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Director Brian De Palma Digs Into 'Redacted' Story

Brian De Palma's films include the horror classic Carrie, the crime epics Scarface and The Untouchables, and the first Mission: Impossible film.

His latest release, Redacted, is a fictional take on a real incident — in which U.S. soldiers who raped and murdered a 14-year-old girl in Iraq. It has strong echoes of his Vietnam War drama Casualties of War.

Inspired, in part, by reports he saw on the Internet about the 2006 incident, De Palma takes a raw, cinema-verite approach what's essentially a faux documentary, telling the story with the aid of soldiers' blogs, video diaries and online testimonials — all invented for the film, but based on materials De Palma found online.

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Other segments from the episode on November 14, 2007

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, November 14, 2007: Interview with Brian De Palma; Interview with John Barkemeyer.
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27:30

From Chicago to Anbar: A Chaplain's View of War

Our guest, Father John Barkemeyer, left a parish on Chicago's South Side to become an Army chaplain in 2003, the year U.S. and coalition forces invaded Iraq. There's a shortage of Catholic priests in the Army, and for much of his current tour in Iraq, Barkemeyer has been the service's only Catholic chaplain in the province of Anbar.

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Director Brian De Palma.

Director Brian De Palma. Now 53, he's the son of a orthopedic surgeon in Philadelphia, and sometimes watched his father's surgeries. Perhaps this explains the frequent depiction of blood and violence in many of his films, which include "Carrie", "Dressed to Kill", "The Fury", and "Scarface". His thrillers were often compared with those of Hitchcock.

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