Why Phil Donahue made Body Of War

By Gilbert Cruz
Tuesday, Nov. 11, 2008
Long-time talk show host Phil Donahue wants America to take a long look at what the Iraq War is doing to its young men and women. Body of War, which Donahue produced and co-directed with Ellen Spiro, and which airs tonight on the Sundance Channel in honor of Veterans Day, tells the story of Tomas Young, a formerly gung-ho soldier who was paralyzed after less than a week in Iraq. Donahue spoke with TIME about getting kicked off MSNBC, why Iraq war movies are not a draw, and the death of the word "liberal."

How did you come across the story of Tomas Young?

I was invited to visit Walter Reed [Army Medical Center] by Ralph Nader. I had been on the Nader bus in 2000. And after the 2004 election, Nader said, "A mother at Walter Reed has asked to see me. Do you wanna go?" I said yes immediately. I'd never been to America's most famous military hospital, so off we went. And here is this young man. 24 years old. Very thin. His cheekbones stuck out. He was totally whacked out on morphine. And his mother explained his injury to me. He was in Sadr City, in an uncovered truck, when a bullet entered his shoulder from above. How it didn't hit a major artery, I'll never know. And now Tomas is paralyzed from the nipples down. Tomas can't walk. Tomas can't cough. Tomas throws up every morning.

You get a sense of the domino effect here. You put a bullet through a man's spine, all kinds of things happen. Tomas has bowel and bladder issues. Tomas has erectile dysfunction—28 years old, in the prime of his life. What we're saying with this film is that what you see with Tomas is a drama taking place behind the closed doors of thousands of homes in this country. Thousands. We're trying to show the reality of this war, which is the most sanitized war in our lifetime.
go here for more
http://www.time.com/time/arts/article/0,8599,1857979,00.html

Wounded Iraq war veteran's plight pushed talk show host into action

Phil Donahue's film inspiration
Wounded Iraq war veteran's plight pushed talk show host into action
By Lisa Kennedy
Denver Post Film Critic
Article Last Updated: 08/16/2008 11:19:59 AM MDT
It's a powerful scene in a film blessed — and, given the subject, cursed — with them.

In "Body of War," Tomas Young attends an anti-Iraq-war event. Members of Gold Star families reach out toward the man in a wheelchair.

"They can't take their hands off him," says Phil Donahue, who co-directed the film with documentary veteran Ellen Spiro. "For that moment, while they're holding a card or picture of their loved one in one hand — a loved one who was killed — with their other hand they're touching the warm face of Tomas Young."

Then the first-time filmmaker (but TV talk show legend) shares an insight he learned from Young's mother, Cathy, who figures prominently in the movie.

"For a moment, they're allowing themselves to believe they're touching the loved one they'll never touch again."

Donahue met Young at Walter Reed Army Medical Center. Young had requested a meeting with Ralph Nader, who invited his friend along.

"He claims he remembers meeting me," says Donahue. "Boy, I would be surprised. He was totally whacked, medicated. As I stood at his bed looking down at this kid — he was 24 at the time — his mother explained the nature of his injuries. The first thing that goes through your head is, 'Why him, not me? What random fate brings this life-altering tragedy to a 24-year-old?' "

Young enlisted in the Army soon after the attacks of 9/11. The Kansan was 22. He arrived in Iraq in March 2004. On April 4, on his first mission, a bullet entered above his left collarbone, paralyzing him.

Donahue, who never made a feature film before, wasn't looking for a wounded soldier to build a movie around. Young forced him out of retirement.

"All I knew was I met a man at Walter Reed Hospital, and I wanted everybody to meet him. I wanted every American to meet him."
go here for more
http://www.denverpost.com/headlines/ci_10207423

In the Body of a Soldier

“Why do the American people tolerate this?” asked Donahue, referring both to the broken system of care for returning veterans and to the continued devastation the war is causing to families like Young’s and the U.S. military.

But, said Young, “The majority of families don’t feel the sting or sacrifice” for this war. “Until they do feel that sting, we will not have a strong enough groundswell to stop it.”

In the Body of a Soldier

April 3, 2008

Twenty-two year-old Tomas Young called his Army recruiter on September 13, 2001. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to fight the Taliban and Al Qaeda. Instead, his unit was sent to Iraq in March 2004. Less than a week after arriving, Young suffered a shot to the collarbone that left him paralyzed from the chest down.

While Young was recovering at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington DC, he met former talk-show host Phil Donahue. “I didn’t know then that I was going to make a movie,” Donahue said last night at a Reel Progress screening of the film. But upon hearing Young’s story, he wanted to show the human costs of war to a larger audience.

Donahue had never made a movie, so he partnered with documentary filmmaker Ellen Spiro. The resulting film, “Body of War,” follows Young from his 2005 wedding, through his daily struggles with physical disability, to his involvement in Iraq Veterans Against the War, all set against the backdrop of the 2002 congressional debate over whether to authorize the president to use military force in Iraq. The past year has seen a glut of films about the Iraq conflict, but none so pointedly from the perspective of a returned soldier.

