Filmmaker Kimberly Peirce burst onto the scene a few years back with the true and tragic story of Brandon Teena, ‘’Boy’s Don’t Cry’’. Since then, she’s been a little quiet – not necessarily by choice - but is back, making lots of noise, with the terrific “Stop-Loss”. CLINT MORRIS talks to one of Hollywood’s most visionary director’s in this exclusive interview.

Where did the idea for “Stop Loss” originate?

I was in New York on 9/11, where I had been living in lower Manhattan for the last 13 years. I saw the burning towers from my balcony and watched them fall. It was devastating to me as it was to everyone. Throughout the day, one by one, as my best friends heard what was going on, they came over. As New York was my home, it was especially personal. New York was in a state of mourning. People were wandering the streets wondering if friends and family members who were supposed to have been in the towers were dead or missing. I began attending vigils for the victims with my friends. Then America declared war. I knew we were about to experience a seismic cultural change.

When I saw that people were signing up I knew I wanted to make a movie about the soldiers to discover who they were, why they were signing up, what their experience in combat and upon coming home was as I knew the soldiers would be the first and most impacted.

I wanted to capture the emblematic story of this generation who signed up after 9/11 willing to risk their lives for patriotic reasons -to protect their home, their family and their country. I wanted to tell this story as much as possible from the soldier's point of view, using their words, their experiences, their stories and the music they listened to (and in some instances made) to get as deeply inside their experience as possible.

I had studied some war history and I'm a big fan of great war films/films about soldiers (All Quiet on the Western Front, Best Years of Our Lives, Patton, Battle of Algiers, Apocalypse Now, Coming Home, Deer Hunter, etc.) I knew I needed to learn from these texts and understand the universality of war and combat as well as discover what was unique to this combat and this generation of soldiers.

So I began making a documentary. My research partner Reid Carolin and I interviewed soldiers across the country. For example, we went to Paris, Illinois, to greet the homecoming of the 1,000 soldiers from the 1544 National Guard Unit. Although the unit was a transportation company which wouldn't usually have seeing combat, this unit had the highest rate of casualty and the highest rate of combat hours because they were driving the generals to and from Abu Gharib along what turned out to be a very dangerous highway where they were getting fired upon and therefore drawn into combat . We met people in the town, families who had had a number of family members in the military in most of the wars America had been in, throughout the many generations. We went to the town parade. We met family members waiting for their soldiers. Mothers who hadn't seen their children, wives who hadn't seen their husbands, new born babies who were yet to meet their parents. It was incredibly moving as the soldiers marched in and saw their families for the first time in years. We filmed the soldiers coming home and interviewed them.

Those interviews as well as a number we did with soldiers from Texas were very informative and helpful in helping us understand what the soldiers were going through, so we used them to craft our story and write the screenplay.

Shortly thereafter my young brother enlisted in the military. We had had a grandfather in WWII, which meant we had heard war stories from our family, but now we were military family again in a very intense way. I had brought my brother home from the hospital when he was born, so in some ways he represented pure innocence to me. I was concerned for his safety both physically and emotionally – I wanted him to come home alive and intact and I wanted to protect his innocence.

My mother had a tough time of it. She was terrified of having my brother in combat. I would get phone calls where she was crying and she would say, "You've never known fear until you've had a child being fired at in a combat zone." She wouldn't come home from work at night, as a lot of women do that, because as she said, "God forbid something happened to him, I know they'd have to tell me in person." Then there would be the news blackouts. We were used to communicating with him frequently over IM. But when a soldier in the unit is injured or killed they black out all communication, all news, so that the military can properly (in person) alert the families of that soldier of the news before the news might travel to the family through other channels (i.e. get spread amongst other soldiers to the family.) So it would be hard when we would suddenly not hear anything. I think that's where the phrase "no news is good news" comes from. She and other mothers and military husbands and wives I interviewed said they would just have to pray they got no news. Those were some of the things that hit me in the gut.

