Stop-Loss Director Kimberly Peirce Tells America’s Story at the Crossroads of Honor and Personal Responsibility

It takes a particular kind of compassion as a filmmaker to engage us as writer/director Kimberly Peirce does with her fiercely independent characters striking out on society’s fringes.

In 1999’s Boys Don’t Cry, the true story of a hate crime in the heartland, she launched the career of Hilary Swank as a young woman, living as a man, in love with another young woman, who paid for it with her life. It was a plea for acceptance that resonated all the way to the Oscar podium for the magnificent Swank, a tiny film with convictions and heart that went the distance.

She took more than eight years to construct her new film, Stop-Loss, another look at a decidedly defiant outsider challenging the system—this time the American military machine—when a provision called "stop-loss" finds soldiers completing their contractual tours of duty and returning home, only to be sent back to Iraq’s battle lines by their own U.S. government.

This back-door draft, and the efforts to avoid it by one conflicted Marine—played with impressive depth by Ryan Phillippe—form the narrative of Stop-Loss, a compelling and relevant American film that takes a personal story of family, responsibility and honor, and then asks big questions about just how much service is enough, and the impact of the war machine on the young men and women of our country.

As Stop-Loss writer-director Kimberly Peirce told me recently, Stop-Loss is America’s story right now, and her film is an engrossing polemic crusading on behalf of families and youth torn apart by what is required, versus what is right.

It is the story of one man, a sensitive sergeant named Brandon King, the All-American Texas boy who receives a ticker-tape welcome home and a Purple Heart followed by a return ticket back to hell. But it is also a movie that unmistakably takes a side in a quagmire with no winner.

Lee Shoquist: It took eight years for you to make another film. Why Stop-Loss, and why right now?

Kimberly Peirce: I was in New York for 9/11 and had been living there for thirteen years, and unfortunately saw the towers fall and was as devastated as everybody was, and started going to vigils for the victims. New York was in a state of mourning. And then our country declared war and it was profound. I could tell that we were involved in a seismic change. I don’t even think I understood how much our culture was going to change, and I knew that I had to make a story about our soldiers: who they were, why they were signing up, what their experiences in combat were and upon coming home. So I started to talk to soldiers, and right at about that time my baby brother signed up to enlist.

LS: How did you feel right at that moment?

KP: I was terrified. Setting aside patriotism and a desire to get the people who did this, he is my younger brother that I brought home from the hospital when he was a baby. That is total innocence. So my feeling was, "I’m glad that you have patriotic feelings. But I’m concerned that you could get crippled. You could get killed. You are nineteen-years-old right now. You might do things that- you don’t have an adult’s perspective to know how this is going to affect you." To be that young and put in those situations, I was like, "This is going to be the defining experience of your life, and who knows what you are going to be asked to do. Who knows if you are going to kill or maim people." The psychic repercussions of being in combat are profound. So I was scared for what that would do to him.

I also didn’t know what it was going to do to our family. It can divide families. It can bring them together. So it was very intense. It was also very intense dealing with my mother who said to me, "You will never know what fear is until you have a child shot at in a combat zone." She wouldn’t go home at night. She would stay at her office because she knew that if something happened, they would come to the door. Very humbling. Very enlightening. So why Stop-Loss? It was the story of a soldier.

He brought back soldier-made videos and I ended up going around the country and collecting them. He was home on leave and watching them. The videos had either been put on the ground on a sandbag, or on Humvees or a turret. If the guys were shooting machine guns, they were filming it.

LS: To us it is dramatic, to them it is just daily life.

KP: Yes, daily life. This was what they were doing every day and night. It captures the camaraderie of the guys. Then they come back and edit it to music. It was either Toby Keith—patriotic music—Drowning Pool’s Let the Bodies Hit the Floor, which we have in the movie, and the country and western stuff. And then the 4th25, a group of soldiers who made rap music that’s actually in the movie.

So you are not only getting this unadulterated look at the soldier’s life and point of view, but when they edit it they are further crafting a story about their fantasy of themselves. Some are patriotic and benign. Some are super violent with blood in the streets and dead people because they want to show you that we have the power in the war. It was like this anthropological find.

So I was continuing to interview soldiers and I wanted to tell an emblematic story. I want to find a story that represents what this story is for most soldiers. I didn’t want to make a film where people would say, "That’s ten percent of soldiers’ experiences." What I was finding was fundamentally you had many, many boys signing up after 9/11 for all the right reasons—defend your home, defend your country, defend your family.

LS: Those were things that we believed in at the time, all of us.

