friends," McKenna says, "but they knew each
other well enough to make that connection.
Right then, I knew we had a miniseries." Fur-
ther digging led McKenna to the revelation
that during the Guadalcanal battle, Basilone
walked right by Leckie's machine gun com-
pany. "You learn these things through deep,
deep research," McKenna continues. "These
connections are real and it's exactly how
they happened."
episode of the entire miniseries. He recalled
the work that went into the 189-page bible
that was created for Band of Brothers. "I
thought the bible for The Pacific would be
800-pages long," he laughs. He called Hanks,
Spielberg and Goetzman and suggested a dif-
ferent approach: He would outline each
episode for HBO to see if it worked. McKenna
spent close to a year hammering out the
plots of each part, ranging from the charac-
ters involved in each chapter to which bat-
tles would be represented. The producers
HBO, which officially greenlit the series on
the spot. "This was a great joy because I
never had to write that goddamn bible!"
McKenna exalts.
Guadalcanal and the very spot where
Basilone earned his Medal of Honor, it was
off to Peleliu, the little-known island that
would become the centerpiece of The Pacific
and the grounds where the battle for Eugene
Sledge's soul would be waged. "It's the most
evil and sad place I have ever been to in my
life," McKenna says. "Within 10 minutes [of
being] there, we entered a cave and there was
the skeleton of a dead Japanese soldier. It has
never been cleaned up and you couldn't help
but weep with the agony of the aura of death
that pervades the island." Not surprisingly,
this experience helped inform the script that
McKenna would soon pen. "You feel it in
your bones," he continues. "Not only does it
help you write the episodes, but it helped me
inform the actors and directors of what this
place was really like. It was one of the more
profound and surreal experiences of my life."
with him. Although he was warned not to
hire former showrunners, such advice re-
mained unheeded. Coming aboard were The
Wire's George Pelecanos, Six Feet Under and