'Welcome to the Suck'

[SWJED]

In 8 Nov's Wall Street Journal - Review and commentary on recently released movie Jarhead - 'Welcome to the Suck' (http://www.opinionjournal.com/columnists/bminiter/?id=110007517). Excerpt follows:

"... It's hard to think of a better way to sum up the antiwar films that have been exploding out of Hollywood for decades now. "Jarhead" is yet another movie about the depravity and uselessness of war. It's based on a memoir by the real-life Anthony Swofferd about his experience in the Marines during the first Gulf War. But producer Sam Mendes could have just as easily have been inspired by Michael Moore's 'Fahrenheit 9/11' or even Francis Ford Coppola's 1979 'Apocalypse Now'--which makes a brief appearance in 'Jarhead' as a film shown to the Marines in preparation for going off to war."

"It may surprise a few Hollywood execs that this isn't an easy sell in a post 9/11 America. In the Brooklyn, N.Y., theater where I saw 'Jarhead,' viewers were streaming out of the theater even before the film was over. What the viewers were hoping for was a rousing film portraying U.S. forces as the good guys sacrificing for a worthwhile mission, or at least, a sense of joy in the victory. But it never came. So on her way out, one woman protested for all to hear: 'They sold us [the movie] with prompted-up music, but then they gave us this.'..."

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9 Nov. New York Times - 'Jarhead': Whose Stories Are They? (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/movies/09jarred.html?ei=5065&en=dad92d06c3e3b2ff&ex=1132117200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print). Excerpt follows:

"Joel Turnipseed, a former Marine who wrote 'Baghdad Express,' a memoir of the first gulf war, was sitting in Minneapolis watching Monday Night Football with his wife last week when a commercial for the film 'Jarhead' came on the television..."

"Mr. Turnipseed said he was shocked... That scene is in my book, not Tony's, he added, referring to Mr. Swofford..."

"A little later on in the game there was another commercial for the film, this one depicting a scene in which a marine colonel gives a motivational speech to soldiers under his command. Much of the scene and some of the dialogue, Mr. Turnipseed recalled, seemed to come directly from the opening pages of Baghdad Express..."

[Tom Odom]

9 Nov. New York Times - 'Jarhead': Whose Stories Are They? (http://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/09/movies/09jarred.html?ei=5065&en=dad92d06c3e3b2ff&ex=1132117200&partner=MYWAY&pagewanted=print). Excerpt follows:

"Joel Turnipseed, a former Marine who wrote 'Baghdad Express,' a memoir of the first gulf war, was sitting in Minneapolis watching Monday Night Football with his wife last week when a commercial for the film 'Jarhead' came on the television..."

"Mr. Turnipseed said he was shocked... That scene is in my book, not Tony's, he added, referring to Mr. Swofford..."

"A little later on in the game there was another commercial for the film, this one depicting a scene in which a marine colonel gives a motivational speech to soldiers under his command. Much of the scene and some of the dialogue, Mr. Turnipseed recalled, seemed to come directly from the opening pages of Baghdad Express..."

I wish that I was surprised but this stuff goes on all the time. Looks to me like this is one to wait for the DVD. Thanks! You saved me the cost of a bucket of popcorn, coke, and a ticket. Maybe someone like Speilberg or Tom Hanks will ultimately do something that at least approaches reality. It is funny (strange not HA HA) to me that the movie industry can actually do a movie (actually 2 now) that looks, tastes, and smells (in my memory bank) right on Rwanda and they cannot get close to reality in film on the 1st Gulf War.

Best
Tom

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11 Nov. Rocky Mountain News: 'Jarhead' a Viciously Dishonest Lie (http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/speak_out/article/0,2777,DRMN_23970_4229434,00.html). Excerpt follows:

"By now you've probably read the varying reviews of Jarhead, the new movie that purports to be about the Marine Corps and the first Persian Gulf War. Based on the memoir of the same name by Anthony Swofford, both the movie and book bear only a superficial resemblance to anything real."

