Not long ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Jake Rademacher, the director of the incredible Iraq War documentary, “Brothers at War.” What ensued was one of the more enjoyable evenings I’ve had in a while. Jake is an interesting fellow. I’ve seen him interviewed before and it seems that, when cameras are involved, he’s a much more subdued character. Sit down with him one on one and get a few cups of joe into him and all bets are off. He’s smart, funny, extremely passionate about his film and its subject matter — and the man talks fast. Very fast.
Cpt. Isaac Rademacher — Jake Rademacher
After some initial pleasantries (actor talk, a little sports, our mutual respect for Gary Sinise, etc.), we got down to it.
By the way, if you want to get a true feeling of how the interview was for me, try to read it very quickly.
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J.R. Head: First, let me say “Brothers at War” looks fantastic. You’re an actor. What was it like to make the transition to first-time director?
Jake Rademacher: I always had a fascination with story and who people are since I was a young boy. I did a lot of reading growing up, watched a lot of movies, and eventually won the English award in High School. I then went on to Notre Dame after poor eyesight kept me out of West Point and studied English. I was actually overseas studying at Trinity College Dublin during my junior year when I discovered acting. What I learned as an actor greatly informed not only my directing, but what I decided to focus on in “Brothers at War.” Traveling around the country as a stage actor gave me an understanding of story and audience from the boards, being up there in front of them. In preparing for those roles, I spent a long time studying behavior, I wanted to give the audience something real. In order to do that I would research extensively. I think that element; spending all that time and all that focus and all that energy trying to understand people, trying to learn about them, trying to figure out how they work, understanding who we are and why we are and what we do, I think, had a lot to do with my ability to have “Brothers at War” cut to the bone of who my brothers, my family, and the warriors on the edge of the battlefield are.
JRH: What about the look of the film? You shot some of it, yes? Who taught you to shoot?
JR: A friend of mine, Ben Byer, got diagnosed with ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease, and he asked me to go out to the east coast with him and shoot some interviews and B-roll for him. I said, “I don’t know. I’ll do whatever I can to help you out but I’ve never shot anything before.” He said, “Don’t worry about it. I went to Paris Film School. I’ll teach you.” I said, “Ohhhh-kay”. I went over to his home in Chicago, and he gave me a crash course in shooting. Over the course of a few hours he taught me about focus, aperture… the way he taught me shot composition was he took a book of these amazing stills, a lot of black and whites, and he just showed me how to construct a shot. The meaning behind a shot. Framing. After catching the acting bug in Ireland, I toured Europe during the summer and would spend hours entranced by Monets, Renoirs, Van Goghs …across Italy and France. Later, every year a major exhibit would be featured at the Chicago Museum of Art, and I would spend hours just looking at paintings. Absorbed, fascinated, taking it all in. I think all those paintings, telling a story or conveying an emotion in one frame, in a picture, left a deep impression.
JRH: So, an appreciation for painting–
JR: –for painting, for a beautiful still. That was the start, but I learned a lot about shooting on the fly from my two DPs (directors of photography), Marc Miller and Conor Colwell. Conor was at LMU film school and I could just tell from his reel that he had the eye. He really knew how to tell a story in a shot. Marc has over 25 years of experience. Conor is kind of young and hip. So, it was a good mix. I learned from both. Stan Eng also accompanied Conor and I on the first trip and shot some good stuff as well.
JRH: So, they were able to kind of mentor you a bit and–
JR: Their tutelage came in handy especially during the second trip. Marc has a wife and kids, so I had an issue with putting him in the most dangerous spots. I’m single, you know. No wife. No kids. So, I climbed the walls with the snipers, was in the lead Iraqi unit as it pushed out the gate. Norman S. Powell, my producing partner looked at the footage and said I really grew as a photographer over the course of the embeds.
JRH: What did you most want to take home with you? Was there a point where you said, “This is the shot I came here for?”
JR: I thought the people were the most interesting thing to see in Iraq. I wasn’t interested in getting them to say something that I had written, to fill in some kind of outline. I was on a mission of discovery. I hadn’t written my script ahead of time. So, I was really interested in finding out who the guys were, why they did what they did and what they had to say about it.
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JRH: That gets into another question I have for you. As we see in the trailer, you say you wanted to know why your brothers do what they do. Couldn’t you have just asked them? What compelled you to go and see things with your own eyes?
JR: That’s an interesting question because the thing is you can’t ask them. I mean, you can ask them–The problem is that they try to tell us but give up because it’s too hard to explain. The chasm is too great. These guys study combat, not communication. I found it very difficult to explain to people what it was like and I communicate for a living, so I can only imagine what it’s like to be a soldier and try to communicate it to a civilian. So, the only way for me to understand, to cross that chasm, was to go, see it and experience it for myself. There were a couple of things that were important to me. I didn’t want to make a film with people talking about what they did twenty years ago, when it was distant. If I’m going to make a documentary, I want to interview them on the job, while they’re doing it and ask them how they feel about it. How did it feel to be in Iraq, while you’re sitting on the Syrian border, eight hours away from your buddies, in 120 degree heat… How are you feeling about it? You enjoying yourself? I figured they might give me a more emotionally in-tune answer there. Also, this dovetails with the look of the film. A lot of the interviews are in close-up because I wanted to pick up what’s happening beyond what they’re saying. I wanted to pick up how they’re feeling, where they are and let all these things inform “Brothers at War”.
