Dan Snow's History Hit - The Making of 'All Quiet on the Western Front'

Episode Date: March 6, 2023

All Quiet on the Western Front is the 2022 film adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque's famous anti-war novel. Told from the German perspective, it presents a gruelling depiction of life and death in the First World War, emphasising the despair and disillusionment of the soldiers who fought in it. The film has enjoyed great success, having already won seven BAFTA Awards and been nominated in nine categories at the upcoming 95th Academy Awards. But what does it take to transform a film like this from a passion project into a blockbuster hit? And how should filmmakers handle stories rooted in conflict? On today's episode, we are joined by Lesley Paterson, the film's executive producer and co-writer, and a world champion triathlete. She tells us about the trials and tribulations she faced to bring the project to fruition, and how history influenced her writing to bring the story to life.Produced by James Hickmann and edited by Dougal Patmore.If you'd like to learn more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad-free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe to History Hit today!Download the History Hit app from the Google Play store.Download the History Hit app from the Apple Store.

Hi everybody, welcome to Dan Snow's History Hit. All Quiet on the Western Front. We're all talking about All Quiet on the Western Front. It is the runaway surprise hit of 2022. It's won seven BAFTAs. It's nominated for a bunch of Oscars, including Writer, Best Picture, Cinematography, Production Design, Score, Visual Effects, obviously Sound. It's crazy, the sound. All that kind of stuff. On the 12th of March, we'll find out whether it's one of this year's big winners at the Oscars. But we felt we had talked well on the pod, obviously, for lots of reasons. One is because it's about the First World War. It's sort of based, it's inspired by Eric Maria Marak's remarkable biographical account

of the First World War, the book All Quiet and the Rest of Front, which was published in the 1920s. As ever, folks, it's a film. It's not a history documentary. It's not a super accurate portrayal of the events that it shows, but it's proved super popular with audiences around the world for its ultra impressive depiction of life and death on the Western Front as told from the German perspective. Now in this episode of the podcast, I'm lucky enough to be talking to Leslie Patterson. She's the executive producer and co-screenwriter of All Quiet on the Western Front. This is brilliant. She grew up near the Battle of Bannockburn in Scotland. That's why she loves this stuff. And she has written a film that is now a smash hit. So I'm going to get her on. She's not a historian. She is a screenwriter.

And I always enjoy, on this podcast, occasionally hear from outside the mainstream history community to find out how people like her, people responsible for making these gigantic, extraordinary films, think about history and how they interpret it in their work, to make their art. It's particularly interesting talking to Leslie, because as you'll hear,

she has the most extraordinary story of how she got this film to the big screen. She's a world champion triathlete. And when she was short of money, she entered a triathlon specifically to make enough cash to pay for the option on All Choir on the Western Front. Just her story alone is pretty epic.

So to tell you all about it, here's the writer of All Quiet on the Western Front, Leslie Patterson. Enjoy. T-minus 10. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. God save the king. No black-white unity till there is first and black unity.

Never to go to war with one another again. And lift off, and the shuttle has cleared the tower. Leslie, thank you very much for coming on the podcast. It is a pleasure. This is a great excitement. Really, before we talk about your extraordinary film, I'm going to ask about your military history. You come from Stirling, the site of the greatest battle in the history of Britain and England and Scotland,

Bannockburn. So was that something when you were growing up? Was there like a military history interest? Oh, 100%. And interestingly, I actually grew up running over the hills and moors of Scotland. And it's funny because I really sort of struggled with a bit of bullying and stuff growing up and just didn't really fit in. And the land was my solace. And I think it's funny because I really sort of struggled with a bit of bullying and stuff growing up and just didn't really fit in. And the land was my solace. And I think it's because certainly in Scotland, there's so much history. There's a real weightiness to the landscape. It's to be expressed.

