21 - Let the Mystery Be

Dead Eyes

Connor Ratliff revisits the central mystery of his podcast, exploring the moment Tom Hanks allegedly told him he had 'dead eyes' during a Band of

Key takeaways

Connor Ratliﬀ was removed from a role in Band of Brothers after Tom Hanks reportedly commented on his 'dead eyes.'
Damon Lindelof discusses the 'sheer terror' and exhaustion of trying to sustain mysteries in shows like Lost.

Main topics

The Band of Brothers audition mystery
The legacy and ending of Lost

Notable quotes

Mysteries mean there's a solution, and a solution means things must end.

Conclusion

A thoughtful meditation on whether true closure is necessary or if the

Transcript preview

Speaker 5 (0:00) This is a HeadGum Original. Speaker 8 (0:07) Hi there. If this is your first time listening to this show, I just want to say, I know there are a lot of podcasts out there, stuff that is maybe more catered to your specific interests, but it really means a lot to me that you stop by. We're here at the beginning of our third season, and I find myself thinking about endings and expectations. Speaker 8 (0:31) What did I expect when I started this podcast? What did you expect when you first heard about it? And where exactly are we headed? It's totally understandable if you don't have a detailed recollection of the inciting incident at this point. I generally take it for granted that we've talked about it enough on this show, but it's been a while. The gist of it is that I was cast in a small speaking role in episode five of Band of Brothers. And the day before I was supposed to film, my agent's assistant called me and said, Tom Hanks thinks you have dead eyes. Speaker 8 (1:07) I was then brought to the production offices near the set to re-audition in person. And, of course, was let go right after. Speaker 3 (1:14) That's terrible, Connor. Yeah, that's terrible. Now, Speaker 8 (1:19) I talked to my agent from back then. Speaker 3 (1:21) I'm sorry, dead eyes. Why do you say that to an actor? I Speaker 8 (1:26) also talked to her assistant. the one who relayed the dead-eyes comment. It was Speaker 7 (1:30) terrible, Connor, but no, I don't remember it that vividly. Of course, you're on the receiving end of this, and it must have been incredibly acute. Speaker 8 (1:39) I tried getting in touch with Band of Brothers casting director Suzanne Smith, who was the one who gently broke the news to me after my re-audition, but she respectfully declined to talk to me, even off the record. Speaker 8 (1:53) I did talk to the actor who replaced me, Adam Sims, a couple times, actually. I Speaker 2 (1:58) get it. It's funny, isn't it? Talking about our failures and our successes. They have a weird place in our personal histories, don't they? Speaker 8 (2:05) A great guy, and I'll reiterate here, as I've said before, ultimately, I think, the right person for the role. I've also talked to dozens of other actors, writers, directors about failure and other things relating to life in show business. Even Eric Jenderson, lead writer on Band of Brothers, who set us on a path to locating the living relatives of Private John Zielinski, the real-life soldier I was cast as. Speaker 1 (2:30) Oh yeah, he was a real guy. Everybody was. There's not a single invented character, you know, in the series. Speaker 8 (2:36) It's been a crazy ride, one I really never expected. And yes, I do feel like I better understand what happened 21 years ago. But I still think there's something you and everyone else listening to this might be expecting, and it's a resolution I don't know if I have a ton of control over. Speaker 7 (2:57) There's a very quick way to end this show, which... Which I'm imagining that the finale of Dead Eyes is a conversation between you and Tom Hanks in which he gives the most satisfying answers imaginable. But any recollection that he has where he could say, I remember this, I remember you, I remember what I was thinking, I remember what I said, I can contextualize it all. And that's the resolution of the mystery, as it were. Speaker 8 (3:28) That is the voice of Damon Lindelof, who I think you are probably familiar with. Or at the very least, you know of him and his work. Lost, The Leftovers, Watchmen. He reached out to me last year on Instagram. At first, I just thought I was reading a very kind message from some random guy named Damon until I looked up and saw it was the Damon whose work I had been devouring since 2004. Damon, in particular, I felt would be able to relate to having a show with a mystery at its center and the pressing need to solve that mystery. Speaker 7 (4:01) However, is that what Dead Eyes is about anymore? Can Dead Eyes live beyond that conversation? Because I think you answering that question really is central to where things go from here. Back Speaker 8 (4:16) when Lost was originally airing, I used to listen to the show's behind-the-scenes companion podcast. For an hour or so every week, I would have Damon's voice in my ears while he unpacked his TV show's various plot lines and theories. It was therefore very surprising for me to realize that more than a decade later, Damon