When the news first broke that Pat Tillman left behind millions of dollars to join the Army, I made assumptions about what kind of person he was. After seeing Amir Bar-Lev's wonderful documentary, I learned what it makes you and me when you assume. However, I do take consolation in the fact that it seems most people thought about the same thing. But the real problem is that the people who knew otherwise and had the responsibility to tell everyone the real story made another one up.
So who was Pat Tillman? He was a low-key sort of guy who hated talking about himself. He married his high school sweetheart, but only after he and his brother Kevin decided to enlist for three years. As a defensive football player, he loved to hit the opponent as hard as he could. On the other hand, Tillman graduated from Arizona State early and summa cum laude. Following his college football success, he signed with the Arizona Cardinals where he broke team records. While his teammates drove luxury cars to practice, he rode his bike. After 9/11 he did enlist, but never publicly told anyone his reasons.
Despite being just another enlisted man, he received a personal letter from Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld thanking him for joining the Army. Rumsfeld sent an email to the Secretary of the Army suggesting that they keep an eye on Pat. When Pat died, the story that first came out had him dying under siege. He was awarded the Silver Star for combat valor. President Bush hailed his decision to enlisting over 9/11 in a speech. More than 2,000 people came to Tillman's public memorial. John McCain and Maria Shriver gave touching speeches about Pat being in a better place.
Then Pat's youngest brother stood up to speak at the memorial. He thanks everyone for their well wishes, but added that Pat wasn't religious, he wasn't with God, he was just dead. Rich used the Tillman boys more colorful language instead of "just" however. The moment is so key to the power of the film, because it underlines the extent of how much Pat's image was used for political means by people who didn't know a thing about him. Even at the memorial the glowing Silver Star narrative of events was already known to be a lie. Fratricide was never mentioned even though it was the truth.
Pat's fellow soldier Russell Baer knew the truth, but was told not to say anything to the family. As word begins to surface that Pat's death wasn't the heroic movie version, his family wanted answers. His mother Dannie received mounds of documents regarding the military investigation, but most of it was redacted. With the help of blogger Stan Goff, she went through the docs and worked it like a vast code game, filling in names that fit the amount of letters in the redacted words. Pat's father Patrick Sr. wrote a letter to the military brass accusing them of whitewashing and a cover-up and signed it with a patented Tillman vernacular touch, which ruffled the right feathers to get a retired General thrown under the bus by the Pentagon for the whole affair.
Tillman and his family were the wrong people to craft a fictional war hero tale about. Tillman was agnostic but read about all religions. He followed the words of Chomsky and Emerson. Watching the bombing of Iraq, he told his fellow soldiers that the war was illegal. He had planned on voting for John Kerry. In combat when fired upon, a fellow solider began to pray out load and Tillman told him to stop, because he needed him to be in the moment not somewhere else. Tillman didn't put up with the BS of the military very well. The private man knew who he was and didn't want a public military funeral in case he was killed, fearing he would be used as propaganda. He went as far as to photocopy his enlistment papers stating so just in case the military pressured his grieving widow. Which is exactly what they did.
The Tillmans simply wanted the truth about what happened to their son and what was concocted about him. The eventual congressional hearing was a chorus of denial and fuzzy memories. For the Tillmans, the real nature of Pat's death didn't diminish his sacrifice. The military's myth did, because it doesn't honor the logical man he was. But heroic celebrity death is better for the recruitment poster than being shot by your own team. Ironically, the real Pat Tillman was an ideal soldier. He was a born leader who used his training and logic. Like on the football field, he loved the camaraderie of his fellow men and opted to finish his tour of duty instead of taking an offered out to rejoin the NFL.
Bar-Lev (MY KID COULD PAINT THAT) honors Pat Tillman by painting the man he was, not as others wished him to be. On Fox News, Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity refuse to believe this 9/11 enlister was against the war in Iraq. Paralleling the captivating character study is the detailed investigation of how the fabricated story came to be and how it came out. In this we learn about the Tillman family, which is part of Pat's story. As the details are unfolded, we begin to feel their pain, frustration and anger over how their son had been used as propaganda. Ironically, Pat was indirectly involved in another military publicity stunt — the Jessica Lynch rescue.
At one point the chief investigator of the case Capt. Richard Scott says in an interview that he couldn't understand why the Tillmans kept pushing for what happened. He believed it had something to do with them being atheists. They can't get their minds around Pat being just "worm food." Well get your mind around this... that same atheist gave his life for his country without the faith in anything better if he should die. Isn't the truth the least his country could give him?
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
