 Good evening everybody. We're excited to have you here tonight. My name is Mike Hopper with HBO Corporate Affairs and on behalf of the LBJ Library and HBO we'd like to welcome you to tonight's special presentation of which way is the front line from here the life and time of Tim Hetherington. We're really excited to be able to present this film for you. We're honored to have the film's director here tonight so we hope that you can stay with us. There's going to be a great discussion after the film and just want to say a quick thank you to the LBJ Library for partnering with us. They give us an opportunity to get in front of you people and and you're our cheerleader for films like this so I want to thank them for that. At this time I'd like to go ahead and get started. If you would please join me in welcoming the director of the LBJ Library Mr. Mark Uptigrow. Thank you Mike. I want to offer a special welcome to those members of our audience who have served in the military or who are currently serving in the military. We appreciate you being here and we appreciate your service to our nation. The LBJ Library has had a longstanding partnership with HBO. In the past several years alone we've collaborated with them on screenings for Path to War, Game Change, Defense and Thurgood. Tonight HBO and renowned war correspondent, author and director Sebastian Younger, bring us a first look at the documentary which way is the front line from here, the life and time of Tim Hetherington. The film will air on HBO on April 18th and follows Younger's close friend, photojournalist and fellow filmmaker Tim Hetherington who was killed in the Civil War in Libya just two years ago. Younger is best known for his as the works of that include The Perfect Storm, A Death in Belmont and War and his work in tonight's documentary is in keeping with the thoughtful provocative films produced by HBO. Following the credits Sebastian and I will have a conversation about this very powerful film. Ladies and gentlemen please join me in welcoming Sebastian Younger. Thank you so much. It's a pleasure to be here. Such a beautiful city. Any film is a collaboration by many people unlike a book. I usually write books but films are collaborations and there's no way to make a good film without many good people involved and I'm probably not going to go through them by name because most of the names it won't be meaningful to you but I just want to say I had an incredible team and I do want to thank HBO for a really wonderful partnership in making this film. They decided within about 20 minutes or 30 minutes in a conversation that this was a film they wanted to support and they've been an amazing partner ever since so I do I do want to recognize them. The film is about my good friend Tim Hetherington. We went through a lot of good times and a lot of hard times together in Afghanistan and later we made Restrepo and we wrote it all the way to the Oscars. We watched in sort of puzzlement as the Arab Spring just exploded while we were on red carpets in Los Angeles feeling quite out of place and we decided we had to rush overseas to continue covering these important stories. At the last minute I couldn't go. Tim went on his own and he was killed. He went from being an Oscar nominated director to dead in combat in six weeks which is has probably never been done before and I hope it's never done again. He was a good friend. He was a brother. He was 10 years younger than me and I learned an enormous amount from him. I hope you learned from me too but I know I learned an awful lot from him. He was very he was incredibly brave on the battlefield and off as a photographer as an artist. He was really sort of intrepid and daring. He was incredibly curious about the world and I would watch him just talk to people anywhere. I mean it could be an Afghan you know an Afghan villager or a soldier or it could be a taxi driver in New York. He was just curious about the world and he had just an endless sort of reservoir of compassion for what I came to think of as the the sort of quiet dignity of the human struggle. He was very very attuned to that and when he took photographs what he was really doing was connecting to people. The photograph was kind of an afterthought in a sense. What he really wanted was connection and he got it over and over again. I learned a lot from him. I wanted to make a film that would allow other people to learn from him as well even though he's no longer with us. So thank you and I look forward to talking to you afterwards. Take care. Ladies and gentlemen please welcome again Sebastian Younger. Thank you. Well congratulations. That's very very powerful. Thank you very much. How did you come to know Tim Heatherington? I'd worked for Vanity Fair for many years mostly covering wars and I had this project of following a platoon for one year in combat and they okayed it. I wanted so I was on assignment for them but I wanted to write a book and make a documentary film and I started that. I was I took one trip, shot a lot of video. I was with a photographer who just didn't work out that well and so Vanity Fair suggested some other names. One of them was Tim. I knew his work from Liberia because I'd been in the Liberian Civil War when he was there except I was on the other side with the government and had an equally miserable time and so I knew he was good in combat and