PBS launches a 10-hour documentary series called "Carrier"

A simple twist of fate spun Chris Altice's life in ways he could never imagine.

The Manassas man should have boarded the Washington state-based Carl Vinson after naval training school, but a delay sent him to Southern California and a tour of duty aboard another aircraft carrier, the Nimitz.

Within a few short months, Altice, then 20, fell in love with a young woman who became pregnant with their child just before he deployed to the Persian Gulf from May 7 to Nov. 8, 2005. His long-distance relationship under stressful conditions is among the stories chronicled in "Carrier," a 10-hour documentary series on PBS.

"I never thought it would be such a big part of the film," Altice said, "but what I was going through was just what a lot of the guys on the ship go through."

The Nimitz is a floating city that stands 24 stories high and is three football fields long. It carries 85 military aircraft and more than 5,000 Navy personnel with an average age of 19.

Executive Producer Maro Chermayeff said it was a long and difficult process to get access to film, but once that was accomplished there was no interference. The filmmakers embedded on the ship got unprecedented access to film the crew, who gave unfiltered interviews about everything from how the war on terrorism was being fought to gays in the military.

"Capt. (Ted) Branch of the Nimitz wanted it to be about the enlisted," as opposed to the fighter pilots, Chermayeff said. "There have been a lot of hotshot stories, but what he was interested in was a story about the people on the ship. He said, 'We really believe in our people, and we don't feel they have had their moment yet.' "

Chermayeff said she wrote down themes she wanted to cover through the course of the documentary - such as faith, danger and relationships - and then sought people who could speak to those themes. Among those chosen were Seaman Altice, fighter pilot Lt. Laurie Coffey and Marine Gunnery Sgt. Randy Brock.

Brock said his parents left him with a worker at a carnival when he was 3; after a rough childhood, he joined the Marines. A producer spied him salsa dancing in the ship's bay one night.

"We were like, 'Who are these guys who have a salsa club at 11 p.m.?' " Chermayeff said. "There was Brock, with his broken nose, a rough-and-tumble guy who could be so graceful."

Chermayeff said she was fascinated by the different personalities on board the ship.

"What I loved was the incredible conversations with people who had so many different political views, yet bonded so much in this environment of isolation."

Altice, who served in the Navy for more than three years before getting an honorable discharge as an aviation ordnanceman, said he was surprised the Navy didn't seem to control the documentary. He thinks the result is a truthful telling of life aboard a carrier.

"During deployment you have friendships that would take a lifetime to form back home. You lean on each other and you never forget them, because they experience what you experienced - like being on the flight deck on 140-degree days. They are the only ones you had to turn to, and there was always someone there with a story and the camaraderie."

The men and women aboard the carrier tell the story of their voyage themselves, without a narrator. They model their tattoos and let cameras and microphones sit in on their wistful telephone calls home. Selections from their iPods, solicited by the filmmakers via a shipwide e-mail request, form the series soundtrack.

"We wanted to get the pulse, because it's such a big thing when you're on the ship," said Chermayeff, whose credits include the PBS series "Frontier House."

The 41 songs in the film include obvious thematic choices - Bob Dylan's "Tomorrow Is a Long Time," Loudon Wainwright III's "Missing You" - and the Killers' "All These Things That I've Done," and "Over My Head" by the alternative indie rock group the Last Conservatives.

While most of the film deals with the enlisted staff and petty officers, it does venture into the well-trod area of Navy fighter pilots. Coffey, who was recruited out of high school to go to the Naval Academy on a basketball scholarship, found her calling as one of the few female F-18 pilots.

"This is a skills-based organization. Women are not there just to fill a quota. There's no stigma attached. You get respect based on your skill."

That skill is showcased when the pilots have to land their planes during a Pacific storm that carries into the night.

"I'm nauseous just thinking about it," Coffey said. "You see the propellers coming up and you know how low they usually sit in the water, so you know how much the ship is tossing, and there's no other place to land.

"The first time I ever had to land on the deck of a carrier, it looked like a postage stamp. It's not nearly as big as it seems when you aren't trying to land a jet on it."

Coffey said the film offers a different look at those serving in the military.

"We are not all of one mind or one political thought. There is a cross-section of America on this ship and I think the public should see that."

By Susan C. Young

Special to The Washington Post

The New York Times contributed to this story.