We also got a hold of a number of "soldier-made videos," like the ones that open and play throughout the movie. Soldiers were taking small, handheld one-chip cameras, and filming in their barracks and on their missions – I learned they steadied the camera by putting them on sandbags, wiring it inside a Humvee (facing the windows so the camera records what the guys see on the mission as the Humvee races forward even capturing a bullet hitting the window), putting it ON the gun turret, or just setting it on the ground and letting it capture whatever happened – I saw one video set there during a firefight that captured guys' boots running past, while you can hear guys screaming, "man hit," etc.
These videos were like anthropological finds, of soldiers' experiences and their reflections of themselves. It was amazing seeing soldiers' experiences as we had never seen them before, as it was happening, as they were filming it, unadulterated and unfiltered; even more than that, we were seeing soldiers' own narratives -- the soldiers would come back to the barracks and edit the footage on their laptops- the resulting videos ranged from expressing their patriotic feelings, images of the guys in the unit all in uniform standing at attention or guys cleaning their guns set to patriotic music like Toby Keith's, "I am an American Soldier," or "Courtesy of the Red White and Blue," (as we have in the movie); others expressed their grief over lost fellow soldiers and were cut in the form of memorials; still others captured a "thrill kill" attitude, with hostile, aggressive images of strength – planes taking off from and landing on aircraft carries, planes dropping bombs, guns firing, set to rock music such as Drowning Pool's; "Let the Bodies Hit the Floor," (as we have in the movie,) AC/DC, Linkin Park, etc. I knew the movie needed to be born from these videos, and we needed to capture this energy and this reality.

I was also motivated by the possibility of giving voice to soldiers who do not always have a voice in the culture, because they are in the military, because it's a volunteer army which means only a segment of the population is involved, and because soldiers have only recently (through blogging and making their own videos and posting them on YOU TUBE) begun to speak to the wider culture. As a result, I feel the movie is of this generation – a generation that picks up a camera, film themselves, films their friends then uploads their videos onto YouTube.

In doing the interviews and writing the story, we discovered two profound things that nearly every soldier told me they realized upon being in combat –

One: that regardless of why they signed up – to protect their home, their family and/or their country, to get an education, or for more abstract ideology, when they were over there, they ended up fighting for survival and camaraderie, protecting the soldier to their left and the soldier to their right, being willing to die for another person, wanting to bring your fellow soldiers home safely. I was amazed that over and over soldiers said the relationships they formed with other soldiers in combat were the most intense relationships of their lives. Even soldiers from WWII often reminisced that those relationships over the years remained the most intense.

Two: that the soldiers felt this particular conflict, which forced them into urban combat, made it difficult for these soldiers to protect that camaraderie – protect themselves and protect one another. As they explained it, that had partly to do with the fact that the FOB's (Forward Operating Bases) where they lived, were right near the cities they were surveilling, which meant "there wasn't much of a green zone," a zone of absolute safety and often times from the cities came a consistent flow of mortars -- mortars being imprecise weapons, meant they didn't always hit, so the soldiers just got used to them coming. When I asked, "How did you know if it was dangerous?" They said, "It's dangerous if it hits you or the guy next to you." Soldiers also found it difficult to protect one another because of what some of them termed, "the faceless enemy," an enemy who as they said was not in the desert, but in the intersections and alleyways of a community they were guarding or in the living rooms, kitchens and hallways of people's homes they were clearing – They said what was most terrifying was not knowing who was an enemy and who was not, not knowing if the person pulling up to a checkpoint was hostile and had a gun; not knowing if a car had a bomb in it; not knowing if the person behind a door they were entering or on the other side of a wall was hostile or had a gun, which according to them made them more likely to kill innocent people and less able to protect their fellow soldiers from harm and death.

