To Amir Bar-Lev, the director of The Tillman Story, one of the great tragedies of the saga is how the myth came to obscure the man. Tillman, he says, 'was taken twice from his family, the first time by death, and the second time by the appropriation that happened, not just by the military but by the culture at large. The government tried to appropriate him as their hero but so did everyone else. The Californians can say he was a great Californian, the Arizonians can say he was a great Arizonian, the right can say he was a great warrior, and the left can say he was a great leftist. The irony is that at the same time as we lionised Pat we dismissed his wishes for privacy. We were going to have him whether he and his family liked it or not.’