Friday, February 20, 2009
Taking Chance, on HBO
It's the very personal story of Lt. Col. Michael Strobl (Kevin Bacon), who, in 2004, volunteered to accompany the body of 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps from Dover Air Force Base in Delaware to Dubois, Wyo. Strobl kept a journal of that journey. He shared that with some of his friends, who shared it with other Marines — and it became the basis of the HBO film that premieres Saturday at 9 p.m "The two days I was at Dover, I think they had about a dozen departures of remains. And every time the remains would leave, these construction workers would stop their work, put their hard hats over their heart, and stand at their version of attention," he said. "And seeing that, I realized I want to remember this because there's really some goodness there." "When you see a body count coming up, it doesn't really hit home in the same kind of way as it does if you actually see what happens to the actual remains — you see the preparation, you see the respect, and you see the tradition and the honor that is involved with actually returning them to their final resting place," he said. "And the story is really a very, very simple one. … It's almost completely unembellished with anything to make it more cinematic or dramatic or to somehow force us to feel one way or another based on what our preconceived notions are about Iraq and whether or not we should have been in there or whatever. These paragraphs were taken from Deseret News because I could not properly put into words and they could.