I began writing with Mark Richard, a wonderful novelist and screenwriter. I was paying for all the research as well as the costs associated with writing the script so we could write a script we wanted to shoot as a movie THEN go to get the money to make it. As Mark was writing on the Emmy Award winning show "Huff," we were working around his schedule, writing on weekends, but were quickly finding we wanted more time to write, wanted to write more quickly. One he called me to tell me he was considering quitting his job so we could write full time. I told him he had three kids and a wife and a paying job and I couldn't encourage him to quit as I couldn't guarantee that we'd be able to sell the script AND make the movie, although that was my intention. He called the next day, saying he had quit. At the point, I said "ok come on over." His wife was nice enough to "loan" him to me. He bought an inflatable mattress and camped out in the living room of my beach house. We had a blast, did marathon war movie watching sessions and wrote from sun up to late into the night until we had a draft.

From our research and our own stories (we were both military family) we distilled the story of our film – that of two best friends SGT. KING (played by RYAN PHILLIPE) and SGT. STEVE SHRIVER (played by CHANNING TATUM) who signed up after 9/11, got through their tours in Afghanistan and Iraq, and on the final mission were challenged by having a number of their guys wounded and killed. The two men have different responses. The mission weighs heavily upon SGT. KING so as he is being decorated as war hero , he's glad his term of service is complete and looking forward to getting out of the military and moving on with his life. SGT. SHRIVER is also profoundly affected by the war, but so much so that rather than being able to marry his fiancé and move on with his life, he finds he can't really come home. He wants to go back to war and wants KING to go with him. At which point King is STOP-LOSSED. The military breaks his contract and extends his term of service for 11 years (beyond even the most liberal definition of what the soldiers' sign up for) and is about to send him right back to war, which brings to a head everything he has been struggling with regarding his experience at war – he argues that he did his duty and fulfilled his contract and therefore the army should uphold their end, should let him go -- he argues that STOP LOSS is only applicable during a time war - and the president said the war is over so there is no basis for keeping him – and then he gets to the emotional core of the issue – he doesn't want to lead any more men into a slaughter, which is what will happen if he returns. When the commanding officer arrests him and forces him back to Iraq, KING goes AWOL in order to find a way out of having to go back to the war – and thus ensues a journey whereby KING pursues his freedom while coming to terms with his obligations to his men, discovering who he really is.

Was it an easy film to get up?

We had written the movie on spec (without getting paid)- Early November 2006, we delivered studios and financiers a script along with a 5 minute trailer (made of our interviews of soldiers around Americas as well as images from the soldier made videos cut to rock and patriotic music to give them a real sense of the how the movie would look, sound and feel) on a Friday; we put into our offer to sell one stipulation --if you buy it you have to make it…and if you don't, there is a big penalty. We didn't want the penalty money – we wanted to sell the script and make sure the movie got made. By Sunday morning (this rarely happens) we had 4 studios and 2 financiers offering to not only buy the screenplay but pay for the green lit movie. We chose the studio that we thought would best protect the movie, give it the best budget and allow us the most creative control.

There's a big gap between "Boy's Don't Cry" and "Stop Loss", what were you doing during this time?

I was in grad school when I made "Boys Don't Cry." The original film was supposed to be my graduate 10-minute short thesis. I fell in love with Brandon Teena, the film's real-life protagonist, and fell in love with the story. I co-wrote then directed the short on my own money while in graduate school. The material wanted to be a feature. While it was certainly difficult turning the short into a feature with little money and little resources, I was lucky in that the right people kept coming in to help me – Christine Vachon of Killer Films who is an extraordinary producer, and probably the only producer who could have gotten BOYS DON'T CRY made came aboard first – when I didn't even have the money to get my 16 mm dailies out of the lab (DuArt). She Eva Kolodner and I developed the script as I work-shopped it at the Sundance writing, directing and producing's labs. Then John Hart and Jeff Sharp as well as IFC came in and provided much needed money to start and sustain production. Then Fox Searchlight came in, and they were great. It was hard, but in the end I was thrilled with the movie because it felt real, it reflected what I had set out to do and it made people fall in love with and understand Brandon Teena, which had a wonderful effect on a number of people, from straights to gays to trans people. I have been very humbled over the years to hear so many people say the movie affected them, opened their eyes and changed their lives. It was a very perfect experience in the end.