But anyone that comes here, they talk about it. I mean, I'm not a religious person, but there's this kind of deep spirituality or sense of energy. And of course, we have Wallace's Monument there. We have the gorgeous castle. So a lot of my sessions were all around those areas. So it's always been in my zeitgeist, that's for sure. Leslie, I couldn't agree more. My therapy is just going outside into the hills, preferably in Scotland or in wild parts of England and just hiking. And there's something different about hiking there to Canada or elsewhere, because you're hiking through a landscape that is awesome and vast, but also you realise that, you know, this was where the Bruce was gathering his troops or where

centuries later Cumberland was hunting down Highlanders. It's the history and the nature that I find so compelling about this island that we live on. Oh totally and every step that you take you wonder who has trodden here before, what has happened, You wonder who has trodden here before? What has happened? And especially as a storyteller, right, my head would go off in all sorts of imaginary places and I'd create all of these worlds. And in fact, I was married in a very historic place as well,

over in Balquidder, where Rob Roy is buried with his wife and my clan resides. So, you know, I mean, yeah, I just love all that stuff. Every single glen, every single patch of ground has got extraordinary story despite looking so wild and unspoiled in fact it's been trodden over by so many previous generations but you mentioned that you didn't quite fit in I've been you know reading about you and it seems it's part of your journey towards this extraordinary film you played rugby with boys you never took no for an answer right you were the only girl on your rugby team? It's true. It's true. I went to watch

my brother play rugby when I was seven years old. And I remember tugging on my dad's hand and saying, gosh, that looks really fun. It's dirty, it's muddy, and I'd get to beat up on boys. And he was like, are you sure? You'd be the only girl. And I don't know what it is. I seem to like adversity. If any obstacle obstacles thrown in my way, I sort of excel with that underdog mentality. And maybe again, that's being Scottish, right? And growing up in that environment where we're the underdogs, we like to suffer.

Well, you made the boys suffer. So that's good. And no doubt suffered a bit on the road pitch. And then you like to suffer. I mean, triathlons is your thing as well. I mean, don't even talk to me about those things i know again there's something there's just a beauty and you find purpose and meaning through suffering i really believe that and if you sort of take that as your mantra then the obstacles that come your way they present an

opportunity to learn and grow and develop and And equally, I think looking back through history, you see that, right? The big battles that have taken place, the big leaders, the adversity that they've overcome and how that's propelled them to the next stage. So yeah, that's definitely my mantra. War is suffering. We only have to look at Ukraine today to see that. We can get into this, actually. This sort of weird way that we've created the First World War is this almost uniquely awful event. I'm not sure that's true but is that something you think has drew you to the experience of those men in the trenches on both sides yeah i think so for me it's sort of a level of compassion that i have i mean growing up running and biking through

different towns where all of these monuments were placed with thousands of names. It's constantly in your psyche. And, you know, whether it's poppies, whether you're spoken about to it, whether your grandparents were in it, that sense that everything changed after that point. It was a real critical moment in history, the mechanisation of war and just the unbelievable consequences of that. In today's age, you can't wrap your head around it. And through all of the research that we did, when we read things like the trench war diaries on both sides,

Germany, French, you know, the British, just that humanity and imagining, I can't wrap my head around what that must have been like. And I'm not going to psychoanalyse it too much, but you were the only young woman in a rugby team full of boys. You're a triathlete individual. And then you've decided to make a war film from the German point of view. Is this all connected, do you think? I seek out things that are going to challenge me and challenge the world. There's something in me that wants to prove people wrong. I don't know if that's because I'm the fourth child, me being Scottish. So upon reading this novel and seeing it from the other side, I felt so compelled to dig into that because, you know, as we all know,

history is told from the winners often. So I think while sport and suffering sometimes will numb your emotions, it also allows you to access emotions. So I like the contrast, I think, of both. Are you into war films generally or was it this novel in particular that just fired you up? I mean, I love war films because obviously the message in most of them is incredibly potent. But I think it's that it's such a heightened situation to investigate character, to investigate the psychology of people, of the world, of history, of context. It's a very layered playground. That sounds trite to say playground. But, you know, it's like the sandbox as a creative artist to really dig into many, many things. And visually as well, it's mind blowing.

