FROM BOOK TO FEATURE FILM
The Kurtz family, pictured in a 1952 snapshot.
The Green Box: At the Heart of a Purple Heart
In 2020, 75 years will have passed since the end of WWII, and those who lived through the events and have direct memories of that pivotal era are dying. Even people of the next generation, immediately affected by the war, but not old enough to fight, are aging; the heroic stories, emotional encounters and some of the mysteries and issues are sliding into the mists of buried history.
The intimate story of Robert Kurtz, as told by his son Jim in his book, The Green Box, is at the center of our film. Robert Kurtz’s life and tragically early death bring to life both iconic events of WWII itself, and issues returning veterans and their families face – both then and now. Our film will follow the multiple threads that his story raises about the effects of war, not just on a particular era or a single generation, but for the long haul as well. We will explore the past, to illuminate the present, and speak to the future in these ways:
A film, told with the depth that Jim Kurtz brings to his family’s story, with visual and auditory creativity of a finely crafted documentary, will bring to life a past that continues to affect us all.
A film that explores the after effects of war on the veterans who fought, and on their families.
An examination of how veterans are cared for and recompensed, and how that varies based on race.
It will preserve for future generations some of the courage, endurance, and love that made possible our own lives and those of generations to come.
Told the way this production team knows how to tell stories, it will captivate and speak to young and old.
The Green Box: The Heart of a Purple Heart will tell Robert and Jim Kurtz’s stories in stunning visual detail. Weaving together the contemporary memoire with the historical drama, we’ll follow both of their journeys from White Plains New York, to the skies and mountains of Europe, from the war’s most famous prison camp, Stalag Luft III, to a desperate march across snow-covered Poland and Germany.
This film will recreate moments in Robert Kurtz’s life, meet people whose stories were woven with his, and reveal the courage and commitment that marked the life of a hero, a beloved husband, and a father – an “ordinary” guy in extra-ordinary circumstances. And the war was not just ‘fought’ on battlefields; the endurance and stress present in times of conflict will also be seen through his wife Peggy’s experience, as revealed through the letters she left behind.
Using period footage from the war, animation and re-enactments, first person accounts, and an original score, the production will recount the actions of a young WWII pilot and place them in the context of the broader war.
The effects of that life will also be explored, both in the past and in the present — even today, four years after finishing the book on which this film is based, Jim Kurtz is still finding amazing connections to his father’s experiences. These connections provide a way to see the war in historical perspective.
The past is a teacher, only when it is analyzed and embraced. Experts in military and social history, psychology, and medicine, will present some of the universal lessons that Robert’s family story illuminates. His war and post war experiences intersect those of Tuskegee Airmen, and the heirs of ‘enemy’ civilians, creating a web that lead us to questions for our own time.
The air battle over Austria on August 3, 1944 lasted 30 seconds and was a pivotal event that affected hundreds, perhaps thousands of lives. It included acts of courage, and led to both unexpected tragedies, and unexpected moments of reconciliation. These thirty seconds, and the lives of the people involved, open a window on central and universal themes about the pain of war – this film is about those issues.
ABOUT THE BOOK:
The Green Box
Seventy-four years ago, in the latter half of 1945, soldiers who survived World War II returned home to pick up the threads of their lives. Second Lieutenant Robert Kurtz was one of these men. Fewer than ten years later, he died unexpectedly, leaving behind a wife and four young sons. The youngest, Jim, would have no memories of his father, which left a huge gap in his life, compelling him to search for the identity of the man he only knew from a few pictures and overheard family conversations. It would take him more than fifty years to learn essential details about this devoted father and husband… and unexpected hero. The resulting narrative is a unique blend of memoir and biography. Jim Kurtz weaves together his search with the emerging picture of his father’s life, vividly telling a story that is war chronicle, romance, mystery and personal reflection. And it all started when an eight-year-old boy climbed some attic stairs to open a forbidden green box.