HBO Miniseries Shows True Stories From Iraq
Home Box Office
Jul 08, 2008
Generation Kill, a seven-part miniseries from HBO, is the first-hand narrative account of the young Marines of the First Reconnaissance Battalion – the “tip of the spear” for the American military’s march into Iraq.
Based on the award-winning nonfiction account of the same name by Evan Wright, the journalist embedded in the lead Humvee of First Recon’s Bravo Company’s Second Platoon, the miniseries is a precise retelling of the early weeks of the military campaign from the point of view of the guys on the ground: the non-commissioned officers and platoon-level commanders who led the way to Baghdad.
Real events are depicted. Real names are used. As much as possible, the film employs the precise dialogue reported by Wright, a Rolling Stone correspondent assigned to First Recon Battalion during their last weeks in Kuwait. The filmmakers made every effort to recreate Wright’s account of Bravo Two Marines riding from the Kuwait border into the slums of Baghdad.
Generation Kill debuts Sunday, July 13, followed by subsequent Sundays at the same time, running for seven weeks through the end of August, on HBO. Beginning week two, the previous week’s episode will be shown prior to the new one.
Watch the trailer and get more details about Generation Kill
From David Simon and Ed Burns, the team behind the acclaimed HBO series “The Wire,” Generation Kill is executive produced and co-written by Simon and Burns, and co-written by Wright, who also served as a consulting producer throughout production and editing. The miniseries was filmed throughout Southern Africa as a close collaboration between Simon’s Blown Deadline Productions and Company Pictures, the London-based producers responsible for HBO’s Emmy-winning miniseries “Elizabeth I.”
Directed by Susanna White (Bleak House) and Simon Cellan Jones (The Trial of Tony Blair), Generation Kill’s ensemble cast includes Alexander Skarsgård, James Ransone, Lee Tergesen, Jon Huertas and Stark Sands.
Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright was embedded with the elite First Recon Battalion just prior to the U.S. invasion of Iraq in spring 2003. He rode in one of the lightly-armored lead vehicles at the front of the invasion for seven weeks, while most of the other media was embedded towards the rear of the troops with the heavy artillery. Wright wrote three subsequent articles for the magazine about his three weeks with the Marines of Bravo Two, and later expanded his detailed account in the book Generation Kill, which was published in 2004.
Wright’s book, which won the Los Angeles Times Book Award, a PEN Faulkner Award and the General Wallace M. Greene Award for Best History of the Marine Corps. from the Marine Corps. Heritage Foundation, is regarded among the most significant war reporting from Iraq and has been compared favorably with such classics as Michael Herr’s Dispatches and Michael Kelley’s Martyr’s Day. His original magazine articles on which the book is based were awarded the prestigious National Magazine Award for Excellence in Reporting.
People magazine hailed Wright’s book “A Top 10 Book of the Year.” The Boston Herald described it as “visceral, sometimes shocking…a brutally honest account of America’s latest generation to experience the stark, horrifying realities of warfare.” Publisher’s Weekly called the book “a personality-driven, readable and insightful look at the Iraq war’s first month from the Marine grunt’s point of view…compelling portraits…a vivid, well-drawn picture.”
Eric Kocher, Jeffrey Carisalez and Rudy Reyes, Marines from the First Recon Battalion who were featured in the book, serve as advisors and are also cast members. Key military advisor Kocher plays another Marine in the miniseries, while Reyes portrays himself. Carisalez plays a composite character who is featured in Part 4.
The miniseries covers the first 40 days of the invasion into Iraq in 2003, as seen through the eyes of the elite First Recon Battalion as they lead U.S. forces across a barren landscape on the long road to Baghdad, often working in uncertain conditions with little protection except their lightly armored Humvees. As the “tip of the spear” of the invasion, the Marines faced indicators of what was to come for the invasion: insufficient supplies, conflicting orders, military strategy, unknown enemy, insurgency and civilians caught in the middle. The men of Bravo Company and their sister company Alpha adapted with skill, resolve, subversive humor, stoicism and occasionally blind faith.
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