E-mail a friendRobert Greenwald
airdate April 15, 2009
Award-winning filmmaker Robert Greenwald has exec produced and/or directed more than 55 TV movies, miniseries and features. He's tackled such subjects as human rights abuse and teens in prison and, through his company Brave New Films, makes political video shorts. His foundation uses media to address social issues and produces In Their Boots, a Web series on the impact that the Iraq and Afghanistan wars are having on people in the U.S. Greenwald serves on the boards of various community organizations.
Documentary filmmaker talks about the scope of needs in caring for returning troops. (2:20)
Full interview. (9:17)
Robert Greenwald
Tavis: Robert Greenwald is an Emmy-nominated a Peabody Award-winning documentary filmmaker whose latest project focuses on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and their impact on people and communities here in the U.S. "In Their Boots" is currently on a 10-month tour, with upcoming stops in Houston, Washington, and Atlanta. The project is also available online at InTheirBoots.com. Here now, a scene from "In Their Boots."
[Clip]
Tavis: Robert, nice to see you again.
Robert Greenwald: Pleasure to be with you.
Tavis: Congrats on another fine project.
Greenwald: Thank you.
Tavis: For those who know your work, as I do, we have known you over the years as one who courageously does not pull punches, does not pull political punches, says what he means, means what he says, and doesn't hold back on film in raising all kinds of truths.
This project raises truths, but in a different sort of way. There's no politics, really, connected to this. It's - can I say right down the middle?
Greenwald: Right to the heart (unintelligible).
Tavis: That's a better metaphor, yeah, a better analogy.
Greenwald: Well, what we felt was that no matter what your politics around the war or wars that there was a very important story that wasn't being told, which was when these women and men come home. And the war may be over for them at the moment, but for their families, for their friends, for the people who love them, it continues and it's ongoing.
And so Rick Perez and his team, working with the "In Their Boots" model, have told these really powerful and very, very emotional stories so all of us know there are needs out there when people come home.
Tavis: What is the war, to your point, that doesn't end when they come home?
Greenwald: Well, people come back changed. Some come back physically changed, some come back mentally changed, everybody comes back emotionally changed. And we all know how difficult change can be on any kind of family system or friends, and so when you've been over there - Iraq or Afghanistan - now you're back home, everything looks different, everything feels different.
You may look the same if fortunately you don't have a physical injury, but as we just heard, in your mind, it's a prison, or there's an emotion going on, and that requires family, that requires legislative support, it requires financial support. And that's what we hope the "In Their Boots" series will do, will let everybody really know, and also get involved, because there's a lot that folks can do.
Tavis: Where that support is concerned on the part of our government specifically - we'll come to the people that you referenced a moment ago - on the part of our government where that support is concerned, we just had Robert gates, Defense secretary, on this program a few weeks ago, and I got a chance to ask him a question about this, and he seemed a bit, with all respect, a bit peeved - just a little bit - in my asking a question about how they were treating or maltreating veterans when they come home, and it made some news, his answer to that question.
I got his perspective; now to your perspective. What's your sense of how our government is doing or not doing, as it were, with taking care of these veterans when they come home?
Greenwald: Well, it's an extraordinary problem, Tavis, and I don't think anybody was prepared for the size and scope and magnitude of it, because nobody knew it was going to go on. It's been seven years in Afghanistan, years in Iraq. So I don't want to put good or bad intent on everybody, but just the resources have not been there.
Now we're working with over a hundred different veteran's groups and support groups to say, okay, these women, these men, have paid this extraordinary price. We must, must provide more services. Some of it is just scope, and some of it is understanding new ways of treating mental and physical illnesses. And some of it, because this is a military culture, these are not women and men who are trained to reach out and ask for help, so part of it is we need to really find ways to communicate to them and say, "You are no less a man or no less a woman because you have these scars and you need help."
Tavis: What's most lacking, where those resources are concerned, when they come home?
Greenwald: Well, I don't want to pretend to be an expert on everything, because that's always the danger in these situations, but I think what's clear is that it's scope, which was the first thing I talked about, and then there's keeping up with the changes, keeping up with the medical experiments, with the new ways of treating the loss of limbs, the restoration of limbs, and the whole psychological piece, which is maybe the hardest in some ways because we all know the resistance that exists there.
And some of these wonderful programs where they're working with families, bringing them into it. A couple of the episodes we've done, I remember there was one of them, a father and mother were talking about the fact they'd been thinking about their retirement, about the two of them. But now it's going to be three, because their son was back.
He would never be able to take care of himself. They were always going to have to be there. That requires psychological help and support, in order for that adjustment.
Tavis: I know that given that you are a documentary filmmaker the first thing one does in planning to do a documentary, if one is smart, as you are, is to do some research. Were you at all surprised to find that some of the same issues that you are raising in this film now, vis-à-vis Iraq and Afghanistan were raised by other documentarians post-Vietnam?
Greenwald: I was surprised of the similarity. I was also pleased on one level, because in Vietnam, people who were against the war very much got sort of there was a whole attitude of blaming the troops. That's not the case here, no matter what your politics are.
So I think the positive side of it is that we're able now to tell these stories at a time when it can still matter, because legislation is happening every day, policy is happening every day. The GI bill that was passed is making a big difference in terms of providing educational possibilities.
So the passion, again, that the "In Their Boots" team and Rick Perez, who's leading them, is we can change things, we can affect things, and if you go to "In Their Boots," you'll see the testimonies and the emails and the letters from particularly relatives of people coming home, and that's stuff that I think we all, on some moral level, must be involved with.
Tavis: And so on some moral level, we are impacted by what we read, we're impacted by what we see when we see the film or go to the website, but that compels us or offers us an opportunity to do what, specifically?
Greenwald: Well, there's a variety of things you can do. On the one hand, there's a great, vigorous role for volunteer, if that's where you are. Almost everybody knows someone who has a family member or a relative or a friend who's coming home, so there's very much sort of support, neighborhood-type support.
And there's lots of legislative and political work that must be done because again, the resources were so small relative to the size of the problem, and it's going to be a big bite. We're in a terrible economic time and there's going to be a lot more financial demands on us. And we have to make very sure that we're not just paying for bombs, if you choose to support that, but we're paying for when the people come home.
Job training, all kinds of ways to adapt them back into society. One of the biggest issues is that caregivers, which is best if it's family members, right, have to leave their jobs to take care of them. Well, they need support. They need a way to be able to survive.
So there's going to be a spiraling and a continuing spiraling, and families, the young kids who are affected. So there's going to be work, legislative as well as just good old going next door and volunteering and saying, "Hey, can I take the kids for a day?"
Tavis: Did you find - and I want to ask this the right way - did you find that the troops who are coming home, particularly those who are no longer serving in the military, were more or less political than you expected? I ask that because while the project may not be political - you know where I'm going with this - these soldiers signed up to serve their country, and they do that.
But they're human beings as well. Some - and I've talked to many, as you have - some don't have a problem serving their country in Iraq and Afghanistan; others come home, when they're out - even generals on all these TV shows. Forget the troops - the generals can't wait to get out so they can get on TV and express their point of view or run for office based upon what they thought about or think about our foreign policy.
So did you discover that these troops were more political or less political in expressing their concerns about what happened or what should have happened when they got out?
Greenwald: Well, it's a really tough question and an interesting one. I guess I would say many of the troops and their families who had injuries did not want to, on any level, say that it was a waste; therefore, they did not want to be critical of the policy, right?
If you've sacrificed literally a limb, you don't want to think that was in pursuit of a policy that you disagreed with.
Tavis: That makes sense.
Greenwald: So I think in general the people who came back, the troops who had said we went over there and we don't agree with what's going on tended to be those more who had escaped any kind of physical injury. But that's a very small sample that I'm working from.
Certainly the longer these wars go on, the more we're hearing from men and women who are saying, "This is not what we should be doing."
Tavis: Award-winning documentarian Robert Greenwald. His new project is called "In Their Boots." Robert, nice to have you on, as always.
Greenwald: Pleasure. Thank you, Tavis.
Tavis: Good to see you.
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