Corey Johnson and Saving Private Ryan

A theater kid from New Orleans decides to act at 16, the spring he broke his knee playing football. Part 1 of our conversation covers how he became the voice behind hundreds of documentaries.

Part 2. What Corey learned watching Anthony Hopkins, Sam Mendes and Brendan Fraser at work, and why you don’t always realize what you’ve learned on a set until later.

Booked for two weeks, Corey spent most of the first one waiting to be called. Then the cameras rolled on the landing, and he watched a beach turn into chaos.

Corey’s part took half a day to film: the radioman in the foxhole whom Tom Hanks grabs to report that “Dog One is not open.” Then hear what Spielberg said about him afterward. Plus, John Williams’ greatest scores.

Ceo Bauer was a rifleman in the 95th Infantry Division, the Iron Men of Metz. At 101 he has seen Saving Private Ryan more than once, and he thinks the battle scenes are good but “pretty enhanced.”

Part 2. Ceo picks up the story from the night he was wounded near Metz, on November 8, 1944, and the sergeant who gave him his own wound tablets: “You need them more than I do.”