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HBO: How did you both come to the project, and
why did you want to do it?
Matt O'Neil: We wanted to do this film because we think
it's important that Americans know what's
going on over in Iraq, the raw everyday
activities. We decided we wanted to embed
ourselves in a military hospital in Iraq to show
the work of the doctors, and also the true cost
of the war.
HBO: It really plunges you into the everyday reality.
Tell me what your first days were like there.
What was the feeling?
Jon Alpert: Well, I want to say terrifying because I've been
to Iraq. This was my fifth trip, and I've seen a
lot of nasty things over there. I've seen a lot of
people die, I've seen a lot of suffering, but I
never saw anybody get their arm cut off
before. And in the first two days we were
there we probably witnessed four or five
amputations. And you focus on doing your
job and making sure that you're recording this
properly, but you've got to be made out of
bricks and cement not to be effected when you
see them taking out a saw and hacking
somebody's just-smithereened arm up like
they're cutting the limb off of a tree.
And very quickly as they took one body out
and brought the next one in and brought the
next one in and brought the next one in, we
realized what the staff of the hospital was up
against. And we also realized that we were in
the perfect location to be able to understand
that the two main themes of the film would be
the heroism of the doctors and soldiers, and
the absolute horror of war.
HBO: You take a very fly-on-the-wall approach
which allows the viewer to form their own
opinions. Was that a conscious choice?
Jon Alpert: We went over there not so much trying to
express our own opinions, but trying to figure
out how we could hold a mirror up to what
was going on and reflect that back to the
United States. We thought that would really
be the most valuable thing we could do.
We certainly didn't know whether the army
was going to welcome us into this hospital,
and being allowed to witness these things
certainly gave us the opportunity to show
people what the cost of the war was. I had
never embedded myself with a military unit
like this before, and assumed that they were
going to restrict and censor me. And when
they didn't, and when in fact not only did they
let us film these things, but they fed us and
they housed us and transported us and
protected us, I really appreciated it.
Matt O'Neil: What enabled us to make that fly on the wall
film was the way that the CaSH (Combat
Support Hospital) gave us continuous all
access ability to film. Because everyone at the
CaSH was rightfully proud but also somewhat
conflicted about everything that they had to
do and wrestle with every day. And because
we were able to basically film almost non-stop
for almost two months, we were able to really
grab a slice of what's happening in Baghdad
without any editorializing, any narration,
anything like that.
HBO: What were your first impressions of the
doctors and soldiers you were filming?
Matt O'Neil: One of the things that I was really struck by
was the sense of family and brotherhood
within the army. You have to remember that
the nurses and the doctors are all soldiers too.
At one point in the film, a Marine in the
hospital says, you know, when one of us is
down, it's like we're all down, we all have to
stand up and fight for him. And that was
really consistently true. When someone was
hurt they mourned like a family. They fought
like a family. They defended each other as
only a family can. And I think that's where
you get that depth of emotional connection
that you see not only between people that
grew and changed together on patrols, or as
members of the CaSH, but across lines, just
being part of that military family.
HBO: What was it like the first time you went out
with a patrol and shot in the streets?
Jon Alpert: I don't know exactly how to explain this, but
the psychological danger of being in the
hospital was a lot more severe than the
physical danger of being out in the street.
When you're out in the street you're riding
around, and it's almost like fishing for
trouble. There's sort of an element of chance
and not knowing what was going to happen.
But when you're in the hospital you know that
by the end of the day somebody is going to
come in with their arm dangling from a string,
or they're going to die in front of your camera.
So it really was a lot easier to be in the street.
The hospital is inside the green zone. There
are these ten foot high walls there. It's really
not that dangerous inside the green zone. But
once you step outside and you're in the red
zone, it's a very anarchistic and
extraordinarily dangerous situation.
HBO: What sense did you get from the doctors and
soldiers in terms of their feelings about where
the war is at, and where it's headed?
Jon Alpert: One thing that was nice about being in the
hospital is that the jobs of the doctors are
basically totally heroic and don't really have
any negative factors associated. They're not
shooting anybody. They're not rousting people
from their homes. All they're doing is trying to
make people well. And they treat anybody
who winds up there. They're going to treat an
American soldier, they're going to treat an
Iraqi soldier, and they'll even treat captured
insurgents. And they'll do their best to try
and help them. So, it's a very selfless and
noble thing that they're doing.
The job of the street soldier is a lot more
difficult, because basically they're involved in
a police action right now, and it's difficult for
them to tell who is on their side and who is
not on their side. That road that we traveled
on between the airport and the green zone is
about five miles long. They know that's where
they're putting the road-side bombs, they
patrol it night and day, and the road side
bombs are still going off. It has to be an
extraordinarily frustrating feeling for the
soldiers to be riding up and down that street.