I mean, I love Apocalypse Now. I love Saving Private Ryan. I love, they're all such heightened situations, investigating different things. I just absolutely love that. It is humanity at its most extreme. And of course, you are an extreme person. It's all making sense to me now. Well said. I'm going to use that. I'm a person of extreme. You're so right. And because people may be wondering why we're talking like this, the point is that your experiences and your athleticism is actually connected with the birth

of this film, right? It's so crazy. You had to win a race or something to make it all happen. So when you option a book, it costs a lot of money and you have to keep renewing it. So the option only lasts for 18 months. So you have to beg, borrow and steal and convince people that you're the person to do it. And then you have to come up for us. It was about $10,000 to $15,000 every year or 18 months. Well well it's just a sort of every person you don't have that kind of money lying around so what we would do is we would use my race winnings often because race winnings that was not part of our budget right our daily budget it was like a bonus so on this particular event the option was due and we didn't have the money and I was very very fit and so we decided

I'd go out to Costa Rica is if I could win it we could get the money option and we're talking this is you know year seven year eight into this and I get to the race site we spent all our money just to get there and I'm pre-riding the course and I fall off and I break my shoulder the day before the race which was just devastating for a number of reasons. And I spoke to my husband, who's a top sports psychologist. He's now my writing partner. And he helped write All Quiet as well. He was like, listen, let's break this down.

What can you do? So I got my bike and I propped up my left arm that was broken. And I could kind of steer with the right. I could walk down the descents. I could run and just kind of hold my shoulder. It was okay. Swimming, not a chance in hell. So we get down to the water and he's like, well, Les, you are very good at the one arm drill. So why don't you try swimming one arm? So always loving a challenge. I thought, why not? So I swam the mile with one arm and came out about 12 minutes down, biked through to second

and ran into first so it was wild, it was a wild experience but it taught me a lot. And when you crossed the finish line were you thinking that's awesome or were you thinking yes I can renew the option on all quiet on the Western Front? I think I was in at the time. When you're trying to be good at something or get through something, whether that's screenwriting, whether that's sport, you're in the moment. You're not thinking about anything else. And you're truly trying to sort of just take it step at a time. And so it's all that sort of mastery of the craft, being in the moment bit by bit.

And so that's where my head was at. And of course, afterwards, it was this great relief that we could do that. You're listening to Dan Snow's History. I'm talking to the writer of All Quiet on the Western Front. More coming up. I'm Tristan Hughes, host of the Ancients from History hit, where twice a week, every week, we delve into our ancient past. I'm joined by leading experts, academics and authors who share incredible stories from our distant history and shine a light on some of antiquity's great questions.

Was the Oracle of Delphi really able to see into the future? What can be discovered from lost civilisations? And was King Arthur actually real? You can expect all of this and more from the Ancients on History hit wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Matt Lewis. And I'm Dr. Eleanor Janaga. And in Gone Medieval, we get into the greatest mysteries. The gobsmacking details and latest groundbreaking research. From the greatest millennium in human history.

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from History Hit, wherever you get your podcasts. Now, writing The Thing, this is where all the history geeks listening to this will all have millions of questions about why you made certain decisions. You departed from the book. So what is your relationship, do you think, when you're a screenwriter 100 years after a book's been written? What's your relationship with it? Is it just kind of almost something to inspire you, or do you feel the need to stick to it? You have to be very respectful of the text, especially when it's a masterpiece like this. And it's a German masterpiece. So, you know, it's a very sort of strategic thing that you do.

