John Chadwell:
Ron Shusett and I had our first story meeting yesterday with Shoreline Motion Pictures’ producers, Dennis Cox and Art Camacho and everyone came away very excited about the direction the script is taking. We agreed we’re not making a political statement about Iraq or Blackwater. Our goal is to tell a straightforward story and let the audience determine where they stand.
Perhaps that may be viewed by cynics as somewhat disingenuous, and I realize it will be nearly impossible not to inject personal biases, but we’re at least setting out on our writing journey with that in mind.
Ron and I want to tell the story of a good, but flawed man who because of circumstances ends up working as a private contractor for Blackwater. The story will be about the men who go to a war zone with the best of intentions - support their families and do a job they believe is both patriotic and honorable. Unfortunately, war - even the most honorable - has a way of changing men’s goals and their very souls. That’s the story we’re after. Time will tell if we pull it off.
Meanwhile, here is a synopsis of the story we hope to tell in Blackwater USA:
When police officer, Bob Kesh, is shot in the back by a child during a S.W.A.T. raid on a gang hideout, he ends up on disability. Out of a job, and because it is determined that he was ultimately responsible for his own injury, he has no benefits.
Happily married and with two kids, the family is strained as their savings are drained and they are about to lose their home and way of life. Kesh is too proud to take money from friends or family who offer to help, so he takes the first job he can find, working in a hardware store.
Then one day, his close friend who quit the same police department and joined Blackwater USA, tells Kesh that he has been working in Iraq for the past eight months as a bodyguard for high-level politicians and he made enough money to pay off his home and set up college accounts for his kids.
Out of financial desperation, but just as much out of pride and patriotism, Kesh decides to join Blackwater as a private contractor. Kesh and those he meets at Blackwater are former Special Forces or police. All consider themselves patriots and the best of the best.
After a quick indoctrination at a secret desert training camp, Kesh is flown to Iraq, but it isn’t the glamorous world of guarding politicians and business leaders. He quickly discovers the dark secret that has gone all but unnoticed back home.
There are thousands of private contractors in Iraq, and hundreds have died while escorting caravans of toilet paper, tires, fuel and kitchen equipment. The Iraqi civilians hate them and insurgents have placed a bounty on their heads. Caught in the middle of a civil war and outgunned, they can trust no one, and ultimately not even each other.
Politics and corporate profits turn them into pawns of expediency. Kesh is soon caught up in the madness of revenge and paranoia as every Iraqi man, woman and child becomes the enemy.
After four contractors are brutally murdered, burned and their bodies hung from a bridge, the outside world learns for the first time that there are thousands of private contractors fighting and dying in Iraq. However, they are not seen as heroes.
While the Defense Department and even the administration sees them as a vital part of the military, the media and even friends and family back home see them as out-of-control mercenaries, who have no regard for the lives of innocent civilians.
Each day is more insane than the last as the contractors find their missions changing from guarding civilians, buildings and equipment to combat missions. They are civilians in the role of soldiers, who are forced to kill. The glare of the media brings about a demand that they be tried as war criminals.
Kesh now must fight the internal struggle to keep his faith and his loyalty to family and country.