Can you imagine if immediately after 9/11, filmmakers like Scorsese, Spielberg, Coppola, Fincher or Apatow would enlist in the military to make films about the war on terror?  Films that would show America at war against its Taliban and Middle East enemies.  Well with  the exception of Clint Eastwood, that's pretty hard to imagine.
Yet in WWII, that's exactly what happened.  Filmmakers John Ford, William Wyler, Frank Capra, John Houston, and George Stevens would in various ways, join with the military in the war effort.  
The work that they did, the impact it had on them personally and on the country, would forever change the workings of Hollywood. It emphasized the importance of film as entertainment and as an art form, as well as how Americans viewed war.  In that sense, those images still shape our perceptions today as they are a part of our cultural and political DNA.
Mark Harris takes us though the war work of these great Directors in Five Came Back: A Story of Hollywood and the Second World War
My conversation with Mark Harris:

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