I’ve heard you plan to film your next Die Hard film about Iraq. I’m sure it will be a fun filled, explosion laden, Yippie-ki-yay motherfucker! kind of flick, ideal for selling watered down sodas and popcorn by the bucketful.
And I understand that you can’t make it too much like the real war. That after all, would defeat the purpose of entertainment. We save the real nitty gritty of Iraq — blown up bodies, melted skin, white phosphorus and MK-77 munitions, depleted uranium, riddling passenger cars with .50 caliber machine gun rounds, Shi’ite death squads, et al. — for little seen documentaries, that no one but the antiwar lefties ever bother to see.
However, I do have some good ideas for the villain in your next film.
I know what you’re thinking: Zarqawi or some other sinister terrorist mastermind. But face it Bruce. That idea has been done (no pun intended) to death. I mean, Fox did a whole series (maybe you’ve heard of it?) around the concept of a terrorist threat. And George Clooney, of all people, did a flick on the ticking time bomb scenario. So I doubt you can come up with a new twist on the whole “terrorist bad guy threatens America’s lives, liberty and the pursuit of our happiness” thing.
Besides, I’ve always liked the fact that your bad guys in the Die Hard flicks generally had a profit motive behind all their evil machinations, despite protestations to the contrary. So with that in mind, here’s my idea for you to mull over before you finalize that script.
Your Villain is: The Evil Security Contractor.
Just imagine that your hero, John McClane, has a buddy named “Ted” let’s say, in the US Army, a morally upright guy and true patriot who volunteered to go to Iraq. His posting there was as the senior adviser for the Counter Terrorism Special Operations training program. His job: to “work on what the Pentagon considered the most important mission in Iraq: training Iraqi forces to take over security duties from U.S. troops.”
As part of his job, he supervised “a private security company, . . . which had contracts worth $79 million to train a corps of Iraqi police to conduct special operations. In the course of his service, however, he discovers a plot by this corrupt security contractor to charge millions for services that are never provided. Even worse, he learns that the contractor’s employees have tortured and killed innocent Iraqis in the bargain, just for sport.
Let’s say his last email message to you told how he confronted the contractor and reported what he had learned to his superiors, who supposedly started an investigation. Next thing you know, your buddy ends up dead, shot through the head in a trailer in Iraq, and the official military conclusion is that he committed suicide, despite that fact that he was a devout Catholic and devoted father and husband. What’s worse, the Army then concluded their investigation into his claims of corruption post haste, determining “there were no contractual violations” and that your buddy’s allegations were “unfounded.”
This was a guy you knew well: an honor student at the Point who graduated 3rd in his class, a former infrantry man and Platoon Leader with Special Forces training who ” eventually became division operations officer for the 82nd Airborne.” (I know, a goody-goody like this might be hard to believe in real life, but hey, you’re making a move, right?)
Then you learn from Ted’s wife that she’d had a phone conversation from him “that chilled her two weeks before his death.”
“I heard something in his voice,” she tells you. “In Ted’s voice, there was fear. He did not like the nighttime and being alone.” When asked what had happened to him, she simply says one word: “Iraq.”
No way, her husband committed suicide, you tell her, so off to Iraq you go to investigate his death on behalf of his family to find out the truth, no matter whose toes you step on, or what nasty characters get in your way.
Well, I think you can take it from there. By the way, if you do use my idea, I expect a modest royalty. But don’t worry, I plan on contributing all of it to a good cause.
I imagine it’ll be cheaper than Canada too. There may be government subsidies, and of course no union hassles.
On a related note, I recall Laura Bush visiting Afghanistan some time ago, presumably shopping for colleges for the twins now that we’ve brought freedom to the women there. I haven’t heard if they’re enrolled yet.
so interferes with one’s social life.
brilliant. Nice work. I’d like to see this spread this far and wide.
The villian could be the entire United States of America. With General Geofferey Miller as one of the stars.
Don’t forget that Mel Gibson is making another Jesus film, using the Maya to juxtapose the beauty of Christianity with the savagery of a religion built around nature. Bush justifies his hallucinations of God’s voice to invade Iraq through progaganda like this.
Here again the villian could be Paul as Jesus was just a fool who got himself killed for nothing. Paul used him to create the myth.
Of course a historian said said today that the Iraq war was the worst military blunder since 9 b.c. Kind of hard to find a hero in that.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1653454,00.html
Nice drubbing, Steven. He deserves it, the ‘winger. (Another winger, Gary Sinise, was on with Scarborough last night, talking about his noble USO trips, mentioning other ‘wingers who go on USO trips, but of course never mentioning the liberals like Al Franken who do the same.)
Reality bites, Bruce.
I can’t wait for “Syriana” to open next weekend.
Why can’t I go cower in the corner and chant “It’s only a movie” over and over?
I guess because Bruce and too many others are making a good living off this horror.
I hope “Top Gun” is forever ruined for a lot of people now that they know that the Dukester was the inspiration for the flick.
“Top Gun” was ruined for me by the jingoism, over-the-top acting, and predictable plot points. Of course, as Quentin Tarantino noted, the bizarre homo-erotic subtext really worked against the painfully conventional narrative.
Having a Methuselah moment: I remember when Bruce Willis was bartending at a joint on Columbus Avenue and trying to break into acting. Too bad he never learned how to do it.
Truly a sick excuse for a human being.
But great high concept, Stevie-boy. I’ll have my girl call your girl, and we’ll take a meeting. Maybe do lunch.
Having graduated from the college Willis dropped out of, I’ve heard so many stories about what a dick this guy is, I have a hard time taking him seriously. People I knew who considered him a friend told me he was embarrassing to hang out with because he was such an arrogant prick. When he won the “People’s Choice” award, I heard the head of the theater department exclaim, “That foul-breathed asshole?”
I’ve actually grown to admire Willis as an actor. He started out as such a bad one, that his performances in “Unbreakable” and “The Sixth Sense” are astounding. He’s really improved as an actor. As a human being, however… not so much.
Willis, Schwarzenegger, Silver, Grammer and Sinise, a band of aging, balding butt-kickin’ brothers head off to finish the “job” in Iraq. The job, finding the WMDs that Saddam buried somewhere under the desert sands.
Many say the search is futile, that these men will die (hard, harder and hardest) needlessly, that there are no WMD, it’s all a lie. But these men and the President alone know that not only DO the WMDs exist, but an evil mastermind, Mohammad Osama Bin Zarqawi has set the timer. Tick, tick, tick…
Rather than allow terrorists to blow up most of the world in 24 hours, the men find Mohammad Osama Bin Zarqawi’s cousin, a sleeper and a city councilman in San Francisco. Willis and Schwarzenegger torture the location out of him, while Silver, Grammer and Sinise use super-douper, double secret star wars technology to disarm the WMD, saving the world – with :59 remaining on the clock.
send this to Olberman and he could do a round of his puppet theatre on it. This is brilliant work Steve.
I have no idea how to do that. I imagine an email out of the blue dosn’t get very far.
But thanks. I’m blushing.
Email it to him. What do you have to lose? Either he gets it or he doesn’t. This is HUGE!
Just a bunch of box office “blowhard has beens.” Living on liposuction and rogaine, hoping for that second wind to sail them over the top.
Will people go see a rah rah Iraq movie when the war is so unpopular?
I smell a big flop.
He’s playing to the John Wayne “Green Berets” crowd I think.