Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks Talk War Games

Now that they’ve saved Private Ryan and exec-produced HBO’s Band of Brothers, it’s clear that Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks like playing war as adults. Did they growing up? ”No, I played Davy Crockett,” says Spielberg. ”When that Fess Parker movie came out, all my friends wanted to be King of the Wild Frontier.” But Hanks, who directed Band‘s fifth episode, soldiered on. ”A lot of the kids had these ornate toy guns,” he recalls, ”but I only had a stick.” Hanks says working with the series’ boyish cast (including Jimmy Fallon and David Schwimmer) was like being back on the playground. ”It is like playing war, with all the gear and the camaraderie,” says Hanks. ”I was showing them how to run across a field, and everyone in the company yelled out, ‘Run, Forrest, run!’…They took jabs every chance they could.”