At the bottom of this L.A. Times piece there’s a fascinating story explaining why “The Hurt Locker” lost their support from the Defense Department at the last minute. It appears as though the government was perfectly willing to support the production until a couple of last minute scenes were added that included detainee abuse (possibly the David Morse scene I describe here)[emphasis mine]:
At one point, “The Hurt Locker” might have been made with government cooperation. But just 12 hours before Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale was to fly to Jordan to serve as the Army’s technical advisor to “The Hurt Locker,” he said in an interview that he heard there might be problems. A Jordanian official told him that scenes were being shot that were not in the script that the Army had approved. Breasseale accused the producer of shooting a scene in which soldiers act violently toward detainees. (The military does not provide help to films depicting violations of the laws of war, unless their consequences are shown.) He also charged that the production had driven a Humvee into a Palestinian refugee camp in order to film angry crowd scenes.
This might refer to a scene where what are supposed to be Iraqi kids are seen angrily throwing rocks at an American Humvee. A scene that seems to say we don’t want you here.
“Nice working with you,” Breasseale said he recalled telling a producer before the military decided to stop working with the production. “Kathryn has a lot of talent, but I cannot trust that your company will honor its contract to the soldiers and government of the U.S.” Breasseale said the filmmakers had been solicitous of the Army’s opinion, “trying to get the look and feel right,” and they had been allowed to film at an Army logistics base in Kuwait. …
[Screenwriter and producer Mark] Boal said that while the production initially worked with the U.S. military, it parted ways when it became clear they would not approve of “The Hurt Locker’s” script. He said the producers did not film on a base in Kuwait and never signed a contract.
Both screenwriter/producer Mark Boal, and military technical advisor Lt. Col. J. Todd Breasseale agree that at one time the U.S. Military was working with the “Hurt Locker” producers. Then, according to Breasseale, “scenes were being shot that were not in the script that the Army had approved” and that he could no longer “trust that [“The Hurt Locker”] company [would] honor its contract to the soldiers and government of the U.S.”
Boal’s response is that no contract was signed, but that’s taking the word “contract” literally. Even my inital reading of Breasseale’s comments weren’t that literal. My first assumption was that he meant an unwritten contract, and if scenes were added after the military had already approved the script — scenes of our guys committing detainee abuse — Breasseale is absolutely correct.
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