New film highlights 1st AD's Iraq mission

By Terry Boyd, Stars and Stripes

European edition, Tuesday, December 14, 2004

BAUMHOLDER, Germany * Filmmaker Michael Tucker is perplexed.

The Berlin-based documentary maker asks why America doesn’t seem to
care about the Iraq war or the American soldiers who are fighting it.

America, he says, has lost interest in the war and turned the channel
to “Survivor” and “American Idol.”

“My friends say, ‘You’re obsessed with this war,’” Tucker said in a
telephone interview from his Berlin office. “I say, ‘How can you not
be?’ The American people have no idea what life is like for these
soldiers.”

Tucker, a Seattle native, has channeled his obsession into “Gunner
Palace,” the first feature-length film about the Iraq war; a film that
he says is from the perspective of the soldiers themselves.

It’s a film that may do for the 1st Armored Division’s 2nd Battalion,
3rd Field Artillery Regiment * nicknamed “Gunners” * what HBO’s “Band
of Brothers” did for Easy Company of the 101st Airborne Division: Make
them into American icons.

The movie is set to open Feb. 11 in six U.S. markets, then expand the
following week to 15 markets. Tucker said he hopes to have pre-release
screenings next month at major U.S. posts, such as Fort Bragg, N.C.,
and Fort Drum, N.Y., but those plans are not yet complete.

Tucker spent a total of two months between September 2003 and April
2004 living with the unit at what soldiers call “Odai’s Love Shack,” a
partially bombed-out palace on the Euphrates River where Saddam
Hussein’s son, Odai, brought paramours for trysts.

The regiment set up headquarters at the palace complex, which they
nicknamed “Gunnerland,” while patrolling Al-Adhamiya, one of the most
volatile sections of Baghdad. Tucker accompanied soldiers on countless
missions and simply hung out with the troops. He said that left him
with a sympathetic view of his soldiers that strongly runs counter to
an image colored by soldiers’ abuses of Iraqi captives at Abu Ghraib
prison.

“I tended to give soldiers the benefit of the doubt,” he said. “They
didn’t ‘sandbag’ detainees (place sandbags over their heads). It
shocked me you didn’t see rougher treatment of detainees” given the
constant threat level.”

He did see, over time, mounting frustration among troops over the
language barrier, and the fatigue of working nearly around the clock.

“It’s a bunch of 20-year-old kids who just want to survive,” he said.

Gunnerland was a world between the reality of raids and attacks and
the “real” world via the Internet, phones and the media, Tucker said.
There were the funny moments, when soldiers would pull up to find
suspects conveniently waiting to be caught, and darker moments when
the U.S. troops rammed Humvees into houses, only to find out they had
the wrong targets, he said.

Tucker said his goal is to show Americans * without being voyeuristic,
political or patronizing * a world that he finds inspiring and
terrifying.

He quotes one of the men he calls “soldier/poets:”

“It’s like (Spc.) Richmond Shaw said – ‘For y’all this is just a show,
but we live in this movie.’”

Tucker and his partner, Petra Epperlein, have shown “Gunner Palace” at
the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado and the Toronto Film Festival
in Canada to enthusiastic reviews.

It is, said Tucker, art out of pain.

It was painful getting to know and respect soldiers and officers such
as Sgt. Maj. Eric F. Cooke and 1st Lt. Ben Colgan before they died in
separate attacks, he said.

After that, he said, he couldn’t make “something rah-rah.” But neither
could he make a film disrespectful of soldiers. Tucker said: “I most
like that it shows them being them.”

Tucker succeeded in keeping the film “apolitical,” said Jon Powers,
26, a former 2-3 Field Artillery captain, now a schoolteacher in
Buffalo, N.Y.

“It’s a great movie … for soldiers to see, and … for their families
and friends to see if they want to understand what we went through for
14 months,” said Powers, who saw “Gunner Palace” at the Toronto Film
Festival in September.

The film is, he said, an accurate depiction of daily life made by a
filmmaker given extraordinary access by Lt. Col. Bill Rabena, the
battalion commander. Attempts by Stars and Stripes to reach Rabena
were unsuccessful.

