BACON TOOK A CHANCE
In his biker jacket, jeans and rock ‘n’ roll hair, Kevin Bacon looks every inch a guy plucked from a tour with his band, the Bacon Brothers, to talk about his latest project. The HBO movie “Taking Chance” is the true story of an officer escorting the body of a Marine he didn’t know across America to be buried. Bacon plays Lt. Col. Michael Strobl, the officer whose first-person account the film is based on.
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Why this film now?
I was resistant for a number of reasons. I’d been doing a lot of emotionally intense characters who are holding a lot of stuff inside. It had gone from “Mystic River” to “The Woodsman” -- I just kind of felt [sighs] I just don’t want to go down that path again.
I wasn’t sure about making a film about Iraq because I had seen that time after time, the content has just not worked. People weren’t really interested. So I didn’t want to be in another Iraq film that would slip under the radar. But the more I spoke to people about it, including the director, Ross Katz, my agents, my wife, people were able to convince me it wasn’t really a movie about Iraq; it was more about war in general.
Coincidentally, I had just done a USO tour of Bethesda Naval Hospital, where most or all of the injured are Marines. That just came smack dab in the middle of my decision-making process, seeing these boys injured, a lot of them badly. I guess it was a story that -- in retrospect, because it was very well received -- needed to be told.
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One thing that stood out was the sea change from how people had treated soldiers returning from Vietnam.
I feel like that’s a testament to us as a nation learning from our mistakes in Vietnam. We didn’t learn from our mistakes in terms of the actual war itself, obviously, because you look at the parallels between the two wars and it’s astounding. But I do think we’ve grown to the point where we can separate the policy from the actual young men and women who are making the sacrifice. We’re able to condemn the war and our leaders without condemning the kids who are on the front lines.
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The details of an escort’s duties also jumped out.
One of the things that’s pretty heavily played in the film is the idea of remains that are never going to be viewed, having a perfect uniform on them. Those details were looked at very carefully by the production but also by the Marines, to make sure everything was done in the right way.
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How involved was the real Lt. Col. Strobl in the production?
He wrote the screenplay along with Ross Katz. I met him at his home and spent a couple of days with him and his family and his friends. When I’m putting my characters together, I want to fill in as many details about them as I possibly can, and one of the things that’s interesting to me is what music they like. So I asked him for a playlist, and he gave me this great Strobl list.
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What’s a sample of that?
AC/DC; driving, classic rock.
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How is he so different from you?
There’s no part of me that could become a Marine. It’s just not in my DNA to put myself on the front line, to put myself in harm’s way. Really, to be able to kill. And to risk your life. I don’t think I’d make it through boot camp.
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What was the reaction to the film?
When we were shooting, the responses I got on a day-to-day basis were really kind of surprising -- and, in fact, in a strange way, very much paralleled what Mike went through. From place to place to place, people would reach out to him and express respect or sympathy for the family but also to him. When we’d shoot a scene -- as you can tell, our locations were moving all the time -- people would come up to me and say, ‘I think it’s great that you’re doing this. I’ve got a cousin in Iraq.’ Extras were actually moved to tears, just watching. We had nothing in our [coffin] but, still, those images -- it was unlike the average kind of filmmaking experience. It just felt bigger somehow, more important.
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