‘Masters of The Air’: Gary Goetzman On His Collaboration With Steven Spielberg And Tom Hanks

Over the years, Gary Goetzman developed a strong partnership with both Tom Hanks and Steven Spielberg. Goetzman served as executive producer on Jonathan Demme’s The Silence of the Lambs, and he also joined Hanks as producer on Philadelphia, The Polar Express, Greyhound, and more recently A Man Called Otto. In 2001 and 2010, Goetzman, Hanks and Spielberg brought to the small screen two miniseries, that are to this day, still considered as some of the greatest war TV shows : Band of Brothers and The Pacific.

With Masters of the Air, the three producers once again bring to our TV, an epic tale of brotherhood through the lives of the men, pilots and navigators, of the 100th Bomb Group, as they lead air raids over Nazi Germany. Starring some of Hollywood’s most in-demand actors, including Callum Turner, academy award-nominees Austin Butler and Barry Keoghan, as well as Anthony Boyle, Nate Mann, Rafferty Law, Ncuti Gatwa and Josiah Cross, the first 7 episodes of Masters of the Air are already available to stream on Apple TV+.

Watching Masters of the Air on our TV screens, and not in a packed theater, almost feels like a crime. The scale of this show as well as the incredible performances give the impression that we’re watching one big, long, epic movie. During my interview with him, I asked Gary Goetzman how the decision on how to cut an episode is made, in order to get the spectators hooked on that cliffhanger every week: ‘’You know, we don’t know how to do that, we know how to make one big movie, and then we’re like ‘Oh no, we have to cut it here’. It ’s always horrible, we always want to play 9 hours, it’s absurd, we can’t do it! We’re not experts on where people should cut things, and what they should do about it, we already have our hands full, making the body of the picture itself.’’

I told Gary Goetzman that I would absolutely watch the 9 hours cut if it ever came out in theaters. ‘’I’d get you snacks, and lots of good things to eat and drink!’’ joked the producer.

Since the show is based on the real lives of the men of the 100th bomb group and on Donald. L Miller’s book, I asked Goetzman which aspect of the show, or which scene, he would have liked to show the real men of the 100th: ‘’If it’s a pilot, I would probably take them up on episode 3 or 5, and just put them in the battle, you know what I mean, that’s what would really affect people who have been through this, now all these years later. ‘’

What is the one question Goetzman wishes he could have asked them, to make sure that their vision of the show, was as close to their reality as possible ? : ‘’Interesting. Well we did a lot of these questions, with a lot of them. What they thought about, or you know, they fly up there for a long time without any action, how do you deal with that anxiety ? How are you going to keep yourself together, knowing that you’re going into these battles. That’s what I’d ask them.”

Steven Spielberg said many times that his father, Arnold, who had served in the Army Air Forces, liked Band of Brothers and The Pacific, but always wished his son had made a series about the pilots. ‘’We really couldn’t have done this show back in the Band of Brothers and Pacific days, we needed the technology to catch up with the story we’re trying to tell. We know the story, we brought in the biggest visual effect supervisor, Stephen Rosenbaum, Oscar winner, to really help us and sink his teeth into the episodes and collaborate, to really get it to a point where the audience could feel that they’re actually involved up there’’ explained Goetzman.

Bringing a story of this magnitude to the screen takes a great amount of brotherhood and partnership off-screen as well. Goetzman described his relationship with Spielberg and Hanks as ‘’very peaceful’’. ‘’Once you have success with people in certain areas, it all becomes pretty natural. We have a shorthand with each other, we’re comrades in arms’’.

Goetzmann didn’t forget to praise the incredible talents who worked behind the camera or in the editing room : ‘’I feel the most peaceful in the editing room, in the mixing room. We have a fantastic mixer on our show, four times Academy Awards winner Michael Minkler, we worked together many a time.” He continued ‘’Blake Neely did the theme song as far as I’m concerned for The Pacific, and a couple of other things we have done, he’s our secret weapon. I love him so much, he has so much heart and passion, and he did all nine hours!’’.