Sometimes you write something knowing in all likelihood that no other living soul will ever read it.  But you still pour your heart into it, obsess over it, and scrutinize it until you know every word by heart and your eyes are bloodshot and sore and your hands cramp from hanging over the keyboard long hours into the night.

I wrote Long March about ten years ago.  It was the fourth screenplay I'd written, and I remember my initial thought was simply to write something that took place during World War One.  Why?  Because very few movies have touched that conflict and it was fertile ground for new ideas, notable exceptions being the excellent Paths to Glory (1957) and All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).  Not exactly recent films.  I started thinking about this screenplay in 1998, so yes, I beat War Horse to the punch by about a decade.

Long March is the story of an American doctor, Noel Hobson, serving in the British Army in and around Belgium in 1917.  Hobson is renown for his skills, highly decorated, and selfless on the battlefield.  He is also a man on the edge of madness.  After too much time on the front, his fellows begin to suspect that he is near the breaking point.  Displaying an increasing paranoia, Hobson himself comes to believe that he has been cursed with a "touch of death," and that anyone he comes in contact with will die horribly.

Interlaced with Hobson's story is that of a fearsome and reticent German sniper, Ernst Wintersteiger.  Like Hobson, Wintersteiger is renown for his skill, though in his case it's his ability to take life.  Wintersteiger is so feared among his fellow soldiers that even officers tread lightly in his presence.  He is a sulky and dark brute with a mysterious past.  Lately, however, he's found that his skill for slaughter is slipping from him and he has been "cursed" with a touch of life, which not only prevents him from taking life, but gives him miraculous powers to heal.

Long March follows the story of these two men as they inevitably are drawn together across the bloody fields and trenches of Belgium during one of the bloodiest battles of World War One.  It's a story of two men's separate but linked quests to find truth amid chaos.

Long March takes places against the backdrop of actual events spanning the Summer and Fall of 1917 in what would become known as the Battle of Passchendaele or the Third Battle of Ypres.  During this barely five month battle, it was estimated that British forces suffered almost 300,000 casualties, and the Germans some 400,000 (compare this to about 3500 US casualties over eight years in Iraq, or even 290,000 US casualties for all of World War Two).  This was a battle of incredible ferocity.

The story, though, isn't really about the battle.  It's a human story told from multiple viewpoints on both sides of the war.  Voiceover takes the form of letters written home from both British and German soldiers.  I did an enormous amount of research for this screenplay, researching everything from the geography and events of the time to the manner in which the trenches were dug, battlefield tactics, and the varied dialects of the soldiers.  I take great pride in it's accuracy.

Long March is not an anti-war film, or at least that isn't it's primary theme.  All war films are, to an extent, anti-war films.  But Long March doesn't pound the reader over the head with preachy anti-war themes (if this is what you want, I recommend the last few seasons of M*A*S*H).  I would not consider Long March a war film, but a dramatic story set against the war.   The theme of the story revolves around war's ability to change people into things they aren't (or may not want to be), and the struggle to find truth.  To that end, every character in the script is in some way putting up a facade.  Some of the best characters I've ever created are in the story, from brooding Wintersteiger to the erudite British lieutenant Jeffrey who battles his own heritage, from the quietly heroic nurse Cordelia to the boisterous  and barely literate Sergeant Shankland.  And I still believe the exchanges between Generals Stuart-Bailey and Dorrien, during which they debate not just the tactics, but the morality of the war, are some of the best I've ever put to paper.

So, if you've read this far maybe you'll read a bit farther.  Click the tab above and take a look at Long March.  It would be enough for me to know that just a few more people read the best thing I've ever written.