RESCUE DAWN
ABOUT THE PRODUCTION

“I love America because America gave me wings.”
-- Dieter Dengler

RESCUE DAWN marks the first truly American film from internationally acclaimed director Werner Herzog. Based on the true story of the courageous POW escapee Dieter Dengler, the film once again takes Herzog on an intense adventure into the dark heart of human peril, but comes out the other side with a heart-lifting sense of all that is meant by duty, honor and triumph over adversity. Says Herzog: “Dieter Dengler embodied everything I love about America: courage, perseverance, optimism, self-reliance, frontier spirit, loyalty and joy of life. He was the quintessential immigrant into America – a young man who arrived with a great dream and came to represent the best of the American spirit.”

The story of Dieter Dengler has long had a grip on Herzog, the German-born director who has attained legendary status for his groundbreaking and unforgettably lyrical films -- both harrowingly truthful fictional narratives and mischievously inventive documentaries -- that have provided ecstatic visions of human reality. Earlier, he created an acclaimed, Emmy® nominated documentary about Dengler, LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY, in which the real Dieter Dengler, then living a comfortable life in Northern California (he passed away in 2001 after a final battle with Lou Gehrig’s Disease), looked back on his jungle odyssey with a gritty, astonishingly unsentimental yet emotionally stirring frankness. Though that film was an evocative work in its own right, Herzog says: “I knew in my heart the story remained incomplete.”

Thus was born RESCUE DAWN, the first time Werner Herzog has written a screenplay entirely in English and his first film working with major Hollywood stars such as Christian Bale, who is rapidly emerging as the leading talent of his generation. With this revisiting of Dengler’s story, Herzog once again finds himself in the ragged borderlands where truth and fiction meet – turning a true story that he previously turned into a documentary back into a fictional narrative that seems to cut to the core truth of human experience at its most intensified.

Herzog recalls first hearing of Dengler back in the 1960s, when he read of his remarkable quest for survival against all odds in the pages of a major German magazine. Even then, Dengler’s story resonated with Herzog, who was already pursuing the theme of heroic struggles in his early career. More than that, Dengler’s childhood eerily mirrored that of Herzog’s. Both were raised in remote areas of Germany without a father – Herzog in mountainous Bavaria, Dengler in the Black Forest. And both suffered from starvation and deprivation in the harsh years following the end of World War II, leading each man down a different path, Dengler to become a pilot where he would be up above it all, and Herzog to become a filmmaker renowned for getting deep down in the visceral guts of life’s most wrenching and amazing moments.

Years later, Herzog was approached to create a segment for a television show entitled “Voyages To Hell” about his own harrowing imprisonment in Africa. Not wanting, as he says “to circle around my own navel,” Herzog decided instead he would do a piece on Dengler. Though he had no connection to Dengler, following a mere hunch as to where he would have wound up, Herzog found the former Naval pilot in the Marin Yellow Pages. After a brief meeting, at which Dengler expressed some iniital hesitation about becoming the subject of a film, the film director spontaneously showed up on Dengler’s doorstep with a film crew. This began not only their collaboration on LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY but a deep-seated and long-lived friendship.

“I truly loved the man,” says Herzog. “Even now, when I get into complicated situations, I often will ask myself: ‘What would Dieter have done?’”

Yet at the premier screening of LITTLE DIETER NEEDS TO FLY Dengler turned to Herzog as soon as the lights came up, gave him a meaningful look and whispered: “Werner, you know what? This is unfinished business.”

It turns out that Dieter had held back some of his most revealing stories, especially regarding life in the camp – largely because he did not want to say anything negative about his fellow prisoners, and reveal the true tensions that developed among them in the camp. “Fact is they would have strangled each other in certain moments -- if they had a hand free,” says Herzog, “but of course they were all six men cross-handcuffed with their feet in medieval foot-blocks.”

Now, in hearing the tale anew, Herzog, too, saw it in a different way. He decided then he would return to the story – this time as a more epic narrative, one that would give audiences an entirely different kind of experience than the documentary, a visceral journey with Dieter as he is thrust headlong into the abyss yet emerges into the sheer euphoria of being alive.

Although the film takes place in what was to become one of America’s most controversial and tragic wars, the story of RESCUE DAWN is ultimately neither about war nor politics. Dengler is celebrated not so much as an iconic military warrior as a man who represented the best of what humanity can be under extreme pressure. It is that central humanity, which motivated each of his actions, that makes Dieter a hero to Herzog.

“Dieter never wanted to be a soldier, his only dream was to fly,” says Herzog. “He didn’t want to go to war, but when he did, he was a good soldier. He was fair, courageous and loyal. When America gets into turmoil, one misses men like Dieter.”

Yet, Herzog also notes that Dengler had a playful, maverick side and that he, not unlike America, was taken by surprise when his mission in Laos turned so devastating so quickly. “At the time, there was no conception that the war in Vietnam was going to expand. But then, literally from one minute to the next, for both America and Dieter, everything changed and Dieter found himself in a world that seemed to be incomprehensible and that led him to the very center of his being,” says Herzog.

As relentlessly suspenseful and dramatic as RESCUE DAWN is, the film defies expectation in that it is completely devoid of blood and gore. Even in the POW camp, though it remains clear that Dieter and his fellow prisoners are being put through grisly tortures, the film never for a second exploits that for easy drama nor turns Dieter’s Laotian captors into simplistic villains.

“Neither I as the director nor the audience wants to see defenseless people suffering,” says Herzog of his decision to avoid unnecessary carnage. “I don’t like that kind of violence. And Dieter himself was very always gracious about his captors. In fact, he became fascinated by Asia and Asian culture throughout his life,” notes Herzog.

When it came to casting the film, Herzog took another unexpected turn – turning to a trio of Hollywood actors to portray the American POWs. “This story truly called out for young actors of great caliber to do it justice,” he says.

Christian Bale, who has already attained a reputation for fearlessly diving into the most demanding of roles, was Herzog’s choice to play Dieter. “He fit very much what I had seen in Dieter, and let’s face it, Christian is arguably the best of his generation,” says Herzog. “But what I love about the movie is that he is also part of a fabric of other very fine actors – Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies. It is fine to be a Humphrey Bogart but you can only develop your best qualities if you have the right context and textures to surround you. And I think both Christian and I were privileged to work with the best of the best.”

Moving into surprising new territory in the film is Steve Zahn, the versatile actor who has become best known for his more light-hearted comic roles. Herzog, however, was impressed with some of Zahn’s earlier performances and felt he had what it took to embody Duane, the only POW to escape into the jungle with Dieter, and the man with whom Dieter would develop a remarkable and raw friendship as they spent nights huddled together against the cold. Says Herzog of Zahn: “I was always convinced that I would take the man to where he had never been before.”

Likewise, Herzog was impressed with just how far Jeremy Davies – who came to the fore as part of the ensemble cast of Steven Spielberg’s World War II epic SAVING PRIVATE RYAN -- would go to bring alive the role of Eugene DeBruin, the civilian who worked for Air America and whose final whereabouts to this day remain a mystery. “What a phenomenal performance,” Herzog says of Davies.

Indeed, Herzog says that every single performer in the film, across the board, matched his expectations. “From the Laotian guards to even the village dog, everyone in the cast was quite remarkable,” he says.

NEXT
DIETER DENGLER’S ODDYSEY
In the winter of 1966, US Navy Pilot Dieter Dengler launched from the aircraft carrier USS Ranger in an agile Skyraider plane to fly along the tricky, sinuous border between North Vietnam and Laos. It was the very first mission Dengler would fly in Southeast Asia and it was about to become one of the greatest epics of survival in history.