Finding 'Dreamland'
Garrett Scott and Ian Olds uncover a Fallujah you don't see on TV.

By Johnny Ray Huston

'THIS IS THE true story of seven guys, picked to live in a cabana and have our lives taped," some of the soldiers of the US Army's 82nd Airborne division joke midway through Occupation: Dreamland. The reference to the opening credits of MTV's The Real World shows that, like most Americans, the soldiers are familiar with the play-to-the-camera codes of "reality TV," and of the show that started the phenom in the US – a show that this season features an obnoxiously patriotic, back-from-Iraq military cast member. The film they're in, however, reveals that country with a depth you won't find on any Comcast station. Real World: Fallujah? Not exactly.

What are we doing? Stationed in Fallujah, the soldiers in the documentary Occupation: Dreamland are given missions that combine perimeter security and public relations.

Occupation: Dreamland was filmed in early 2004, over a period – a good five and a half weeks longer than the usual three-day, hit-and-run style of embedded journalism – that captures the mounting frustrations in Fallujah. The charged setting came about through happenstance, when an article in The Nation by Christian Parenti, who was traveling with the filmmakers, resulted in them being booted from their original expedition in Baghdad. Though Scott and Olds shared a bungalow with the 82nd Airborne, it took time to establish a sense of trust, particularly as their subjects were already in a paranoid state of constant surveillance. "Soldiers feel that from the journalistic point of view, they're just vessels holding information, or even worse, they'll be used as poster children for antiwar sentiment," Scott says via phone, taking a break from organizing a contentious screening of the film in Fayetteville, NC, home of Fort Bragg.

In making the film, Scott and Olds had to weigh their opposition to the war against their fondness for the military members they portrayed. Other ideological dilemmas – such as whether to accompany the 82nd Airborne on night raids into the homes of Iraqi citizenry – proved even more difficult. "There was no representational escape," Scott says. "We were with the Army, doing this to them, and charging through someone's inner sanctum is a huge no-no in Arabic culture. I knew there was a danger, aesthetically or formally, of simply reproducing a Cops episode. If you're going to go into people's houses, does that mean they are the enemy – dirty or subhuman – because they're cowering? Ian and I had been to other people's homes before we joined up with the Army, and they'd shown us this incredible warmth and hospitality at a terrible time. Why should they do any of that for us?"

The Cops quandary Scott mentions is interesting, because both of the features he and Olds have made are united by a home-invasion theme. In 2001 the pair collaborated on the extraordinary Cul-de-sac: A Suburban War Story, which tells the story of Shawn Nelson, a San Diego resident who, six years earlier, stole a tank and drove it through the suburb of Claremont – plowing into vans and motor homes, crushing cars like bugs – before he was fatally shot by police. Afterward, local news stations had no reservations about stomping through Nelson's front door uninvited to see his home – convinced he'd found gold, he'd dug a 17-foot hole in his backyard – and interview family members. "The same [tank] footage we used was also used in America's Craziest Chases," says Olds, whose affable nature compliments Scott's laid-back theorizing. "It's all about context."

In Cul-de-sac's case, the context is a thorough examination of the city and neighborhood where Nelson lived, an area Scott had a special attachment to because his father and other family members also grew up there. Asked about Claremont, Scott is capable of launching into a five-minute, intricate analysis of the area's birth as a post-World War II suburb, the effects of military-sponsored amphetamine use on its population, the subsequent local emergence of methamphetamines (which could be made from ingredients found in strip malls), and the economic depression that hit when the cold war ended and plants shut down. Seen through his eyes, Nelson's fatal gesture is powerful in both symbolic and Walter Benjamin-inflected material terms. "Through talking to Garrett, I saw he had this very sophisticated understanding of what was going on," says Olds, who edited the film. "Looking at [the material], what immediately came to mind was creating an archaeological structure. The tank would be this device we'd return to, and each time we revisited this image, we'd have added another layer of history or meaning."

