Hey everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
There's a special documentary called BROTHERS IN WAR opening on March 13 in a few markets (Columbus, GA; Fayetteville, NC; Jacksonville, NC; Washington, D.C.; and Chicago) and then expanding to 20 more markets on March 27. I think that every American--no matter how you feel about the Iraq War or those who fight in it--needs to see. The film chronicles filmmaker Jake Rademacher's journey to understand his two brothers, Joe and Isaac, both of whom are serving in the Middle East. As kids, these three were extremely close but as they grew older and chose different paths in life, they grew distant. Jake believes that part of the divide has to do with the fact that he can't relate to the experiences his brothers have gone through serving in the military, and he sets out to close the divide the only way he knows how. But taking a small camera crew with him to Iraq and seeing that things are like. His first trip was a bit of a let down and he didn't really see the sorts of things that change a soldier's outlook on life and death, so Jake returned to imbed himself with a group of soldiers who were seeing action on a routine basis.
The film was more or less complete by the time Gary Sinise signed on as an executive producer, but since he aligned himself with the film, he's made every effort to promote it every way possible. And this extraordinary film tackles what's going on in Iraq as well as the emotional struggle these men have when they return home.
I'll admit the idea of me sitting down with Sinise, the King of the Hollywood Republicans, was a bit daunting. But the truth is, I've loved his work as an actor both on film and in theater for decades. The very first professional play I ever attended was in high school, and Sinise was in it. In fact, he spit blood on my shoes (more on that later). And the first Broadway show I ever saw also featured Sinise in the Tony Award-winning "The Grapes of Wrath." As a co-founder of Steppenwolf Theatre Company, Sinise is a Chicago institution, and when he comes to town, the city is abuzz. He's also played more than a few iconic characters in screen history. Hell, you could take just the films he's made with Tom Hanks--FORREST GUMP, APOLLO 13, and THE GREEN MILE--and have yourself a nice little film festival. His TV work is also nothing to sneeze at--"The Stand," "Truman," and his unforgettable portrayal in "George Wallace," not to mention playing Det. Mac Taylor for five seasons of "CSI: NY."
But it is Sinise's commitment to promoting veterans' rights, supporting and visiting troops as part of the USO program, and creating Operation Iraqi Children that in December 2008 earned him the United States of America Presidential Citizens Medal, one of the highest honors the President can give a civilian, second only to the Presidential Medal of Freedom. This is the Gary Sinise that I sat down with. He has quite a bit to say about the way the media has portrayed soldiers in recent year, especially in light of Abu Ghraib, and he doesn't really hold back. He's a passionate man, who also is incredibly personable. We did a pretty good job keeping politics out of the discussion, although the current administration did come up.
Joining us for our conversation was filmmaker Jake Rademacher. In fact, I was the first journalist of the day for both men, and since I arrived a little early, I was marched right into the meeting room where Jake was waiting for Gary. So I just started asking questions of Jake before Gary made it to the room. Enjoy this conversation about war, soldiering, and the bond of family.
Capone: The President just announced yesterday a pullout deadline for Iraq. How does your family feel about that?
Jake Rademacher: Well, I believe there was a timetable to start drawing down anyway. So I think he's going along the lines of what the timetable is. It sounds like the timetable he's proposing is a little bit quicker than the military wanted to do, but it's a little longer than the one he wanted to do when he was a candidate running for office. I think part of that comes from, it's different when you're sitting there in front of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and all the generals, and the security of the entire world is in your hands, I think things start to change a little bit.
Capone: And when the reality of pulling that many people out of a single location.
