With Body of War, Phil Donahue returns to the public-affairs trenches. The talk-show legend, whose program ran for a record 26 years, uses the film, which he also produced, to explore what he and co-director Ellen Spiro see as the tragic ramifications of a foolish, illegal and unnecessary war in Iraq.
Body of War follows Tomas Young (pictured here with Donahue), a soldier who, after returning home from Baghdad paralyzed from the chest down, becomes a vocal antiwar activist. Winner of the National Board of Review’s Best Documentary prize, the film opens in select theaters in March. Donahue spoke with Wired.com about Young, what Donahue describes as the failures of the mainstream media’s Iraq coverage and the bright future he envisions for independent journalism.
Wired: Was there a specific moment that catalyzed you to make the film?
Phil Donahue: I visited Walter Reed Army Medical Center and was introduced to this young man’s mother. As I stood beside the bed, looking down at this emaciated figure, I felt that people should see this. I certainly felt that I couldn’t pat him on the head and say, “Have a nice life.”
Wired: This isn’t the kind of story we see on CNN. Why?
Donahue: This administration says you can’t cover the coffins coming home. And the entire mainstream media establishment has said, “OK.” What is happening in this family is taking place behind the closed doors of thousands of homes in our nation, homes occupied by people who come home with catastrophic injuries, injuries that alter the lives of the victims but the lives of their families.
These are the hidden sacrifices made by Americans who proudly lined up, signed up and followed the president’s call to bring the evildoers, as (Bush) calls them, to justice. It becomes all the sadder when you realize how unnecessary this war was, and understand the havoc this massive foreign policy blunder has heaped upon so many people in our country.
Photo: courtesy of Body of War
Wired: What does it tell us about the state of the war coverage that you had to make this film?
Donahue: We need no more evidence of the failure of big media than the reality that every major metropolitan newspaper in this country supported this war. Imagine! The nation of the First Amendment, a place where the framers expected a ribald, spirited cacophony of voices disagreeing, pushing back and forth, learning from each other, freely, in an unfettered way, standing up to say what you believe. And we have an administration that’s told us that we have to watch what we say.
Free speech has become a quaint idea. To dissent at a time when the president is getting on his horse with his sword drawn is somehow seen as unpatriotic. This is what the bomb-throwers would have us believe. These are the people who beat the loudest drum for this war and would never think of sending their own kids to fight it. This is beyond hypocritical. For another American soldier to die in this war is morally indefensible.
Wired: In the film, you show the lead-up to the vote to authorize an invasion of Iraq. Senators and congressmen from both parties basically quote the same lines — the “smoking gun becomes a mushroom cloud,” the Saddam-Hitler comparisons. Someone was obviously feeding them their material.
Donahue: They came from the White House Iraq Group, or WHIG. It’s made up of advertising agency warriors. These are the people who name our invasions. Rolling Thunder, Shock and Awe. As if it was a videogame. Imagine! Shock and Awe. This is embarrassing. It makes us look like we are not a serious nation. The American public watches on TV as we drop bombs on old people and children while they are sleeping. And then we have a public argument about whether or not waterboarding is torture.
Wired: Was it liberating to be an independent filmmaker after 40 years of network TV, of being cautious about speaking your mind?
Donahue: I did say what was on my mind during a short, unhappy life at MSNBC. I had a weeknight television program. And I was against the war. This was during the late summer of ’02 and through the fall. That was met with very unfriendly stares from the people to whom I reported.
Wired: As an independent filmmaker you can tell the story you want to.
Donahue: I believe these documentaries fill the giant black hole left by corporate media. These (filmmakers) don’t report to boardrooms, don’t fear making people angry.
Wired: The mainstream news media should do the same, right? Why aren’t they?
Donahue: Being against the war is not good for business — it’s important to know this. There is a fundamental economic feature of the rootin’-tootin-shootin’ attitude on the part of this and past administrations. I’m telling you: Give a president a cruise missile and he’ll fire it. He will think of something. He’ll fire it. And it’ll land on an aspirin factory. We’ll never know how many people it kills. We’ll forget these things. The people in those neighborhoods never will.
These Iraq films out there now are the defining films of this generation…. Independent filmmakers are doing work that’s light-years ahead of the corporate media in terms of detail, honesty and truth. They aren’t subjected to the whims of the big media channels, of having to be popular in order to survive.
Wired: Yeah, but most are failing at the box office.
Donahue: Let’s not close the tent too soon here. If documentary filmmaking was the ballpark, Michael Moore would be Babe Ruth…. (Before Moore), the cliché then was documentaries don’t make money. And they are expensive…. I am encouraged. If Michael Moore can do this, so can someone else.
I used to carry a 1,200-foot magazine of 16mm film, back in the Middle Ages, for doing interviews. The equipment weighed over 100 pounds. Today a 9-year-old can make a movie. This will mean a thousand times more Steven Spielbergs and a thousand times more Stephanie Spielbergs. The solid state has brought this particular art form within the grasp of a huge number of young people. A lot of them are politically turned on and they want their message to be heard.
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