In a sense, both Cul-de-sac and Occupation: Dreamland are exposés of the military-industrial complex Americans take for granted. ("Domestic prosperity and frolicking beach life are fused inextricably to US global superiority, which we achieve through the most bloody measures," Scott says.) One of the more disturbing moments in Occupation: Dreamland is a sequence in which the 82nd Airborne are lectured about reenlistment, and essentially told that without "an ironclad plan" for their personal lives, they're better off staying in Iraq. The scene's irony cuts deep, because as the film progresses, it becomes increasingly obvious that the Bush administration – after the "success" of the initial assault – has no real plan to deal with the occupation. Soldiers are forced to go out on missions that combine security measures and public relations. "The soldiers were very frustrated by those missions," Olds says. "They knew that exchanging a few words with people wouldn't change their minds, and they knew it put them at great risk – during infantry training, they were taught not to stop and hang around in crowds."

If there's a weakness to Scott and Olds's film, it's that it contains no Iraqi counterparts to the 82nd Airborne, no residents of Fallujah given the same lengthy attention. That said, the directors had to work (however informally) within embed confines, and there's no shortage of on-the-street voices. "Where is the civilization that Bush speaks about?" one man asks. "Is it in the prison?" His questions come before the abuses in Abu Ghraib were made public and before military violence in Fallujah reached epidemic proportions, after the 82nd Airborne (who were redeployed to Afghanistan) and other Army forces were replaced by comparatively ill-trained Marines. By November 2004, 1,000 Iraqis and 42 Marines had been killed in the city.

Occupation: Dreamland's varied group of soldiers – jovial, camera-loving Luis "Doc" Pacheco, heavy metal bassist Sgt. Chris Corcione, the sensitive Woods – counter the enthusiastic-yahoo portrayals that dominate the only other nonfiction, feature-length, Iraq-set military portrait, Gunner Palace. One of Dreamland's more striking personalities belongs to Sgt. Eric Forbes. Describing himself as "a pretty cynical guy ... a skeptic," Forbes has no qualms about complaining that the Bush administration and Halliburton are out to "get another OPEC country set up that's friendly to US interests." Yet these views are welded to a hot temper, and of all the 82nd Airborne, Forbes seems likeliest to give in to violent impulses: At one point, he scares a motorist with gunfire; at another, he reacts to a nearby bomb blast by cursing, "I hate these people."

"Forbes was definitely the most articulate [of the soldiers], a constant reader," Scott says. "He was also one of the alpha soldiers – everyone looked to him for guidance. But at the same time, he was constantly being tested, and he has a dark, angry side. It stands to abstract reason that the most lefty guy would have perspective and wouldn't lash out, but you can really see him coming under more and more pressure, and he has the most murderous potential. Not that he was a sadistic person; he was really close to people who got hurt badly, and the resentment was building in him."

According to Scott, Forbes is currently stationed in Germany, while Wood – who'd wanted to go to art school but couldn't previously afford it – is attending Parsons School of Design in New York: "I see him from time to time. He made it." Yet even a success story like Wood's contains an undercurrent; though Olds is quick to distinguish his experience from that of the soldiers', he notes that a return to the US hasn't been easy. "No one there was expressing worry about how the transition [upon returning home] would be," Olds says. "They felt like they'd seen some stuff, but they were going to go back to their regular lives. But I've talked to some guys, and they'd come home and their world would be complicated; they'd get into fights. More than one person referred to having this rage that completely surprised them."

"The only way I can describe it," he continues, "is that I had a very clear awareness when I came back of something I didn't know when I was there, which was that I was shut down. Coming back, the anxiety and stress that emerged was almost inaccessible in a way. It didn't feel grounded. I can only imagine what it might be like for people who spend a longer time in combat."

'Occupation: Dreamland' is currently showing at the Roxie Cinema, 3117 17th St., SF. $4-$10. (415) 863-1087.