Young cannot cough, nor can he control his bowel movements or body temperature. He has to wear a vest packed with ice when in warm environments. When Young tells Bobby Muller, a similarly paralyzed Vietnam veteran and president of Veterans for America, that he was only in the hospital for two or three months after his injury, Muller is shocked at the VA’s impetuousness.


go here for the rest

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2008/04/body_of_soldier.html

Young is absolutely correct. Admittedly I would among those who would be disconnected from what is happening. I wouldn't be spending 12 hours a day doing this. I would be concerned with making a good living back in Massachusetts, going shopping and for walks in the woods with my dog. I would be spending time reading books instead of online news reports and blogs. I would be watching Life Time channel instead of news stations. I would be listening to music online playing games to take the stress of everyday living off my shoulders. I would be doing anything but what I'm doing if I didn't meet a Vietnam Veteran over half my lifetime ago. As the saying goes, I have skin in this game. I have a personal interest in the troops, in the wounded and in the families, especially the families dealing with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. To me this is all personal because I've walked in their shoes.

What does it take to get a nation to care about those who serve it? I mean for real, when it matters to those who serve instead of just taking one political position or another? What does it take to motivate them to want to do something about what is going on or to at least reach a point in their lives when they pay attention. It's appalling so few know how many deaths have occurred in Iraq and especially in Afghanistan. As of today, the count is 4,013 in Iraq with at least six deaths not counted according to ICasualties.org and in Afghanistan there have been 491. We don't talk about Afghanistan and the media won't touch it unless something catastrophic happens.

Ilona Meagher wrote a book Moving A Nation To Care. It was a fantastic book, but I often wonder how many books would have been sold if the nation had already really cared. Would the book have been necessary at all? In a perfect world, everyone would be involved. The media would be all over both occupations and fit in reports on a daily basis, but they've been far too busy reporting celebrity shenanigans and over a year covering the chosen running of the presidency. In a perfect world we would be sacrificing back home and buying war bonds instead of the latest gadget out of Best Buy. We wouldn't be talking about tax cuts for the wealthy either because that would not have even been considered during a time when we have men and women in Iraq and Afghanistan risking their lives. In a perfect world, no wounded veteran would ever have to lift a finger to have their claim honored by a truly grateful nation because people would be ready and waiting to take care of them instead of standing in their way on Capitol Hill and you know exactly whom I'm referring to.

I've been racking my brains trying to figure out how it is possible that so many in this nation will take to the streets to protest the occupation of Iraq, or to support it going on, yet there have been so few pressuring Congress to do something about any of this. I've been wondering what could get me involved if I had no personal interest in this? The answer is clear. It's information. Being informed, seeing the price the families are paying and the toll it is taking on those who are on yet another deployment. Too many in this country have no idea and they are not apt to search for information unless they already care to learn. It has to be the media, the 24 hour stations paying an interest before any of this will happen.

With Iraq taking a back seat to the economy, yet blamed on the bad economy and the devastation across the country of resources, more attention should be on Iraq. It's not that people don't care but when they think they have their own problems in their lives, it's hard to think of others unless someone reminds them.

My blog is about the wounds they have especially Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, yet the largest hit count I ever received was on the YouTube video of the reported Marine doing a puppy toss over a cliff. That astounded me! People were more informed about this video than the men and women who died that week while deployed or how many had committed suicide. You cannot find a video on YouTube unless you really search for it. If enough people search for it, it becomes front and center and it gets more hits. That's a very troubling sign because videos like mine hardly get any, yet the news reports on PTSD are all over the Internet.

What happened to the days when the stations like CNN and MSNBC were doing specials on Iraq and Afghanistan? Body of War is getting attention now because it's important but is it important enough to the rest of the nation when they are not already motivated to watch it? Will there be more specials because of it? PBS is showing Bad Voodoo and I wonder how many are watching it and learning from it, at least enough to do something?

But, said Young, “The majority of families don’t feel the sting or sacrifice” for this war. “Until they do feel that sting, we will not have a strong enough groundswell to stop it.”

It would be great if they at least made sure the wounded were taken care of. Isn't that the least we owe them? The question is, how do we get there from here?

Chaplain Kathie Costos
Namguardianangel@aol.com
www.Namguardianangel.org
www.Namguardianangel.blogspot.com
www.Woundedtimes.blogspot.com
"The willingness with which our young people are likely to serve in any war, no matter how justified, shall be directly proportional to how they perceive veterans of early wars were treated and appreciated by our nation." - George Washington

Phil Donahue, Body Of War

Phil Donahue unveils documentary on wounded GI
Film follows path of a ‘warrior turned anti-warrior,’ says ex-talk show host
By Mike Celizic
TODAYShow.com contributor
updated 39 minutes ago
In 2004, Phil Donahue stopped to visit his old friend Ralph Nader on a visit to Washington, D.C. Nader asked the talk show legend to come along on a visit to a wounded soldier in Walter Reed Hospital. So moved was Donahue by his meeting with Tomas Young, he decided to film a documentary about the young man’s journey from warrior to paralyzed veteran to spokesman and activist against America’s presence in Iraq.

Four years later, the film, “Body of War,” is debuting to reviews that make liberal use of such adjectives as “powerful,” “riveting,” “unforgettable” and “wrenching.” Richard Corliss of Time magazine called it, “A superb documentary ... almost unbearably moving.”

“The first time I saw him will be with me forever — paralyzed from the chest down — he had that morphine look, droopy eyed, sallow, sunken, lifeless,” Donahue writes in the director’s notes to his movie. “Body of War is a film provoked by my own questions as I stood on my functional legs at his bedside.”
go here for the rest
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23884161/

view clip at bottom of this blog