when I talked to him on the phone I said look the stuff they're doing out there the American soldiers is physically really really hard so you have to be in really good shape. Are you in good shape? And he said well when you meet me you realize I'm rather lean and typical British understatement and so on my second trip I started working with Tim and then he kind of fell in love with the project as well. He started shooting video and we just started alternating trips. You had been on the front lines many times earlier and you'd known a lot of war correspondence. What made him unique? We heard a little bit about that in the film but in your view what made him unique? He I mean he was very brave and he was also quite cautious which don't always go together and he also he was not interested in war he was really interested in people and what happens to people in war. It's very combat is very dramatic and it's very easy to get distracted by the sort of repetitive drama of combat and just take a lot of photographs of guys shooting guns and that's actually not that interesting and Tim sort of saw through that and what he was really interested in was the human drama that plays out in war in such an intense form between men in the platoon between you know in refugee populations whoever it may be that's what interested him and that made him quite different from a lot of combat photographers. The film talks a little bit in the film about his destructive tendencies and he took up photography I think to in order to alleviate those. But in a way you have to have destructive tendencies to go into a war zone. I wonder how do you overcome your fear of death when you go into a war? I think some people do go to war for self-destructive reasons. I don't think Tim was I mean he was referring to his 20s when he how should I put this he had to be enjoyed his 20s and I think eventually he realized he had to kind of grow up and focus and he did brilliantly. How do you deal with your fear of death? I mean how do any of us deal with our fear of death you know like nothing happens in combat that doesn't happen to everybody eventually. But you're not seeing it every day when I go out every day I'm not I'm not faced with my own mortality as you are when you're in a foxhole or on the front lines. It's I mean in a sense yes in a sense no in a sense you're just choosing not to think about it right and and in a war I mean what happens with me and I think it's pretty common. There's kind of a switch and you're worried and you're worried and you're worried and then there's a point where I was always particularly fearful before patrols you know or you know like multi-day operations that we're going to go might go badly like it was in the lead up that I was particularly anxious and there was always a point where you have to jump out of the helicopter you got at whatever there's always a moment where whatever's going to happen is going to happen and when you cross that threshold it's actually kind of a relief and you stop being scared. It's a kind of denial and a kind of fatalism and I recognized it in combat because you know I was a climber for three companies I took all through my starting my mid late 20s I started working for tree companies taking trees down so I'd be 80 feet in the air with a chainsaw on a rope taking down big sections of tree you know complicated dangerous job and there was always a point where if you're topping out a big tree if you don't cut it right it can go quite badly for you and there's a moment you do the front cut and there's a moment where you start the back cut and you're setting in motion a process that you can't stop and the act of turning on the saw and starting the back cut is was always very hard for me and I would get to myself to a place where I didn't care about the outcome and I found that I sort of I would kind of empty empty feeling and I recognize that in combat and that other soldiers I talked to also said like that's it's an emptiness and that you can achieve and I think all of us deal with it that way. Do you need that psychology in war? Yeah you do. Yeah I mean if you're focused on what can happen to you if you care what can happen to you there are moments where you won't be able to function and yet you said when you left the war zone when you left the platoon you were with you missed it how so? Well I mean those those things that you're doing are very they're very dramatic and meaningful they have enormous consequences and as a journalist you do feel like you are providing this crucial role of telling the world what's happening in it you know that's you know that's that can be pretty intoxicating to be in that role it feels very important and in addition their relations between people and situations like that are very intense and and kind of unbounded and that also is quite intoxicating and I think when I mean a lot of the soldiers we were with really missed the war and what they were missing I think wasn't the killing and the risks and the bloodshed it was the connection that they all had which you really can't reproduce in civilian life and they missed it. One of the one of the guys a guy named Brendan said to me you know there's guys in the platoon who straight up hate each other but we'd all die for each other that you can't reproduce back home and they really miss it. You chose not to be a war correspondent