JR: Right. I'm told you're given two briefs as a president--one the day your are elected and a second, more thorough one the day that you take office. And I think those briefs about what's actually going on in the world tend to have a significant impact on someone. All of the sudden, you are the Commander and Chief. You are in charge of 3 million service members. And the safety of 300 million people in the United States is in your hands, and the security of the entire world--because we are the only superpower that is right now--and the decision you make have ramifications that are far reaching. You also have a whole team of professionals who have over 30 years of their life dedicated to this informing you of what their perspective is on this. And this is what they've dedicated their lives to studying and understanding. All of the sudden, you're having those one-on-one conversations or committee meetings, and I can see a change in Obama, even in the time he's been president. I don't know if other people see that.
Capone: I see him withdrawing and slightly less accessible than he was as a candidate. He's locking in that CEO mode.
JR: Which is good.
Capone: The mark of any great film, whether it be a documentary or a feature, is that you really want to know where these people are now, since we leave them at the end of the film. Where are your brothers now, what are they up to? And your family has seen the film now. What do they think of it?
JR: That's a great question. That one of the values of the film is that it jumps right into the middle of real people's lives in the middle of doing something really extraordinary in their lives. We're all going through that, all military families are going through that. And then the film ends, but the lives continue. I would say that where we are at the end of the film is where we're still at. Isaac and I are very close; we saw each other last Friday at the National Press Club screening. He's going to get promoted to Major on Monday. Joe is currently an instructor in sniper school. He's going to Afghanistan and come back, so he returns in April of this year from his third deployment. Isaac just got back from his fourth deployment. My relationship with Joe is in a whole new place because I made the movie. You see in the film a critical moment in our relationship as brothers. We almost had more conflict in the middle of the film than when I started it.
Capone: That's true. It's uncomfortably awkward, and you want to avert your eyes because it's such personal family business. So now it's better?
JR: Now it's better. He's seen that I've gotten shot at and IED'd [improvised explosive device] in some of the ways he's had to do. There's still a distance there in some ways between us, but we're closer as well. It's funny, relationships really are a fluid thing. You evolve over time and learn that you have to understand them more and hope that they understand you more as well. I understand Joe in a whole new way, having been to Iraq twice now, especially going on those intense missions, living through a lot of the things he did. Going through those experiences increased my understanding of him and my respect for what he's done and what he's gone through. I think that's brought us closer together.
Capone: There have been so many documentaries in the last few year dealing either with the situation in Iraq--there was that great film GUNNER PALACE, where they actually gave cameras to the soldiers to film--and you get a few about the men and women who return and have trouble readjusting to society. You somehow managed to capture both aspects, but I think that's necessary at this point. In order to understand the problems at home, you have to understand what they went through overseas.
JR: That's a really astute comment. You're absolutely right. I think that is one of the very special things about the film, the access I had, both because it's my family and I'm inside of it, and the access I received being able to go out on the front lines to the edge of the battlefield and live with those guys. Those guys are taking the fight to people coming in from other countries, like the re-con guys on the Syrian border, the guys that are working with the Iraqi army on the front lines. But also what they face when they go home, and the reintegration and what the families are going through. I think both those components are really important to understand if you're going to try and understand them. I think what's great about the film is that it's not an outside-looking-in point of view. It's like you said, you might even feel a little uncomfortable because there you are. You're there in the bedroom with Joe and I when I come home, and Joe rejects me. It's not me telling you about it; you're there. And it's not talking about the experience to someone who's outside the circle. And I'm glad to hear you say it, but that's one of the things I thought would be really interesting to people. I wanted guys to talk about what it's like to be a sniper while they were on a sniper mission in the Sunni Triangle in the worst part of the war. That's what I wanted to do. I wanted to be there with them, ask them what it was like while they were doing it, not 10 years later. I thought that was the way to get as close to the truth as possible.
Capone: I also applaud you for leaving in the part where the one soldier admits that he's not sure why he's fighting in this war. I'm sure there are a lot of guys in that situation, who know why they signed on initially but maybe aren't so sure now. Along the same lines, you also make it clearer why guys re-enlist with such regularity.
