 | | Production still via “Once a Marine” |
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It took Stephen Canty seven years to finish his documentary, “Once a Marine.” On its face, the film seems pretty linear. Its characters join the Marine Corps, go to war, return from war and are confused by what happened to them in between. The film — to be released independently on Amazon in the coming days — has been screened before, at a film festival in New Mexico in 2016, to good reviews. |
Mr. Canty, 31, and I served together in the same Marine battalion during our two deployments to Afghanistan in 2008 and 2009-10. We were not in the same platoon or company, but our paths crossed at the height of those mismanaged years of the war. We were both enlisted; we knew the same people and many of our stories feature the same locales in Helmand Province. |
The element of this documentary that’s unusual, however, is that Mr. Canty filmed and interviewed members of his own platoon and his own company several years after they disbanded, the same guys he fought with on their deployments. They are the same guys I bumped in to shuffling to the bathroom at the Thunderdome, an outpost in Marjah, or went on patrol with from the third platoon’s shoddy patrol base. |
One of the main characters is Joey Schiano, a Marine who enlisted through the same strip-mall recruiting office I did, and who died in a car wreck in 2011. |
The film interviews several characters, including Joey’s mom, Deb, and includes footage from Afghanistan, filmed mostly by members of Charlie Company. |
If you watch “Once a Marine” knowing all this, you’ll quickly realize that this is not so much a documentary retelling the happenings of a few guys during the unending and failed war in Afghanistan, and what happened afterward. It’s about a group of friends coming to terms with the people they were and who they are now. |
I spoke to Mr. Canty this week from The New York Times’s bureau in Kabul, Afghanistan, about the motivations that drove him to make this documentary. |
What made you decide to put this together? |
I had worked in the hydroponic industry in Virginia for a little bit and I had some money. I bought a camera that could record video in addition to taking photographs. On a trip to North Carolina to visit my brother, who is also a Marine, I called up some of my friends. In one day, I talked to three or four people. I kind of realized, like, here are people in very different stations in life going through very different experiences, but they’re all saying they feel similarly — despite being a drug addict, a cop or a dude unable to be a cop. |
What is the final product like versus how you thought it was going to be? |
After I did the interview with Xavier Zell, and like watched that, I sobbed for three days. Like it was [expletive] I was actively trying to avoid. I wanted to talk about being angry and hating people around me because they didn’t understand. But I didn’t want to talk about why I felt that way. |
And Zell like just came up and did it, you know how Zell is, he’s [expletive] weird, man. He was like, “I wanted to come up and drop that off and get that out there.” And after I saw, I gave them the opportunity, and a lot of people just poured out their hearts. |
I set out to film anger and angst and frustration. And I set out to film a documentary about that, like surface-level things, but not film a documentary about the experiences that caused them. |
And that honestly is probably why it took me so long to edit it; that stuff was super painful. |
In that sense, you’re not a detached observer or a filmmaker from Hollywood, so how could you ever be comfortable with releasing the film as you wrestled with everything it had brought out of you? |
I guess making this film is my weird way of documenting my own experience through the shared experiences of other people. On every screening, people would be like, “Oh it’s perfect, man, just release it the way it is. You know?” But I’d think, “I don’t think this is it, it doesn’t do the people the justice they deserve.” |
I always used to say if I finished this film, then I’m a filmmaker. I’m no longer a guy that goes around telling everybody that I used to be a Marine. Because that’s like what I was like. And it took me a long time to even get to the point where I’d be like, “Yeah, I’m a filmmaker.” It took me until about three years ago that I kind of had that identity shift. |
I was a decent filmmaker already, but I couldn’t call myself one until “Once a Marine” was done. |
For you, what is the most critical moment of the documentary? |
The most critical moment now is getting it released. But I’d say when Deb Schiano looks at the camera and says, “And I know a whole bunch of you still deal with it — like you, and you.” |
This interview has been condensed and edited. |
Thomas Gibbons-Neff is a correspondent in the Kabul bureau and a former Marine infantryman. He can be reached at thomas.gibbons-neff@nytimes.com. |
Afghan War Casualty Report: November 2020 |
 | | Damage to a classroom at Kabul University on Nov. 3.Farzana Wahidy for The New York Times |
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At least 100 pro-government forces and 154 civilians have been killed so far in Afghanistan in November. [Read the report.] |
Here are five articles from The Times that you might have missed. |
 | | The message was found in a small metal cylinder in the fields near Ingersheim, in eastern France. The note could date to 1910, according to a museum curator, who said it was impeccably preserved.Sebastien Bozon/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images |
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“I’ve never seen this in 40 years.” A century-old soldier’s note with details of German military drills was found in eastern France in a capsule probably dropped by a carrier pigeon. Despite its age, experts said it was “exceptional” and “impeccably” preserved. [Read the article.] |
“I’m only 2-on-a-scale-of-10 concerned.” There is no evidence so far that President Trump’s new Pentagon appointees harbor a secret agenda on Iran or have taken up their posts with an action plan in hand. But their sudden appearance amounts to a purge of the top civilian hierarchy without recent precedent. [Read the article.] |
“I am humbled to play a small role in this momentous season of American history.” Students at the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Md., have never been led by a Black woman in the school’s 175-year history, but that will change after the holiday break when Midshipman First Class Sydney Barber takes charge as brigade commander for the spring semester. [Read the article.] |
“When asked why I did it, I usually prattle on about patriotism and giving back,” Jeremy Stern wrote in an Op-Ed this week about enlisting in the military. “That’s part of it, too. But I still don’t have a frank, pithy answer, because when I think back, I don’t really know.” [Read the article.] |
“It’s not a victory, but there’s no defeat.” Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan of Armenia on Monday signed a Russian-brokered settlement to end the war in Nagorno-Karabakh, surrendering disputed territory and bowing to other demands as he faced a battlefield defeat. [Read the article.] |
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