HISTORY CHANNEL 'Washington the Warrior' spotlighted in documentary

The program portrays 'America's first action hero.'
LOS ANGELES (AP) -- George Washington has one of the most recognizable mugs on the planet. But what was inside that head?
The History Channel documentary "Washington The Warrior" attempts to answer this and other questions about the formative years of America's first president.
"We all know the Washington on the dollar bill and Mount Rushmore, and we know him as the president. But the more we started thinking about it, the more we realized that there is a vast undiscovered territory about Washington's early life," says Dolores Gavin, the History Channel's director of historical programing.
Action hero
"One battle at a time," Gavin explains, the program follows "America's first action hero" -- through his transformation from a brash young officer, nearly killed during the French and Indian War in the mid-1750s, into the wiser Revolutionary War hero of Yorktown in 1781.
"His gut instinct got him into a lot of trouble as a young man," she adds, "but later he doesn't go down the path of brash action. He thinks it through."
The production is narrated by Stacy Keach, with Shea Patrick and Jackson Bolt portraying the tall, imposing Washington at two stages of his military career. They do so without words, because, as Gavin explains, "We made the decision that we wanted deliberately to stay away from the spoken word. We wanted them to just forward the story."
Patrick was cast because he looks very similar to the first portrait of Washington as a young man. With Bolt, who's had appearances on "Nip/Tuck" and "Deadwood," Gavin says they "went more for the essence of George, as opposed to a strictly physical resemblance."
Battle sequences
The battle sequences were re-created in Lithuania, with about 1,500 re-enactors participating.
Lithuania provided excellent locations for the battles, and sets were created with great attention to historical accuracy. Computer-generated imagery was used to complete the proper look.
"The story of Washington is an incredibly epic story and we always took the approach that without CGI done in the appropriate way we wouldn't really be able to convey the epic landscape in which he maneuvered," says Gavin.
The filmmakers called on the insight of numerous historians, both as behind-the-scenes consultants and on-camera commentators, to help form a fully three-dimensional portrait of this ambitious man, who lost more battles than he won yet managed to found a nation.
Revolutionary War expert Wayne E. Lee of the University of North Carolina, who makes an appearance in the documentary, says there are "mounds and mounds and shelves and shelves" of Washington's writing, but his feelings are rarely exposed.
"One of the primary values of an 18th century gentleman was reticence, and Washington in particular was very interested in cultivating an image of, not unconcern, but stoicism."
Picky experts
Lee, who has complete confidence in the documentary producers' concern for accuracy, acknowledges experts tend to be very picky.
"Some historians really feel that filmed versions of history are problematic because of all the things they get wrong. To a certain extent I agree, but I also tend to think that any conversation that begins because of a film is better than none at all."
Gavin says a certain amount of speculation is inevitable in trying to "go beyond the top layer," to fully understand the man.
She believes viewers no longer want their history "filtered from a dry textbook" that offers only one-dimensional portraits of historic figures and events.