Jul
13
2008
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GK Episode 1 |
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Written by JD Johannes
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Monday, 14 July 2008 |
"Stop scribbing, it encourages him," the team leader Brad Colbert says to embedded reporter Evan Wright in HBO's miniseries, Generation Kill .
And that scribbling may be the downfall of the entire enterprise.
In the course of making four documentaries about Iraq, I've learned that Soldiers and Marines will 'perform' for a reporter.
That is one of the hazards of the embedded reporter system.
I've had a built in advantage--the Eagle Globe & Anchor tattooed on my shoulder. I've been one of them and I don't care for the acting.
As a filmmaker embedded with grunts, I have a simple policy--if the camera is rolling they are obviously on. During an interview they know it is the real deal.
But I spend a lot of time without the camera on.
A print reporter like Mr. Wright is always on and therefore the temptation for young men to perform for him is always there.
And in the sheer volume of living with grunts 24x7, there will be a lot that could be missed, misunderstood and misquoted.
In the documentary I'm editing now, I disect one raid/firefight. The whole operation took 90 minutes, but conveying all the moving parts, audibles, complex details and events subject what Julias Caesar called "the fortunes of war" is next to impossible.
And that was for one 90-minute raid with the added benefit of video tape.
In the 21 days of major operations, there was too much detail to be covered in the 384 pages of Mr. Wrights book or 8 hours of a miniseries and the neccessity of creating an entertaining narrative guarantees much will be glossed over, simplified, ignored or discarded.
Throw in the opportunity for the young men to perform 24x7 and you have a Polaroid photo of warfare--small field of view with a fuzzy focus where you may never know what was real and what was a performance.
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