Close Encounters of the Celebrity Kind...
Boys Don't Cry Director Kimberly Peirce Returns
Expanded Edition of 3-26-08 Windy City Times Interview
by Richard Knight, Jr.
Actor-Director-Writer Kimberly Peirce returns with the searing war drama Stop-Loss, on set directing her star Ryan Phillippe
Almost ten years after her stunning 1999 feature debut, Boys Don’t Cry, writer-director Kimberly Peirce has returned with Stop-Loss, a
powerful, thought provoking film that focuses on a little known policy that is in essence a backdoor draft for soldiers that are forced
to return to duty in Iraq after fulfilling their commitment.  Peirce spent years researching the film and collecting actual footage from
soldiers documenting their experiences in Iraq.  The film stars a crew of young hunks (Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, Joseph
Gordon-Levitt, etc.) who enact a story revolving around the stop-loss issue.  Peirce has also set up a website,
www.stoplossmovie.
com/SoundOff where actual victims of the practice can post their own stories.  In person Peirce has enormous vitality, speaks quickly
in a no-nonsense manner in a torrent of words.  Dressed in black jeans, boots, and a blue t-shirt under a black blazer, not
surprisingly, she’s eager to talk about her first movie in almost ten years.  Highlights:

WINDY CITY TIMES (WCT):  Oh my gosh, what a great film.

KIMBERLY PIERCE (KP)  Oh good!

WCT:  I know this started from a personal place for you.  Could you talk about that?

KP:  Sure, sure.  Shortly after the war started my younger brother told us he was enlisting so…shocking.  We had a grandfather in
World War II and now we had my younger brother signing up.  It wasn’t so much that we took a position on whether it was right or
wrong to fight the war, it was that I’d brought him home from the hospital when he was born and he represents innocence to me.  
Suddenly to hear that he’s signing up it’s like, “Is he gonna live?  Is he gonna get injured?”  Then, what about the emotional toll?  
How is what’s done to him going to affect him and what about what he does to other people should he kill somebody, should he
main somebody?  We know it’s going to change him to go through that training so that was just a constant concern among the
family.  My mother, obviously very upset, wouldn’t come home at night because she knows that if you’re home they can come to the
door.  A lot of women do that.

WCT:  I didn’t know that.

KP:  They just stay at work because they have to give you the news that your soldier has died in person so they’re just like, “I’m not
answering the door and I’m not going to be around.”  They’ve had women just say when they’re knocking, “You can’t come in.”  They
don’t want the news.  So it’s very intense when you have that personal connection.  So not only was I IMing with him every day and
hearing his side of it which was an important element and as a sister and a brother but I was interviewing soldiers throughout
America and that was really important to me.  I really wanted to understand like generally speaking where were the soldiers coming
from?  I didn’t want to tell a story that was like 10% of it.  I wanted to tell an emblematic story and actually I came here to Paris,
Illinois and I met the homecoming of a thousand soldiers from the 1544th which is a National Guard unit and they, at that point, had
the highest casualty rate and the highest number of combat hours because they were driving the generals to and from Abu Ghraib.  
So they would be on this highway and be shot at.

WCT:  That horrible highway we’ve heard so much about.  So you’ve seen all this stuff that we haven’t seen on TV.  You’ve seen all
this footage and I know now you have people posting on the film’s website which is so cool.

KP:  Have you seen the site?

WCT:  Yes.

KP:  Isn’t it great?

WCT:  Yes, it’s a great idea.

KP:  It’s also giving voice – which I love – because I think that the movie is of this generation – the generation that picks up a
camera and films itself and puts it on YouTube.  I think it captures that in the energy and the youth but also what I love is I think
that these people in the military and the military families have not had a voice because it’s not a culture that maybe encourages
that.  Because it’s about following the rules and about staying within the military so the internet gives them the chance – whether
anonymously or not – to say what they feel.  And they are and that’s huge.

WCT:  Yes because there’s been this blackout.  We haven’t seen any of this footage.

KP:  No we haven’t.

WCT:  This research has taken you years and been your main focus for a long time.  In all your research did you find examples of
gays and lesbians that had been stop-lossed?

KP:  Yes.

WCT:  Did you find some people who said, “Okay, I’m going to go back even though I’m a gay or lesbian?”

KP:  Yes.  But those are the people in the military anyway.

WCT:  Right and everything you read now seems to suggest that they look the other way because they need the people so badly.

KP:  Yes – they really need them – and that’s why to me the movie isn’t about stop-loss, it’s about people.  The reason that stop-
loss is so important is because it cuts through everything including the gay and lesbian thing.  I feel like both the soldiers are being
stop-lossed and I feel that America is also being stop-lossed.  Which is you’re stuck in it, you can’t get out.  I mean it’s happening
to 81,000 soldiers but it’s also very much like America – kind of like having all these resources in Iraq and you just can’t pull them
out.

WCT:  Is there any chance this policy will be overturned?

