The pain of soldiers
Don’t say ‘Thank You for Your Service’ to the real-life soldiers depicted in new film
DALLAS — There are all sorts of reasons why movies might fall apart on their tortured journey from script to screen — from busted budgets to ballooning egos.
But those gossipy culprits weren’t what nearly took down “Thank You for Your Service,” the Iraq War drama based on David Finkel’s nonfiction bestseller about a group of veterans’ painful re-entry into civilian society, which opens Friday. It was a phone call. When director/writer Jason Hall initially rang Michael Adam Emory — one of the real-life soldiers whose story of struggle after being paralyzed in battle is key to the film — things didn’t go well.
“I knew he had a physical disability and I assumed that the physical disability was a greater impediment than the trauma he had experienced. I said something to that effect … and that really upset him,” Hall said during an interview in a Ritz-Carlton conference room alongside the film’s star, Miles Teller, and Adam Schumann, the veteran and friend of Emory’s portrayed by Teller.
“He kind of heard it in a more dramatic way than I said it and he flipped off the handle,” Hall, 45, said. “He was on the edge. He called Adam and hit the wall with him.”
The exchange left Hall shaken.
“The core of it is trauma, and these guys are experiencing trauma after trauma after trauma and they don’t have time to move on.” Miles Teller, star of ‘Thank You for Your Service’
Never mind that he had earned a 2015 Oscar nomination with his screenplay for “American Sniper,” the film about the life of Texas Iraq War vet Chris Kyle who was murdered in 2013. He was ready to bail on “Thank You for Your Service,” a project that originally had been meant for Steven Spielberg to direct anyway.
“I was worried for his safety,” Hall said of Emory. “I was like, ‘I can’t do this again, man.’ The last [movie] I did, the guy got murdered and this guy feels like he might take his life.”
Hall’s wife urged him to sleep on the decision.
“I woke up and I knew I couldn’t drop out,” Hall said. “If (the producers) heard that talking to this guy had set him off, they would say it’s too risky, they wouldn’t do it, and this story would never get told. I felt strongly that it was my duty to finish it.”
Covered in blood
It’s easy to understand why Emory became unnerved.
As documented in Finkel’s two books — “The Good Soldiers’”(2009) and “Thank You for Your Service” (2013) — the men of the “2-16 Rangers,” the company with which the journalist had been embedded — have not had an easy time of it. The war’s emotional wounds lay bleeding long after returning home.
That was especially true for Staff Sgt. Schumann who, after Sgt. Emory took a sniper’s shot to the head while on an Iraqi rooftop, carried his nearly lifeless friend on his back down several flights of stairs while the man’s blood drenched him.
To make matters worse, Schumann’s adrenaline-fueled strength finally gave out and he dropped Emory. “I remember the blood was coming off his head and coming into my mouth,” Schumann later told the New York Post. “I couldn’t get the taste out. The iron taste. I couldn’t drink enough KoolAid that day.”
The anguish from that experience rippled through Schumann’s life like a stone skipping across a still lake, affecting relationships with his family and friends. Even today, Schumann can’t bring himself to read “Thank You for Your Service.”
“I opened that book and I read the first few lines. I drop (him) and I quietly close the book and that was it,” Schumann said in that RitzCarlton conference room. “I had read ‘Good Soldiers.’ David’s work spoke for itself so I didn’t need to read it. I knew he did great things.”
And he too was reluctant when first contacted by Hall. He already had opened himself to Finkel. Now, he’d have to do it again for this film
“I made assumptions (about Hall),” he said. “We all do that, judging a book by its cover.”
That cover was, by Hall’s own admission, one of “Hollywood a-hole.” The former actor said he had to change his approach when dealing with Schumann, Emory and the other vets at the heart of the story, including Tausolo “Solo” Aeiti who rescued two buddies but couldn’t save a third, triggering enormous guilt.
“If you come at it like a smart aleck — I kind of came at it like that — it was ‘Oh no, that doesn’t work here,’ ” Hall said. “I have to bring my authentic self to this because that’s how they relate to the world.”
Portraying PTSD
Teller, the one marquee name in the film, hadn’t read the books by Finkel, but was knocked out by the script.
“(I thought) this is a daunting task,” he said. “Ignorantly, knowing I was going to be playing this soldier coming back with PTSD, I thought I have to act PTSD … . There’s an ignorance and a stigma that surrounds it if you don’t understand it.
“The core of it is trauma, and these guys are experiencing trauma after trauma after trauma and they don’t have time to move on. They’re literally doing a final roll call for their brother who just died and, 30 minutes later, the guys are loading up their guns and going on a mission. You’d better be locked and loaded or you’re going to be dead.”
In a case of cinematic serendipity, “Thank You for Your Service” opens a week after another film starring Teller playing a true-life hero. In “Only the Brave,” Teller is one of a group of firefighters called the Granite Mountain Hotshots.
But he says viewers shouldn’t draw too many parallels between the two.
“It’s a certain type of person at the core,” Teller says of both movies. “If a bullet’s coming at them, they’re going to walk towards the bullet. If a fire’s coming at them, they walk to the fire. But the people couldn’t be more different.”
What’s in a name?
“Thank You for Your Service,” as a title, can be taken two ways, as straightforward gratitude for sacrifice and service, or as an ironic put-down of an empty cliche that has been robbed of all meaning.
“The title of the book was all-the-way ironic,” Hall said. “The movie is less ironic in that way. We all want to understand these men and women but we don’t have any vessel for understanding what they’ve done … . When someone comes up and thanks (Adam) for his service, what flashes through his head is some of the stuff that sticks with him. He ordered his guys onto the roof, one of them got shot and he carried him down stairs, choked on his blood and dropped him. It’s like what part are you thanking me for?”
Schumann says he knows people mean well when they say it to him. “None of us want a thank-you … . That was my job. You wouldn’t thank the vacuum for sucking up all the crumbs off the floor. If you’re going to take the time to walk up to a veteran, just ask them where they served, how long they served, and if they were gone anywhere, say ‘welcome home.’ ”
Worth the trouble
Today, Hall is glad he persevered with “Thank You for Your Service” despite the veterans’ initial reluctance.
“The only (other) director (the producers) talked to about it was Clint (Eastwood). So, I pitched myself. I said, ‘I know these guys. I know this world,’ ” he said. “Maybe I’m cocky but … I saw it in my head and felt it in my heart.”
Schumann is glad, too. Even though he couldn’t finish reading the book, he was able to steel himself to work on and watch the movie.
“I sat there and cried for two hours,” he said. “It kicked me in the guts and ripped at my bones. It pulled at my heartstrings and sent my nerves into places they hadn’t been in 10 years.”
Now, he has found a new career of sorts. He was a military consultant on another Iraq War-themed film, the North Texas-set “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk,” that came out last year. And there are spoils to his new position, like getting to hang with Bruce Springsteen, who recorded a song for “Thank You for Your Service.”
But the shocks of war never, ever go away.
“It usually takes a sight, smell, a sound or a feel that stirs them up a little bit,” Schumann said quietly. “And anniversary dates, like (a friend) being killed and other guys losing their lives. Those days are tough.”