Latest / Brian Thomas / Michael Pack, director and producer of The Last 600 Meters

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Michael Pack, director and producer of The Last 600 Meters · Brian Thomas

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  Speaker 1: Brian Thomas here right here, and please welcome Michael Pack.
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  Speaker 1: He is a renowned documentary director and we're going to
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  Speaker 1: be talking about his newest release, The Last six hundred Meters,
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  Speaker 1: The Battles of ned Jaff and Fallujah. He is the
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  Speaker 1: president of Manifold Production, the independent film and television production
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  Speaker 1: company that he founded way back in seventy seven. Manifold Productions,
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  Speaker 1: mister Pack have written, directed, and produced numerous award winning,
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  Speaker 1: nationally broadcast documentaries, as well as corporate and educational films.
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  Speaker 1: Also president of Palladium Pictures. I could go through your
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  Speaker 1: film list, but let's dive right onto it. Michael, Well,
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  Speaker 1: welcome to the fifty five care Some morning should to
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  Speaker 1: talk about a very important documentary you released, this Last
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  Speaker 1: six hundred Meters. What caused you to gravitate to make
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  Speaker 1: this particular film about the battles of Najaff and Fallujas
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  Speaker 1: are good to have you on the program.
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  Speaker 2: Well, it's good to be on your program. Well, as
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  Speaker 2: you say, I've made a lot of documentaries, fifteen have
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  Speaker 2: been nationally broadcast by PBS, a very unusual path. It's
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  Speaker 2: called The Last six hundred Meters, The Battles of the
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  Speaker 2: Joff and Fallujah, because a special force of sniper says
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  Speaker 2: in the film, I don't make foreign policy. I delivered
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  Speaker 2: the last six hundred meters of it, meaning what he
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  Speaker 2: could see through a sniperscope, And we try to stay
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  Speaker 2: true to that. It's not about should we be in
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  Speaker 2: Iraq with the Iraq We're good or bad. It was
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  Speaker 2: what it was like to fight these battles. These are
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  Speaker 2: the biggest battles in America has fought since Vietnam. And
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  Speaker 2: we try to tell the story from the point of
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  Speaker 2: view the people who fought there, from corporals and sergeants
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  Speaker 2: up to the one star generals in the field, and
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  Speaker 2: we try to make it a battle story as if
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  Speaker 2: it were a great historic battle like b Rejima or Gettysburg.
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  Speaker 2: And it is the hard great historic battles. But the
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  Speaker 2: path that you asked about how we got there is
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  Speaker 2: an odd one. We were researching a film about the
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  Speaker 2: Iraq War while it was going on in two thousand
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  Speaker 2: and four and five. You know, I thought the stories
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  Speaker 2: of these battles and these young men and women were
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  Speaker 2: being were untold, and I conducted the interviews with them
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  Speaker 2: in two thousand and seven three years after the battle,
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  Speaker 2: when they were still young and their memories were fresh.
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  Speaker 2: And then we completed a version of film in two
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  Speaker 2: thousand and eight, and even though it was primarily funded
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  Speaker 2: by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting PBS initially declined to
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  Speaker 2: broadcast it. They thought it was too pro military. Not
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  Speaker 2: sure what that means with us what they said, And
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  Speaker 2: over seventeen years we begged them to broadcast it, and
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  Speaker 2: finally person of the PBS and what I considered to
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  Speaker 2: be a courageous move, reversed seventeen years of no to
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  Speaker 2: say yes, and we slightly updated it and we put
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  Speaker 2: it on PBS. It was broadcast nationally and PBS the
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  Speaker 2: day before Veterans Day in the two hundred and fiftieth
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  Speaker 2: anniversary of the Marine Corps. And it is now streaming
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  Speaker 2: off doing elsewhere. So it's it had a very unusual history,
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  Speaker 2: but it's being more relevant today than it.
