Greg Mitchell's Blog, page 12

American Gun Culture

Glad to see Gail Collins at NYT tackle one of the under-covered aspects of "American Sniper"--what she pictures as the insane final scene where Kyle walks through the house, with kids around, and points loaded gun at his wife.  It's "all in fun" and, wait for it, his wife has said this indicated to her that actually he was getting healthy and back to his fun-lovin' self!  You know, the guy loved to point loaded gun at TVs and pretend to shoot bad guys.  Gail frames all this with current gun control battles. 

The Lies of Brian

No, it's no Monty Python, but the NBC anchor getting away with--until today's Stars & Stripes story--claiming for years he was in copter shot down in Iraq.   Now he's finally apologized but the stain shouldn't go away.  Prediction:  goody buddy Jon Stewart will have him on his show this week and let him laugh it off as just getting old, forgetting things....And may claim he did teach daughter to fly without wires on TV....Dave Weigel tweets: "To put this Brian Williams thing in perspective, imagine how any news org would cover a senator who fudged such a story."

Here's Williams gassing about it on Letterman as recently as 2013.  And below that, in 2007.


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Now We Take Berlin!

January update:  Trip to Berlin now set--so very light posting for the next 10 days--and amazingly have arranged interviews with all four key tunnelers who took part in the "CBS" and "NBC" tunnels.  

And further:  Signed contract this week so, so as the tunnelers no doubt said at some point, there's no turning back now!  My risks a good deal lighter, however.   My photo at left is from memorial at Bernauer Strasse with photos of more than 100 who lost their lives at the Wall--with the remains of the Wall visible behind their pictures. 

Further update:  Thrilled to be working closely with my daughter on this, as she and husband already hard at work as (paid) researchers in Berlin.  My next trip there: late-January.  And I hear tremendous interest from A-list screenwriters on movie.

Update Thursday:  Publishers Weekly covers the book (and movie) deal tonight.   NYT, ABC, CBS,  and a few dozen others picked up the AP story today.  

Update Wednesday:  And now another wild week, since we did things backwards, my book proposal sold to the movies first, for Paul Greengrass film--and only now comes the remarkably major book deal.  Here's the Associated Press story now, with the great Rachel Klayman at Crown/Random
House to edit. 

Friday: Big news today for yours truly, as my proposal for my next book The Tunnels was purchased by great upstart company FilmNation for a major film directed by one of my film heroes, Paul Greengrass.  Just up at Variety.

Quite flattered by interest over past 10 days from several leading studios and A-list directors but very happy to be with Greengrass--I was one of early boosters of his Bloody Sunday back in 2002, and since--and producer Mark Gordon (who did Saving Private Ryan and so many others).  Amazing story of  young folks in the West who at unfathomable risk dug tunnels under the Berlin Wall in 1962 to bring out family and lovers and others--and now a wonderful chance to tell it on the page and on the screen.  The Variety description includes the key angle of CBS and NBC financing two key tunnels--but omits what happened then:  JFK at the White House trying to suppress the two network specials as nuclear tensions rose.

Special thanks to Brian Siberell and Michelle Weiner at CAA and my literary agent Gary Morris at the David Black Agency.  Yowza.  And great chance to work with my daughter, who lives in Berlin about a mile from the former path of the Wall.   My photo above of some of those who died trying to get over or under or around the Wall, at the Memorial on Bernauer Strausse (remnant of the Wall behind them).

The Voice of a (Golden Ager) Generation?

It's come to this:  Dylan on the cover of AARP magazine.  And as per usual for mag (which celebrates older folks but oddly refuses to let them look like themselves) with a heavily airbrushed photo.  And now--here's the cover story.

With Beethoven in Berlin

Will be a thrill next Friday to catch a Beethoven concert in his native Germany at the historic Konzerthaus in Berlin, no less.  Of course, his role in celebrating the end of the Wall in 1989 is documented in our Journeys With Beethoven book--and film--so this will be especially significant for me as I embark on my own Wall book.  Here's one of the pieces for this program, the stirring Egmont Overture, led by Leonard Bernstein, who also led the 1989 LvB Ninth Symphony celebration there.

