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60 free Saving Private Ryan trivia questions with answers. Saving Private Ryan changed how war looks on screen, and it left plenty to quiz about. This set covers Steven Spielberg's 1998 film from the landing craft to the cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer: Captain Miller's squad and the actors who played them, the wrong Private Ryan, the schoolteacher reveal, the fictional town at the bridge, and the German prisoner the men nickname after a cartoon. It also covers the true story behind it - the four Niland brothers of Tonawanda, New York, and the sole-survivor rules their loss helped shape - plus the Bixby letter General Marshall reads aloud. Behind-the-scenes questions dig into the six-day boot camp, the County Wexford beach that stood in for Omaha, the milk of magnesia and blue-tinted blood, the coin toss that split the studios, John Williams's Boston sessions, the 1999 Oscar upset and the 2004 broadcast that 66 stations refused to air. Early questions suit anyone who has seen the film once; the last stretch is for people who know which Oxfordshire estate hosted the machine-gun nest. Every answer was checked against Wikipedia's articles on the film, its soundtrack, the Niland brothers and the 71st Academy Awards, plus a Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press account of the FCC ruling, and each question shows its source.
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Q 01In what year was Saving Private Ryan released in cinemas?
1998
It opened on July 24, 1998, a serious drama dropped into a summer of big-budget blockbusters, and still took the number-one spot.
Q 02Which actor plays Private James Francis Ryan?
Matt Damon
Spielberg wanted a relative unknown for the part and did not foresee how much Good Will Hunting would raise the actor's profile.
Q 03On what date does the film's opening battle take place?
June 6, 1944
The landing depicted is the assault on the Omaha sector of the Normandy invasion.
Q 04What civilian job does Captain Miller finally reveal to his men?
Schoolteacher
He also coached baseball, and jokes that back home people used to guess his job easily, whereas his men could not.
Q 05How many Academy Awards did the film win?
5
Its wins were for Director, Cinematography, Film Editing, Sound and Sound Effects Editing, from eleven nominations.
Q 06Which film beat it to the Best Picture Oscar?
Shakespeare in Love
The loss is still counted among the biggest upsets in Oscar history, and a 2015 poll suggested Academy voters would reverse it given the chance.
Q 07Which composer wrote the film's score?
John Williams
The score deliberately stays out of the combat scenes, playing instead over the long quiet stretches between them.
Q 08What nickname do the squad give the German soldier they capture at the machine-gun nest?
Steamboat Willie
Miller frees him with orders to surrender to the next Allied patrol; he later returns with the German assault on the bridge.
Q 09Which real set of siblings was the main inspiration for the four fictional Ryans?
The Niland brothers
Two of the four were killed in Normandy and a third was presumed dead; the fourth was sent home from the war.
Q 10In which country was the Omaha Beach sequence filmed?
Ireland
The real Normandy coast was judged too built-up, and Irish Army contacts from Braveheart led the crew to County Wexford.
Q 11Ryan is a paratrooper in which division?
101st Airborne
The squad first hunts for him among scattered paratroopers who had landed off course.
Q 12From which U.S. state does Private Ryan hail?
Iowa
The farmhouse where his mother receives the news was built for the film in the English countryside.
Q 13Which sitcom star plays Captain Fred Hamill of the Pathfinders?
Ted Danson
It is a brief role, one of several familiar faces the squad meets on the road, alongside Paul Giamatti and Dennis Farina.
Which HBO miniseries did the film's director and star go on to executive-produce in 2001?
Q 21Which future Firefly and Castle star plays the wrong Private Ryan?
Nathan Fillion
The credits list him as 'Minnesota Ryan'; his soldier shares a surname and first name but a different middle name.
Q 22Which of the following actors was considered for the role of Captain Miller?
Harrison Ford
Spielberg said his eventual star was the only actor he could picture who would not want to pull a grenade pin with his teeth.
Q 23Which director was originally hired before leaving the project?
Michael Bay
He departed because he could not resolve how to approach the material; the script then reached Spielberg through Tom Hanks's agent.
Band of Brothers
It borrowed many of the film's visual cues and crew members, and its cast went through another boot camp under the same adviser.
Q 15Who was the film's cinematographer?
Janusz Kaminski
He wanted the footage to look as if combat cameramen had shot it on 16 mm, and the result earned one of the film's five Oscars.
Q 16Who wrote the original screenplay?
Robert Rodat
He conceived the story within a few weeks of a 1995 meeting with producer Mark Gordon, and later created the TV series Falling Skies.
Q 17Which historian, whose D-Day book inspired the script, served as historical consultant?
Stephen Ambrose
The book was a gift from the screenwriter's wife; the historian later admitted sending eight men after one soldier was 'a stretch'.
Q 18Which telemarketer-turned-actor was cast after Spielberg saw his short film Multi-Facial?
Vin Diesel
His character is the first of the squad to die, shot by a sniper while trying to help a French girl.
Q 19Which town does the squad reach first, where a sniper kills one of them?
Neuville-au-Plain
One of the real brothers who inspired the film was killed on D-Day covering his company's retreat from that same village.
Q 20What is the name of the fictional town where the final bridge battle takes place?
Ramelle
The town does not exist; the set was built on an old airfield in Hertfordshire and modelled on five real towns where fighting took place.
Q 24Which actor turned down the role of Ryan to make American History X?
Edward Norton
Neil Patrick Harris was also considered, and Noah Wyle had to decline because of ER.
Q 25Who plays the Bible-quoting sniper Private Jackson?
Barry Pepper
Critics singled out his performance alongside those of Giovanni Ribisi and Tom Sizemore.
Q 26Which future Breaking Bad star plays a colonel in the War Department?
Bryan Cranston
His officer helps deliver the news about the Ryan brothers to General Marshall.
Q 27General Marshall reads aloud a condolence letter written by which U.S. president?
Abraham Lincoln
The 1864 letter consoled a Massachusetts widow believed to have lost five sons; at least two of them actually survived the war.
Q 28Retired members of which service ran the cast's pre-shoot boot camp?
U.S. Marines
The actors got three hours of sleep a night in cold rain and wanted to quit, until Tom Hanks talked them into staying.
Q 29Why did Spielberg keep the actor playing Ryan out of the boot camp?
So the other actors would resent him
The resentment was meant to carry into the squad's grumbling about risking their lives for one man.
Q 30Which Irish beach stood in for the Normandy coast?
Curracloe
The village had no three-phase electricity until the production arrived and had it connected.