NAPLES FF INTERVIEWS: Producer/Writer Mark Stafford talks about Brian Morrison’s BASTARDS’ ROAD

Brian Morrison’s documentary BASTARDS’ ROAD, which recently won the Jury Prize for Best Documentary Award at the Naples International Film Festival, follows Jon Hancock, a veteran Marine Corps interrogation specialist who reached the bottom following his return to the states from doing multiple tours in Iraq and Afghanistan thanks to PTSD and other health and emotional issues. After years of struggling as he attempted to transition back to civilian life, Hancock decided to take an epic journey across the country – on foot. Walking nearly 6,000 miles alone, Jon confronts the demons that had overtaken his life. Visiting his fellow 2/4 Marines – a unit known as the The Magnificent Bastards – and families of their fallen along the way, Jon finds a mission greater than his own redemption.

Let’s face it, we’ve seen variations on this theme both with documentaries and narrative explorations of the same, but Morrison, working with producer/writer Mark Stafford, and of course, Hancock, uncovers something special here. That something special is a film subject self aware enough through this journey to not simply reflect but also actively work on healing and digging deeper within himself to do so. Yes, the reunions with the members of his unit AND the families of the men that did not return are largely what we would expect, but then they cumulatively become something more, as we are opened up to not just an individual that, by design, is put through the grinder of warfare and then spit back out, but to the realization of the literal army of men and women he represents. In a world where we have been desensitized thanks to reality television manipulation, BASTARDS’ ROAD can’t help itself but give us the real deal. By doing so, the journey we tale with Hancock inspires us, crushes us, and ultimately fills us with hope for him and his fellow homeward bound soldiers.

In the interview, I talk to the film’s producer and writer Mark Stafford about the gift, as I see it, to be able to see and hear the man, and Stafford’s efforts as the writer for the documentary to help craft a coherent path to tell the man’s story. Stafford also talks about the beauty of documentary filmmaking knowing as you are going in, the different and unexpected directions it can go, and then how a filmmaker’s perspective changes after viewing the first cuts with an audience. Another big topic is the filmmakers’ decision to show Hancock some revealing footage from an interview with another person during the course of filming and what resulted from that, as well as his and Morrison’s moments while cutting the film together feeling that they actually had created a moment that would get through to – in this case – civilians as well as those who had served.