You have a system about how you go about it, at least we did. We really analysed the novel. We tore it apart. We put all of the scenes on the wall. We really absorbed what it was about, what were the themes, what was compelling to us, why is this a story that should be told now? Then we went away and we did a lot of research. So we researched all around World War I, how did it all happen, what was the background? Then we looked at the German perspective. We read a lot of things like trench war diaries from the German side and from every side. So we really tried to understand the historical context because when you're adapting material,

looking through our lens of knowing what happened in World War II, we felt that historical context was an important piece to address because it's something we're not taught. How did the reparations that Germany had to pay, what was the setup, how was this nationalistic party of the Nazis? How did that rise? Why? All of that stuff we're not really taught. So we felt, one, that was really important. And then also when you're adapting a novel like this, it's a beautiful poetic novel, but it's almost like excerpts of a diary. There's no through

line of action. So how do you create some kind of dramatic tension that can drive the story and act almost like a ticking clock? Because we know that modern cinematic audiences are different now than they were then. So you want to cater to what you think will appeal to an audience and me as a viewer. So that's when we thought about the storyline of the armistice and the last six hours of the war. And obviously that juxtaposition between the upper brass and the everyman, because it's an everyman story. So if you give it the context of where it sat in terms of politically and who was fighting over what and how powerless these young men were, then that juxtaposition acts in a very powerful way cinematically. Shakespeare plays fast and loose with history, and so does Gladiator, some of the great historical books and films and novels. Should creating great drama today trump trying to be as loyal as you can

to the history, for example? Are you quite relaxed about that? as loyal as you can to the history, for example. Are you quite relaxed about that? No, I would say I'm not relaxed at all. I think it's very important to be as accurate as you can be within certain parameters, right? Within a story, often you need certain cinematic beats in order to carry the audience the way that we understand screenwriting, the architecture of story. So sometimes you might have to create some fictitious characters to help orchestrate those beats. And you might sort of build up a certain point and pull back on another in order to hit those beats.

However, I don't think it's right to completely go against what happened and lie about it. That's what Hilary Mantel, that she thought great fiction, somehow you add if the audience feel that there's an authenticity to the kind of historical understanding as well. Yeah. And to be honest, we were at pains every step of the way to do as much as we could. So obviously the research that Ian and I did, but we are outsiders, we're not German. This is an authentically German story. So when our director came to us, when we are outsiders. We're not German. This is an authentically German story. So when our director came to us, when we finally got to the point where they had found our script,

they came to us and they said, we want to do this in German. Not forgetting, of course, that when we optioned the material 16 years ago, it would have been very difficult to get a foreign film in German and a World War I film off the ground. So the landscape had changed, but they came to us and they said, we want to do this in German. And Ed, our director, wanted to take a pass at the script and really infuse it with his sensibility, which was critical. And we handed it over and we said, yes, this has to be yours in this next phase. And he dug deep into research as well. So we had our research, we had his research. So I feel like we covered a lot of bases to make sure we were as accurate as we feel we could be. Well, the film is now famous for its

super accurate depictions of battle scenes, which we can have a quick listen to now. no no that scene depicts the main character, Paul, and his soldiers taking shelter in a trench from a creep from Bowers. Every account of the First World War describes how appalling that is. How do you interpret those as a writer and take those accounts and that description and put them down as dialogue? It must be so challenging.

It's so, so challenging. And I think the key here is reading the trench diaries and getting a sense of the emotion that these men were going through to really understand what types of interactions were happening, how they were feeling, and then interpret that into dialogue. But in a film, what is beautiful,

and especially about this film, is there's many layers to create that realism. You've got the script, you've got the research, then you have the director's vision, who's also a screenwriter. Then you have the cinematographer and the visual piece. Then you have the production design. Then you have the sound design. Then you have the makeup. All of that layers on top of each other. Every person comes to the table with both their interpretation and their, it just layers the sense of reality. Every department was absolutely top notch, both in their research, both in their

commitment and their passion, and they were all following Ed's vision. And I just don't think that happens very often in a film. This is quite unique. I feel that in the 90s, something happened just technically with cinema that you're able to just achieve these hyper-realistic visions of combat and stuff. It must be exciting for you as a writer to know that you can write something now, and then it's going to be realised by all these amazing people around you. Whereas in the 70s, you could write this amazing stuff, but it would kind of look a bit shonky and it wouldn't be quite as good is that inspiring as a writer oh like you would not believe but for me it's always grounded in character and it's always grounded in the why why did i write this what matters what's the thematic essence what am i trying to say with this and if it's not grounded in that and it's all just