“People always ask me if there was censorship; if I had trouble
getting access and all those issues,” Tucker said.

Instead, he said, he had unrestricted access to soldiers in their off
hours, to all missions and even to interrogations of suspected Iraqi
insurgents. “They embraced your being there,” Tucker said. “People
just want their story told.”

Whether the regiment’s soldiers will be able to go to the local base
theater to watch themselves on the big screen remains unclear. Army
and Air Force Exchange Service executives say that’s unlikely, unless
a major distributor with whom AAFES has a contractural relationship
picks up the film, and it goes into wide release, said Judd Anstey,
media branch manager at AAFES headquarters in Dallas.

Viewers should be prepared for what Powers calls “some down-and-dirty”
footage, including a scene where soldiers are “playing guitars and
basically hanging out,” a peaceful moment interrupted by a mortar
attack. “But once (the audience) gets over the shock, it will get a
conversation started. … The guys who went with me to see it said, ‘Is
that what it was really like?!’ … I said, ‘Yeah.’”


www.gunnerpalace.com

( OT, BTW)

reviews here..

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gunner_palace/

& SINCE we're off topic,

2 films..

1 Sideways.. Funny .. really funny...

2 Million Dollar Baby..

this film just connected.. Gritty atmosphere..Great Fight Scenes...

She apparantly worked out 4 hours a day for weeks to get in shape for
the film..

Great story.. Morgan Freeman can do no wrong..

- But you might want to just get up & leave before the ending...

I'll wait on the mainstream stuff. I'm a year behind on the pop
culture. I see it as a defensive move. The last thing I want to be
is in sync with the masses.

On 4 Mar 2005 18:33:22 -0800, wrote:


( OT, BTW)

reviews here..

http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/gunner_palace/

& SINCE we're off topic,

2 films..

1 Sideways.. Funny .. really funny...

2 Million Dollar Baby..

this film just connected.. Gritty atmosphere..Great Fight Scenes...

She apparantly worked out 4 hours a day for weeks to get in shape for
the film..

Great story.. Morgan Freeman can do no wrong..

- But you might want to just get up & leave before the ending...

An Art? I am not so sure.It is about breaking things and killing the
enemy.I don't know if I would classify it as an,Art.Our U.S.Men and
Women in our U.S.Military think on their own,Individually,they work via
Gut Hunches.
cuhulin

David wrote:

I'll wait on the mainstream stuff. I'm a year behind on the pop
culture. I see it as a defensive move. The last thing I want to be
is in sync with the masses.

LOL, I rather doubt that you'll ever be in sync with anything, 'tard.

dxAce
Michigan
USA

Cinema is art, silly boy.

On Sat, 5 Mar 2005 09:19:19 -0600, wrote:

An Art? I am not so sure.It is about breaking things and killing the
enemy.I don't know if I would classify it as an,Art.Our U.S.Men and
Women in our U.S.Military think on their own,Individually,they work via
Gut Hunches.
cuhulin

At least we have some Sheriff's.Hinds County Sheriff Malcom McMillin is
a mighty fine Sheriff too.Over here,if somebody is trying to break into
your home,just let the ******* get so much as one finger inside and you
shoot the ******* stone cold dead and it is OK.
cuhulin

Around he "if you shoot them outside,
drag them inside before you call us..."

wrote:

At least we have some Sheriff's.Hinds County Sheriff Malcom McMillin is
a mighty fine Sheriff too.Over here,if somebody is trying to break into
your home,just let the ******* get so much as one finger inside and you
shoot the ******* stone cold dead and it is OK.
cuhulin

In article .com,
"RHF" wrote:

DaviD - Did I Touch a Sensitive Spot ? - freakingly yours ~ RHF

You sure did by giving him the attention he craves and he will keep it
up as long as you pay attention to him.

--
Telamon
Ventura, California

Believe it or not,the Police and Sheriff's departments here DO give
advice to DO exactly That!
cuhulin