The New York Times ran a lengthy story this past Sunday on Hollywood’s latest effort to address the Iraq war, the bomb-to-be Stop Loss. The film stars Ryan Phillippe and deals with the tragic story of khoevemcpw3fwc c cmwpowmsmnedheidndccelalaslepfecnecmeclececwwpe – I'm sorry, I feel asleep at the keyboard. Anyway, I found this passage from the Times story revealing:

The film doesn't shy away from the story's visceral horror, showing one hospitalized soldier's burns and stumps in lengthy close-up. A drawn-out raid in a housing complex in Iraq is ear-shatteringly loud and look-away bloody.

"We shot the sequence in Morocco during Ramadan, which made me uncomfortable," Mr. Phillippe said in an e-mail message. "We were storming real homes and real neighborhoods, and at times I felt like a monster."

It would take a lot of pixels to tease out all the obtuseness in Phillippe's e-mail message, but here’s a start at what will hopefully become a productive national conversation on the imbecility of self-important Hollywood types.

I'm assuming Phillipe has a basic fact confused and that in truth he was not really "storming homes." Seeing how Phillippe is an actor, it's much more likely that he was pretending to storm homes. Although this is a minor distinction, it is a critical one, especially if you don't want to get shot while "storming homes.' The director yelling things like "Cut!" and "Action!" should have been Phillippe's first hint that the whole "home storming" thing wasn't what the rest of the world calls "real." The lighting and the cameras also could have helped clue him in as I don't believe such things accompany the typical soldier, even during Ramadan.

And what's with this "I felt like a monster" comment? Surely Phillippe isn't suggesting that the typical American soldier behaves as a monster. What else was Phillippe doing on that set? Cutting off the ears of innocent Moroccans between takes in the manner of Jengis Kahn? The monster comment shocks me. I thought Hollywood supported the troops.

It is however nice to see the young actor was so sensitive to the traditions and holiness of Ramadan. Still one wonders about the Moroccans whose homes were being "stormed" and exactly how bothered they were by the timing. Did they not grant their permission for pretend home storing to the movie-makers? Or perhaps Phillippe's email has it right, and he really was storming Moroccan homes. At Ramadan no less.

In which case I guess I’ll owe him an apology.