Sean Penn 'plays' reporter

2004-01-21 12:11

San Francisco - Notorious for his rocky relationships with journalists, actor Sean Penn has stepped into the shoes of a reporter with a two-part series of articles in the San Francisco Chronicle.

Given a press credential by executive editor Phil Bronstein, Penn spent four days in Iraq in late November, shortly before Saddam Hussein was captured.

It wasn't Penn's first trip to Iraq. In December 2002, three months before the war, Penn visited Baghdad seeking what he said was a better understanding of the crisis. Afterward, he pressed the US to make public evidence it claimed it had that Iraq was stockpiling banned weapons.

Bronstein said he first talked to Penn when the actor stopped by the newspaper for a tour and Penn showed him a bit of writing from his first Iraq trip.

The two articles ran last week and were accompanied by 12 photographs. They read like diary entries, documenting Penn's observations and experiences during the visit, from a run-in with armed guards who questioned why he was filming a building that had recently been car-bombed, to his decision not to wear a flak jacket for fear of increased attention on the streets.

"Our aim was to keep them as diaries instead of being about foreign policy or about the overall political situation in Iraq," Bronstein said.

Bronstein said a second assignment for Penn isn't planned, but wasn't out of the question.

"He's a local guy," Bronstein said. "We like to have contributions from our readers."

- AP