‘All you have to do is not die’
Veteran’s film explores difficulty of adjusting to life outside war zone
The men talk uncensored about what they did during the war and how they are adjusting back home. Some say they miss combat. One calls it “fun.” Another says it “makes me feel powerful.”
For all the pain and confusion of combat, and the PTSD that followed, being under constant fire was a lot easier than being back home — changing diapers, paying bills, finding a job. In war, they say: “All you have to do is not die.”
The veterans’ candid conversation was caught on film by Marine Corps veteran Stephen Canty, 26, who created a one-hour documentary about men who have one job: kill and avoid being killed in return. In the film, the men, identified only by their first or last name, talk about the thrill of battle and the fear of returning to a civilian society that cannot possibly understand what they have experienced.
Canty, a native of Virginia who now lives in Santa Fe, will hold a public screening of Once a Marine on Monday, Memorial Day, a holiday he said has been difficult for him — one bought and paid for with blood.
He had dreamed of being a filmmaker since his adolescent days, he said, when he and his brother would stage fights between stuffed animals.
He would capture the action on video.
Once a Marine began as a documentary about the difficulties veterans returning from Afghanistan faced when trying to find work, but it took another turn.
Canty had called his old Marine combat buddies, who were trying to navigate the treacherous world of domestic stability and mortgages. He asked if he could film them talking about those difficulties.
“But 20, 30 minutes into the interview, it became a therapy session,” Canty said. “They would say to me, ‘Remember when this happened?’ and then open up. It hit me that I had something unique … no one realizes what you are going through until you put it in context and see that everyone else is going through the same thing.”
Canty shot the film in about six months on a budget of $5,000. He eschewed shooting the so-called B roll to set the scene — such as the exterior of a house or apartment, or a shot of a town where one of the Marines now lives — but now he is raising money to do just that to lengthen the film’s running time and to fix some of its technical flaws.
“I want it to have a life,” he said. “I have a responsibility to these guys and myself and all combat veterans, a certain responsibility to tell the story in a way that they deserve but that doesn’t make any of them feel uncomfortable or exposed.”
One of the men in the film, known as Zell, said it was weird opening up, letting people “see me in my comfort zone.” But he said talking to Canty about his experiences helped him, “so it may help others going through the same thing.”
Zell, who lives on the East Coast, flew to Santa Fe to attend Monday’s screening and support Canty.
Another Marine veteran, who goes by Heath, is also in Santa Fe for the event. But he said he could not bear to
sit through all of Canty’s film and is not sure he will be able to on Monday.
In the span of a few minutes in the film, Heath switches from talking about watching his kids grow up and succeed in school to recalling the excitement of kicking in a door and opening fire on whatever was on the other side.
“Everyone thinks that we are violent psychopaths,” he says. “Combat gave us a rush that we will never feel again. We also want peace in our lives, too.”
Canty used some actual combat footage that he and some of his buddies filmed during their deployment. With smartphones and other devices, he said, it is now common for troops to shoot such footage. Superior officers just ask them to avoid showing dead bodies or gore.
The footage in Canty’s film includes the sounds of aerial warships, howling dogs and the cheers of the Marines as they see artillery light up enemy territory
in the distance. When bullets from a Taliban sniper surprise the unit by hitting a bit too close, one of the men says, with a touch of admiration, “Hey, they’re getting better.”
The fun fades, however, when friends start dying and the men have to tend to a wounded comrade.
Back at home, a veteran experiences a flashback while changing his baby’s diaper — he is reminded of his efforts to stop a friend’s bleeding during a firefight.
Though the men are contemporary combatants, Canty stripped the film of background information about the mission at hand. “I didn’t want the story to be unique to this group of people,” he said. “I wanted it to apply to anybody who has been in combat — not Iraq, not Afghanistan, but anywhere, anytime.”
Though he and some of his comrades talk of their lack of fear today, Canty said he is afraid of how people will respond to the film. He has screened it for a few students and a few combat veterans. The vets liked the film, he said, but when he saw a couple of young women start texting during a screening for a small, invited audience, “That was painful for me. That was the exact reception all of us are afraid of.” He’s also seen more positive results. Shortly after showing the film to another Marine, Canty said, he encountered that man in the waiting room before a therapy session. “He told me that after he saw my film, he thought he should be going into therapy,” he said.
“That’s exactly what I wanted to achieve.”