CHICAGO -- When he first read a script for Saving Private Ryan, Tom Hanks knew that the rebellious, cigar-chomping, decorated hero would have to go.
''The screenplay that Steven (Spielberg) and I read independent of one another . . . was very conventional,'' Mr. Hanks said during a press tour here to promote the movie. ''We said, the story is great . . . but the rest of this, we had to change every word of the script.''
Once screenwriter Robert Rodat reworked the story to Mr. Spielberg's specifications, the 42-year-old Mr. Hanks begged to be cast as Capt. John Miller.
Like the director, the star was committed to making ''the most realistic war movie'' of all time.
''Right from the guys vomiting in the landing craft -- you've never seen that in any war movie,'' he said.
He said the strict commitment to re-creating the experience of soldiers freed the movie from the need to address politics.
For Vietnam stories in particular, he said, ''The nature of the war movie itself (was that it) always had that editorial position about the war it was portraying.''
But Private Ryan ''requires no editorializing,'' he said. ''It doesn't even require a setup of history.
''It's not about maps and points and objectives and all of this kind of stuff . . . All it really has to be about is what it was like to be on that landing craft going into Omaha Beach.
''It makes it very tactile, and very human.''
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