Tonight I had the privilege of being able to see the first two episodes of HBO’s new mini-series, “Generation Kill,” as part of the Nashville Screenwriters Conference. The series focuses on a group of Marines headed into Iraq at the start of the invasion. On top of the excitement of getting to see something new was the excitement of have the people who actually did the writing in the room. David Simon (of “The Wire” fame) introduced the show, while Ed Burns and Evan Wright sat in the audience.

I worried a bit going into the Ford Theater at the Country Music Hall of Fame. I walked into the screening knowing only that the mini-series had to do with Marines and war. I worried there would be scenes of graphic violence one right after another. My worries were, thankfully, unfounded.

Of course, there was war. There was gore. But it felt… real? Justified? Not “justified” in a moral sense equivalent to the portrayal of a “righteous” war, but “justified” in that the violence/aftermath was not gratuitous. Scenes were ugly, but appropriately ugly. Through most of the first episode, I was on guard against those vicious, mid-sentence ambush-murders that feel like the car accidents in Adaptation, and thankfully none of those murders came.

It’s been five hours since I started watching, and the thing that I remember most are the characters. Sure, the writers did their job with the dialogue - I was never confused and frequently entertained - but where their work really stands through is in the quirky characters like The Godfather, who was a Lieutenant Colonel with a throat cancer that made him sound like Don Vito Corleone six days in to a two week cold. Soldiers were always asking what The Godfather had said on a subject. Another memorable character was Sgt. Maj. Sixta. He was from some deep south place, deeper than I’ve ever been before. His drawl was sometimes undecipherable, but that was okay; he was frequently telling people to shave their mustaches.

Tomorrow morning I’m going to a Question and Answer session with the writers of this series. As I watch this evening, I kept trying to think of a question to ask them. The only thing I thought of was this: “How does it make you feel to see something you’ve created shown on the big screen?”

This is a crappy question, I know, but I’m looking to have someone verbalize a sensation I hope one day to capture.