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  Speaker 1: Was a way back when well, cults being say, I'm
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  Speaker 1: trying to draw parallel altitudes about Vietnam. Why were we
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  Speaker 1: battle in the country, We don't care about why? Well,
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  Speaker 1: the soldiers took the brunt of that when they can
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  Speaker 1: always felt terrible about that. But the idea into Iraq
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  Speaker 1: was predicated on weapons and guess what, there weren't any
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  Speaker 1: there at least that is that part of the resistance,
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  Speaker 1: like we shouldn't have been in that ignoring the pearl,
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  Speaker 1: the death and the awful and women on the front
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  Speaker 1: line had to I.
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  Speaker 2: Think I think people couldn't see the because of their ideology.
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  Speaker 2: Whatever it happened, and it was very much parallel to
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  Speaker 2: non war veterans. I think the Irastan were veterans also done.
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  Speaker 2: People don't like their wars too a bunch. The fact
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  Speaker 2: that these were heroic people, young men and women on
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  Speaker 2: the line for us, the American and I think now
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  Speaker 2: more clearly. I mean, you know, the very impressive they've
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  Speaker 2: done to put them laves a huge rim. You can
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  Speaker 2: hear this very dramatic. Oh you know this is you know,
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  Speaker 2: people I wore from home at least, so these people
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  Speaker 2: are doing an unusual thing. And I also think it's
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  Speaker 2: meant though it's in twice battles. I think the world
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  Speaker 2: are often in the wars and will be a point
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  Speaker 2: to the war in Gaza. You know, America opt into
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  Speaker 2: until we should at least understand that.
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  Speaker 1: And you know, I've been in a blessed going to
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  Speaker 1: talk to a lot of what I always refer to
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  Speaker 1: in indoors in Fallujah, and I'm text of I think
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  Speaker 1: I had experience. I can certainly step to post traumatic
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  Speaker 1: stress either reavey or whenever you start kicking, you go
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  Speaker 1: into a room. One point of these brave men they
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  Speaker 1: kick it the room and beneath the foot mounted the
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  Speaker 1: enemy crayoft gun and they started the room from beneath
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  Speaker 1: the floor. What his pants went right through it. Through
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  Speaker 1: that experience, you're doing innutes later in the next building,
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  Speaker 1: you're doing getting up tomorrow and doing the same thing,
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  Speaker 1: operating at that level of adrennine and exploring that amount
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  Speaker 1: of brave in and day out.
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  Speaker 2: It is truly I think that in the breakdown these doors,
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  Speaker 2: you don't know when you smash the dress and the
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  Speaker 2: you're confronting Alliam that you're supposed to help or if
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  Speaker 2: it's going to kill you and you've got to kill him.
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  Speaker 2: But when you have to make these split level decisions day,
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  Speaker 2: you know, to time day after day, a lot to
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  Speaker 2: ask and a lot of the people be down the doors.
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  Speaker 2: The corporal sergeants are eighteen nineteen young men in this
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  Speaker 2: case you know, just out of high school or in college.
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  Speaker 2: It's a lot to ask pressure, but I do spent.
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  Speaker 2: There's been attention to these that are PTSD and typical.
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  Speaker 2: Maybe bad things that happened there like Aditha obscured the
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  Speaker 2: fact that yeah they had true but there's also they did.
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  Speaker 2: We tell the story of Hell House, it varied where
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  Speaker 2: marines were pinned, had to heroically or it's to rescue
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  Speaker 2: the marines in the house. Now you can see it's
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  Speaker 2: going to break into the house to bars and take
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  Speaker 2: his kevler off, having to cross the kill zone. Where
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  Speaker 2: have them PINNs for times? I mean it's very yeah,
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  Speaker 2: sure what is after Hell House? You can see the face,
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  Speaker 2: you know, it's just empty stairs and ang of all energy.
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  Speaker 2: But I think, yeah, there's the PTSD, so the heroism
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  Speaker 2: and valor to notice.
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  Speaker 1: But I couldn't agree more with you and port of
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  Speaker 1: of what they were, what they understand that the questionable
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  Speaker 1: circumstaned to gravitate over that some profoundly affected to the
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  Speaker 1: negati amount of stress, for example. But did you get
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  Speaker 1: collectively if you had to put them on the folks
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  Speaker 1: that you talked about or the talk with when you're
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  Speaker 1: making the last that they were indeed able to accomplish,
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  Speaker 1: that they were prouday with a higher sense of bravery,
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  Speaker 1: efective on their extreme, their sense of purpose. Were they
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  Speaker 1: all positive whole experience and looking looking back atting themselves
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  Speaker 1: on the back that you know, damn it, I entered
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  Speaker 1: and then I did what I was failed.
