get real TV / ‘REALITY’ PALES AS FX GOES TO WAR, A CULT KIDS’ SHOW MORPHS AND PUBLIC TV ENDURES. Showing the true horrors of war through fiction

In a nondescript industrial warehouse in Chatsworth, something unprecedented, emotionally risky and potentially politically volatile is going on. A drama series is being produced for television about a war that is underway -- a war where the American death toll is mounting, American public support is eroding, and there is no end in sight.

Putting the Iraq war in prime time is obviously risky; certainly Hollywood hasn’t come front and center with a big movie about the war, and few books have surfaced yet that depict the brutality of Iraqi combat. Nonetheless, “Over There,” which debuts July 27 on FX, intends to portray the blood, horror and brotherhood of U.S. troops in combat in Iraq in a realistic way that surpasses even the daily drumbeat of news stories about insurgent attacks and American casualties.

The challenges the production faces go well beyond the philosophical. On a recent weekday, as the heat and dust in the early summer air gave the set an uncomfortable physical realism, director Jesse Bochco, son of the series’ co-creator, Steven Bochco, worked with the actors as they tried to build a corresponding emotional tension. The scene had the soldiers of the Army infantry squad that is the focus of “Over There” confronting their angriest member, a tough, cynical kid from Compton nicknamed Smoke, full of bitterness toward the Army and disdain for other squad members.

Smoke, played by Kirk “Sticky” Jones, was lying on a cot inside a tent that is identical to tents used by U.S. military personnel in camps throughout Iraq. Dim, a college-educated soldier played by Luke MacFarlane, was trying to break down the alienation and anger that separates Smoke from others in the squad. “You blame me, you all blame me,” Jones yelled out. As MacFarlane stood up to leave, Jones reached out to him in a wordless sign that, for all their characters’ differences, they must depend on each other for survival.

Then came a break, but the actors stayed in character, talking in subdued voices.

Afterward, MacFarlane talked about the responsibility felt by the cast. He has been reading Web logs by soldiers stationed in Iraq, he said, and also a book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Rick Atkinson about the U.S. assault on Baghdad, “In the Company of Soldiers,” to gain insight into the fears and hopes of soldiers in combat.

“We hope to leave the viewers with a greater understanding of what soldiers go through, what their families go through, the pain of it all,” MacFarlane said. “A lot of people have no idea.”

Even in the realm of fiction, the reality of Iraq is taxing. “Living with the human consequences of war in your head -- that’s a burden,” said co-creator and writer Chris Gerolmo.

When FX Networks head John Landgraf had suggested a drama series about U.S. soldiers in Iraq, Steven Bochco was dubious. Even the creator of the envelope-pushing “Hill Street Blues” and “NYPD Blue” was not sure viewers would accept the violence, blood and rough language necessary for realism.

There were other serious questions as well: Would the left wing find the show too rah-rah for the war? Would the right wing find it lacking respect and support for U.S. forces on the front lines? And what about those troops and their families? Would they find the series too Hollywoodized, too hyped, too trivializing, too exploitative of their fear and their pain?

Still, with all his misgivings, Bochco, 61, decided he could not pass up the chance to work with FX and to team with Gerolmo, the writer-director whose screenwriting credits include “Mississippi Burning.” FX has contracted for 13 weekly episodes. The pilot and Episode 2 were directed by Gerolmo and Episode 3 by Jesse Bochco, 30, who directed 12 episodes of “NYPD Blue.”

The military uniforms and weaponry aside, Steven Bochco said by phone, the basics are the same as those of a cop story or even an attorney show like his “L.A. Law.” “It’s about good stories and compelling characters and putting them in dramatic -- often life-and-death -- circumstances,” he said, “and seeing how that impacts their humanity and their families at home.”

For Gerolmo, 51, war was a natural subject for television. “It’s got all the drama of ‘Law and Order,’ all the action of ‘24’ and, for better or worse, all the gore of ‘CSI,’ ” he said. “Why not write about war?”

Before filming began, the cast was put through a five-day “boot camp” by the show’s technical advisor, Sean Thomas Bunch, who spent 10 years in the Marine Corps. Bunch stressed fitness and weapons training. What he could not completely prepare them for was the psychological reality of war, in all its manifestations. It was Bunch who came up with the idea of emphasizing the stress on families at home because that stress affects the soldiers as well. Bochco said “Over There” will be 60% at the front, 40% at home.

But as in a real war, nothing could fully prepare the actors for what they were about to experience. A roadblock scene in Episode 2, in which the soldiers are confronted with fast-approaching cars in the dark of night, became a turning point. The soldiers have to make split-second decisions about whether to open fire on cars approaching with lights off and intentions unknown.

The scene was shot without breaks, to keep the actors focused.

“It was probably that moment when a lot of us felt like, ‘Wow, this is what it feels like to be there. These guys have a very tough job,’ ” said Erik Palladino (“ER”), who plays the tough-love “Sgt. Scream,” who was just days from being shipped home when his tour was extended. “The difference was that we’re only pretending.”

Asking the troops

The first test of whether he has succeeded, Bochco said, will be whether troops who have served in Iraq will find the show realistic. With that in mind, The Times assembled a dozen Marines from the 2nd Battalion, 5th Regiment, 1st Marine Division at Camp Pendleton for a preview of the pilot and Episode 2 of “Over There.”

