Marines Take On Bureaucracy in Generation Kill

[thedrifter]

Marines Take On Bureaucracy in Generation Kill

Talk of the Nation, June 24, 2008 · David Simon dealt with cops, civil servants and low-level drug dealers in Baltimore as co-writer of the urban epic The Wire. Now he tackles the Iraq war with Generation Kill, based on Rolling Stone reporter Evan Wright's book of the same name about his experience being embedded with the Marines' 1st Reconnaissance Battalion during the first 40 days of the Iraq war.

Simon and Wright, who is also a screenwriter for the series, talk about their new collaboration.

Were you a soldier in the early part of the Iraq war? What stories do you think ought to be dramatized?

Ellie

[thedrifter]

Much-Decorated Marine Vet Takes Aim at Iraq War Movies

By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Thursday, June 26, 2008; C03


Former Marine sergeant Eric Kocher served in a battalion in the vanguard of the Iraq invasion -- and later as a consultant for a new HBO series about the war, "Generation Kill" -- so he seemed like the ideal person to ask the question that's bedeviled Hollywood lately:

Why have so many critically acclaimed movies about Iraq failed so miserably at the box office?

Kocher, the darkly handsome recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valor during an enemy ambush near Fallujah, didn't hesitate.

"Because they kind of suck," he told us. "In 'Stop-Loss,' the whole platoon grew up in the same town, which never happens. Or in 'Jarhead,' which wasn't that bad, but at the end where everyone shoots up in the air . . . they throw so much fallacy into these movies that nobody believes them, and they lose the whole thread of the plot."

Hard to argue with that! We met Kocher at an HBO/Brookings screening at the National Press Club Tuesday, packed with journalists, foreign policy experts and other such types who peppered co-creators/Baltimore homeboys David Simon and Ed Burns ("The Wire") with variations on the "well, in my experience" non-question during the panel discussion. Simon said he didn't really care what these folks thought of the series, debuting next month -- he'd already vetted it with the toughest audience possible, the Recon Marines depicted in the show.

"None of us were beaten up," Simon joked. "No heavy weapons were used against our domiciles."

Ellie

[Eric Hood]

If Hollywood wants to show the real America, try showing some heros, not losers all the time. I won't watch most of the movies about Iraq, because the y find the infintestimally tiny amount of losers. They then make the bad eggs look like the norm. Where are the movies about the five guys, decorated with the Medal of Honor?
Maybe Hollywood got this one right, for a change.
Semper Fi,
Eric:usmc: