Must See: Guild Cinema to Host Phil Donahue and "Body of War"

Tomas Young and family at March on Washington

Albuquerque's Guild Cinema will screen the new documentary, Body of War, on May 25-27, 2008. Legendary talk-show host Phil Donahue and award-winning filmmaker Ellen Spiro, the film's producers/directors, will appear at a live Q & A session at the 6:30 PM showing of the movie on May 27. Call for showtimes: (505)255-1848

The critically acclaimed antiwar film, which was three years in the making, tells the story of Tomas Young, a 26-year-old veteran, who was shot and paralyzed after serving five days in Iraq. Body of War is an intimate human drama wrapped in a political documentary -- full of emotion, humor and hope. As Tomas deals with his disability, he evolves into a new person, finding his own passionate voice against the war. Body of War also captures the historic debate in the Congress in the fall of 2002 authorizing the war and celebrates those that stood up against the rush to invade.

Tomas Young visits Ground Zero

Body of War was voted "Best Documentary of the Year" by the National Board of Review, nominated for "Best Documentary" by the Producers Guild of America, and received multiple audience awards at film festivals from Toronto to Palm Springs. It's been acclaimed in the media and by the public. The film features two original songs by Eddie Vedder of Pearl Jam. A companion double-CD compilation “Body of War: Songs that Inspired an Iraq War Veteran” is available from Sire Records.

Bill Moyers interview with Donahue and Spiro about the movie and the real costs of war.

Phil Donahue's statement about the film:

The first time I saw him will be with me forever - paralyzed from the chest down - 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:

Who is this young man? Why him, not me?

I had accompanied my friend Ralph Nader who had been invited by the patient's mother. "She is caring for her son who was seriously wounded in Iraq. Wanna go?" A week later the two of us entered America's most famous military hospital.

The closer you get to Tomas Young, the more reality sets in. T-4 is the spot on the spine that is severed. Anatomists know what this means: Not only can't Tomas walk - he can't cough, his bodily functions are paralyzed, his bladder must be manually drained several times daily.

And no small issue for a male, just married. Twenty-six-year-old Tomas Young can't - in the language of the locker room - get it up.

This film, Body of War, is our effort to spread news that is not good - news that is hidden behind the doors of homes all over this country. Dwellings occupied by the mere five per cent of our population actually sacrificing for this war.

This film's story mirrors the stories of thousands of young soldiers who, like Tomas Young, have sustained life-altering injuries in a war mission that was "unnecessary" as Tomas tells Mike Wallace on 60 Minutes. This foreign policy decision was not only unnecessary, it was ill-considered and misguided from the start- a mission that has never been - and in Tomas' opinion - never will be "accomplished."

Our film also revisits one of the most tragic errors of judgment ever made by a United States Congress. After engaging in a superficial dialogue, robotic Senators and House members are seen voting to approve the Iraq War Resolution in October, 2002. Members take the floor, one by one, reading talking points of the White House Iraq Group, the assembly of advertising agency warriors whose job was to sell the war. It was WHIG who gave the nation a litany of untruths:

Saddam has "unmanned aerial vehicles" to deliver toxins "over wide territories" and scary doomsday scenarios, "The smoking gun could be a mushroom cloud."

As the War Resolution is debated, our cameras watch as Tomas deals with the very personal consequences of this historic and unprecedented vote for pre-emptive war. It was this vote that put him in a wheel chair. Our film watches him coping with his body, his drugs, his anger, his marriage and his future. Who is Tomas Young? He's a young man who enlisted knowing he might be killed. He thought he might come home dead -

He never dreamed of coming home like this.

His is a true story of war; here is the un-sanitized harm in "harm's way." It is a story of a heartland kid who suddenly went from a social life of single bars and courtship to a daily routine of catheters, puke pans and erectile dysfunction.

I discovered a great American in Tomas Young, a warrior turned anti-warrior, a voice of courage rising above the war drums, a voice to "be heard behind the White House gate" in the words of the song Pearl Jam's Eddie Vedder wrote for this film.

To all the main-streamers in the press who supported the invasion of Iraq, to the pundits who continue to talk tough while other people's kids die, to all the merry warriors who recruited Jesus to assist them in this massive foreign policy blunder -

I have a soldier for you.

Before the next President swaggers to the cameras challenging the enemy to "Bring it on," before the next Congress votes another War Resolution, my hope is that all these heavy breathing, lap top bombers take a moment to meet the First Cavalry's Honorably Discharged United States Army Specialist - Tomas Young.

Phil Donahue
New York City, May 2007

Vedder, Young, Spiro, Donahue

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