Brokedown Palace

By Matthew Scott Kelemen, AlterNet. Posted March 4, 2005.

It's Friday afternoon, and Michael Tucker has just scored a small victory. Yesterday he screened his documentary, Gunner Palace, for representatives of the Motion Picture Association of America, and won an appeal that will allow the film to be released with a PG-13 rating rather than its original R.

"It's a landmark thing," says the director by phone from Los Angeles. "It's landmark for profanity in America. It's huge. It's the most profane PG-13 movie, ever."

The profanity comes from some of the mouths of the 400 soldiers of the 2/3 Field Artillery Unit who, in November 2003 when Tucker arrived in Baghdad, were stationed in a bombed-out palace that once belonged to Uday Hussein. Tucker lived with the soldiers for two extended periods. He rode along on raids,

... But outside the pool, the reality is hard to avoid.

waited interminable hours for action, and absorbed the unease that the soldiers felt as they experienced the rise of the post-invasion insurgency. He also captured their coping mechanisms for dealing with beerless frustration, whether communicative or satirically sacrilegious.

Gunner Palace is one of a cluster of cultural signifiers indicating a fundamental shift in how we perceive, and will perceive, the war on Iraq. The recent Frontline special, "A Company of Soldiers," followed the 1/8 Cavalry's Dog Company in November 2004, one year after Tucker embedded himself with the 2/3. The Sand Storm, a one-act play conceived and written by veteran Sean Huze, won critical acclaim when it opened in L.A. last fall and returns soon to the Elephant Asylum Theater for a month-long run, beginning with a March 17 benefit for Operation Truth.

Watch an Exclusive 'Gunner Palace' Clip Soldiers from the 2/3 Field Artillery Unit conduct a raid on an Iraqi house. Lo-Res (60k) Hi-Res (300k)

It's an inevitable shift, as the first generation of the million soldiers who have served and are serving in Iraq have returned to settle back into civilian life, re-adjusting to life on this side as the death toll back in Iraq passes the 1500 mark. When they were in Iraq, they wondered if Americans thought about them at all between episodes of American Idol as they lived through the real Fear Factor on a daily basis. They wondered if anyone back home besides their relatives cared about what they were going through or what their lives were like. Now, America is finding out.

One Man with a Camera

When Michael Tucker first showed up at Gunner Palace, Sadaam Hussein had still not been captured, and members of the 372nd Military Police Battalion had yet to begin snapping digital photos of prisoners at Abu Ghraib. George Bush would make a surprise visit to Baghdad later that month to slice turkey for the troops, but that would to little to relieve the sense of unease that had already set in.

"I always joke that he just came to the gate one day," says John Powers, a captain with the 2/3 who is currently accompanying Tucker on a screening tour. "We had a lot of cameras there, so it wasn't a new thing to have a cameraman with us. Usually we had guys with entire crews."

But Tucker stood out. "He was just one man with a camera," says Powers. "He actually stayed for more than a couple of days. The soldiers saw he wasn't here to get a news clip. A lot of journalists come there with a specific story in mind. I think the guys realized Michael was there to get their story."

Tucker was not a journalist. An itinerant filmmaker, he had won an award in Germany in 1998 for a short film he had made with his wife and Gunner Palace collaborator Petra Epperlein, but his resume was otherwise nondescript. Prior to residing at Uday's crib he had been to Iraq twice, once to make a film about an armored car salesman. He would make two more trips to Baghdad to make his documentary.

Gunner Palace opens in New York, San Francisco, Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles on Friday, March 4. For details on further openings, see the Gunner Palace web site.

Matt Kelemen is Assistant A&E Editor/Film Editor at Las Vegas CityLife.