![]() It may appear arrogant, to make television with such a vast cast of characters that unfolds so randomly, chaotically even, with no narrative signposts, no help for the viewer and a lot of jargon and military acronyms. "You want the person leaning in to the punch so it requires them to try to figure something out," he says. Sit-up TV, that's what Burns (and David Simon) do. If you want a show that you sprawl back in the couch and sort of let wash over you then this is probably not the show." But that comes with just sitting up and watching the show. HBO were worried about it - how are they going to figure out who is who, stuff like that. "Yes, there are quite a few characters," says Burns. This is something people who have watched The Wire may identify with. There are an awful lot of characters in Generation Kill, and to begin with I had no idea who was who, or what was going on. Then he got a part, playing himself, reliving it all. He was originally hired - along with a couple of the other guys who were there with him - to train the actors, make sure they got everything right, that it was all authentic. This show came along at the right time for Reyes. I'd never had what I had in the marine corps." It's mourning the loss of your unit, and your team, and your family, and your identity. Is that common? "Very common, bro, very, very common. When he left the corps a couple of years ago, he got depressed. So he found a new family with the marines. Dad left, mum shacked up with someone else, there were more kids, and Reyes was more or less forgotten. His background, he says, is typical of the men he went to war with. ![]() "They count on me because I come from a background with no stability and no family, and this is the best family I ever had and I wouldn't do anything to endanger them." ![]() Reyes talks about this, and the one fear he had - letting down his team. This is what Generation Kill is really, a bunch of guys doing their jobs, albeit in an extraordinary workplace. And he has a complaint: "How come we can't invade a cool country with, like, chicks in bikinis?" As the Humvees rumble north over the border from Kuwait, Person, charged up to the eyeballs, spews out his theories about gays, South Park and why Saddam Hussein's ill-thought-through "pussy policy" is the real reason for the conflict. Person, played by James Ransone (the equally out-of-control Ziggy in series two of The Wire), a terrifying little nut who is permanently off his head on some horrible stimulant drink called Ripped Fuel, has all the best lines. They beat us, starve us, and once in a while they let us out to attack somebody." One of the characters, Cpl Josh Ray Person, puts it nicely: "The marine corps is like America's little pit bull. That's not to say there isn't anger about the place, but it sometimes has to be self-generated, at least to start with. Most of the killing you see in Generation Kill - and you see a lot - is the first kind, the almost fair sort, because this is about the first 21 days of the war, the invasion in 2003, not the years of mess that have followed. When that starts to happen then the anger in the unit starts to build, and God help anybody who steps in front of that anger." Where it breaks down, and becomes a different type of thing is when the enemy is a bomb, or an IED, or a mine, and you're stepping on it, or it's blowing you up, and you can't retaliate. It's what warfare actually should be, in the sense that they're shooting at you, you're shooting at them. And did the experience affect Burns? "Erm. Hell, I'm the only person around here who hasn't killed someone. As so much of Generation Kill is about the taking of human life, I wonder if he too has killed, in Vietnam, perhaps. Burns - Vietnam veteran, teacher, policeman turned writer of the best television ever - is with me too, to talk about the new project. The team behind Generation Kill is David Simon and Ed Burns, creators of The Wire, the Baltimore cop show that is rarely mentioned without the word "gritty" and has caused a critical swoonathon, sometimes even called the best television ever.
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