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  Speaker 2: The variety of view is about them kind of screening
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  Speaker 2: in Washington very really invited all the veterans that many did.
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  Speaker 2: But I hadn't seen them in seventeen years older, of course,
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  Speaker 2: but they were very proud of them. They were very
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  Speaker 2: bonded to each other. A moving experience many veterans, I
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  Speaker 2: think it was their most intense experience, as they said,
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  Speaker 2: got even if I haven't seen them for years, they
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  Speaker 2: have them waves deeper than whether you know they've gone
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  Speaker 2: through this intense you know. So on the other hand,
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  Speaker 2: they all have had trump. Many of them were happy
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  Speaker 2: in my film. Finally they couldn't show it to their family,
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  Speaker 2: They couldn't really speak about the experience. But yeah, I
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  Speaker 2: think they thought, you know, especially the marine that we had.
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  Speaker 2: When marine got it, Look, we can win any war
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  Speaker 2: and any battlefield that we will win. Get to the
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  Speaker 2: objective went on together, these strategic objective to other people's job,
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  Speaker 2: and today we could do it. And this guy years later,
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  Speaker 2: he's still so I think they live over there.
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  Speaker 1: I am so happy. Director of the last six hundred
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  Speaker 1: meters is the battles of I have a kind of
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  Speaker 1: were these the saddles? I mean, you know when you
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  Speaker 1: look in different theater, jungle warfare, you got desert wars,
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  Speaker 1: you know, basically door to door as I sort of
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  Speaker 1: explained it, if re forms were in the job and
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  Speaker 1: fame type of fighting, or were there that going on.
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  Speaker 2: Urban warfare? I mean that sense good the same, but
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  Speaker 2: it's still a Flujia in the north the insurgents and
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  Speaker 2: then out against Chia after the second Battle of fallusiaus
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  Speaker 2: a month period. You know, the city hit by the
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  Speaker 2: mad maconter al satter first began in this very weird
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  Speaker 2: huge cemetery, multiple and multiple layers below grounded landscape, and
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  Speaker 2: then nice bunty militia into this grand uh one of
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  Speaker 2: the most holy sites, and then it's a question of
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  Speaker 2: how you get it's a political battle and vibrating and
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  Speaker 2: then there's all these huge kind of apartment they had
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  Speaker 2: that the that there's levels and they're found in those buildings.
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  Speaker 2: It's now a Democratic congressman story of someone in his
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  Speaker 2: squad countered in the surgeon undergrounds and the quarters were
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  Speaker 2: so close they their machines, and so it was turned
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  Speaker 2: into a knight tell the marine urgent with his knife food.
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  Speaker 2: So it gets bootle, primitive combat and very strange surreals
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  Speaker 2: fight to kicking down the doors. Full of the Second
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  Speaker 2: Battle of Fallujah. Creation on that, but.
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  Speaker 1: Still are fair enough from the Bobs Link. Can't thank
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  Speaker 1: you enough for document that's six hundred meters of battles.
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  Speaker 1: And in my listening audience, I had conveterans, many of
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  Speaker 1: whom were probably can certainly relate to it, and to
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  Speaker 1: a lot of people who really don't get it, haven't
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  Speaker 1: can't understand it, get a load of it. It's right
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  Speaker 1: there for everyone to see, the last six hundred meters
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  Speaker 1: of battles in the job Infludium. My guest today, the
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  Speaker 1: producer and director of the film, Michael Pack, thank you
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  Speaker 1: again for your service to the country and your service
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  Speaker 1: to the men and women who were involved in the
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  Speaker 1: conflict and putting the film together. And I will encourage
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  Speaker 1: my listeners to check it out. I'm staring at the
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  Speaker 1: page right now. PBS Documentaries. It's easy to find, and
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  Speaker 1: my producer will put a link on my blog page
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  Speaker 1: at fifty five care se dot com to make it
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  Speaker 1: that much easier