any longer why? Well I found out about Tim and within about an hour it was in shock right and I found out on Twitter someone called me and said Tim might have been hurt in Libya and I didn't know what to do so I searched his name on Twitter and Twitter is so if sort of ephemeral and insubstantial and death is so much the opposite of those two things and the finding out about the death of a friend on Twitter is like I hope that never happens to me again but with I sort of I went into shock you know and within about an hour I just made the decision I wasn't going to cover war anymore I you know I had two or three really close calls and but more importantly I am I sort of sensed this tidal wave of grief that was coming towards everybody about Tim and everyone who cared about Tim there was this just dark tidal wave of grief coming hadn't really hit yet right we're all in shock and I just I was like this is gonna be awful for a long time and I just had the feeling that I didn't want to put the people I love through that kind of tidal wave like there's a point in your life you know not at 25 not at 30 but it's a point in your life where you have to stop gambling with other people's lives and when you lose your life in combat it doesn't really matter to you you're actually gambling with everyone else's emotional life you and Tim saw the war in Afghanistan as few have in your view have our efforts in Afghanistan been worth the sacrifice and blood and treasure that's an I mean I don't know how to evaluate that what you trade a human life for so it's hard to answer the question worth it but let me as a friend of mine said journalists don't tell you what to think they tell you what to think about and so let me answer it in that context the we would not have killed bin Laden without being in Afghanistan like period end of sentence you're not gonna fly SEAL Team 6 from Virginia into Pakistan into Afghanistan to kill him and get out we could not have destroyed Al Qaeda without being there on the other side of the equation and we haven't been attacked in 12 years almost 12 years and there have been many many attempts and I think one of the effects of being in Afghanistan is we really degraded al Qaeda's capabilities I was completely against Iraq Iraq was like I refused to cover it I was so against it in Afghanistan I thought it was necessary and it might protect us but also I'd been covering Afghanistan since the mid 90s I really cared about Afghanistan a lot and you know my first trip there in 96 I never imagined the US would be involved militarily in that country and after 9 11 the Afghans were so grateful I mean I was there when Kabul fell when the Taliban were driven out of Kabul and I was getting hugged by Afghans on the street because they were so grateful that America had kicked out the Taliban and that country I don't know what is in the future none of us do obviously but that country is so much better off right now and it's also the lowest level of civilian casualties in 30 years because of NATO security forces so is it worth it or not that I can't answer but those are the things that happened because we were there Afghanistan has been called the graveyard of empires can we establish democracy in that part of the world in your view I think it the what we have helped establish there is as much a democracy as in many allied countries like Pakistan Mexico I mean we do business with many many countries that have a very very funky system you know and Afghanistan is going to be one of them I think you know it's not going to be Wisconsin you know I mean that's not realistic for that area of the world but I think if we can put it into the realm of many other countries that we take seriously who are participating in in the community of nations I mean yeah I think it's possible as a result of Tim's death you were the catalyst for a medical training program for freelance journalists can you talk a little bit about that yeah I mean Tim as you saw in the film he was hit by shrapnel and he bled out he was not necessarily a mortal wound Chris Hondros was hitting the head with shrapnel that was a mortal wound although it took him a while to die Tim just bled out over the course of four or five minutes and none of the freelancers around him knew what to do none of them had any medical training and so when I found that out I decided to start a I haven't had any medical training and neither had Tim you know and freelancers do probably 90% of the frontline reporting and they are they have no training and so I started a group called reporters instructed in saving colleagues risk RISC risk training org is the website and we're a nonprofit and we we provide four days in a hotel in New York four-day training session and a medical kit for experienced freelance war reporters we've just finished our third session so thus far we've trained up 72 people and you know 28 journalists have been killed in Syria alone this is a very dire situation people are dying and so we're training as fast as we can the real frontline troops of the journalism world so that if another Tim happens and unfortunately it's entirely likely that people might have the equipment and the knowledge to help treat them have you seen any success from the program to this point no one has saved the life yet and I mean in some ways thank God you know like you're like if they never have to