Television Review

Below is a link to a rather fascinating review of two new television shows that center around hostages. Fascinating because there are aspects of both stories that hit close to home.

In this case compelling stories make great television - but the fiction just scratches the surface of what in reality borders on mind blowing. Truth will always be stranger than fiction. There is so much more to the story than just the disappearance of Kirk von Ackermann and the murder of his colleague, Ryan Manelick. More than is ever likely to make it to print or screen.

Rewind TV: Homeland; Kidnap and Ransom; Melvyn Bragg on Class and Culture – review
By Andrew Anthony, The Observer, February 25, 2012

Scriptwriters the world over must have been shaking their heads with the defeated recognition of tinderbox makers who have just seen their first matchstick. It's one thing to place a character in the isolation of unique knowledge – that's an old Hitchcock trick, opening the way for all manner of paranoia-testing trials. But how much smarter to burden that character with psychotic tendencies, so that we can't be sure that what she thinks she's seeing is actually what's happening, and therefore we can't be sure of anything.

That's the intriguing predicament in which Claire Danes's Carrie Mathison places the viewer. She's a CIA agent who, as a colleague notes, "is a little intense" and, even by her own reckoning, has a problem with a "mood disorder", but who in fact is bipolar and may be in the grip of a manic episode.

If only they knew...

The Birthday Boys - theater

Throughout March, Theater Unleashed in Hollywood, CA will present The Birthday Boys.

Their brief description of the play, set in 2006 Iraq, 'a gritty and terrifying dark comedy that tracks three United States Marines who have been taken hostage, bound and blindfolded, as they do whatever's necessary to keep their sanity and stay alive.'

The Birthday Boys
Playwright: Aaron Kozak
Director: Jacob Smith
Show Information
NoHo Stages
4934 Lankershim Blvd.
North Hollywood, CA 91601

Missing Deserter

While serving in Iraq, a  Lebanese-American, US Marine Corporal Wassef Ali Hassoun, went missing on June 19, 2004. A week later a videotape provided to Al Jazeera purportedly showed Hassoun held as a hostage. On July 8, 2004, Hassoun suddenly arrived at the embassy in Beirut, Lebanon.

After an investigation into his disappearance, in 2005, Hassoun was charged with desertion. Hassoun disappeared for a second time and is believed to be hiding in Lebanon.

Missing Utah Marine's story could become TV movie
By Jennifer Dobner, Associated Press, Bloomberg, February 11, 2011

The strange tale of a Utah Marine corporal charged with desertion after allegedly faking his own kidnapping in Iraq may be told in a television movie after all, although it may not have input from Wassef Ali Hassoun [the missing guy], or his family.

Los Angeles publicist Michael Sands worked with the family in 2005 on a $1 million book and movie deal to clear Hassoun's name. The deals fell apart after the family balked at signing a contract.

Sands told The Associated Press he now plans to tell the story on his own.

"The Deserter" is a television movie by Sands and retired FBI agent Bob Hamer. It chronicles the Hassoun story and Sands' own role trying to help the family.

The disappearance of Hassoun is not included in the table of Americans Missing in Iraq. I have no idea if a SIGACT report exists for either his 'abduction' or his re-appearance. I just don't find myself motivated enough to even want to look.

Kidnap & Rescue - Discovery Channel

Episode 105 of a new television series on Discovery Channel, Kidnap & Rescue, will feature Dan O'Shea, former coordinator of the Hostage Working Group in Iraq. A short bio is available at the Discovery Channel website. Kidnap & Rescue premiered January 29, 2011.

Brief interview with O'Shea at the Huffington Post.

Making the Hunters the Hunted: Exploring Hostage-Rescue
By Heather Robinson, Huffington Post, January 29, 2011

[Dan] O'Shea is a consulting producer of "Kidnap & Rescue" on the Discovery Channel, a series on the "global kidnapping crisis" that premiered Saturday night. The series will cover the efforts of O'Shea and others to combat political kidnappings in global hot spots and also cover areas like the kidnapping of businesspeople for ransom, kidnapping for money or revenge by drug cartels, and the kidnapping of women and children by promulgators of child pornography and sex slavery. Saturday's episode focused on Mexican drug cartels; episode five will feature O'Shea.

