Nearly four years ago, when Phil Donahue, the onetime king of daytime television, set to make a documentary film about the war in Iraq, he knew he'd be telling a story of shattered hearts. What he never guessed was that the project would break his own.
"Body of War" is the story of 26-year-old Tomas Young, a handsome young Kansan who enlisted in the Army not long after 9/11. He wanted to go to Afghanistan to hunt down Osama bin Laden but ended up in Iraq instead. An insurgent's bullet penetrated his spine, and he became one of more than 13,000 American soldiers and Marines to return home badly wounded, many permanently disabled. Donahue met Young on a tour of Washington's Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where the newly engaged vet was undergoing rehabilitation and learning to use the wheelchair he'll need for the rest of his life.
"The first time I saw him will be with me forever -- paralyzed from the chest down," the 72-year-old former TV star said. "He had that morphine look: droopy-eyed, sallow, sunken, lifeless. 'Body of War' is a film provoked by my own questions as I stood on my functional legs at his bedside. Why him and not me?"
Donahue resolved to tell the story of Young's struggle to recover his life and enlisted director Ellen Spiro, a documentarian who has made films for HBO and PBS, in the effort. Along the way, their subject became involved in the growing antiwar movement, which reinforced the filmmakers' decision to intersperse Young's personal story with footage of the congressional votes and hearings that sent hundreds of thousands of young American men and women to war in Iraq. The film debuted on the festival circuit in Toronto last year to standing ovations and nearly universal critical acclaim.
Theatrical release, perhaps a cable deal -- the holy grail of documentary filmmakers -- seemed within reach. And then they weren't.
"It's been a big disappointment" said Donahue over lunch at the Peninsula Hotel in Beverly Hills this week. The film, which has been making the festival and small-theater rounds for more than a year, "goes up on marquees -- and then it goes down. I've been jumping out of cakes everywhere. I just came from Seattle, Berkeley and San Francisco. . . . This business will break your heart."