It all happened very quickly. I got a Hollywood career out of it. All of a sudden Hollywood was offering me movies and millions of dollars. I love working. I was looking for something I cared about as much as "Boys Don't Cry." I thought I could jump from this movie I loved and believed in right into another one that I loved and believed in.

But second movies can be tough AND just because the studios have the money doesn't mean a movie always gets made. Just as I was wrapping up release of BOYS, I did fall in love with a story about the murder of William Desmond Taylor- an amazing story. I co-wrote a screenplay and got it to the point where it was cast. I had Ben Kingsley, Annette Benning, Evan Rachel Wood, and Hugh Jackman. I was on the one-yard line (about to shoot). The studio ran the numbers (did their budget) and decided it would cost $30 million. They told me they wanted to see the $30 million version, but they only wanted to pay for the $20 million version. When I asked if they wanted me to cut $10 million, which was impossible, they reiterated that they only wanted to see the $30 million version.

I was devastated. It was a lesson for me, a lesson lots of directors go through – we pour our energy into these passion projects, get them to a certain point (i.e. working script, cast) when we can see the movie and when they don't get made, we find we've lost a lot of time, and we also find these projects that we love have development money against them, which can make it hard, even impossible to move them forward at that point, sometimes ever.

I like getting development money from the system and I like working in the system, but I decided in order to move as quickly as possible and follow my curiosity, I would pay for all my STOP-LOSS research on my own- write the script outside the system and sell it as a green light movie as we did (see above).

Back to “Stop-Loss”, did you have any of the cast in mind before they were chosen?

I generally don't start trying to cast the film when writing, because I feel it will interfere with being true to the character - I want the character and the story to inform the script. But certainly if I was writing for an actor, I could.

Casting needs to be right for all movies and especially for this because we were telling a story inspired by real soldiers. I think all my collaborators, co-writer Mark Richard, producers Scott Rudin and Mark Roybal, Cinematographer Chris Menges and Editor Claire Simpson felt this responsibility- for the soldiers, our families who were/are in the military, and for the sake of the story.

As we had been interviewing real soldiers who had a degree of masculinity not always found in some contemporary actors and we wanted our depictions of soldiers to be authentic, I was looking for masculine guys to play the soldiers, guys who soldiers would buy as soldiers onscreen.

For the key role of the heroic, conflicted Sgt. Brandon King, I was looking for someone who could express the strength and masculinity to lead men into and through battle and also possess the warmth and humor necessary to be at the center of these men's lives. It required someone who could depict the patriotism and innocence required to go to war on behalf of his country, but who was also introspective enough to question what he had done when he needed to question it. Because it's essentially a point-of-view movie (one guy's journey) and he's in every scene, he had to be able to carry us through the entire story.

Ryan Phillipe brought something unexpected to the part. Not only could he act it, but he seemed like Brandon. He seemed like one of these guys who would have signed up for this war, who would have been the leader, who would have killed in order to protect his men and been devastated when he lost them, who would have questioned the authority when he found out they were breaking his contract, who would have gone on the run and who would have ultimately gone made a decision that allowed him to stay connected to his family, his men and his country.

Ryan and I wanted him to behave and appear like a real soldier to honor the real soldiers. To play an Iraq War-era soldier, Ryan plunged into deep research. He watched hours and hours of video camera footage that the soldiers shot of each other to get a sense of their camaraderie, and he also viewed many of the excellent documentaries that have been made about the Iraq conflict. And we hired Sgt. Major Jim Dever, 25 years in the marines (has handled many of the funerals at Arlington) as our technical advisor. He's the best in the business and Ryan had already worked with him on 'Flags of Our Fathers.'"