use it that's that's entirely a good thing although one of them was at home and this elderly gentleman fell down some stairs and was very badly hurt and he sort of rendered aid so you know it's just like it's maybe they'll never have to use it I don't know but they the deal I have with them is once we it's entirely free they just have to get to New York right and as a once we train you and give you a medical kit you have to commit to always having that medical kit on you in combat you can't leave it in the car you can't leave it at the hotel room and so and they're doing that they send back photos of them in Afghanistan and Syria and wherever else and there's our little medical kit and it's pretty cool and if you're feeling generous please check out the website risktraining.org you know we're doing this 20 bucks at a time but we are getting it done this airs I mentioned to the audience on the 18th of this month on HBO what do you hope audiences derive from this film well a few things I mean I just want to remember and honor my friend Tim and I wanted to make a film that would allow other people to be affected by him and his work now that he's no longer around to do that in person I also wanted to continue a little bit of the topic that he was sort of intrigued by why is war so captivating to young men like why are young men drawn to war to combat and you can see it in Liberia you can see it in North Africa you can see it among American American soldiers it like what is it they're drawn to and what are the consequences of it it's very politically incorrect thing to say but it's the truth of the matter and I feel like we really don't have a chance of reducing the level of violence in the world until we understand why violence among other things is compelling and I sometimes do this with audiences I'll I'll say you know who here's horrified by war and of course you know everyone raises their hand and and and then I'll say okay you're all horrified by war who here is paid $12 to be entertained by a Hollywood war movie just about everyone raises their hand so war we have a very even completely compassionate sensitive people have are interested in war it's a very very compelling thing and we have to unpack that in order to have a chance stopping it I think particularly young men have romantic images of what war might be in some respects so what was what most surprised you about war when you were exposed to it for the first time I was surprised by how mundane it was you know like my first war was in Bosnia and you sort of picture war you know in what you know what you've seen in Hollywood war movies but it's act you know like a lot of normal life goes on in war I mean if there's a civilian population and I don't mean you know D-Day but you know Bosnia and Sarajevo I remember having dinner it was a beautiful summer evening and we were having dinner outside in a suburb of Sarajevo called Dobrinja and it was a real frontline situation and we were having dinner outside with this family that we knew lovely soft summer evening and meanwhile like tracer rounds were just streaming down the street you know like about 15 feet away and we were safe because we were behind the building we were just watching these things go by we're completely safe and it was normal life family having dinner and tracer fire going on you know like simultaneously that really surprised me you were telling you I read an interview where you were talking about one of the people in the one of the members of the military that you were with and during a particularly mundane time and he said man I hope we get attacked today but did that happen often did they want to engage did they did does your adrenaline sort of pump and do you want to get into the fight well you have to understand they out at Restrepo there everything else was taken away you know there was no internet there was no phone there was no television there was no girls there was nothing there was no sports there was nothing that young men like and kind of the only compelling thing to do out there was fight and the fighting happened when the enemy attacked for the most part and so you were kind of at their mercy and if they wanted to just bore you to death for three weeks they could do that you know and and it drove the guys crazy and and they just be would be moping around like God can we be attacked please so you know and you know and being attacked in an outpost I mean you can get killed in an outpost absolutely and we you know there were some real fears of being overrun actually so very small position you know and but that is very very different from being ambushed in the open like no one no one wished for that that's really scary do you keep in touch with those guys that you're with at Restrepo some of them yeah I mean I was closer to some than others some I hear from once a year some I hear from once a week I mean yeah your storyteller was comfortable with the written word and and with film what's your next project I'm doing another film for HBO and I'm writing another book on the same topic like war in Restrepo but it's a I can't tell you the details it's a little bit secret it's it's it's a tiny bit illegal not immoral but a tiny bit illegal well we hope you'll you'll come back and share that with us as well ladies and gentlemen will you please join me in and thanking our guests thank you thank you