Matt Damon’s Saving Private Ryan Speech Is Supposed To Be Terrible (Thanks To Steven Spielberg)

In Saving Private Ryan, Matt Damon’s character tells an awful story that feels out of touch with the rest of the movie’s great writing, but the ins and outs of the terrible speech explain how and why it eventually made the cut in Steven Spielberg’s epic. The scene in question takes place after the group of soldiers led by Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) has succeeded in their task to find Private James Ryan (Matt Damon), who is to be brought to safety and discharged as a result of his three brothers all becoming casualties of war.

During a conversation with the captain, James amusedly recounts the deeply unfunny, unimpressive story of the last night he spent with his siblings. Considering that Saving Private Ryan is widely regarded as the best war movie ever made, the scene seems like oddly dull dialogue sequence in an otherwise witty screenplay. However, in his book The Gross, producer Peter Bart reveals that every line of the speech was actually improvised by Damon, who made the addition on his own initiative. Upon watching the scene, most people utterly disliked it, but Spielberg, despite agreeing with them, consciously chose to keep it in the film.

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Matt Damon’s Improvised Story Worked For His Character

The Matt Damon Saving Private Ryan Speech Was A Brilliant Bit Of Method Acting

The Matt Damon Saving Private Ryan speech was completely improvised by the actor, and he specificly went for something lackluster as opposed to grand, heroic, or in-keeping with the rest of the dialogue in the movie. As surprising as it sounds, what ensured Damon’s impromptu story’s place in Saving Private Ryan is precisely its sub-par quality compared to the rest of the script.

The speech is delivered by James during a conversation with Captain Miller, who encourages him to picture a memory with his brothers. James tells him about two of his brothers dragging him into a barn in the middle of the night to witness the eldest make out with a girl, which leads to a series of random, cheap physical-comedy-style incidents. Despite Damon’s effort to make the humor believable by punctuating the account with snickers, the story is far from entertaining, with the comments about the girl’s allegedly unappealing appearance making it also childish and offensive.

As Bart writes in his account of the behind-the-scenes of Saving Private Ryan, Spielberg himself acknowledged that “the ad-libbed speech was neither profound nor insightful“, but that this is what made it seem “true to this oddly unformed kid who was fated to be at the center of this mission“.

Ultimately, the story works precisely because it sounds like something an average immature boy would find funny, which is what Damon’s character is all about. Private Ryan is not supposed to have heroic traits or even be particularly charming or interesting, but rather an unremarkable, ordinary young man at the mercy of events, which makes the tribulations involved in his rescue all the more dramatic.

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Tom Hanks’ Reaction Makes The Speech Better

The Improvised Response To Private Ryan’s Dull Story Sells The Scene

The Matt Damon Saving Private Ryan speech may have been jarring for some viewers, but the fact that Tom Hanks’ Captain Miller seems to share the feelings of the audience makes the scene work remarkably well. There’s every chance that Tom Hank’s awkward reaction to Damon’s improvised lines is due to the actor being genuinely unimpressed with his colleague’s made-up story, but his uncomfortable attitude makes James’ speech seem more consistent and in line with his character.

Tom Hanks’ real near-cringing expressions and forced smiles not only emphasize how bad James’ story is, but also add nuance and credibility. At the end of the day, the scene looks like it was made intentionally to highlight how unexceptional and slightly unlikable Private Ryan is, which increases the frustration at the losses and sacrifices that the mission to save this one undistinguished kid brings about.

By not making James special in any way, Spielberg subverts the audience’s expectations and crafts a scenario in which life is ruled by chance and everything feels meaningless, especially at war. In this respect, Damon’s clumsy improvisation ends up unintentionally serving the movie’s purpose. The scene gives substance to Private Ryan’s characterization, which makes the Saving Private Ryan‘s ending even more bitter while also tapping into the inherent value of saving a human life, regardless of how remarkable the person is.

Other Movies With Famous Improvised Moments

The Matt Damon Saving Private Ryan speech isn’t the only improvised moment in a timeless classic. Many actors have improvised scenes that went on to be among the most memorable in their respected movies, and there are several notable examples that are now famous among movie buffs. For example, in 2013’s The Wolf of Wall Street, Matthew McConaughey makes a brief but memorable appearance as arrogant broker Mark Hanna. McConaughey’s character stuck with audiences thanks to a bizarre ritual he shares with DiCaprio’s Jordan Belfort, which involves Hanna thumping on his chest and making strange noises.

This scene is among the funniest in The Wolf of Wall Street, and it’s all the more impressive since McConaughey improvised more-or-less the whole thing. It completely sold the character of Mark Hanna to viewers, and were it not for McConaughey’s method-acting the character would likely have been completely forgettable. Speaking of Leonardo DiCaprio, McConaughey’s The Wolf of Wall Street co-star is also responsible for an infamous improvised scene in Quentin Tarantino’s Django Unchained.

The Django Unchained dinner scene is one of the most disturbing in the movie, and sees DiCaprio’s Calvin Candie shatters a glass with his hand. He then continues to nontuantly talk to his dinner guests while picking broken glass out of his hand. The entire moment was, amazingly, improvised by DiCaprio, since the cut on his hand was entirely real and unscripted — he simply didn’t break character due to it, and this made the final cut of Django Unchained all the better.

So, while the Matt Damon Saving Private Ryan speech may have been improvised, there are plenty of other examples of method actors doing the same — and, in many of those instances, it leads to much more memorable moments than the divisive scene in Steven Spielberg’s war movie.

Saving Private Ryan

Tom Hanks stars as Captain John Miller in Steven Spielberg’s 1998 WWII film. Saving Private Ryan tells the story of Miller’s command of a company of soldiers who risk their lives in an attempt to extricate Private James Ryan from the fighting in Europe, in order to spare his family from losing all of their sons after Ryan’s brothers are killed in the war. Matt Damon, Edward Burns,  and Tom Sizemore also star. 

Release Date

July 24, 1998

Studio(s)

DreamWorks Distribution

Writers

Robert Rodat

Runtime

169 minutes

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