By Gregg Shapiro

Staff writer

There are a few reasons why “Stop Loss” is one of the most eagerly anticipated movies in the Spring 2008 line-up. First, it’s the second feature length film from acclaimed filmmaker Kimberly Peirce, the out director behind the acclaimed and award-winning “Boys Don’t Cry.” Second “Stop Loss” boasts a hot, youthful and attractive cast, led by Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum and Joseph Gordon-Leavitt. And, third, the subject matter of “Stop Loss” is an Iraq War soldier who returns home to Texas thinking that he has fulfilled his obligations to the U.S. military, only to find out that he’s been recalled, “stop lossed,” if you will, to duty in Iraq. I spoke with Peirce following a screening of “Stop Loss.”

Gregg Shapiro: I interviewed you a few years ago, shortly before the release of “Boys Don’t Cry.” Now that a few years have passed, how do you look back on that film?

Kimberly Peirce: I look back on that film as an extraordinary privilege to have made. Really. I fell deeply in love with that character and I was intrigued and terrified by what those men had done to her. What I wanted to do was go as deeply inside of it as I could. It came into my life and from the moment I read it, it was this obligation to tell the story of somebody whose story nobody understood, and that was why they were hurt. It was an honor and a privilege and I could not have been more moved by the fact that people actually fell in love with Brandon. That was my goal, but I never imagined, because I love Brandon so much, that the world would—but in retrospect, of course they would, because we did.

GS: Nine years passed between “Boys Don’t Cry” and the release of your new film “Stop Loss.” What were you doing during that time?

KP: I was in grad school when I made “Boys…” and it was supposed to be my 10-minute film. It was funny, because I went to shoot, and my stepmother said, “It’s a feature!” and I said, “I can’t make a feature.” I ended up having three different (sets of) actors. I had actors in the short, actors at Sundance and actors in the feature—they were like, “It’s a feature.” So really it was an uphill learning curve, moving from a 10-minute film, and it was extraordinary what happened to it. I basically emerged from it with a Hollywood career, which was great, and I was appreciative. But my standards were so high artistically, because that was about my gender and my identity and my friends’ gender and identity. It was literally creating an identity that I needed in the world. I never could have foreseen what happened with “Boys…” I came of age and then Hollywood came to me offering me millions of dollars and movies, but when I knew to make art was my identity, and I’d already made this story about my gender and my sexuality, I wasn’t going to make that again. I then had to look for the next thing that was compelling to me. I was fortunate and I fell deeply in love with the story about the life and death of William Desmond Taylor. It was the greatest unsolved murder mystery in Hollywood and it turns out that we cracked the case and figured out who did it, why they did it and how and why it was covered up. It was covered up by the government and Hollywood to protect Hollywood and America’s innocence. I ended up casting it (“Silent Star”) with Hugh Jackman, Ben Kingsley, Annette Benning and Evan Rachel Wood, but it was a period piece, and the studio ran the numbers and said, “We’d like to see the $30 million version of this,” and I said, “Great.” And they said, “But we’d like to pay for the $20 million version.” So that was a huge lesson, as any obstacle always is. That was the end of ’03. I’ll make that movie someday. But I learned a huge lesson, which is maybe I shouldn’t tie up the means of production and my artistry with a corporation, simply because if what I’m trying to do is at all innovative, the studio system isn’t made for making innovations. And I’m not putting them down for that, but if I’m dealing with gender and sexuality and things that haven’t really been touched, I’m going to have to spend way too much time justifying my curiosity than if I just did the work. I had enough money that I could pay for the research. After 9/11, I funded interviewing soldiers around the country, including Paris, Illinois, to interview 1,000 soldiers for the homecoming of the 1544th. They had the highest casualty rate and the highest number of combat hours, and I interviewed the military families with my friend (producer) Reid Carolin. He had just graduated from Harvard and was willing to pick up a camera and jump on a plane. If it was interesting to us and it was moving and humane, I’ll pay for the camera, the tickets and the plane. Then I paid for the writing of the script. I got novelist Mark Richard.

GS: He wrote “The Ice at the Bottom of the World.”

KP: Exactly. He’s a great Texas writer and we agreed to do it together on weekends. It wasn’t fast enough and he called me to say that he was thinking about quitting his job (writing for the Emmy-winning series “Huff”) and I advised him against it because it was spec script. Then he called the next day to say that he had quit his job, and I said, “Why don’t you move in?” So, Mark Richard, and I love him, this Texas guy moves into my little beach house and he’s sleeping on the floor and we’re writing as fast as we can from all the research. It was this thing that we had a passion for and we didn’t have to ask anybody if it was interesting. It was interesting and meaningful to us. We gave it to our agents and they were like, “We need to make this now.” Then Reid and I cut together this five-minute trailer that had all these original soldier videos that my brother and all of these other soldiers had brought back—handheld, hung from a Humvee, put on a sandbag, put on the gun turret. And we combined that with the homecoming of the soldiers in Paris, Illinois—that I didn’t have to say to Hollywood, “Let me tell you what’s going on in America. Let me show you.” When they saw that and got the script and saw that its young and energetic, that it had rock music, that it was actually happening, that it had good-looking young soldiers, they saw the movie. I don’t know if it’s ever happened before, but we greenlit a movie off of a script. That was a different experience than the one I’d had on the last movie, and to me it was a corrective experience. It will never take me that long to make another movie because I’ve already learned that lesson. Don’t put the things that are most precious to you in the hands of people who may not make them, whatever the cost.

GS: While introducing the Feb. 27, 2008 screening of “Stop Loss” at the University of Chicago, of which you are an alumnus…

KP: Yeah, that was great.

GS: You talked about the way that digital video recorders and cameras were revolutionizing the way that soldiers in Iraq were able to record and present images from the war. Would you say that that was the impetus for you to make this film?

KP: I would. I knew I was going to tell the story about this soldier, but it was when I saw the videos that I understood the style. Those videos are the defining thing about this generation. We’ve had great World War II films and Vietnam War films—those images are seminal. I love the great war films, but how can I take what they’ve already done and not graft that onto this experience, but allow this experience to inform me? This is the generation that picks up a video camera, turns in on themselves and their friends and puts it on YouTube. That is the defining thing of this war, this generation, of where humanity is. If we can make a movie that captures that—it’s been extraordinary bringing that to life.

GS: Music also plays a considerable role in the film and I was thinking of the way that movies about Vietnam also used music of the era.

KP: Not only did I write down the name of every piece of music that I found on a video from a soldier—the music that they were mixing in, like a DJ, with their videos—what I found was that they were listening to Toby Keith: “I’m an American soldier/courtesy of the red, white and blue.” They were listening to Southern rock—Lynyrd Skynyrd and Marshall Tucker Band—and country-western. They were listening to a lot of rock—Drowning Pool’s “Let The Body Hit the Floor” and “Firestarter” by Prodigy, AC/DC. Then we interviewed soldiers about what they were listening to—a lot of Linkin Park.

GS: Without giving away the ending, what occurs came as something of a surprise. Was that always the ending that you had in mind?

KP: If I’ve gotten you emotionally invested in wanting him to get free, you need a turn at the end. Given who he is, he’s a patriotic guy who signed up for all the right reasons: His home, his country, his family. He signs up with his buddy. He gets over there and what does he discover. He discovers what every single soldier I interviewed discovers, that it’s about surviving and camaraderie. It’s about keeping the guy to your left and right alive; that the most profound experience is the camaraderie. So that in the end—home, family, camaraderie, patriotism—the only way that he can not lose who he is, and, again, it’s a story of identity, this character makes a choice about preserving the deepest sense of who he is and what he finds most valuable.