“Baghdad Happens”
Mar 23, 2009 3 Comments ›› Pat Dollard
Caption:
http://www.outsidethewire.com
Baghdad Happens is the story of an improbable, unforeseeable, irreplicable sequence of events that took place one day in Baghdad.
In his fifth documentary on the Iraq war, JD Johannes throws many of the cliches of what a war documentary should be out the window.
“Our guiding vision was to ask, ‘What would PBS do?’ then do the exact opposite,” Johannes said.
“The soldiers in this documentary were really up beat. They had been on a string of successful missions and they could tell the fortunes of war were turning in their favor,” Johannes said. “So, we took that positive energy let it show through.”
Johannes conducted the interviews with the soldiers at Joint Security Station Black Lion a day after the successful mission.
“These guys were riding high at that moment and you rarely get to see that in a documentary,” Johannes said.
Other anti-PBS aspects include a disco-funkadelic-surf-rock soundtrack and Johannes narrating the documentary on-camera in a tavern.
