Kimberly Peirce was late. Landing at the airport just moments before her new film, Stop-Loss, premiered in Houston, she walked into the theater and noticed one thing: the music had stopped playing.
Prior to her arrival, the anxious audience of the over-packed theater had been passing the time scanning through a hauntingly hypnotic slideshow of pictures of soldiers: a strong foundation of emotion supported by the pulsating music of Drowning Pool, Eminem and Toby Keith.
Unfortunately, she didn’t get to hear any of them. It was the sound of the restless audience, not the music, which greeted her as she walked down the side hall into the theater.
"Keep the music going," she said. "Keep the energy up."
But it was already too late. This was her film, and now that Toby and Eminem had abandoned her; this was now her crowd. The music proved to be inconsequential, however, as applause dominated the theater as she made her way to the front. She couldn’t have handled the restless crowd any better.
"I’m so excited to be in Texas," she began. "I love Texas."
After introducing the film, Peirce stood in the side hall to the theater and watched her work from afar. Like a critical artist, she seemed to be judging herself more than anyone ever would and, after disappearing from the theater for the remainder of the film, she returned later for a personal question-and-answer session with the audience.
Peirce, whose last film, Boys Don’t Cry (which led Hillary Swank to her first Best Actress Oscar) was released in 1999, said the failure of her 2003 Mary Miles Minter project that taught her enough to pursue Stop-Loss.
The story of Minter, the 1920’s Broadway star, and the infamous, covered-up murder of her director, William Desmond Taylor, was supposed to be Peirce’s follow-up to her acclaimed directorial debut. The failure contributed to the seven-and-a-half year gap between Boys Don’t Cry and Stop-Loss.
"After co-writing and casting the film with Evan Rachel Wood, Annette Bening, Ben Kingsley and Hugh Jackman, the studio said, ‘It’s a period piece. We’d love to see the $30 million version, we’d love to pay for the $20 million version. We don’t want to see the $20 million version.’
"What did I learn during that period of time? I learned a huge lesson about being careful where I give control of my creative materials."
Lesson learned, Peirce would eventually find the stories of soldiers and would pay out of her own pocket to tell them the way she wanted. The journey would become a more personally epic and hauntingly touching odyssey than she could have ever predicted.
"I was in New York during the Sept. 11 attacks," she said on a press tour that would eventually lead her to the film’s Austin premier at the South By Southwest festival. "I knew then we were in the midst of a seismic change. I knew then I wanted to tell the stories of these people."
Peirce’s brother soon enlisted into the Army in response to the Sept. 11 attacks.
"I understood his desire to ‘get the people who had done this,’" she said, "but the idea of my own brother carrying this out was devastating."
This would lead her to make a documentary in an effort to understand what her brother was going through.
Interviewing the soldiers, Peirce went about searching to discover their reasons for joining, their war experiences and their struggle to re-assimilate into society. What Peirce found, however, was discontent among some soldiers and an alarming rate of others going AWOL.
Following his first leave, Peirce’s brother would text-message her from Iraq with the story of a friend who had been "stop-lossed." The idea was foreign to Peirce
The policy of "stop-loss," created by Congress after the Vietnam War, essentially gives the Army the ability to break contract and involuntarily extend a soldier’s enlistment beyond their agreed term against their will. While not put into action until George H.W. Bush imposed stop-loss on the soldier’s of the Gulf War, 81,000 cases have been enacted since the Sept. 11 attacks.
It was at that moment that the alarming AWOL rates became crystal clear to Peirce.
"A number of soldiers were calling it a ‘back-door draft,’ and doing everything they could to fight it," she said. "From going to their commanders and their chaplains – who were not budging – to bringing a class-action law suit, which failed, to getting thrown in jail, going AWOL, even leaving the country."
It would be these immensely personal stories that would convince Peirce to transform her documentary into a feature film. The darkness that lived at the core of those stories would act as its controversial spine.
Authenticity would remain a constant and unwavering demand during the pre-production of the film. Along with her brother, who had returned home from Iraq, Peirce studied hundreds of hours of soldier-shot and edited videos of raids, flights and the overall quality of life during the war.
Shot with lightweight cameras mounted on Humvees and guns and edited on computers, most to the background music of Drowning Pool, Eminem and Toby Keith, the videos made for the most authentic research materials available to Peirce.
"These small home movies were like anthropological finds – told entirely from the soldiers’ point of view," she said. "They opened many windows into the lives of these guys and my brother."
While it would consist of hundreds of individual true stories told from the soldiers of the videos, Peirce had determined that the film itself would be fictional.