The character of Michele was inspired by real military wives I had interviewed. I was fascinated with them– for the challenges they face, the fears and hopes they feel while their men are at war and the struggles they face upon their men's return. Many spoke of feeling committed no matter what, but felt old before their time; many said they felt they lived two lives, one when he was home and one when he was away. Many spoke of how the other wives banded together to deal with the loneliness and the strangeness of their soldier's return: men meeting their newborns for the first time after being away for a year; the sudden bouts of anger and violence; how they couldn't go out to a bar without having a fight/brawl erupt; how going to Dunkin' Donuts was a challenge when they were overwhelmed by the number of donut flavors, being forced to make a choice about what they ate for the first time in months.

Abbie Cornish was my first choice for Michelle. Having seen her in Candy and Summersault, I knew she was brilliant and perfect for the role. But I was told she was unavailable and there was no way of waiting for her to be free to play the role. So I auditioned other young women. Many were very good, but they weren't right. I was incredibly happy one day when Abbie's agent called and said that she had read the script, she loved it and she wanted to audition for me. I spoke to Abbie on the phone for about an hour. She was in Australia, I was in NY. I was immediately struck by her deep understanding of and affinity for the character of Michele. I would have cast her for the role without the audition if she had pushed, but since she wanted to audition and I love working with the actors in person to see what they will really bring to the role, it was my pleasure to audition her in an old fashion screen test in Austin. She was wonderful, better than we could have imagined. She has that quality that certain actors have. She simply holds the screen – she holds your attention – and she can do it without any dialogue and even if the scene is not hers. I think we have so much to see from Abbie.

Michele is the emotional touchstone of the film – she's a gorgeous woman, and yet she's also "one of the boys," she can jump start a car, change a tire, peel out, and shoot a gun. She's also one of the many women who waits for the boys while they are at war, so she understands the effects of their absence and she sees the changes in them upon their return. She comes closest to understanding what is going on with King, her fiancé Shriver and Tommy Burgess. And ultimately she helps SGT KING, Ryan understand what he and his men are going through.

I know the film intrigued Abbie because it made contemporary issues personal. She said, "It was an interesting exploration of what is happening in the world as told through a man's desire to disengage from the war and how that affects his family, and the people around them. I also liked that it was very much an ensemble piece. When first exploring the character of Michele, I found her honesty and direct nature to be very strong. She is a big heart and a pillar of strength many times throughout the film. Michele to me was a symbol of the realizations of war, its effects on both Iraq and its occupants and also the soldiers and their families. Michele embarks on a road trip with her friend but comes away a changed person. The idea of playing a Texan like Michele, a small town girl dealing with the effects of war in the same world we live in today, really appealed to me." We felt very fortunate that Abbie joined our ensemble, and she did an incredible job.

Steve Shriver is another complex, multi-faceted young man- a true believer. His character was inspired by a number of real soldiers I interviewed - guys who loved their wives, who loved America, but after fighting never really came back the same, and ultimately needed to go back to war to feel complete. Though I came to understand and love these guys and saw the heartbreak they faced in acknowledging and allowing themselves to live out this truth about themselves, the challenge in writing Steve was in depicting him honestly, with dignity and passion, so that we bring the audience all the way inside this guy, why he feels and acts as he does, why he must go back.

On a physical level, I needed a man's man to play Steve – the sexy, handsome, patriot ruled by passion and emotion – a real believer in the American way – we wanted to go back to the era of men – Brando, Lancaster, Deniro, Penn, Bogart, even Grant in Steve's physicality.

I had a wonderful time finding Channing to play Sgt. Steve Shriver. Channing came in after a long day of auditioning. He had been in a few movies. I think one was Coach Carter, which I hadn't seen, the others hadn't come out. It generally doesn't matter for me when auditioning whether I've seen an actor's prior work. I like to see what they feel like and what they can do in the room.

