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 Lieutenant colonel Paul Sinor, an accomplished writer who served as the Army’s TV and Film liaison, has served as an advisor on such big-name films as Transformers and I Am Legend. However, The Messenger, a movie about casualty notification officers, holds special significance for the colonel not only as his last assignment before retirement but as a film that reflects his own experiences having been the head of the Army’s “Killed in Action” branch.
By Allison Griner In this award-winning drama, Ben Foster plays Will Montgomery, a casualty notification officer who falls in love with a soldier’s widow, played by Samantha Morton. Woody Harrelson co-stars as Montgomery’s partner in casualty notification. We talked with the Colonel to find out how he influenced this emotionally charged film. How would you describe working with writer/director Oren Moverman and his cast and crew?
I would work with them tomorrow. It was probably the best experience I had ever working with films, even films I wrote myself. They were very professional when they needed to be. When we had time off, we partied hardy. We worked hard, and we played hard. What was your first reaction when you received The Messenger’s script?
I still have the original copy. Usually when I read a script, the first time I read it for information, then I go through and make all my notes and suggestions. But on this one, when I read it, I think it’s on page 37 that I wrote with a big red magic marker, “Army support stops here.” I did this because in the original script, Ben [Foster]’s character and Samantha [Morton]’s character consummate their friendship; they go to bed and have sex. And I said, “No, not going to do this. This crosses a line that even a soldier wouldn’t cross.” So when I told [director Oren Moverman] my feelings about it, he said, “Ok, how would you fix it?” And I said, “Let them both draw a line in the dirt. Let them both walk up to it and not cross it for their own personal reasons.” And I think their characters are much stronger in the film because they did not go to bed. Was there any friendly fire between you and actor Woody Harrelson, who has a reputation for being anti-war and something of a hippy?
Woody and I got to be pretty good friends. Over the course of pre-production and production, we went out to dinner a lot and we spent a lot of time just getting out together. A lot of the dialogue that Woody delivers in the film is dialogue that he and I worked out together on the spot. I’d say that 90% of the jokes and the comments and the little nuances that he throws in are stuff that I gave him. When we first started, I was a little concerned about, as you said, Woody’s reputation as being anti-war. Midway through, we were having a conversation one night, and we were at Fort Dix, New Jersey. He said, “You know, this thing is changing my opinions. I was never around soldiers before.” He said, “I don’t support the war, but I’m one hundred percent behind the men and women who are over there. I think I’m more pro-soldier now than anti-war.” I thought that was a great revelation. How did you help the actors enter the mindset of the casualty notifications soldiers?
I took [Woody Harrelson and Ben Foster] to my old office in Washington DC, to the casualty notification center, and let them meet some of the people who actually make those notifications. There is a board up there with the names of every person who has been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since the war started. There’s a board up there with everybody who is in the hospital right then and who is wounded, who is being transported back and forth. Whatever the situation is, they track it. These things became real for [the actors]. Then I took them to Walter Reed Hospital. I made arrangements for Ben [Foster] to meet a person who had an eye wound and a leg wound similar to what [Ben’s character] Will had in the film. Ben got to talk to him... After meeting this young soldier whose name is Will, Ben said, “I want to honor him by changing my character’s name.” So that’s where the character’s name Will came from. It was very emotional. Both [Harrelson and Foster] came out in tears that day. Do you believe you can separate politics from the war film? Does this film accomplish that?
This film had the backdrop of a war. However, this was a love story, but not between Ben’s and Samantha [Morton’s] characters. This was a love story between [the characters of] Ben and Woody. This is a buddy movie. This is classic drama set against war. There is not a shot fired in this movie. You never saw anybody get shot, wounded, killed, blown up. You never saw tanks or high-speed aircraft or anything that you associate with war movies. This could have been about cops in the inner city, because police officers make notifications, firemen make notifications, and so do priests, rabbis, doctors. There’s a lot of people who make notifications of deaths, but this one happened to be set very timely with a war backdrop. I think the film separated [politics] very nicely. The soldiers in the film are responsible for casualty notification. It’s a largely ignored job. Why do you think it is important to feature the jobs of soldiers outside the battlefield?
Casualty notification is not something that’s unknown in the military. Everybody’s going to have the opportunity to do it. It’s just a question of when do you do it. I’ve been to several premiers and showings where there were military in the audience, and every one of them stood up without fail and said, “Hey, these guys nailed it. This is exactly what it’s like, and this is how it feels. This is the personal trauma that I went through when I did it.” I don’t care how many times you do it, you will always remember the name of the person that you notified. You take those names to your grave. Contemporary war movies, if you can call The Messenger one, notoriously have a hard time attracting viewers. Why do you think that is?
I think that the war movies that have not attracted viewers have been war movies that have tried to politicize a war. You go to movies for entertainment. If you want poli-sci 101, read a book or go to school. Don’t go a see a movie. There’s some really funny stuff in The Messenger. I think The Messenger’s message is that the soldiers are human too. Soldiers are not supermen and superwomen. They’re human. They have the same feelings that everybody else does. But they have a job and they do it as professionally as possible.
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