Shooting War: Richard Schickel talks about his new documentary

By Ted Elrick

l-r Co-producer Doug Freeman, director/writer/producer Richard Schickel and editor Bryan McKenzie putting the finishing touches on Shooting War. (Photo: Terry Lilly)

We've seen the images - as scratchy black-and-white newsreels, as stock action footage in Hollywood war films, used to make documentaries more dramatic regardless of whether the images actually occurred during the subject of the documentaries. These images, of course, are those captured by the combat photographers of World War II.

While soldiers carried rifles and grenades, these men hit the beach armed only with cameras and film - generally a Bell and Howell 35mm Eyemo that spent its film in less than two minutes requiring hasty film changes as bullets filled the air.

Rarely have we seen this footage used in its proper context - actually depicting the battles the cameramen filmed. Even rarer is the opportunity to hear from the cameramen themselves, recounting the horrifying situations they found themselves in while capturing the images that have come to haunt the consciousness of succeeding generations.

Fortunately, a new documentary, Shooting War, airing December 7 on ABC, provides us with that unique opportunity to hear these heroes tell their stories. Longtime DGA member and Time magazine film critic, Richard Schickel, who wrote, produced and directed the documentary, had initially proposed doing a film about John Ford's war. He approached Steven Spielberg, who executive produced Shooting War, with that idea.

"There had been an article in The New Yorker by Doug Brinkley of the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans about some fellows who had found some footage Ford's unit shot in World War II," Schickel explained.

"I had worked with Steven on a couple of little things and so I sent him a note about it. He sent back a note suggesting, 'Let's do all the cameramen of World War II. I think I could sell this at a network.' So I put together a little outline and Steven was as good as his word and it became a DreamWorks/Lorac [Schickel's production company] Production. "

The concept for the film was to show the entire WWII experience, from Pearl Harbor through Nagasaki, through the eyes of the cameramen. Such a massive undertaking would require unearthing thousands of reels of original footage and tracking down the men who'd shot it.

To that end, Schickel immediately contacted Melvin R. Paisley, a WWII aviator and Reagan-era Assistant Secretary of Defense. Paisley had discovered the canisters of Ford's missing film within the National Archives mentioned in The New Yorker article. Schickel hired him and Lars Anderson to be the researchers for his film.

"Mel just lives in the National Archives and I'd say 99% of our combat footage came from there," he added. "Then I contacted Joe Longo who had been a combat photographer and who, until recently, was President of the Combat Cameraman's Association. He was very helpful in tracking down cameramen to interview. "

To Schickel, it was crucial that the film cover every theater of war. "In talking with Joe or Mel, we would very specifically say, 'We need some more people from Europe,' or 'We need a Coast Guard guy,' or whatever. That was how it evolved and how we were able to focus in on such a massive undertaking. "

Film director Richard Brooks. From his personal collection. (Photo: Phil Stern)

Schickel began conducting his interviews, specifically asking each of the cameramen to talk about their most significant experiences. He discovered that many could vividly recall footage they'd shot - the time, location, incident, the pressures, the emotions - and he sent that information off to Paisley to track down the corresponding footage in the National Archives. One of the remarkable things about the footage is that even in the midst of a firefight, the cameraman would slate the film, verifying the date, place and time.

"With two or three exceptions Mel was successful in locating specific footage," Schickel explained. "One guy, for example, had a wonderful story about parachuting behind the lines in Yugoslavia with the guerillas, but we could only find still photos. They were terrific, but, there wasn't any motion picture footage. Another fellow, I felt, made up a tale and I didn't feel comfortable including his incident. Another, we just couldn't find his footage. His was about Northern Europe toward the end of the war and sounded great, but it didn't turn up. "

What did turn up were some harrowing incidents such as that shot by Norm Hatch on Tarawa. "We're seeing his footage and he's talking about how hard it was to walk through the water and what a mess it was on the beach. Suddenly he hears some guy say, 'Here they come' and he swivels his camera around and you see these Japanese soldiers running across his field of vision. To me, that's what makes this film unique. These guys were there. "

Then there's the footage shot by Arthur Mainzer in Buchenwald concentration camp. The Army forced the local townspeople to walk through the camp to show them the horrors of what they had lived next to and remained silent about for so many years. "Art's story is very touching to me in that he is a very simple man," Schickel said. "He was a G.I. shooting in the neighborhood and they told him there was this weird thing he'd better go up and shoot. He was appalled because he had never known about the camps. And he looks in my camera and says, 'There were a lot of people who didn't believe [these atrocities] happened. Here we had it on film.' There's all these dead bodies, emaciated bodies, and he says, 'Some people kept dying even after we liberated them.' The simplicity of the way he says it, to me, is just enormously touching because he's never gotten over that. But more important, it seems to me the perfect answer to the Holocaust deniers. How can anyone dispute the evidence of a camera's eye?"