All had served at least one tour in Iraq; most had served two. Nearly all had been in convoys attacked by insurgents and had friends killed or wounded.

The young Marines hooted at the sex scene between a young soldier and his wife. They shifted forward in their seats during a firefight at a mosque, and when it became obvious that a convoy was in danger from a roadside bomb, they were silent and uncomfortably still.

They loved it when a captain bawled out a dunderheaded lieutenant. And they liked the running joke that the soldiers are stationed in an Iraqi town to which they give an unprintable name.

One Marine said he’d been to that town, “but we called it Ramadi,” the Sunni Triangle city where the Two-Five was involved in some of the bloodiest fighting of the war.

Their consensus was that, with some allowable license for dramatic effect, “Over There” conveys what it’s like to be over there, right down to the orange glow of the sandstorms, the agonizing wait for air cover when the fighting begins, and the danger of getting killed if you wander off to dig a hole in the sand to go to the bathroom.

Sgt. Jon Swanson, 29, of Franklinville, N.J., said that Palladino’s blunt-talking Sgt. Scream nicely captures what it is like to be a sergeant on patrol, required to make snap decisions for your men without the time or ability to check with superiors. “He only gets limited information and he has to work on that,” Swanson said. “That’s exactly how it is in-country.”

In one episode, Angel, played by Keith Robinson, and Jones’ Smoke, both of whom are African American, talk briefly and bitterly about race. One suggests that race is what’s important, not any sense of colorblind loyalty that the Army has tried to instill.

Lance Cpl. Alan Smith, 21, of New Orleans said he’s heard those kinds of discussions among his fellow black Marines. He sided with the character who said the color of your uniform is most important.

“There is always some brother trying to bring the ‘hood into the military,” Smith said, “and it never flies.”

The roadblock scene that had so affected the actors was given high marks for realism.

“It’s like that: Things happen so fast, there are flares going off, cars speed up, you don’t know exactly what’s going on but you have to react,” said Lance Cpl. Andrew Neuman, 22, of Valley Springs, Calif.

One of the soldiers has a wife who begins cheating on him immediately and repeatedly with soldiers who are still stateside.

“That’s everybody’s worst fear,” said Lance Cpl. Adam Gerstenberger, 20, of Pierce, Colo.

When one of the “Over There” soldiers has a leg blown off, his first thought while recuperating in a hospital is to get back to his unit. That, the Marines said, is directly on target.

“I remember a guy who had his calf blown off, and I saw him [in the hospital] and he kept saying: ‘Tell the platoon that I’ll be right back,’ ” said Lance Cpl. Nicolas Gonzalez, 24, of Pasadena. “Guys cannot stand the idea that their buddies might be in danger and they can’t help them.”

The Marines of the Two-Five decided that for all its gut-wrenching entertainment value, “Over There” might serve another purpose.

“Maybe it will help the American people really know what’s going on over there,” said Neuman. “They’ve forgotten about us or think it’s only peacekeeping. It’s not, it’s real fighting, every day.

“Maybe if they see it on a TV show....”

‘Playing by ghost rules’

Although Bochco insists he is not political, his view of soldiering is similar to his take on being a street cop: You do what’s necessary to save lives even if rules have to be broken. In Episode 3, “The Prisoner,” while the soldiers talk of Abu Ghraib and worry about being court-martialed, an Army colonel is interrogating a prisoner, the Geneva Convention be damned. “We’re ghosts, playing by ghost rules, and I’m the only ghost who knows what they are,” snarls the colonel, played by Michael Cudlitz. It’s an approach that is not likely to please Amnesty International.

But the goal of “Over There,” Bochco said, is to provide a compelling look at Americans in Iraq, with no political viewpoint, just the reality of being part of a squad of soldiers in a dangerous and uncertain place.

“When you’re there, your first goal is to save your ass and save your buddy’s ass,” Bochco said. “Politics is for somebody else.”

Indeed, none of the soldiers in “Over There” is particularly gung-ho. Only the football star Bo (played by Josh Henderson) and the agonized liberal Dim seem not to be at war with the Army. Looking at a dead insurgent, Dim concludes only that he looks “smaller than I thought.” One soldier, Tariq (Omid Abtahi), is an Arab American from Detroit who has no turmoil about fighting his “Arab brothers.” Nor does he want to engage Dim in a discussion of why, in combat, some die and others survive.

“You think about that much -- it’ll mess your head up,” he says.

Although realism is the goal, the series will not be looking to translate specific events into episodes, in the “grabbed from the headlines” manner of “Law and Order.”

And for practical reasons, most of the episodes will depict events that take place in wide-open desert spaces, not the crowded cities where many of the U.S. casualties occur. “If you do a cop series, you go to New York,” Bochco said. “We’re not about to go shoot in Baghdad.”

To keep the work free of any suggestion of Pentagon spin, Bochco opted not to ask for support from the Department of Defense, relying instead on Bunch for military realism and an Iraqi American film producer, Sam Aylia Sako, for advice on cultural matters.

If “Over There” stirs up political controversy, Bochco said, it will say more about the agenda of those who are angry at the show than it will about the show.

“We don’t have an agenda,” he said, “except for a compelling drama.”

Even amid the war’s consistent presence in the news, Gerolmo and Bochco are convinced that “Over There” will bring something different. “We can give you a powerful, visceral, gut-wrenching experience that the news can’t,” Gerolmo said.