Bacon has solemn escort duty in ’Taking Chance’
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AP
Oluşturulma Tarihi: Şubat 23, 2009 00:00
PARK CITY, Utah - First comes the bearer of bad news -- that a loved one has died in combat. Then comes the bearer of the loved one -- the military escort who brings the fallen home.
Kevin Bacon's drama "Taking Chance" chronicles a home-front saga little-known to most Americans Ñ the procedures and protocols followed in tending to our battle casualties and the honors paid them on their last journey.
Based on a true story, the film stars Bacon as Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a career officer who volunteered to escort the body of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps back to his family in Wyoming after the 19-year-old was killed in Iraq in April 2004. Then based in Quantico, Virginia, Strobl traveled to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where Phelps' body was prepared.
The film depicts the agonizing attention devoted to slain troops. Hands carefully cleaned, though they will be concealed by white gloves. Uniforms and medals meticulously arranged, even in cases of closed-casket funerals. And that is just the beginning. Along the way, escorts and other military personnel must solemnly salute the dead each time their bodies are taken off a hearse or loaded onto a plane.
"It never occurred to me, the painstaking detail," Bacon said in an interview alongside Strobl at January's Sundance Film Festival, where "Taking Chance" premiered.
Along the way, Bacon's Strobl encounters little moments of compassion and communal grief with strangers who never catch a glimpse of Phelps but are moved by the young man's voyage home.
A civilian hearse driver explains he took the job partly in honor of friends wounded or killed in Iraq. An airline clerk upgrades Strobl to first-class with a somber thank you for his escort duty. A flight attendant gives him a gold crucifix. An airline pilot who Ñ like Strobl, served in Desert Storm Ñ joins in saluting Phelps. Ross Katz, a producer on such films as "Lost in Translation" and "In the Bedroom," collaborated with Strobl to write the screenplay and also made his directing debut on "Taking Chance."
The tipping point that convinced Katz to direct "Taking Chance" was when he caught a TV news item one night about the latest casualties from a roadside bomb in Iraq. While filming, Bacon found even his movie world stopped for a moment as the filmmakers re-created Strobl's journey with the box containing Phelps' coffin.
"There was this odd thing where the process of making the film, it's all pretend, and yet I sort of felt a similar kind of thing to what Mike has expressed going through," Bacon said. "Because we'd shoot these scenes, even though there was nothing in our box, just people watching it were really profoundly affected by it."
Based on a true story, the film stars Bacon as Marine Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, a career officer who volunteered to escort the body of Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps back to his family in Wyoming after the 19-year-old was killed in Iraq in April 2004. Then based in Quantico, Virginia, Strobl traveled to the military mortuary at Dover Air Force Base in Delaware, where Phelps' body was prepared.
The film depicts the agonizing attention devoted to slain troops. Hands carefully cleaned, though they will be concealed by white gloves. Uniforms and medals meticulously arranged, even in cases of closed-casket funerals. And that is just the beginning. Along the way, escorts and other military personnel must solemnly salute the dead each time their bodies are taken off a hearse or loaded onto a plane.
"It never occurred to me, the painstaking detail," Bacon said in an interview alongside Strobl at January's Sundance Film Festival, where "Taking Chance" premiered.
Along the way, Bacon's Strobl encounters little moments of compassion and communal grief with strangers who never catch a glimpse of Phelps but are moved by the young man's voyage home.
A civilian hearse driver explains he took the job partly in honor of friends wounded or killed in Iraq. An airline clerk upgrades Strobl to first-class with a somber thank you for his escort duty. A flight attendant gives him a gold crucifix. An airline pilot who Ñ like Strobl, served in Desert Storm Ñ joins in saluting Phelps. Ross Katz, a producer on such films as "Lost in Translation" and "In the Bedroom," collaborated with Strobl to write the screenplay and also made his directing debut on "Taking Chance."
The tipping point that convinced Katz to direct "Taking Chance" was when he caught a TV news item one night about the latest casualties from a roadside bomb in Iraq. While filming, Bacon found even his movie world stopped for a moment as the filmmakers re-created Strobl's journey with the box containing Phelps' coffin.
"There was this odd thing where the process of making the film, it's all pretend, and yet I sort of felt a similar kind of thing to what Mike has expressed going through," Bacon said. "Because we'd shoot these scenes, even though there was nothing in our box, just people watching it were really profoundly affected by it."