get real TV / 'REALITY' PALES AS FX GOES TO WAR, A CULT KIDS' SHOW MORPHS AND PUBLIC TV ENDURES. Showing the true horrors of war through fiction
With 'Over There,' Steven Bochco goes beyond battlefront news to underline the awful anxiety troops face in Iraq -- and at home.
In a nondescript industrial warehouse in Chatsworth, something unprecedented, emotionally risky and potentially politically volatile is going on. A drama series is being produced for television about a war that is underway -- a war where the American death toll is mounting, American public support is eroding, and there is no end in sight.
Putting the Iraq war in prime time is obviously risky; certainly Hollywood hasn't come front and center with a big movie about the war, and few books have surfaced yet that depict the brutality of Iraqi combat. Nonetheless, "Over There," which debuts July 27 on FX, intends to portray the blood, horror and brotherhood of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq in a realistic way that surpasses even the daily drumbeat of news stories about insurgent attacks and American casualties.
The challenges the production faces go well beyond the philosophical. On a recent weekday, as the heat and dust in the early summer air gave the set an uncomfortable physical realism, director Jesse Bochco, son of the series' co-creator, Steven Bochco, worked with the actors as they tried to build a corresponding emotional tension. The scene had the soldiers of the Army infantry squad that is the focus of "Over There" confronting their angriest member, a tough, cynical kid from Compton nicknamed Smoke, full of bitterness toward the Army and disdain for other squad members.
Smoke, played by Kirk "Sticky" Jones, was lying on a cot inside a tent that is identical to tents used by U.S. military personnel in camps throughout Iraq. Dim, a college-educated soldier played by Luke MacFarlane, was trying to break down the alienation and anger that separates Smoke from others in the squad. "You blame me, you all blame me," Jones yelled out. As MacFarlane stood up to leave, Jones reached out to him in a wordless sign that, for all their characters' differences, they must depend on each other for survival.
Then came a break, but the actors stayed in character, talking in subdued voices.
Afterward, MacFarlane talked about the responsibility felt by the cast. He has been reading Web logs by soldiers stationed in Iraq, he said, and also a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson about the U.S. assault on Baghdad, "In the Company of Soldiers," to gain insight into the fears and hopes of soldiers in combat.
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