Go to TOC for this film ( (which has also a statement on purpose and manner of analysis and a disclaimer as to caveat emptor and my knowing anything authoritatively, which I do not, but I do try to not know earnestly, with some discretion, and considerable thought).

PART FIVE

LINKS TO SECTIONS OF THE ANALYSIS ON THIS PAGE:

This is Vietnam: The Movie -- Credits Section, Shots 392 through 397
This is Vietnam: The Movie -- Requiem for the Dead Section, Shots 398 through 406
This is Vietnam: The Movie -- The Interviews Section, Shots 407 through 423
Double Feature at Le Ngoc, Shots 424 through 444

THIS IS VIETNAM: THE MOVIE -- CREDITS SECTION

392 A chopper flies in (#23). Wounded marines are run out to it. "Surfin' Bird", which began at the end of shot 390, continues. (1:15:47)

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393 A film crew, from the rear, walking backward, crouched, screenright to screenleft. The camera tracks with them as they pass resting Marines, wounded on stretchers, a Marine walking by whose face and hands are entirely wrapped in bandages who waves to them. (1:16:13)

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394 The film crew from the front, their film camera pointed at the camera. (1:17:00)

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395 The film crew from the rear as they pass by Joker and his fellow Marines. (1:17:06)

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JOKER: Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?

COWBOY: Hey, start the cameras. This is Vietnam: The Movie.

EIGHTBALL: Yeah, Joker can be John Wayne, I'll be a horse.

DONLON: T.H.E. Rock can be a rock.

T.H.E. ROCK: I'll be Ann Margaret.

DOC JAY: Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo.

CRAZY EARL: I'll be General Custer.

RAFTER MAN (brandishing a rifle): Who'll be the Indian?

ANIMAL MOTHER: Hey, we'll let the gooks play the Indians.

396 The chopper lifts off and flies away under a daylight moon. (1:17:33)

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NOTES

THE PLAY WITHIN A PLAY

Cowboy announces this is a movie, and I'm going to treat it as a movie within a movie. Kubrick has the play within the play in all his works. The mouse trap.

Out of the different sections of this play within a play, the movie within a movie, this is the only one in which we see the characters all at once, together, in one shot, so we may easily orient them in respect of one another. In the other sections of this movie within a movie, some or all are isolated from one another.

The play within a play is introduced, in Kubrick's work, as early as Fear and Desire with Lt. Corby describing the "mousetrap" by which they'll find their gate to freedom from behind enemy lines. This references the play-within-a-play mousetrap in Hamlet, by which he expresses, as a fiction, what he believes may have happened and is intended to reveal truth by how the audience responds. I discuss this in Stanley Kubrick's Fear and Desire, The Tempest, Comus, Chess, and HAL's Error.

In Barry Lyndon the stepson, Lord Bullingdon, parades Barry's son who he has put in his own shoes, expressing for all to see how he has been replaced, Barry effacing him. Everyone well understands the performance and Barry attacks him.

In Killer's Kiss, the manager of Davey, the boxer, is pursued by thugs into an alley outside a theater. We hear the audience laughing in the theater behind him and he struggles to get their attention, pleading for help. He's unable to get help and is killed. I posit that Kubrick is identifying the film audience with that invisible theater audience. Related to this, we see an ad for the magic show film Himberama, in which Orson Welles, from the film screen, breaks the fourth wall, dialoging directly with the audience, and also through the intermediary of a magician who exits the stage, entering into the real life audience and bringing a woman up on the stage where she communicates with Welles on the screen. I discuss this at length, what it has to do with Killer's Kiss, in Kubrick's References in Killer's Kiss to an Obscure Magic Film by Orson Welles.

A Clockwork Orange is nothing but playing with the role of the audience and what is real or performative and how action on stage and screen is perceived and comprehended by the audience. For Alex, it's only movie blood that looks like real blood. To quote myself:

In his films, Kubrick plays a lot with expanding the role of the actor/character so they become as real entities conjured by their god of a writer and are trapped in their predetermined world by that writer (or director). Wanting to keep this concise, I don’t have room to go into examples of how that’s so here so I’ll leave it at that. Kubrick also plays with the roles of the audience, action and camera, most pointedly in A Clockwork Orange, breaking down the fourth wall so the audience is intersecting directly with the action. For instance, when Alex is finally strapped into his chair in the theater during his programming, he is actor and audience staring at the screen, the movie he’s watching replicating his thug/droog life, a scene during which we have his famous remark that blood always looks more real on screen. Later, he does in fact watch real life movies of Nazis. As Alex watches from his position in the audience, he looks at us, the audience, and we are not only the audience watching him in turn, we’ve also become the screen upon which the movie is being played, those flickering images of both the imitative film and the real life actions of the Nazis. The confluences of reality, celluloid and theater are explored, the stage presented again and again in A Clockwork Orange, activity taking place both on and off it, such as when Alex and his droogs interrupt the rape of the woman on the casino stage and the opposing gang leaps off the stage and engages in a fight with what is in effect their audience. Then when Alex assaults the writer and rapes his wife at HOME, this occurs on a stage, the lighting design being as stage foot lights and the cinematic audience hidden in the dark window beyond them, a window which we face and so we are also removed from the audience and become as participants in the action. One could write pages upon pages on Kubrick’s work with content and its relationship to audience and the creator of the content, this being a strong component in all his films, but I’m trying to be concise here. I’ve examined this more thoroughly in my analyses for I’ve paid attention to Kubrick’s doing this for some time.