Many of the cameramen have until now been anonymous witnesses. But some became DGA film directors such as Russ Meyer and the late Richard Brooks who as a Marine corporal gathered the footage from cameramen and assembled the documentary, Battle of the Marinas. "In my opinion, Richard Brook's film is one of the best documentaries of the war," Schickel said.

The miniatures John Ford used in his documentary to re-create Pearl Harbor. (Photo: Courtesy of the National Archives)

Brooks tells about a moment when he asked Marine General Howland "Howling Mad" Smith if the combat cameramen could also carry sidearms. He said that when they ran out of film, at least they could pitch in with the fighting. Smith snapped back, "I don't even care if you've got film in the camera. I want those cameras there and I want them there all the time, because those cameras are the eyes of the world and there are no cowards in front of a camera. "

Meyer talks about hooking up with a Free French Tank Force who warns them not to turn down a certain road. "We found a lot of Meyer's footage, including the guy telling Meyer not to turn down that road," Schickel said. "Meyer's footage is maybe the most harrowing we have. The wounds the tankers took are just horrible to look at. One of the things I'm very proud of is that I believe every single thing in our movie is true. I don't think anybody lied to me because we found their footage. I was very strict in the sense that if it seemed to be questionable, then we wouldn't include it. If we can't prove it, we don't play it. "

Actor/director Tom Hanks introduces the film and leads the audience through the different theaters of war. The film opens with John Ford's depiction of Pearl Harbor and reveals that the famed director chose fake footage of miniature battleships exploding on the 20th Century Fox lot over actual footage because Ford felt his was more dramatic. Schickel includes a lot of the behind-the-scenes footage of the miniatures.

Another interesting tale of how Hollywood impacted what we saw, is told by Ed Montagne who tells about how John Huston shot his own WWII documentary The Battle of San Pietro in Italy. Huston not only used the footage shot by Montagne and other cameramen but also used a group of GIs to restage the battle. Not realizing that much of footage was staged and that Huston wasn't hindered by Germans shooting at him, many in Army command began demanding that their other combat photographers get equally good shots of the action.

Since the film would air on ABC, Schickel had some concerns that many of the scenes were very graphic. These included a fallen Japanese soldier being hit by shells from a 50 caliber machine gun and shots of the bodies of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini and his wife after they'd been hanged by an angry Italian mob. "Steven kept saying to remember that this was war; he didn't want it prettied up. It's the same philosophy that made Saving Private Ryan so powerful. There's a lot of rough footage. It tends to be bloodier in the Pacific war because the islands were small, and they're in very intimate contact with the enemy. In addition, very few Japanese surrendered."

One of the most heart-wrenching sequences is of a woman, who had been so filled with Japanese propaganda about how brutal the Americans were, that when cameraman John Ercole pointed his camera her way, she threw her child, baby and herself off a cliff to drown in the sea below.

Schickel estimates that well over six months were spent at an AVID to edit down the interviews and combat footage. Bryan McKenzie, the editor and who had worked previously on many of Schickel's documentaries including The Harryhausen Chronicles, Eastwood on Eastwood and Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey, said that his experience on Shooting War was unlike any project he'd worked on before. "I've never worked with this much historical footage before," McKenzie said. "I worked on one show where they threw in every frame of historical footage they could find whether it related to the event they were showing or not. This was very specific. Somebody would tell a story and then we'd sure enough find their slate on the footage at the National Archives and it would be the story they were telling. So it was really exciting and moving at the same time. Since working on this film, I've seen a number of World War II films and they're usually just whatever shot works. "

G.I. on the beach at Normandy. (Photo: Walter Rosenblum)

Doug Freeman, who co-produced this film and Eastwood on Eastwood with Schickel and who was associate producer and composer on Elia Kazan: A Director's Journey, said, "There was so much to learn on this film relative to any of the others we've worked on together. Most of the films we work on relate to the Hollywood movie history in some way. This was a nice diversion. We came into contact with so many more people on this, so many with incredible stories. Also, this project seems to be creeping out into the world in ways that none of our others have. "

Those ways include recognition from the military establishment. The film premiered at the June 5 opening of the National D-Day Museum at the Eisenhower Center in New Orleans. Secretary of Defense William Cohen attended the screening and was so moved by the film that he arranged to have Schickel screen it in October for the Pentagon brass including the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and invited guests. According to Schickel, many in the crowd were extremely enthusiastic about the film.

Shooting War is Schickel's 28th film as writer, producer and director. About the experience he said, "Every other film I've ever made, when I look at it I find something wrong. I say, 'Oh, God, that's terrible. We could've done this or that.' Let me put it this way, I don't expect ever again to make a film that I so totally like. In a way, I feel this thing came together in some magical way, it was just click, click, click, pieces falling together. It was a very important subject about very important individuals. So if this is the last film I ever make, it's the one I'd be happiest to go out on."

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