‘Memphis Belle’ Cast Really Got Down to Basics : Movies: Director Michael Caton-Jones put his 10-man bomber crew through eight grueling days of basic training to achieve a spirit of wartime camaraderie.

When the cast of producer David Puttnam’s WWII movie “Memphis Belle” signed on, they knew they would be spending weeks in tight quarters in a mock-up of a B-17 bomber. What they didn’t know was that before filming began, they would go through basic training--swimming through rat-infested waters and running through the woods trying to avoid stun grenades.

The “Memphis” cast endured its own mini-war--an eight-day ordeal on Dartmoor, an isolated area of southwestern England where a former member of Britain’s Special Air Services whipped them into shape mentally and physically.

“It was important to get that spirit of camaraderie,” said director Michael Caton-Jones. “We didn’t want them to have to pretend. However, the only way to forge them quickly was to put them through hell.”

For some, it was their worst nightmare; others found it invigorating and challenging.

“For me, boot camp was a tremendous experience,” said 19-year-old Sean Astin, who plays the bellygunner, encased in a glass and steel bubble below the B-17. ‘We were 10 guys from totally different backgrounds, but we were portraying guys who are so close they know how each other smells.

“Trudging through mud and staying out all night was physically tough, but now I know all their idiosyncrasies. Our days would start at 4:30 a.m. and go until 2:30 or 3 the next morning. We’d be exhausted, and they were yelling at us.”

Said Reed Diamond, 23, who makes his film debut as the plane’s flight engineer and top turret gunner: “These guys are not comic book heroes. They’re ordinary men who do incredibly heroic things selflessly. Part of it is not wanting to let the other guys down. In boot camp I did a lot of things I’d normally be terrified of doing. But there was a sense of selflessness for the group.”

D.B. Sweeney, the “old man” of the cast at 29, had already had a taste of military life while preparing for Francis Coppola’s “Gardens of Stone” and he was less than enthused about the “Memphis” preparation. “Sure it was bonding,” Sweeney said, “but actors can bond in a lot of ways and look after each other. It wasn’t entirely unpleasant, but I was frustrated because I felt the time could have been better used.”

Nevertheless, the special training did its job.

“This is a character study of 10 men in the middle of an action-adventure war movie,” said co-producer Catherine Wyler, who developed the project from a 1944 documentary made by her father, the late director William Wyler. “It’s really about how they depend on each other for their survival.

“These men have been on 24 missions and have shared umpteen life-and-death moments. They’re fused into a highly polished machine and are really intimate because of being through this horror together. When our cast went to boot camp, they were a motley band of ‘80s actors. They had to survive a lot of tests that drew them together and made them know each other’s strengths and weaknesses.”

Describing their week in the wilds, Caton-Jones said: “An SAS guy and I designed a special course that was basically sensory deprivation. We scared them. They all hated me.”

Caton-Jones, whose first feature at age 30 was last year’s well-received “Scandal,” is a tough-talking, wise-cracking, soccer-playing Scot. Luckily for the actors, he also has a sense of humor.

“I told the boys, ‘I’m going to rip you, shout at you, kick you and kiss you,’ ” he said. “ ‘We’re all in this together. You can do anything you like, as long as I like it.’ I treat them like my little brother. That’s my manner, and it took some of them a long time to get used to me.”