seemed as invested in the story I was telling on my podcast. Speaker 7 (4:40) There's this narcissistic thing at play where, in Dead Eyes, I am grafting the Damon Lindelof experience onto the Connor Ratliff experience. And so the finale of Lost and you being fired from Band of Brothers are exactly the same. We both experienced success. So you were cast. I created a show. It was working. And then Tom Hanks was like, no, you suck. I'm firing you. And the audience, millions of people said. You suck. You were making it up as you went along. I'm fucking firing you. The voice inside us told us that we sucked and then a voice outside of us confirmed it and it sent us spinning. Speaker 3 (5:24) This is Dead Eyes, a podcast about one actor's quest to find out why Tom Hanks fired him from a small role in the 2001 HBO miniseries Band of Brothers. Speaker 8 (5:37) My name is Connor Ratliff. I'm an actor and comedian. 21 years ago, I was fired by Tom Hanks. The reason I was told at the time was that he had looked at my audition tape and he thought that I had dead eyes. You've Speaker 7 (5:49) created a paradox. Tom Hanks doesn't fire people. He's a treasure. He's a national treasure. Firing people, that's something that mean people do. Tom Hanks doesn't fire people. And Speaker 8 (6:00) that's the short version. Speaker 8 (6:12) When I was watching Lost, I had a feeling early on that I thought, what did I want from the ending? Like, what would I do if I had been cursed with, you have to end Lost? I would have been like, oh, I don't know. Like, I think my impulse would have almost been complete sabotage to just have someone turn to the camera and go, eh, it's only an island. Speaker 7 (6:35) You know, just like... We considered it. Speaker 8 (6:40) Lost, if you haven't seen it, was a drama series that aired on ABC for six seasons, 121 episodes. It was a massive water cooler hit about a commercial airplane that crashes on a mysterious tropical island where there are weird things happening. And the survivors of the crash all have secrets and surprising backstories that we see in flashback. Later on, we would also see flash forwards and eventually even flash sideways. There are polar bears and a smoke monster and a hydrogen bomb that needs to be detonated in order to reset the timeline. And if any of that sounds confusing to you, well, it was the kind of show that was constantly raising questions. And the viewers all had theories. And the longer it went on, the higher the expectations grew for the inevitable answers to all the show's mysteries. When that conclusion arrived, some people loved it, some people liked it, and some people hated it. The latter group was especially Speaker 7 (7:32) vocal on social media. Speaker 8 (7:34) And I'll say it, I liked the finale of Lost, so I'm part of the people who were not angry when that show ended. The resistance. But I was braced for just enjoying the journey, and if the ending was unsatisfactory, not letting that ruin my experience of the overall thing. Obviously, Lost had this amazingly successful first season. Begins with a question, ends with a bigger question. You get to the end of season two. How did you feel at that point, knowing that you had an unknowable amount of road ahead of you narrative-wise, and you have continued to raise question after question? To Speaker 7 (8:14) put it very simply, when you get onto a treadmill or an exercise bike, The first thing that the bike asks you is how much time do you want to exercise for? Lost was a treadmill that only had the infinity insignia. All we could do was keep running. You had some control over the speed, but you couldn't stop it. And when you slowed down and started walking, people started yelling at you that it was filler and that you weren't moving fast enough. That was the emotional experience was sheer terror. but also the exhaustion of running constantly. And the only way to generate more story was to ask more questions and bring in more characters and keep them on the island at all costs. We had made a number of attempts in the second season to allow a couple of the characters to get off the island, and ABC rejected them straight up because they knew what that meant. And we were begging for an ending pretty much from the moment that the pilot got picked up. Speaker 8 (9:19) A few years later, Damon returned to television with a show that had a lot in common with Lost, HBO's The Leftovers. It also starts with a big traumatic event that raises countless questions. Two percent of the world's population suddenly vanishes and no one can figure out why. One key difference between the two shows, it was made clear when the show premiered that the creators were not going to solve their big mystery, ever. There would be no answers to be disappointed by. And I have to admit, by being upfront about this, the show was a very different experience. Speaker 8 (9:57) I found myself relaxing because I never meet anyone who's angry about The Leftovers. Whenever I, maybe you do, I don't know. Speaker 7 (10:05) Well, like only 45 people watched it, maybe 46. Like it was a pebble versus a meteor in terms of how