Friendly Fire is a response to the death of Pat Tillman, the former professional American football player killed in April 2005 while fighting in Afghanistan. Tillman was shot by a member of his own unit, returning fire following an ambush. His death, recognized with the posthumous award of a Silver Star for gallantry, provoked a media outcry and forced millions of Americans to face up to the terrible realities of war. In his fluid, quasi-holographic depiction of the event, Meyerson portrays the speed, danger and confusion of warfare, severed by a deadly rain of fire unable to distinguish between friend and foe. Tillman himself is presented as some kind of contemporary Frankenstein, created from the red and white of the Arizona Cardinals and the green of the U.S. Army.