ON THE SET
Thirteen Days: the Making of a Crisis

This quite wonderful documentary not only covers the making of the movie, Thirteen Days but uses primary sources, historical footage and interviews with scholars and actual participants to create an in-depth study of The Cuban Missile Crisis itself. For the making of the film, all three of the leading actors were interviewed as well as the director, three producers, the scriptwriter and production designer. To comment on historical events, Robert McNamara, Sandy Vanocur and many others were interviewed in the present day, while film footage revealed John Kennedy's own insightful comments as well as Fidel Castro's surprisingly candid observations. Private White House tapes mirrored dialog from characters in the film and actual newsreels re-captured Pierre Salinger's press conference and Walter Cronkite's tense and fearful live coverage of events.

As fascinating as this half-hour documentary is, the best part for Bruce Greenwood fans is the central behind-the-scenes section where Bruce proves hysterically funny, drily commenting on his Presidential powers.

The documentary was seen on some stations in Los Angeles in December 2000, but was officially scheduled for the first time on Encore, a cable pay station.

In the first part of the documentary, the actors were all interviewed from the set of the Oval Office with scenes from the film liberally interspersed between:

Bruce's Comments:

BG: For the first time in the history of man we were capable of blowing one another off the face of the earth forever.
	BG: A very small number of men got together in a room about this size - 14 or 15 men - and laid their souls on the table for 13 days, their beliefs and their fears.
BG: Our parents were given the choice of having us stay at school and do the duck and cover under the desks and cower under the mattress and present it to the kids in the basement or dashing home to perish with your parents -- which we did.

The large central section of the documentary went behind-the-scenes and showed the actors at work and play, discussing quite seriously how important their roles were to them, but giving way quickly to levity for the later parts of the interview:

	BG: It has great appeal because you get to play somebody who's one of the great characters of the 20th century. BG: And perhaps when I walked into the White House I was expecting to feel a certain way. I felt good when I walked in here. I walked down the halls and went fine "where's my office."
	BG: (walking in, interrupting Kevin Costner's interview and using a pronounced Kennedy accent) Excuse me, Kenny. Your office is down the hall. This office is oval shaped. KC:You can't throw me one crumb - not one crumb?
	BG: (back to his own interview; nodding toward an imaginary chair and continuing to use the JFK accent) That's my rocker! Please don't sit there! BG: You know people are calling me Mr. President. At first, I was laughing. Now I'm not.
	SC: Bruce and I, actually we had about 5 weeks when we were both in preparation. We'd call each other on the phone and do dueling Kennedys. BG: (using a broad JFK accent) Fortunately I'd constantly win. 'Cause he's not that good at it.
	SC: You know I had to sort of fight to be heard. BG: (with JFK accent) He may tell you different, but...a...he'd be wrong.
	BG:I got piles and piles of biographies. Just hrs. upon hrs., upon hrs., upon hrs. of tape so my wife is quite tired of listening to them and watching them. "You watching that again?" BG: (the scene shifts back to interrupting KC's interview) I've gone along with you a long time, a lot of ways, but this office is oval.

commenting on Kenny O'Donnell's role in the film:
BG:The point of view is every man, a regular guy at the seat of power watching this stuff unfold.

BG:I think the thing that resonates for us today, of course, is that with the world becoming more and more volatile in a nuclear sense and less controllable in a nuclear sense these threats are still real.....This balance of peace that we think we enjoy is incredibly precarious....... You know, the ice of peace is a lot thinner than I think any of us imagine.

Kevin Costner	Bruce Greenwood	Steven Culp	David Self	Roger Donaldson

Peter O. Almond	Armyan Bernstein	Ilona Herzberg	Dennis Washington

Pierre Salinger	John F. Kennedy	Walter Cronkite	Fidel Castro

Robert McNamara	Sandy Vanocur	Evan Thomas	Roger Hilsman, Jr.	Philip D. Zelikow

Thirteen Days TV Interviews