Paramount is courting controversy by being the studio that won the rights to Boys Don’t Cry director Kimberly Peirce’s new film, Stop-Loss. The film began life as a documentary, where Peirce was looking into the stories of GIs who returned home from Iraq, only to be shipped back out again against their wills by the military’s “stop-loss” procedure. After doing a number of interviews, though, Peirce decided to make a narrative film about a soldier who gets home and then gets recalled, but who refuses to go back.
Paramount wasn’t the only studio interested in the concept, which Peirce sold using five minutes of interview footage. "You’re always surprised by that kind of reaction, but the thing that drew us to the project is what appealed to studios," Peirce said. "This is a story about great guys who do the right thing by fighting for this country, and are then done wrong. The fatality rates for second and third tours are very high, and you understand why these guys feel like they’ve being asked to play another round of Russian roulette."
The director says that she may use the interviews she’s already conducted as a supplemental feature on the eventual DVD release.
Peirce hasn’t directed anything since Boys Don’t Cry, but she was moved to tackle this subject when her own brother came home from Iraq, only to be recalled.