JR: One thing that really flooded in on me when I was with those guys on the Syrian border was the very different myriad cast of characters I was surrounded by and that these guys were all very, very different people. They weren't cookie-cutter clichés of what I'd seen in movies; these guys were all very interesting, thoughtful dudes. And they all were different and they all had their own points of view, and the Army hadn't taken that away from them. In fact, all that time alone on the Syrian border to read, to talk, to not look at the Blackberry or the cell phone, actually helped them develop their individuality a little bit more than the civilian world. They'd all thought through a lot of things, just sitting there in the Humvee for eight hours, going out to the Syrian border and seeing nothing but sand, you do a lot of deep thinking and your mind goes to lots of interesting places, and you really think about all the things in your life. And it was amazing to go through that experience. And the thing about Sgt. Ben Fisher, which I think is so interesting in the film and I'm still friends with him now, he is really wrestling with the choice. He loves the job, but it scares the crap out of his family. He wants to stay, but he also wants to try something new and different, and move on to the next part of this life. That back and forth, tug and pull went all the way back to the point where he decided to go back to the civilian world and see what that was like, with the knowledge that he can always come back to the military if he wants to. He ended up deciding to leave the Army when his four-year commitment was up and go into construction in Hermosa Beach, California. He's having a great time, but he still misses the Army quite a bit and the friendships he had and the job he was doing. He love his experience in the Army, but he was ready to do something else with his life.
Capone: When you entered the second phase of the project and went back to Iraq, did you realize that this was going to be less about family and more about the experience?
JR: When I went back to Iraq the second time, I went back looking for what I'd missed the first time. I really was trying to wonder, "What is Joe talking about that I missed?" And I dove right in with both feet. Hey, Gary.
[Gary Sinise enters the room.]
Gary Sinise: Good morning, everybody. Sorry I'm late. I got lost trying to find my way around this giant hotel.
Capone: While you're getting settled, I just wanted to say that back in high school, my very first profession theater-going experience was at the Kennedy Center--I didn't grow up here; I grew up in D.C.--seeing the Steppenwolf company do "Streamers."
GS: "Streamers"? You saw that? Wow.
Capone: I did, and you spit up blood on my shoes.
[Everyone laughs]
GS: It was a small theater.
Capone: It was. There was no separation between the actors and the audience. You get stabbed, you drop to your knees facing the audience, you spit up blood, and it landed right on my shoes. I thought I was going to pass out.
GS: That was a bloody, bloody show.
Capone: Years later when you started to become more famous with your film work, I immediately recognized you as the guy from that play.
GS: [reaching across the table to shake my hand again] Well, it's good to see you again. And that was not even a theater. We made a theater out of this small room.
And the same friend who took me to that in high school went on to got to college in New York, and he took me to "The Grapes of Wrath" that Steppenwolf did on Broadway.
GS: Do you remember that it was Ving Rhames that was in that show, "Streamers"?
Capone: I do, and I also remember that Dennis Farina was in it too.
GS: That's right, he was.
Capone: So Gary, at what point in the production of this film did you get involved?
GS: There was a mutual friend of ours that introduced us, a guy named Michael Broderick, he's a former Marine. He's a friend of mine and a friend of Jake's. Jake could probably speak more about how Michael ended up hooking us up. That was probably about a year ago.
JR: About a year and a half ago, I think.
GS: When did I do the Fox thing, the screening?
JR: The day before Thanksgiving. It was January 10, we did the screening at Fox. I got asked to go to Iraq to screen the film for General Petraeus' public affairs folks. I'd was still tweaking it, and Gary did have some input into the final tweak of the film, but it was pretty much done. I was in Iraq and while I was over there, there was a lieutenant colonel, she saw the film and got really emotional and said, "It's obvious how much you love your brothers. You've got to show this to Gary Sinise. You've got to get him to present this film. He's a big supporter of the Marines and a big supporter of the military. Call Gary when you get back to L.A. and show him the movie."
GS: Just give him a call [laughs].