JRH: Did it take a long time for the guys to get used to having a camera in their face?
JR: Yeah. Hell, it took me a while to get used to the camera being in my face. I didn’t want to perform for the film. I didn’t even know if I was going to be in the film. I just let myself be filmed because we thought that may be the story. With them, I think it was a little awkward, at first, so I tended to shoot a lot. I just kept rolling. Part of the reason was so that they would forget about the camera. Further, for the most part, we were “outside the wire” on a mission, it’s dangerous, they’ve got a job to do. It also got to the point where I’m out there with you–You’re carrying a rifle, I’m carrying a camera. You’re doing your thing, I’m doing mine. Under stressful situations, I find you get to know people in a more intimate way. More so than, say, standing at a bus stop or working with them at a restaurant. Y’know, nobody is going to lose their life if someone forgets to clear table twelve.
So, out on a mission, you get closer with people, you get to know a little bit more. It makes you more in-tune with them. You spend a lot of time with these guys, so they really get to know who you are. Bottom line is that we all kind of forgot about the camera because there were more important things going on and I think there was a bit of trust. I wasn’t like a news crew out for one day on a mission, trying to get the answers I wanted to plug into my story. I was there as someone in for the long haul. I was there for three months and went on 30 missions, asked a lot of questions, interviewed a lot of war fighters and had a real interest in what they were doing and why they were doing it. I think a lot of those guys want to talk about what they’re doing, they just don’t want to have there story suffer the telephone game as it goes from the News Bureau desk to an editor back in the states who does the final edit even though the closest he’s ever been to the Sandbox is when he picks his kids up from kindergarten.
That was one of the most exciting things for me, to just be there to the point where I just kind of disappear. When I was with the snipers and we caught that M&M moment, I just faded into the bricks. I think that was the second hour of footage on them. I shot a whole other hour of footage before that moment happened. And by the time they get into the banter: the girlfriend and all that, they’re just doing their thing. They’re trying to pass the time and they’re not worried about the guy sitting against the wall (me) doing his thing. They don’t even know if I’m rolling or not at that point.
JRH: The M&M bit is in the trailer, which looks great, by the way. It shows a pretty broad range. It’s not just some dour, heavy-handed thing. There’s an element of humor as well as more serious tones. What can the audience expect from “Brothers at War”?
JR: Well, the trailer is very evocative but, at two and a half minutes, it’s really just a teaser. The trailer gives you a sense of the danger, of the humor, a sense of the discovery and certainly a glimpse of how we penetrate into the family dynamic. You’ll get a chance to see these guys reflected through the viewpoints of their wives, their daughters, their fathers and mothers, brothers and sisters. So, when you start to see somebody through how other people look at them, I think you start to paint a more complete portrait of who these guys are. An additional element of “Brothers at War” is the opportunity to spend time with and meet a wonderful cross section of the people we have serving us overseas. These unique individuals create a vivid and dynamic portrait of our American Warrior on the edge of the battlefield.
You get a taste of that in the trailer, you get a moment, a flash of some of the guys you meet along the way. Each of these guys comes out of the texture of the scene and really takes the spotlight, and you get to know who they really are… who these guys are that stepped up to be Marines and Rangers and Recon Paratroopers and snipers. Guys working with the Iraqi Army, Iraqis who stepped forward to be a translator in the most dangerous combat units. You also get a sense of Iraq, the landscape. You get a chance to go up to Kurdistan, into the Sunni Triangle, out to the Syrian border. So, you get perspective on Iraq by going on the journey across the country in this story.
Finally, you get a chance to see how this war is actually being fought. You get a chance to sit in on an intel brief and be out at a reconnaissance site at night as the action is happening. Then during the day, when nothing is happening. You’re with the soldiers baking in the sun and waiting for the next moment of action the next night. You get to go out with the National Guard snipers and see how they’re trying to ferret out the bad guys. Trying to catch them in the act of placing I.E.D.s or walking out of mosques with automatic weapons. You get a chance to see the Iraqi Army and make your own evaluation about why it takes more than ten minutes to set up the Iraqi Army.
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In part two, Jake Rademacher talks about “pre-Surge” Iraq, my beloved Marine Corps and more. Stay tuned.
Semper fi,
J.R. Head
“Brothers at War” is currently playing in Los Angeles at Santa Monica’s AMC Broadway 4. It is also currently playing in Springfield, IL, White Plains, NY and Knoxville, TN.