Side note: the Hostage Working Group was also called the Office of Hostage Affairs at the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq.

Dan O'Shea biography distributed in a press release from the Discovery Channel.

Additional Information

Kidnap & Rescue - online clips

Kidnap & Rescue Biographies
Discovery Press Web, December 22, 2010

Previous Related Posts

Hostage Working Group - background information
April 1, 2006

Office of Hostage Affairs - background information
September 8, 2006

Homeland tv pilot

A television pilot is in the works for Showtime starring Claire Danes and Damian Lewis.

Claire Danes and Damian Lewis to star in Homeland pilot on Showtime
By Christine Nyholm, Examiner.com January 4, 2011

Damian Lewis will play U.S. Marine [Sergeant] Scott Brody - a POW who was missing in Iraq for nearly a decade - who miraculously returns home. Carrie Anderson (Claire Danes) is a driving CIA officer is suspicious of Brody and becomes convinced that the national hero may [be] connected to an Al Qaeda plot. Mandy Patinkin plays Saul, a CIA division chief who is Carrie's boss and mentor. 

Coming Soon

Buried opens October 8.

That's uncomfortably close to the date that Kirk von Ackermann disappeared in Iraq - October 9, 2003.

Buried at Sundance

A new film, Buried, featuring an American contractor held hostage in Iraq screened at the Sundance Film Festival. For the entire film, the contractor, Paul Conroy, (played by actor Ryan Reynolds) is trapped in a coffin. Lionsgate picked up the film for distribution. Critics are hailing the film as brilliant.

Slashfilm has clips.

Buried Teaser Trailer and Clip: Will Ryan Reynolds Shine Underground?
By Russ Fischer, /Film, January 20, 2010

Sundance synopsis at IMDB:

U.S. contractor working in Iraq awakes to find he is buried alive inside a coffin. With only a lighter and a cell phone it's a race against time to escape this claustrophobic death trap

Credits

Director: Rodrigo Cortés
Writer: Chris Sparling
Director of Photography: Eduard Grau
Cast: Ryan Reynolds, Ivana Mino, and Anne Lockhart, Stephen Tobolowsky

Interview with actor, Ryan Reynolds, and a short article on the film at Vanity Fair.

Buried: Ryan Reynolds's Break-Out (or Not!) Role
by Eric Kohn, Vanity Fair, February 1, 2010

At least six American men are known to still be missing in Iraq:

Kirk von Ackermann (2003)
Timothy E. Bell (2004)
Aban Elias (2004)
Dean Sadek (2004)
Jeffrey Ake (2005)
Ahmed Qusai al-Taayie (2006)

Heads

Something a little different...

An American playwright, EM Lewis, has written a play about a group of hostages in Iraq titled 'Heads.' The play features four characters separated as two pairs of hostages. The first pair are a journalist named Michael Apres and a photojournalist named Jack Velazquez. The second pair are a British embassy worker, Caroline Conway, and an American engineer, Harold Wolfe. I thought it was interesting the playwright chose only civilians for her characters.

Synopsis of the play:

'Heads' is the story of a British Embassy worker, an American engineer, a network journalist and a freelance photographer who are being held captive in Iraq; as death draws close, each hostage must decide what he’ll do to survive.

Denver Post has a review up although it's not clear what the reviewer really felt about the play - to see or not to see - it's not clear.

Review: "Heads" explores how hostages cope
By Angela Clemmons, The Denver Post, October 16, 2009

It's strange to say that a play about hostages in Iraq could be entertaining, but EM Lewis' "Heads" at the Victorian Playhouse is a gripping fictional drama that raises important questions about our times.

Susan Lyles directs the And Toto Too production to brutal depths. But what could have been a deeply political piece instead ends up a play about coping with current events. Who or what is it we reach for when it seems all hope is lost? What small gestures give us solace? Is optimism a better mechanism than pessimism, or the other way around?

The playwright's blog, Players to Broken Stones, has some production photos:

Coming up next: HEADS in Denver!
September 25, 2009

More Pictures from Heads in Denver
October 14, 2009

PS I've created a new label, 'drama', to cover theater, film and tv productions that touch on Iraq hostages.