JR. Yeah, it was like Gary and I hang out all the time, and I just hadn't bothered to tell him I'd made this movie yet. So I was like, "Okay. Do you know him?" But I did remember what she'd said, and I went back to William Morris, where I'm represented to do voiceovers and stuff, and I was sitting in the lobby, and this former Marine Michael Broderick, who I now know is a very good friend of both Gary Sinese and myself. He's a voiceover actor and actor in Los Angeles. And he asked, "How did it go over there?" And I said, "It went great. It was very excited, and they really like the film. And then this Marine Colonel suggested something, that I should show the film to Gary Sinise." He goes, "Yeah, I think he'd love it. You know, I know Gary Sinise. I'm having lunch with him this week, I think I'm going to bring this up to him." Okay! A week later, I get a call a week later saying that Gary wants to see the film. You guys got to set it up. And eventually we got this morning, the day before Thanksgiving 2007, we went over to watch the film in CBS's little screening room.
Capone: What do you remember about that first viewing, Gary?
GS: I was very moved by it. Having spent so much time with veterans and military families and the troops, having them ask me all the time, "When is Hollywood going to make a movie that shows what we're doing here, in a positive way?" And I said I don't know when that's going to happen. But I'm still out here to do what I can to support the troops and help them out. Then this film came along, and I saw it and was very moved by it for many reasons. Jake's courage to take this camera over there and wander around. He was actually lucky to get imbedded with these folks, but he did it somehow. Not everybody can just go over with a film camera and wander around the battlefield and shoot things. [laughs] It takes a little doing to do that, but he was able to manage that. But it gave him the opportunity to make this film about his brothers Isaac and Joe. The love between these brother and in the family really touched me--all the family members and what they're going through because of this military deployment and the call to service that both his brothers have, which is something that I see all the time when I've out there visiting troops.
You know, a lot of Americans if you don't have a personal relationship to somebody in the military has this perception that anyone who joins the military can't do anything else, doesn't have any other options. And that's clearly not the case. The military is actually a great collage of America, because you see all these different people, and I noticed that on my first trips overseas way back, when I would meet some guy from Pakistan who wanted to be an American, so he joined the military. Or some kid from Micronesia, who went into a recruiter's office in Guam and said, "I want to be an American," and then he loses three limbs in the war. You get all kinds in the American military, and everybody has a different reason for serving. Clearly, Isaac going to West Point, he was a very serious kind of guy. He wanted military service kind of like Lt. Dan did in FORREST GUMP. He wanted to be an officer, he wants a military career. Not everybody does, who joins the military, but these two guys in Jake's family…and Jake, years ago, thought about being someone who would go into the military and didn't, but his brothers did, and he wanted to know what they were up to. And through them, we get to see a side of military service that is important for us to know at a time when we've just gone through a terrible times with the war. We've had negative images and negative perceptions of our military portrayed in the media over and over again, and this is another side of the story, where you see somebody who is called to serve and they want to serve. And we get to see the inside of Iraq from the soldiers' point of view. There's so many different reason I love the film and wanted to help support Jake. This is a movie that I've been waiting to see myself.
Capone: You mentioned that people have asked you, Why can't Hollywood get this right? Why do you think mainstream films haven't gotten it right, or have some of them come close?
JR: I think part of it is, to make this film was unbelievably difficult. There are not a lot of people in the industry that have a personal connection to people in the military. Gary has family members who serve in the military, I obviously do too. So this thing has a very personal meaning for both of us. We're already involved at a very personal, emotional, spiritual level on what's happening overseas with our guys. So that's the first thing. So the people on my team have been willing to make huge sacrifices to get the film to the point so it can open on March 13. I've been working basically for free for four-and-a-half year, put myself in harm's way where I literally had bullets whizzing by my head to make the film. My partner Norman Powell, a former television executive, working for next to free to help me get overseas to make the film. He put his 30-40 years of producing experience to mentor me as a filmmaker. Gary's been helping for over a year now to get the film launched into the national consciousness, to get the awareness going, to coach me on this whole aspect of what's going on. He's doing that out of the goodness of his heart. So it's very difficult to get a project to the point where we're at now. We're all very excited because now America is going to get a chance to decide is this the kind of film we want to see about our soldiers and our Marines and our National Guardsmen and our airmen and their families. Do we want more of this? And if they do come out and see the film, trust me, Hollywood will get the picture and they'll go, "Oh, this is what America wants to see." And they'll put more resources behind it.
