Today we talk with BAKER BOYS director Kern Konweiser. A Newport Beach native and former screenwriting instructor at UCI, Konsweiser has had films in the festival on four prior occasions.
His film BAKER BOYS tracks cameraman John Steele, who after covering nearly every major conflict over the past 35 years, went straight into the heart of an Al Qaeda hotbed a few kilometers outside of Baghdad to chronicle the last 90 days of Baker Company's (U.S. Army, 3rd Infantry battalion) tour of duty, and the 'war inside' that they will inevitably bring home with them. Steele developed an uncommon level of trust with the soldiers, and an unprecedented level of access to the Army's commanders. The resulting conversations with the soldiers toward the end of the final 90 days of their tour of duty are so deeply personal that they seem more like confessionals than interviews.
Q: How did you hear about the Newport Beach Film Festival?
My brother (who is my producing partner) and I were raised in Newport Beach, so it was always been an ambition of ours to have a film included in the festival. Our first film to make it into the Newport Beach Film Festival was the documentary "Crossover: A Worldwide Basketball Odyssey" in 2004. We've had a few other films in the festival since then, but "BAKER BOYS: INSIDE THE SURGE" is by far the most significant documentary we've made and we are deeply proud to be able to bring it to our hometown audience in Newport Beach.
Q: Tell a little about the story of your film and the production of it.
A: The documentary was filmed in Iraq by a crew of one -- war cameraman Jon Steele. Jon has an amazing 35-year career of filming in war zones and areas of crisis around the world for the UK news channel ITN. But he quit his job the day before the bombing started in Baghdad because he objected to the way the media had been complicit in the Bush administration's lead up to the war.
Five years later, he saw tens of thousands of American soldiers coming home with PTSD and realized that nobody was covering the story of what this war was doing to the hearts and minds of our own soldiers. So he went back to Iraq -- by himself, with no media affiliation -- and spent 90 continuous days embedded with Baker Company of the 1/15 Infantry, an Army combat unit at a forward outpost in the middle of an Al Qaeda hotbed, so he could ask the soldiers on camera "What do you think?" and "How do you feel" about a range of topics. He joined them right at the start of a new turn in the war, which we now know as The Surge. What Jon ended up capturing is perhaps the first and only look on film at how a counter-insurgency really works, including the massive cash payouts the Army made to Sunni extremists in order to buy their loyalty away from Al Qaeda. It is startling to see these American soldiers handing over briefcases full of cash to Iraqis who they know are harboring terrorists... but the strategy actually worked and what Jon captured in the film was the turning of the tide from Al Qaeda back toward the American troops. And all the complex questions that arise out of a strategy like this. Questions like what does this say about our mission in Iraq? What impact does this tactic have on the common soldier who earns in a year what we're paying the enemy every two weeks? And the soldiers spoke candidly to Jon about all of that, and more.
After Jon returned, I was fortunate enough to be introduced to the project by David Pritchard of Gigapix Studios, and I threw myself into it with everything I could give. I collaborated with Jon and the editors, Davon Ramos and Derek Boonstra, on taking his 120 hours of raw footage and crafting the documentary. About a year later, we now have a movie that we all feel is the most important thing any of us has ever done in our careers.
Q: Tell a little about yourself and your story in filmmaking.
A: When we were kids, my brother Kip and I used to sit on a bluff near our house in Newport Beach, looking out over the harbor and planning how we were going to make movies together someday. Kip would be the producer and I'd be the writer/director and between us we'd make sure that creative and business earned equal attention. And that's pretty much what we did. We got our masters degrees from USC School of Cinema-Television, myself in screenwriting and Kip in production, went to work at the very bottom of the industry as assistants and PAs and learned every possible aspect of the business on our way up. We had a break out hit in 1997 with our film "Miss Evers' Boys" for HBO, and have stayed busy ever since. Our expertise has become documentaries and independent feature films, often with a global view of the world or getting inside cultures beyond what we find in our own backyards. We both consider ourselves 'world citizens', to steal the phrase from Arthur Ashe, and try to reflect that in the stories that we tell. Currently, we're both working at Gigapix Studios, an independent film company specializing in family films and the company that co-funded "BAKER BOYS: INSIDE THE SURGE".
Q: Your take on the performances of the lead actors, any set backs, triumphs, impressions, good surprises, etc.
A: Since "BAKER BOYS: INSIDE THE SURGE" is a documentary, I'll speak to the process of working with the soldiers in the film, which was a delicate situation because they speak so honestly on film and say things that are deeply personal, things that they probably haven't even told their own families but are saying to Jon on camera. Many of the guys shared their experiences dealing with PTSD, which I know was difficult for them. So we felt a powerful responsibility to treat these guys with respect and to avoid being exploitative. Our approach was that we're not making a pro-war film or an anti-war film, it's just a naked look at what war really is. And the response from the soldiers in Baker Company has been largely supportive and grateful. It's a sign of validation that so many of the guys from Baker Company have asked what they can do to help promote the film, including the commanding officer, Captain Rich Thompson, who will be attending the Newport Beach screening and leading a Q&A immediately afterward.
One other thing I have to say is that the U.S. Army was remarkably cooperative with us, especially considering that the film shows the cash payouts and that many of the soldiers say things that probably make the Army's top brass turn blue in the face. But the Army's take on it was "We may not like the things the soldiers have to say, but after 7 years in Iraq, they've earned the right to say it." The Army exhibited no creative control whatsoever on the content of the film. The only changes they requested were to blur the faces of certain people whose safety would be compromised if their identities were revealed on film.
Q: What do you do when not making a smash indie film?
A: The curse of making independent films is that as soon as you finish one, you are unemployed until you get the next one going. It's a frightening cycle that means no matter how much success your latest film achieves, you can never get comfortable resting on your laurels. So when we're not in production, we're writing scripts or searching for scripts that we can fall in love with, then packaging them, securing financing and basically pouring our souls into the entire process, because in my experience that's the only way that worthwhile films get made.
That, and spending good quality time with our wives and kids who endure us being gone for months at a time when we're in production!
BAKER BOYS screens at 2:45 PM on Friday, April 23 at the Edwards Island Theater 6.
Buy ticket here:
http://newportbeachfilmfest.tix.com/Event.asp?Event=256746
Watch the trailer for Baker Boys here:
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