"First, the book. Third-generation enlistee Swofford joined the Marines to escape a dysfunctional family, but unfortunately he brought a lot of that dysfunction into the Corps. In the end, he dishonored the uniform he wore..."

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13 Nov. Washington Times - Hollywood: Rotten to the Corps? (http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20051112-102750-6549r.htm). Excerpt follows:

"...It's pretty clear those making movies in Tinsel Town don't know any real men like Aaron Mankin. They apparently prefer cowardice over courage; witless whiners to real patriots; gutless wimps and hollow phonies to men who know the meaning of self-sacrifice and integrity. That's the only conclusion one can draw after seeing Hollywood's latest anti-military travesty -- Jarhead..."

[SWJED]

Major Brooks Tucker in the National Review (http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/tucker200511150822.asp).


There is a telling moment during Jarhead when its main character, played by Jake Gyllenhaal, hears an American helicopter blaring a Sixties pop song as it flies overhead into battle. He turns to his Marine sniping partner, Troy (Peter Sarsgaard), and quips, "That's from Vietnam, can't we get our own music for this war?" It seems screenwriter William Broyles Jr., himself a former Marine and Vietnam vet, and Sam Mendes, the director of American Beauty, can't steer clear of subtle linkages and comparisons between Vietnam and our past and current war with Iraq. During the pre-combat phase of the movie, which is the first two thirds of the flick, the Marines in Jarhead fantasize about combat by watching Apocalypse Now and The Deerhunter. Marines in the early Nineties no doubt looked to Vietnam as the last big war, but they were more likely to find motivation from active duty vets who'd fought in Beirut and Panama, not from the Hollywood screen. The same could be said of curious moviegoers looking to the Hollywood Jarhead for a realistic and compelling account of the common grunt's experience during the Persian Gulf War.

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18 Jan. London Daily Telegraph - Marines Believe Gulf Film Makes Them Look Soft (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/01/18/wirq118.xml&sSheet=/news/2006/01/18/ixworld.html).


Few audiences can have watched Jarhead, the film about an American marine in the first Gulf war, more intently than that at Camp Ripper, a base in western Iraq filled with thousands of marines.

But there will also be few places on Earth where it is so reviled.

Sam Mendes, its British director, has explained how, by bringing Anthony Swofford's autobiography to the screen, he hoped to expose the barbarity of military life...

Being a marine can be brutal, the men at Ripper admit. Boot camp was not pleasant and, although incidents of sergeants physically attacking their men when they muck up are rare now, older hands say that they were relatively common in 1991, when the film is set.

But unlike the action on screen, the violence is normally constrained by discipline, the marines say. That restraint is part of their professionalism - and is meant to keep them alive.

Aim a gun at a friend and threaten to kill him, a soldier said, and you face jail and a dishonourable discharge, not a few words of complaint from your corporal...

[Merv Benson]

"Being a marine can be brutal, the men at Ripper admit. Boot camp was not pleasant and, although incidents of sergeants physically attacking their men when they muck up are rare now, older hands say that they were relatively common in 1991, when the film is set."

I do not think this was true in 1991 and I know it was prohibited in the mid 1960's too. My son went through boot camp at San Diego in the late 80's and saw nothing like this. While I have not had access to DI training material, I would be surprised if this is permitted. This is not to say that DI are not demanding and don't push recruits beyond what they thought they can accomplish. I think such suggestions do a disservice to men who dedicate their career to making people into Marines.

There has probably always been a tendency to say things were tougher in the old Corps, but for a guy like me who went through OCS in the 1960's it is hard to think of 1991 as being that long ago. Now, there was the story about why Chesty Puller was banned from the Basic School after his retirement. It seems he got the young officers so fired up that they were jumping off the "flying bridge" (the balcony) and one of them missed graduation with a broken leg.