Diane Krall "Pines" for Richard Manuel

Surprised to come upon this, Diana Krall doing Richard Manuel's classic for The Band, "Whispering Pines," one of the loveliest ballads of them all.  R.I.P. Richard.  Yes, I've seen those pines outside Big Pink.

Box Tops Redeemed

Just came across this surprising and low-fi 1967 live performance from famed NY folk club (which I know all too well) the Bitter End, the Box Tops with Alex Chilton and their mega-hit "The Letter."

Sniper Shooting Americans: Roger That?

A couple of days ago I posted this over at my main blog post on the American Sniper controversy (mainly a collection of critiques by others):

Writer at the New Orleans Times-Picayune hits Kyle for his clear lie about helping to shoot 30 bad guys in that city--from the roof of the Superdome.  I've noted it before but good to see it in the city's leading news outlet.

Okay, let's say that Kyle was just gassing about this while drunk--what does this show about this "hero's" make-up, that he would brag about being judge and executioner--of American citizens this time, not "savage" Iraqis?  This is a question none of his, and the film's, supporters wish to tackle.

I posted link to this over at Twitter and Facebook and twice asked for any defenders of the film and Kyle to respond.  It is, of course, a kind of third rail--the "hero" boasting that he'd executed Americans (and then there was his claim of killing a couple of car thiefs).  Anyway, I'll again to get some sort of response.

And to those (many) who say "it's just a movie" or "it's not a documentary"--the movie is based on Kyle's memoir, not his novel.  The character in the movie is Chris Kyle.  They could have changed name and frankly said it was "inspired by" or some such.  So they are stuck with Kyle--especially when they call him, loudly and often, a "hero."

Time to 'Evolve'

Okay, gamers, here's my son's brilliant official trailer/how-to (that's his job) for the most anticipated game of the year so far,  "Evolve."   I'm stressed just watching the trailer. Always glad to see game where monsters, not people, get gunned down.

'Sniper' Under Attack (Updated)

Update #6  Two more good takes on the dangerous fictions in the film related to the war itself and how Eastwood falsely presents it.  A detailed accounting here from Vox on the "whitewash."

And this piece IDs what it calls the most "pernicious" lie in the film--that the U.S. was fighting "al Qaeda" right from the start of our invasion--not only completely false (no Al Qaeda in Iraq at that point) but also lending credence to Bush and Cheney claims that Saddam had something to do with 9/11 and we had to root out Al Qaeda in Iraq.  That famous scene in movie (and trailer) where Kyle shoots woman happened on his first tour, at the beginning of the invasion, and in the film the enemy is already labeled Al Qaeda.
  

Update #5   Writer at the New Orleans Times-Picayune hits Kyle for his clear lie about shooting 30 bad guys in that city--from the roof of the Superdome.  I've noted it before but good to see it in the city's leading news outlet.

Okay, let's say that Kyle was just gassing about this while drunk--what does this show about this "hero's" make-up to brag about being judge and executioner--of American citizens, not "savage" Iraqis?  This is a question none of his, and the film's, supporters wish to tackle.

More: The Guardian in London fact-checks the film vs. both history and Kyle's own book--and finds it wanting in many aspects.  I'd had pointed out nearly all of this many days ago.

Update #4  New piece hits what's left out of the film and portrayal of U.S. mission--by Marine who served with Kyle in Fallujah.

And a good piece here from Charlie Fink at Medium, which opens by recalling the Liberty Valance line--"When the legend becomes fact print the legend." Goes on to say that since we've apparently learned nothing from our Iraq invasion it could easily happen again tomorrow--after everyone has viewed this movie we'll be ready.  

And truth is gone, banished, most probably for good. We’re not cying about the right things and we are never going to. We lost a war, we destroyed a country, we displaced millions and started what may yet be regarded as World War 3. So far, we suffered five thousand dead, twenty five thousand wounded, and five hundred thousand traumatized. We transferred hundreds of billions of dollars of public wealth into private hands to pay for the war. We could have cured cancer, or world hunger. Instead we destroyed Iraq, for false reasons, at huge cost to us. We remain bogged down in Afghanistan. We are on our way back to Iraq. And so there will be more Chris Kyles, and more killing, and more transfer of wealth.

A bit of a backlash developing in Hollywood over making a "sociopath" a "super hero."

Update #3  Film gets Oscar nod for Best Picture for Actor Bradley Cooper.  Now Cooper again offers bullshit defense of film, explaining again that it is "not political" and not really about Iraq, so ignore that, brother.  Just a "character" study.  Yes, true, but in ways he may not realize.     Then Kyle's widow says, hey, even Mother Teresa gets criticized.  And, about Kyle's many lies after returning home....

Update #2  Good Salon piece by Laura Miller on Kyle, as revealed in his memoir. 

Update:  Among other things, we also now know that Eastwood and star Bradley Cooper both went to Texas to assure Kyle's father that their film would do nothing to hurt his son's reputation at all--which they apparently lived up to.  The dad says he told them he would "unleash hell" on Eastwood if he went back on his promise.  

Earlier:  Let me say quickly that I have not seen Eastwood's new American Sniper, but I have read a bunch of reviews and I get the drift.  But let me also emphasize that my views my change somewhat if I see the film.  And Kyle no doubt had some good post-war virtues.  But to begin:

Given the horrid number of Iraqi civilians killed by U.S. gunmen one has to wonder how many of the record-setting victims of his marksmanship fell into that category--though not hinted at in the film, apparently.  We do see him offing a mother and child--but she has, of course, just handed the boy a bomb.  The film, from the reviews,  even goes so far as to suggest that the vast majority of the bad guys were "al-Qaeda" which is absurd given the al-Qaeda numbers there--but it's necessary to emphasize the revenge-for-9/11 focus.  Also the film apparently does not raise questions about sniper Chris Kyle's treatment for many of the PTSD vets he tried to aid--you know, take them to a firing range for fun (which led to his death and, it must be noted, that of another man).  Kyle's widow, however, claims that the man who shot her husband--and the other victim--was not suffering from PTSD.

In the book that inspired the film Kyle bragged that he  “hated the damn savages” he was fighting. He recounts telling an Army colonel, “I don’t shoot people with Korans. I’d like to, but I don’t.”   A New Yorker profile called him part lawman, part "executioner."  Yes, he did have some good qualities, too, in aiding vets he didn't take to rifle ranges.  But as A.O. Scott of the NYT wrote, "And though George W. Bush's name is never invoked, American Sniper can be seen as an expression of nostalgia for his Manichaean approach to foreign policy."

Even a conservative National Review writer has hit another (alleged) media-promoted Kyle myth--that he and his widow donated all or most of the massive profits from his book to help vets.

Finally, here is a Washington Post piece from a few months back looking at his post-Iraq lies or exaggerations and one has to wonder about his record in the war as well.    He claimed he climbed on top of the Superdown in NOLA and shot 30 bad guys from there after Katrina.  Killed a couple of others or more elsewhere.   Police and reporters can't find any of the dead.  Claimed he punched out Jesse Ventura in a bar--while Jesse was in a wheelchair, no less--and lost a million dollar lawsuit (since affirmed a couple of times since this article) for seemingly making it all up.  And so on. You won't see any of that in the Eastwood epilog.

Kyle, of course, became a prominent anti-gun control advocate and claimed Obama mild opposition to assault rifles was move to take away all gun rights and other rights. 

Lengthy post here adds a couple other alleged Kyle lies to the mix and much more. This review raises other questions about Eastwood dropping all of the troubling Kyle claims and deadly quotes--making him a more sympathetic hero but not the real Kyle (in that view).