I think right now, a lot of people making films about Iraq have never been to Iraq. If they were there, they weren't there for more than two weeks. They came in as an outsider, not as a brother of someone serving over there, or they interview people as they come home, but they're kind of outside the circle. So they're not really…it's like making a film about dog, by someone who's never owned a dog.
GS: Jake went to Iraq. He shot all this film. He shot his brothers at the house, he showed what the family members are going through. It's an inside look from a different perspective. I've said years ago when we went through the craziness of Abu Ghraib, where some of our soldiers ran amok, and took all those pictures and those images became the image of the American soldier. And that couldn't have been more wrong--you have 15 people out of 150,000 that went a little nutty over there, and they became who our military was. And then you add another 150,000 shaking their heads at how stupid that was. Yet the media just flooded us with those images and almost was in a frenzy to show the negative side of the American soldier. At that same time, I was over there shooting soldiers giving pencils to kids and helping children build schools, and I'd go on television trying to tell what I'd seen. But the media wasn't buying it. They just wanted to flood us with these negative images of the soldiers. Bad news sells; there's no question about it. If there are two houses sitting there and one's on fire, the camera is on the one that's on fire. That's what they gave us, they gave us half the story. They didn't show us the house that was fine and everybody is happy inside. They didn't soldiers doing positive stuff enough, so we were getting just a small portion of the story.
That was frustrating, because if you go over there and you see how dedicated our soldiers are, and you see them depicted in this film quite beautifully, dedicated to service and trying to do the right thing for their country. And why can't we see the other side of the story? You always have to look at the media with one eye.
JR: That's a good analogy. It's like watching a quarterback throw for four touchdowns, 30 completions, and the only image they keep running over and over is the one interception pass he threw. The problem for us with that is, yes, it's horrible because America doesn't understand. But for me personally, it's hard because the guys that are serving deserve better than that. The guys I was with were working six days a week, 12 hours a day. You see the sacrifices they're making on the home front. I think the film beautifully captures that with Isaac's relationship with his daughter, and I just think Americans deserve to know what's going on without a filter, just the truth. I wanted to put the camera there in the battle, in the fight, back at the base, with what they're actually doing.
GS: You know what's very good about this also. When have you ever seen Americans working with the Iraqis in that way, that you see in this film. You just don't see it, maybe a little bit, but not nearly…I mean, going out to the battlefield with an Iraqi unit and watching the Americans work with the Iraqis, support them, help them. You never see that, and that's something we've been doing for years now, trying to get those Iraqi troops up to speed and get them ready so they can defend their own country. You see the bond that goes on between the American Marines there and those Iraqi troops. When he tells the Iraqi, "You did good today." They are proud of themselves. They took some hits that day, but they fought back and did a good job, and they get a pat on the back from the American Marine. That's a very positive thing. I've been all around that country and seen different Iraqi units at various degrees of capability. Some places, you have guys who are crack guys now; they're real soldiers ready to go. Other places, they're moving a little slower. And that battle that day made them better, and Jake was able to capture that and be right in the middle of that thing. That's something you don't see.
Capone: Jake, it was great meeting you. I really did like this movie. Gary, it was great meeting you finally.
GS: You too. Spread the word.
Capone: You coming back to Steppenwolf anytime soon?
GS: Not to act, but my band will be at Joe's Bar on Weed Street on April 17, and we just played last night.
-- Capone
capone@aintitcoolmail.com
