Director Peter Berg is well known for his films about football (“Friday Night Lights”) and war (“Lone Survivor”). With his newest project, he’s combining those two interests.
“The Mosquito Bowl,” based on a book by Buzz Bissinger, follows four American football players who enlist in the U.S. Marine Corps to fight in World War II after the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. While preparing to fight in the Battle of Okinawa, the players participate in a football game, nicknamed the Mosquito Bowl, that took place on Christmas Eve on Guadalcanal.
“The Mosquito Bowl” hits theaters on Oct. 30 and will release on Netflix on Nov. 25.
Berg’s films are often immersive, and the battle sequences in “The Mosquito Bowl” are no different, infusing his almost vérité style with the horror that was World War II in the Pacific. The film focuses on the relationships between four young men, played by Nicholas Galitzine, Bill Skarsgård, Ray Nicholson, and Tom Francis, and the deadly cost of war, calling to mind a movie like Peter Weir’s “Gallipoli” – but with American football players instead of Australian sprinters.
Berg’s process is as intensive as the films themselves. To make “Friday Night Lights,” he immersed himself in the culture of Texas high school football. Before making “Lone Survivor,” he spent a month embedded with Navy Seals in Iraq.
“The first thing I ever wrote was called ‘Wonderland.’ It was about a psychiatric hospital in New York,” he said. “I checked myself into Bellevue Psychiatric Hospital for a week, which was a pretty incredible experience.”
For “The Mosquito Bowl,” he could not embed himself with real Marines during World War II, and he could not meet the real men who fought at Okinawa. But, he did write much of the script (co-written by Mark L. Smith) on Parris Island, a military installation in South Carolina where the Marines from the film were trained.
Berg’s process stems from a life spent interested in human behavior. When Berg was in college, he took a cultural anthropology course where he was asked to hang out at a bus stop for a week and document human interactions. At first, he thought it was a ridiculous concept, but he soon began to notice all the unspoken rules that humans live by. Subsequently, research and observation has become an important part of his filmmaking – something that helps him guide the actors and the crew when he’s on set.
“[The actors are] going to have questions, and the crew’s going to have questions, and everyone’s going to sort of have their own interpretation,” Berg said. “I find that through the research, especially if I’ve written it, I have a level of understanding that can provide a clear path – a vision that hopefully they can then see and kind of get on with me, and then bring their own ideas and collaboration within that vision.”
Actor Tom Francis, who plays former football player and Marine Dave Schreiner, was excited to jump into that environment. He said when he initially signed with his agency, he made a list of directors he would love to work with, and Berg made the cut. When he started to learn more about the story behind “The Mosquito Bowl,” Francis became hooked.
“It’s one of those things that, every door you opened, you just kept falling deeper and deeper into it, because it’s such an interesting part of history, and such a harrowing part of history,” Francis said.
Francis is best known for work on stage, particularly for his turn as Joe Gillis in Jamie Lloyd’s rendition of “Sunset Boulevard,” which ran both on the West End and Broadway. He was interested in the specific challenge that playing a real person would bring.
“I’ve spent a lot of time in theater playing people that are imaginative,” Francis said. “For me, there was something about playing a real person and being able to delve into the research of the man himself, the real man, and finding out what that was, and then trying to bring that story to life.”
Actor Ray Nicholson, who plays football player and Marine Tony Butkovich, also threw himself into research for the part. He was so interested in the project that he wrote Berg a letter.
“I felt really compelled with the story to do so, and that began the research,” Nicholson said. “That began diving into the individual that [Berg] thought that he saw me playing, and slowly falling in love with the guy that you’re playing.”
Nicholson was attracted to Berg and “the depth of his heart” as a filmmaker, but what really sealed his interest was the story.
“Ultimately, what drew me to this was the fragility of the immortality of youth,” Nicholson said. “You know, of feeling like the world is at your fingertips, only to discover that the world is so much bigger than you could possibly imagine, and the world’s crushing you.”
“The Mosquito Bowl” hits theaters Oct. 30.