KP:  I don’t know the future of stop-loss but I do know that (Defense Secretary Robert) Gates has come out and said, “We want to
decrease the use of stop-loss.”  You don’t have anybody in the military saying, “It is a good solution.”  I think consistently you have
almost everybody saying stop-loss is not a good solution.  Stop-loss is because we don’t have people enlisting; it’s because we have
to keep the numbers up.  So I believe that the more public it becomes the better it will be.  You know, almost nobody knows about
stop-loss and you know why that is?

WCT:  No.

KP:  Because – I believe – it’s not like the draft where everybody was invested.  You have a smaller group of the population – but a
significant group – fighting this war.  It’s contained.  And it’s a group that necessarily has access to talking about something like
stop-loss, something that’s unfair to them.  Whereas, I think now, this is why I love the website, there’s a place where people can
talk about these things.  Every person who finds out about stop-loss says, “I can’t believe that we as Americans are doing that.”  
That is the consistent response I get and that’s because they don’t know about it.

WCT:  What about the change in the attitudes toward “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell?”  Over the course of your research – from 9/11 to now…

KP:  You mean because they need gays and lesbians, they’re more tolerant?

WCT:  Well that’s what I’m reading and you have military personnel saying, “I don’t care if he or she is gay, this is someone who
has watched out for me.”

KP:  Exactly.  Well that’s the argument that I found the most profound.  That it’s about comradery, right?  It’s about the person that
you’re serving with and so it makes sense that it would get to a point where gay wouldn’t matter.  The same way we got to a point
that race didn’t matter.  I mean fundamentally it doesn’t matter.  I’m sure there’s still racism in the military and I’m sure there’s still
homophobia but it’s really true – you put people into a life threatening situation that’s the bonding experience that happens in the
military.  It makes sense to me that you would get to that point.

WCT:  With such a punitive policy I can’t help wondering what makes a gay or lesbian person want to go see a movie like
Stop-Loss?  
I can’t serve my country…

KP:  Well you can serve your country.

WCT:  I can’t
openly serve my country.

KP:  Right.  But there are a lot of people who still have these values that were raised in these military towns; that were raised with
this as a value system so they don’t see their gayness…it’s not mutually exclusive with their desire to serve their country in this way.  
They still want too.

WCT:  I see that.

KP:  I also think that the way masculinity works…I mean, I’m so fascinated with masculinity; I’m so fascinated with guys bonding.

WCT:  Me too.

KP:  (laughs)  I think the guys are gorgeous, I think the guys are deeply interconnected, they live together, they fight together, and
I think there’s something very interesting about that.

WCT:  
Boys Don’t Cry featured two strong female actors in the starring roles – and here you had Ryan Phillippe and Channing Tatum
and
Joseph Gordon-Levitt – who I love so much—

KP:  Me, too, he’s great.

WCT:  What was the difference in directing all these men?  Intimidating?  Easier?

KP:  I don’t think it was intimidating or easier or harder.  I think it was just very different.  I’m a very physical director.  I seek in my
screenwriting and my directing to create physical situations.  That’s why I like sexuality and I like gender and I like fight scenes and
car races.  I like bodies against bodies and I like bodies moving through space and time.  What’s so great about the guys was – if
you notice – they’re always hitting each other and touching each other and bonding and when they have that fight with the snake
they’re in each others faces.  In a way I got to be even more physical.  I got to make them physical and I got to be physical.  
Channing would just pick me up and put me over his head.  He was just like a big teddy bear.  He wanted me to literally push him.  
During the fight scenes I would physically stand behind the actors so that when they backed up I would push them into each other.  
They became boys with me.  I had them wrestling and tumbling.  That was really fun.  It was like schoolboys.  Also, this is about
male love.

WCT:  Oh yes.

KP:  This is about guys who love each other and respect other and will die for each other and almost every soldier I’ve spoken to
said, “The relationships that you form in combat become the most intense relationships you will ever have in your life.”  I just had a
screening where the wounded warriors came in San Diego.  These guys are crippled and they were like, “We love the movie and we
want to go back and fight” and I was like, “Why do you want to go back and fight?  Is it because you love war and combat?”  They
were like, “It’s not that exciting being a husband and a father.  I miss the guys.”

WCT:  That bonding thing.  That must have been heartbreaking.  I’m immediately taken back to that scene in the VA hospital in the
movie.

KP:  Heartbreaking.  That was based on all real interviews.

WCT:  Between this and
Boys Don’t Cry you are the perfect director to do the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell movie.

KP: (delighted)  Oh good!

WCT:  Right?!  You do action so well; you do gender issues so well.  Any chance you’ll get into that issue?

KP:  If I find a story that feels compelling I would love to, yeah.  I mean, for me it’s about making sure that the central protagonist
has a deep human goal that I can identify with.  For Brandon King this is a guy who is a great leader and he wants to protect his
men.  It’s about family and duty and honor – those are the things that are compelling.  So if then I can get a character that in the
pursuit of their goal fits that in a Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell story then that would work.

WCT:  Great, great!  Or an action picture.

KP:  I love action.

WCT:  It’s so ironic that you do war so well.  You’ve made a great war film.

KP:  I think the way a gay and lesbian audience finds their way in is certainly duty, commitment, value, honor, being patriots, the
American stuff but I think also the male bonding is just so interesting to me.