look for authenticity. Most of the film was photographed in the cities of Rabat and Salé in Morocco; the Task Force Ranger base sequences were filmed at Kénitra.

In order to keep the film at a manageable length, 100 key characters in the book were condensed to 39. The movie also features no Somali actors. Additionally, no Somali consultants were hired for accuracy according to writer Bowden.

The film features soldiers wearing helmets with their last names on them. Although this was an inaccuracy, Ridley Scott felt it was necessary to have the helmets to help the audience to distinguish between the characters because "they all look the same once the uniforms are on".