Channing was hunky, good-looking and masculine. And he had that spark of charisma and anger and confidence that allowed him to be the guy that just might charge into that house in the combat scene to go after the insurgent who was firing on his best buddy Sargeant King (Ryan), and he could be the guy who ended up digging a ranger grave in his front yard, who shot up the wedding cards off the wedding gifts with his buddies, and who re-signed up with the military because being with his comrades and at war made more sense than being at home. Channing had all the passion, emotion and physicality we needed and talent to fully embody the role. He did break dancing for me at the end of the first audition.

Channing and I worked together a total of three times, twice in LA and once in NY before I cast him. On the final audition he told me he would do whatever it would take to perform the part. I said that was important to playing "STEVE," since he was a believer, someone who put himself totally into what he did. We worked together for a few hours and sent the tape of our work to Scott Rudin. Scott called the studio. I called the studio. And they let us cast him. I was thrilled. He was pure physicality and charm.

On set, Channing was sheer energy, willing to try anything, go anywhere emotionally and bare himself – his vulnerability, his sense of dignity and his feelings of brotherhood for the other men. Channing is a lovely person, a wonderful actor, generous to his fellow actors, and a good friend.

At some point in production, I needed some pictures of Channing as a kid to flesh out our portrait of SGT. STEVE SHRIVER. His mother sent me a whole batch of images – him doing a kind of handstand at 3 years old, him with tons of muscles, him in football gear. He told me she called him "CHANIMAL." Which I thought was great because I had called him "MANIMAL," my "MAN," "ANIMAL."

Of course, Brandon, Steve and Michele are not the only ones having trouble adjusting to civilian life. The character of Tommy, while able to channel his smoldering rage and violent temperament to good effect during battle, cannot contain it easily in peacetime – with devastating consequences.

I had worked with the prominent young actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt in an audition type setting and knew I wanted him for the pivotal role. I did not want to compromise. I had to have Joe. He's one of the best actors of his generation and he was phenomenal to work with – a true method actor.

Joe had a unique take on the character. He's said, "I think Tommy left home and joined the Army partially to escape demons at home and found a real family, found more connection and love in the Army than he had at home. I think that when he comes back, he first has the same problems a lot of guys have when they come back but, for him, the old demons rear their heads again alongside new ones he has brought back from Iraq."

Unlike Ryan who had a family full of veterans, Joe didn't come from a military family. Joe told me his grandfather fought in WWII, but his dad and my mom were peace activists in the '60s. So he wasn't allowed to play with G.I. Joes when he was a kid.

Victor Rasuk, who was so phenomenal in Raising Victor Vargas, was cast in the role of Rico Rodriguez, a role that required the application of special make-up and extensive prosthetics, including contact lenses that blinded Rasuk, to convey the horrible injuries Rico suffers in battle. Victor elected to keep the contact lenses in during his scenes and the constricting prosthetics caused him to limp; often, Ryan or I would guide him to his mark on set or towards a chair in between takes.

Victor has said, "The prosthetics helped me with the character. My arm was bound behind my back and it hurt like hell, so I incorporated that into my character, as part of his literal and emotional pain. I wanted to keep the contacts in because I honestly felt like I was in the dark, as Rico would. I couldn't see anything. When the cast and crew walked around me, I didn't know where anyone was or who they were, I saw only shadows. It was very helpful."

People have asked how I go about casting generally. I'm very drawn to an actor's talent. If they're charismatic, emotionally honest, and talented it's obvious in the room. I try to give them the space and whatever guidance I can to bring out the best in them. And i've worked with wonderful casting director's like Avy Kaufman and Kerry Barden and producers like Christine Vachon and Scott Rudin who have great instincts when it comes to actors.

Stay Tuned for the Second Part of Our Interview with Kimberly Peirce