The True Story Behind ‘The Greatest Beer Run Ever’

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Chickie Donohue, 81, has been telling saloon tales since his teenagers, however there’s one he now not has to inform.

It’s about his preposterously unlikely journey to Vietnam in 1967 to deliver his soldier associates a beer and a hug of help from their house neighborhood of Inwood in Higher Manhattan.

The troopers, all stationed with completely different models, have been gobsmacked to see their neighborhood buddy in well-worn dungarees and a checked shirt all of a sudden present up in foxholes and tent barracks and hand them a heat one from his duffel bag.

Over a long time, it turned a broadly identified, and broadly disbelieved, story in Inwood saloons and amongst Donohue’s fellow sandhogs, the city miners who dig prepare and water tunnels deep within the metropolis’s bedrock.

However now, Donohue is as amazed as anybody to see his story go from New York’s gritty bars and muddy tunnels to the large display.

It has became “The Biggest Beer Run Ever,” an adventure-comedy directed by Peter Farrelly and starring Zac Efron as Donohue. It opened in theaters on Sept. 23 and can attain Apple TV+ on Sept. 30.

Throughout his 4 months in Vietnam, Donohue visited 4 associates. All survived harrowing fight excursions to return house. They’re all nonetheless alive and meet for dinner repeatedly in New York.

When the movie premiered this month on the Toronto Worldwide Movie Competition, the producers flew them up, all bills paid. It was a far cry from rations in muddy foxholes. There have been luxurious resort rooms, $250 each day meals stipends, a crimson carpet and a screening the place the boys earned a standing ovation.

On a current weekday, a day after flying house, Donohue slapped a $100 invoice on the bar on the Tubby Hook Tavern in Inwood, his buddy Rick Duggan, 74, sitting beside him.

The proprietor, Niall Henry, clapped Donohue on the shoulder and stated, “I imply, you’re a handsome man, Chickie, however come on — Zac Efron? Give me a break.”

“I had by no means heard of him,” Donohue stated. “However my granddaughter instructed me he’s this, he’s that — so he handed the odor take a look at for the household.”

Donohue, whose given identify is John, grew up in Inwood when it was an Irish American enclave dense with bars. He ran errands for the old-timers within the Democratic golf equipment and bookie joints. He stated that by late 1967, he knew greater than 20 younger males from the neighborhood who had died within the Vietnam Struggle.

So one evening at Doc Fiddler’s saloon in Inwood, when a patriotic bartender nicknamed the Colonel (performed within the movie by Invoice Murray) blasted antiwar demonstrators and blurted out that somebody should deliver a beer to the native boys combating over there, Donohue shocked his fellow patrons by volunteering.

At 26, he was a Marine Corps veteran (stationed in Japan and elsewhere) and dealing as a service provider seaman. He signed on with a ship transporting ammunition from New York to Vietnam and introduced a duffel bag filled with American beer and no matter data he might discover on the whereabouts of a half-dozen soldier associates.

He basically sneaked across the nation to seek out his buddies’ models, navigating via restricted areas and army officialdom, and hitching rides on Jeeps and planes.

“The story went all via the neighborhood, however some individuals positive had their doubts,” stated Duggan, a retired New York Metropolis police lieutenant who grew up in the identical Inwood residence constructing as Donohue.

Duggan confirmed bar patrons photographs of Donohue consuming rations together with his ambush patrol unit, photographs he took with the Kodak Instamatic digital camera his mom despatched him in Vietnam.

Donohue stated that when photographs like these have been available, over time, they helped him again up his far-fetched story and “I didn’t have to purchase a beer for a very long time in Inwood.”

“However clearly I by no means dreamed it’d be a film.”

How the beer run story went from Inwood bars to the large display is itself one other dizzying Chickie story. As Andrew Muscato, one of many movie’s producers, put it, “Making the movie was nearly as unlikely because the beer run itself” and required “the identical type of hubris and naïveté it takes to deliver beer right into a warfare zone.”

Donohue stated the story started with the New York Each day Information strike of 1990 when the homeowners have been intent on placing out a “scab paper” regardless of a labor walkout. He stated he thwarted administration by getting their rail cargo of Canadian newsprint diverted to the Dakotas, with assist from his union allies.

Anyway, in the course of the strike, Donohue and his beer run story drew the eye of a Information reporter, Joanna Molloy, who finally collaborated with him on a 2017 ebook, additionally titled “The Biggest Beer Run Ever.”

Whereas writing the ebook, she met Muscato, a documentary filmmaker on the lookout for a challenge. They organized to satisfy Donohue and the 4 Vietnam buddies at a bar to listen to the definitive beer run story. The buddies introduced their footage and Donohue introduced the stamped passport issued from the American Embassy in Saigon.

Muscato secured financing from Pabst Blue Ribbon to make a brief documentary referred to as, you guessed it, “The Biggest Beer Run Ever,” which turned broadly considered on Pabst’s YouTube channel.

Muscato stated his aim was to doc the journey, “or else it could have remained this fantastical barroom story.”

The quick ran solely 13 minutes, nevertheless it solidified the story’s credibility and caught the eye of executives on the manufacturing firm Skydance, which in 2017 determined to make the movie together with Muscato.

Muscato’s quick additionally caught Farrelly’s consideration whereas he was making “Inexperienced Ebook,” the 2018 drama that will go on to win greatest image, and he was hooked immediately.

“I used to be a minute in, and I used to be like, ‘You’re kidding me,’” he stated in a cellphone interview.

“The idea, on the face of it, is ridiculous: a man brings beer to his associates within the Vietnam Struggle, that’s ludicrous,” stated Farrelly, who signed on as director.

Early on, he requested Donohue how acquainted he was with the wealthy style of Vietnam movies.

Only one, Donohue replied sincerely: “Forrest Gump.”

Muscato stated that Efron obtained his arms on the script and rapidly approached Skydance hoping to play Donohue. (Efron was not obtainable to remark for this text.)

This was fairly a hoot to Donohue’s family and friends, a hunk like Efron taking part in a person who had by no means positioned a lot inventory in appearances, particularly when laboring underground or operating the locker room trailer at a job web site referred to as the “hog home,” the place sandhogs bathe and launder their mining garments as soon as again above floor.

A primary-timer on a film set, Donohue watched Efron and was initially confused about why filming concerned so many takes.

“At first I wasn’t impressed,” he stated. “I stated to myself, ‘Jeez, doesn’t the child hear?’ I’ve had numerous jobs and if I needed to be instructed to do one thing again and again, I’d have been fired instantly.”

Donohue then noticed that Efron was utilizing these takes to hone his portrayal.

“He requested me, ‘Did you do that or that?’ He wished my assist,” Donohue stated. “It felt good that he wished my participation.”

“I’m no decide of nice performing however I believe he actually nailed me,” he stated. “Watching him taking part in me, I felt the identical emotion that I felt 50-something years in the past.”

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