'I have no idea how I'm still alive'Hollywood talent agent Pat Dollard turned war reporter

[maddezmom]

'I have no idea how I'm still alive'

Hollywood talent agent Pat Dollard turned war reporter when he went to film US marines in Iraq. His bravery earned their admiration - but then stories surfaced of drug-fuelled rampages and alleged abuse of Iraqi civilians. He puts the record straight with Killian Fox

Killian Fox The Guardian, Tuesday April 29 2008 Article historyAbout this articleClose This article appeared in the Guardian on Tuesday April 29 2008 on p10 of the Comment & features section. It was last updated at 00:00 on April 29 2008. In late November 2004, Pat Dollard, a Hollywood talent agent whose biggest client was the director Steven Soderbergh, dropped everything, picked up a video camera, and went to Iraq. The 40-year-old, who was suffering a drug-fuelled breakdown following the collapse of his fourth marriage, had never been near a war zone in his life. After a brief stopover in Baghdad, he embedded at Camp Kalsu, a US Marine Corps base in an area known as the Triangle of Death.

The marines reckoned he would be gone within a matter of days. But Dollard stayed in Iraq for three months and returned a year later to spend an even longer stretch in Ramadi, one of the country's deadliest, and most underreported, flashpoints. He filmed everything that moved. He was blown up several times. On February 18 2006, a roadside bomb blasted Dollard out of a patrol vehicle and killed two of the marines he was riding with. He jumped back into the vehicle and kept filming.

By the time he returned to Los Angeles in late March 2006, Dollard had amassed more than 700 hours of footage, the raw material with which he planned to forge a unique record of life and death on the frontline in Iraq. The documentary would be called Young Americans.

Then, in March last year, an epic article in Vanity Fair set in print the flurry of weird and wonderful - and often deeply troubling - stories that had been circulating around Dollard's Iraqi odyssey. It told of drunken rampages and a vandalised mosque. It alleged that Dollard had been abusive towards Iraqi civilians and that he had, moreover, put the troops he was with at risk. One alarming story claimed Dollard robbed an Iraqi pharmacy while on the hunt for a local brothel and distributed liquid Valium among his friends back at base.

Soon after the article was published, Tony Scott, director of Top Gun, read it. "I said to myself: 'My God, this guy is off his fucking head. It's great.' Pat's life was in total shit and turmoil back in the US. He had lost custody of his kid and had lawsuits all over the place. So he went to find some sanity in Iraq with drugs and a hi-def camera."

more:http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/apr/29/iraq.iraqandthemedia

[zonkers]

1. Can't wait to see that footage. Good article. Thanks for posting. I

totally "get" where Scott is coming from. It's perfect. This will be a super cool war film. Way better than Daniel Pearl story.

[Kali]

2. sounds interesting

[zonkers]

3. Kick. Cool story. Fear and Loathing meets Black Hawk Down meets Jarhead....

my kind of story -- visual and insane gonzo war movie.