Matt O'Neill: These doctors, they're all rightfully proud to
serve their country, and they'll tell you that
it's probably the most satisfying professional
experience of their life. Because they're not
wrestling with health care, health insurance
companies, they're not justifying expenses,
they're not worried about who has to file what
form for which test. They just do absolutely
everything in their power, and whatever they
think they might be able to do to save people's
lives and put people back together. So it's
very rewarding for them.
But at the same time, I heard so many times
from various doctors and nurses that you'll
never find anyone who hates war more than a
war surgeon, because that's someone who
wakes up every day and spends the entire day
wrestling with the most difficult emotional
and physical wounds that are caused by war.
And when you talk about this war or that war,
it's just war. No army surgeon likes war no
matter how rewarding the professional
experience may because they see the ugliest
side of it.
HBO: Did the movie emerge out of the material or
did you have an idea of what kind of film you
were looking to make before you got there?
Jon Alpert: Well, to say that we knew what we were going
to encounter before we left, we didn't. And
that's part of the excitement, and also part of
the fear of going into a situation like this. Are
you really going to do a good job in capturing
what this war is about and be able to bring it
back? But after two or three days in that
hospital, we knew we were in the right place.
And shame on us if we couldn't capture this
and bring it back. When we got back we knew
we had the makings of a good film, and it was
our challenge at that particular point to try
and figure out how we were going to present
this.
And some of the issues involved would be how
much blood, guts, and just the real horrors
could we show on television? Do we show the
amputations from the beginning to the end?
Do we show all the people that die on camera?
Where we park the real violence in the
program was a decision that we were wrestling
with and changing in the program as we were
editing.
And in the end, we backed pretty far away
from how graphic and violent the emergency
room and the operating room are. We're
giving you the veneer of the violence. But it's
much, much worse than we portrayed it. We
just didn't think that an audience would
tolerate that. I was for showing more, and
Matt was for showing less. And so we would
go into editing sessions, and at the last
minute I would sneak in a couple really
violent scenes, and everybody would be
repulsed, and so then we would come back to
where Matt had thought it belonged.
Matt O'Neill: Or maybe some place in between. We tried to
do it in a tasteful way that captured the
horror, because I don't think you can
understand the pressure on the doctors
without understanding the horror. And
without understanding the horror you can't
understand the heroism and what they're
overcoming, and how they keep positive and
working each day despite the nightmare that
they're living through.
HBO: Some of the soldiers in the film express a
desire to return to Iraq after they've been
injured. Explain why that is.
Matt O'Neill: I recently spoke on the phone to the wife of
one of the soldiers who was really horrifically
injured, and I told her that I was looking for
her husband, and I asked, how is he doing?
And she said, well, he's got his vision back,
twenty-twenty. I said, twenty-twenty? That's
a medical miracle. That's fantastic. And she
said, well, sort of... [LAUGHS] Now he's in
Kuwait on his way back to Iraq. And if you
remember in the film, he says, I want to live
like an infantry soldier, and die like an
infantry soldier.
His first priority was being with his unit.
Before we went over there, when they told me
every single soldier wants to get back into Iraq
and be with his unit after they get hurt, I was
thinking it couldn't possibly be true. Because
I was thinking if I was spending every day in a
hundred and twenty degree heat, and I got
blown up, the last thing I would want to do is
go back to the desert. But almost all of the
soldiers we've continued to speak to after their
injuries want to get back in the fight.
Jon Alpert: And it's not that they want to go back because
they want to win the war, or they want to help
further the objectives of the war, because in
many cases I don't think they even know what
those are. But if you said, do you want to go
back to the United States and get away from
this, or do you want to stay here with your
fellow soldiers? They're going to stay with the
soldiers.
HBO: What do you hope people will take away from
the film?
Matt O'Neill: I hope that it gives every American that
watches it a sense of physically being there, of
the stress that people are under, of the cost of
the war, and also the absolutely inspiring
feats that our soldiers are accomplishing over
there in the medical community, but in a way
that reminds them of what war actually is.
War isn't an abstract thing. War involves lots
of individual soldiers and families, and every
life, every moment over there has infinite
repercussions for our country and the people
within it.
Jon Alpert: And so we had the responsibility and privilege to be able to go
over there and to be able to capture, not
everything, but some of the consequences of
the war, so that we could bring this back to
the American people, so that they could
understand an aspect of what was going on
over there, and make up their own minds and
be informed.
And the interesting thing is that I think the
Army wants this too. I think the Army felt
that it was important that the American
people see and understand some of the
realities of what's going on over there.
Some people will support this and find this
another reason to get behind the war efforts
over there, to support our troops, and to
endorse the policies, and other people won't.
But at least now they'll have some concrete
facts, images, and information that they can
use to make up their minds.
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