KP: All of us believed in. Therefore it was emblematic of the culture. It wasn’t just this rarified soldier experience. This was the outpouring of America. I loved it that these two characters had been on the football team together. One had been the captain. So they signed up on the buddy program. They go over and one is the leader. And every soldier that I interviewed said that you go over for patriotic reasons, ideals—lots of reasons. But that the most profound experience is that when you are over there, it is about survival. You need to keep yourself alive and the guy to your left or right alive, and you are more likely to keep him alive than yourself. This camaraderie is really the defining experience of soldiers.

So it became hugely important to me that the camaraderie was going to run through the movie and that is what Sgt. King was going to feel—that he had to keep his men live. And when he faced a challenge to doing that, because of the nature of this urban combat, he was not going to feel that he could protect his men, and that was going to break apart. He is a patriot and responsible kid, so of course he would finish out the mission. When he gets back, he wants to put this behind him. He wants to move on.

Then I found out about stop-loss from a patriotic soldier. And that patriotic soldier was angry. Then I (realized) this was hitting the patriots as not American. This is not fair. In the soldier’s words, this is a back door draft and making them shoulder an unfair burden. And this is not right on so many levels in their minds.

LS: Doesn’t the very concept of stop-loss contradict what you want with a soldier on the battlefield? If, in his mind he doesn’t want to be there, it is a dangerous situation for everyone.

KP: Well, in a volunteer army it is really problematic. When you have a draft situation and nobody wants to go, it’s more in line with the draft. But stop-loss by its nature is taking volunteers and saying, "You volunteered for this amount. Now we’re going to make you go and do this amount." So it is inherently conflicting for them.

LS: I wonder what the mortality rates would be for those who have been stop-lossed.

KP: No one is publishing that. But as the movie says, there are at least 81,000 soldiers who have been stop-lossed. What I hear from the guys is that you are more likely to die on a third tour. I certainly have heard of people who have died on stop-loss. And that is a real tragedy for these families. How do they grapple with that? He did his time, and he was extended. And their complaint is that the president said the war is over. So if the war is over and stop loss is only in a time of war, then it’s hard to pull the contractual argument.

LS: Do you see this film as personal or political, or both? Ryan feels it is personal. But it does sometimes feel like an indictment.

KP: Very personal. It’s not a political indictment but it’s a personal story that reflects the stories of many, many soldiers. And I think the reason I was drawn to Stop/Loss is because it not only reflects many soldiers, but I think it reflects America—because I think America has been stop-lossed in a certain way. Stop-lossed meaning we put our energies into the Iraq war. We’ve lost a lot of people. It is costing us a lot of money. I think a lot of people would like to find a way to get out that is responsible and honorable, and that’s what we are seeking to do. That to me is what Stop-Loss is. I think it is America’s story.

LS: Why Ryan Phillippe for the role of Sgt. King? I used to find him to be a lightweight of sorts, but he has really matured in the last few years with films like Gosford Park, Crash and Breach.

KP: I think he is great. Fortunately, I ended up being able to truly cast the movie, so I looked at all the guys. And I knew right off the bat that I needed true masculinity, which is not something that we have in Hollywood always. We have a lot of boy-men and a lot of boys. So I was like, "We need men!" I had been interviewing soldiers and these are guys who had put on 30 pounds of muscle. It is just what happens. They are strong. So we needed strong, masculine guys. We also needed guys that, particularly in that role, had to be sensitive. First, he had to be strong and a leader. Then he had to be young and charming enough for the camaraderie. Then he had to be sensitive when his duty as a soldier came into conflict with his duty as a human being, to allow himself to actually begin to question the things that he was doing. And that is something that Ryan fortunately has. He looks like an All-American kid. Good looking guy. Very friendly. And he’s a father. Being the father of two children really matured him.

LS: Of course there are detractors who have not seen the film, but nonetheless question whether it is anti-American in its perspective on a soldier’s dilemma. Obviously that is not your intention, so forgive me for putting you on the spot.

KP: It’s a perfect question. I have screened the film all over America and I have not had a single person see the movie and say it is anti-American. But what I have had is many people screen the movie and say, "Thank you for making a movie that is different from the rest, from a soldier’s point of view, that’s emotional and that deals with camaraderie." I think it’s young and I think it is of this generation that picks up a camera, films themselves and puts it on YouTube. That is very much who these boys are. But over and over I am getting appreciation for the human qualities of it.

And I think it is completely American to make a movie that looks deeply at out people and culture, and shows them in action. I think when you look at the movie, I am giving voice to people who are actually in conflict. The movie doesn’t have an agenda. It is bringing people to life and letting us see them in conflict.

-Lee Shoquist