"I was looking for the emblematic story of this generation," said Peirce. "When you tell a story in the form of a documentary, everything is in past tense. Fiction allowed me to take the truth and make it emblematic."
The story itself, which Peirce co-wrote with Mark Richard, is based in Brazos and follows the young and conflicted Sgt. Brandon King, a decorated Iraq war hero, whose patriotism and loyalty are thrown into question when he finds out that he is being forced back into combat against his will.
Casting the role of King, who acted as the representation of the soldiers Peirce has seen on the videos and who would need to carry the warmth and masculinity to lead men into the face of danger, was crucial to the development of Peirce’s big picture.
"It required someone who could depict the patriotism and innocence required to go to war on behalf of his country," Peirce said, "but who was also introspective enough to question what he had done when he needed to question it."
That "someone" was Ryan Phillippe.
Phillippe, who is no stranger to war-based films (he starred in one of the two Clint Eastwood’s Iwo Jima films, Flags of Our Fathers), used Peirce’s brother and the videos to plunge himself back into the roll of the soldier.
"I got really into the military aspects," said Phillippe, "You really want to make sure you know how to behave and appear like a soldier. I think you’re doing these men a service if you do your best to appear legitimate."
Victor Rasuk (Lords of Dogtown) would be cast to play the physically – but not emotionally – wounded soldier, Rico Rodriquez.
While Rodriquez may have been a physical disaster, he was determined to play the role with optimism, Rasuk said.
"It would have been easier to play the ‘Tom Cruise, Born on the 4th of July disgruntled soldier,’ but when I interviewed these guys, that’s not how they were. They were optimistic. They were ready to go back."
The cast would eventually grow to include young rising stars such as Channing Tatum (Step Up), Abbie Cornish (Candy) and Joseph Gordon-Levitt (The Lookout) as well as established veterans Timothy Olyphant (Hitman) and C
iaran Hinds, who traveled consistently between the Austin set and Marfa for his role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood.
Prior to filming, the cast was put through a rigorous boot-camp to increase their knowledge of the issue at hand and, and Peirce puts it, "increase that ‘band of brother’ comradery."
From walking formations and flag folding to weapons drills and reveille-sweetened 5:30 a.m. wakeup calls, the cast was led by the film’s military advisor, retired Sgt. Major Jim Dever, through every rigorous aspect of a soldier’s life to add an even greater depth and dimension to the realism and authenticity to the film.
"I asked him a few questions, but he was running around all day commanding the extras," laughed Olyphant, who plays the film’s stern commanding officer Boot Miller. "So I thought, ‘You know what? I’ll do what he’s doing.’"
The boot camp would lead to the "comradery" that Peirce had hoped for when it came to shooting the soldier-inspired home videos of the actors improvisational lapses in the Iraq scenes (shot in Morocco) that would act as the unifying dimension of the characters.
"You create a plausible scenario," Peirce said, "and, since they’re all friends anyways, you hope that with every scene something unexpected happens. And if it’s in the ballpark, I just let it run."
Shooting began in early August of 2006 and was based in and around Austin – a location used to give the film its authentic Texas feel.
"This was one of the few opportunities in the movie that opens up to show the Texas prairie," Production Designer David Wasco said, "We were in the midst of the strongest drought in memory, which gave us these golden fields and dusty prairie, which looks beautiful on film. It’s quite a heartland America thing."
A year later, during the film’s post-production, MTV Films, a studio under the umbrella of Paramount, approached Peirce about her film’s potential with a younger audience, which would lead to a massive publicity campaign involving MTV, MySpace and Facebook. Peirce, however, denies that the film is skewed toward a younger audience.
"The fact that the story appeals to the young generation makes sense, since it comes from a young man’s point of view. It’s a young, good-looking cast," she said. "It’s a great marriage of distribution and production, but I would never skew toward an audience. That’s just not how I make movies."
Still, the undeniable fact remains that recent Iraq-based dramas, from In the Valley of Elah and Rendition and Redacted have all been met with mixed critical reception, at best, and even worse box office numbers. This doesn’t seem to worry Pierce, however.
"My movie has a heart and soul. It’s what separates it from the crowd," she said.
So, with lessons learned and stories told, Pierce departs with a handshake and a smile. Stepping out into the hallway to continue on her long sojourn of publicity for the film, she is escorted toward the elevator in silence.
There is no Drowning Pool, Eminem or Toby Keith to keep her company. But she’s already proven that she doesn’t need them. Maybe she never has.
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