spectacle it doesn't have the depth and that's where this film has really struck a chord across all sectors, right? Because you have the spectacle and the beauty of what they've achieved from a technical standpoint. But at the basis, there's a very potent message, wonderful acting, wonderful characters, and it means something. That's what excites me is getting together with the right kind of filmmakers with the right kind of story. There's something about military history fans and sort of questioning which vehicles they are and stuff. Have you had to engage with people who haven't seen the wood for the trees? Yeah. You know, I think people just want to kind of assert their power, what they know.

And there's so many restrictions. I mean, geez, we shot this during COVID. Like the height of COVID with 300 extras. Not only that, on a limited budget, you do the best that you can and then there's also the cinematic piece. How is this going to work? How is this going to work logistically? So, you know, when it comes to a film,

it's not a documentary. It is an interpretation of what went on and you're trying to heighten certain things to bring about an emotional response in the audience. So I guess it becomes an understanding of what is film, what is its function? The First World War is a really tricky one, is it? Because the Second World War, you're still allowed, although the films have got darker subsequently, but you're allowed to be positive about it. And although war is hell, there are happy endings. In the First World War, we haven't got to that place.

What is it about a writer or artist approaching the First World War that just means it has to be just this dark, dark place? Well, I think that's especially potent for Germans, because they have a lot of shame in their histories, we well know. And this is something that Ed and Malta, our producer, brought to the table and really spoke to us about. And it was something I did not appreciate as a British person that has always been on the winning side, for want of a better word. So there is no hero in their narrative. There can't be. So in that regard, you cannot have a happy ending in a German film. Now, World War I in general, I think it was such a devastating war without a lot of heroism in so much as who was the baddie? It's almost like every country was because everyone was flexing their powers. It wasn't as cut and dried as World War II where we had the Nazi party

that were doing something truly awful and we were fighting against an enemy. World War I kind of wasn't like that. So how can you have a hero when a war is that devastating with not a good outcome? Do you want to make more war films? I think so. I mean, I love strong. Both both my husband and i we write juice together and we love character stories against a big backdrop so we love pieces in history we've got this piece in ghana that's a beautiful story about you know a queen mother fighting against

colonial escapades in west africa and so we love those, but it's a real character piece against that backdrop, just like All Quiet. And I think we love anything that really digs into the deep psychology of suffering and what that means. My husband being a psychologist by training and then me sort of being Scottish. I mean, I'd love to do some historical stuff in Scotland. There's so many amazing stories.

Gosh. Incredible. Yeah, I weirdly just happened to be reading at the moment about the ravaging of the Highlands following the Battle of Culloden in 1746. And it's just appalling, war crimes being committed there. And it's bizarre.

Happened 250 years ago. Right for the telling, I think. Right for the telling. Well, let's hope you get happened 250 years ago. Right for the telling, I think. Right for the telling. Well, let's hope you get a chance to tell. Let's hope you don't have to do all these triathlons. Let's hope everyone just starts throwing money at you all the time now after your huge success. Right? Jeez, Louise.

So what are you going to do? Yeah, it's kind of wild. At the moment, we're taking a lot of meetings. We're meeting a lot of cool people. But that's the exciting piece of all of this right there's so many amazing stories through history so many amazing stories to kind of dream up because ultimately even if we're writing not about a true story we use history as our inspiration because it's all there so we're always digging through wonderful stories and then finding good people to tell them with. Lesley, the main thing is good luck. Go out there and win some Oscars.

Okay, I'll do it. Don't worry. Then I'm going to watch a film about you doing triathlons in order to pay for a film in which you get to win Oscars. That's the next film, I think. Exactly. Let's hope. Great stuff. Well, thank you so much. Good good luck and i'll be on the edge of my seat thank you mate all right thanks so much