American screenwriter Robert Schenkkan.
(John Adams writer Michelle Ashford joined
later.) "I mainly hired them because I
thought they were better writers than I was,"
McKenna says. Working off the outlines
McKenna penned, along with hundreds of
pages of his interview transcripts, the writers
set out to work on their own individual
episodes. Soon enough, The Pacific was ready
to head into production, yet one logistical
problem remained.
experience and therefore wasn't the ideal
choice to be the showrunner once filming
got underway. Enter Graham Yost, the vet-
eran writer-producer-director who worked on
both Band of Brothers and another Hanks-
HBO collaboration, From the Earth to the
Moon. "It was one of those things where
there was no question," Yost says of his con-
versation with Hanks about joining the proj-
ect. "I really respect Tom and I like the work
he's done and the work we've done together
-- so it was a no-brainer." Yost jokes that
Hanks considers him his good-luck charm
and likes having him around. In addition to
their other projects, Yost was the one who
turned Hanks onto John Adams and even re-
ceived a producing credit for, as Yost ex-
plains, "Basically sending Tom an email
as the showrunner and there was no ani-
mosity between him and McKenna because
the two were already good friends.
Yost to see if he could join the project. Yost
was busy at that time, but McKenna con-
vinced him to read the books by Sledge and
Leckie anyway. "They completely blew me
away," Yost recalls. "That's all I could talk
about for weeks. I was hooked but I couldn't
work on the project. I kept calling Bruce and
saying, `Send me your outlines. I'd love to see
what you're doing.'"
ple episodes. When tasked with writing con-
secutive episodes, they strategized on how
to best work together. "He said, `Look, I'll set
this up for you if you pay this off for me,'"
Yost laughs. "It was a little quid pro quo." By
the end of it, the duo wound up co-writing
a Band episode together. For The Pacific,
Yost's responsibility was to get the scripts
into production shape. His production ex-
perience, combined with McKenna's com-
mand of the material, once again made
them a perfect team.