SURFIN' BIRD

From the book, the below extended quote concerns immediately before the men go into combat, mentally preparing themselves for it, then during combat Joker is knocked unconscious by a B-40 rocket-propelled grenade, but a man next to him is killed by it. While in states of semi-consciousness, he believes he is dead. Hasford describes them running into battle like big-assed birds. This is preceded by much of the dialogue in the first part of the movie-within-a-movie:

War is a catalogue of sounds. Our ears direct our feet.

A bullet crunches into a wall.

Somebody starts singing:

M.I.C...K.E.Y...M.O.U.S.E.

The machine guns are exchanging a steady fire now, like old friends having a conversation. Thumps and thuds puncture the rhythm of the bullets.

The snipers zero in on us. Each shot becomes a word spoken by death. Death is talking to us. Death wants to tell us a funny secret. We may not like death but death likes us. Victor Charlie is hard but he never lies. Guns tell the truth. Guns never say, "I'm only kidding." War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war is very sincere.

I say out loud: "You and me, God--right?"

I send guard-mail directives to my personal Tactical Area of Responsibility, which extends to the perimeters of my skin. Dear Feet, tiptoe through the tulips. Balls, hang in there. Legs, don't do any John Waynes. My body is serviceable. I intend to maintain my body in the excellent condition in which it was issued.

In the silence of our hearts we speak to our werewolf weapons; our weapons reply.

Cowboy is listening to me mutter to myself. "John Wayne? Hey, Joker's right. This ain't real. This is just a John Wayne movie. Joker can be Paul Newman. I'll be a horse."

"Yeah."

"Crazy Earl says, "Can I be Gabby Hayes?"

"T.H.E. Rock can be a rock," says Donlon, the radioman.

Alice says, "I'll be Ann-Margret."

"Animal Mother can be a rabid buffalo," says Stutten, honcho of the third fire team.

The walls are assaulted by werewolf laughter.

"Who'll be the Indians?"

The little enemy folks audition for the part--machine-gun bullets rip across a wall to starboard.

Lieutenant Shortround calls up his squad leaders with a hand signal--he holds up his right hand and twirls it. Three squad leaders, including Crazy Earl, double-time to him. He talks to them, points at the wall. The squad leaders double-time back to their squads to confer with their fire team leaders.Lieutenant Shortround blows a whistle and then we're all running like big-assed birds. We don't want to to this. We are all afraid. But if you stayed behind you would be alone. Your friends are going; you go too. You're not a person anymore. You don't have to be who you are anymore. You're part of an attack, one green object in a line of green objects, running toward a breach in the Citadel wall, running through hard noise and bursting metal, running, running, running...you don't look back.

We double-time, werewolves with guns, panting. We run as though impatient to sink into the darkness that is opening up to swallow us. Something snaps and we're past the point of no return. We're going through the broken wall. We're running fast and we aren't going to stop. Nothing can stop us.

The air is being torn.

The deck shifts beneath your feet. The asphalt sucks at your feet like sand on the beach.

Green tracer bullets dissect the sky.

Bullets hit the street. The impact of the bullets is the sound of a covey of quail taking flight. And sparks. You feel the shock of bullets punching through bricks. Splinters of stone sting your face.

People tell you what to do.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. If you stop moving, if you hesitate, your heart will stop beating. Your legs are machines winding you up like a mechanical toy. If your legs stop moving, your taut spring will run down and you will fall over, a lump without motion.

You feel like you could run around the world. Now the asphalt is a trampoline and you are fast and graceful, a green jungle cat.

Sounds. Cardboard being torn. Head-on collisions. Trains derailing. Walls falling into the sea. Metal hornets swarm overhead.

Pictures: The dark eyes of guns; the cold eyes of guns. Pictures blink and blur, a wall, tiny men, shattered blocks of stone.

Keep moving, keep moving, keep moving...

Your feet take you up...up...over the rubble of the wall...up...up...you're loving it...climbing, you're not human, you're an animal, you feel like a god...you scream: "DIE! DIE! DIE, YOU MOTHERFUCKERS! DIE! DIE! DIE!"

Hornets try to swarm into you--you swat them aside.

Boots crunch in powdered stone. Equipment flaps, clangs, and rattles. People curse.

"Oh, fuck."

Keep moving.

Your Boy Scout shit is wet with sweat. Salty sweat wiggles into your eyes and onto your lips. Your right index finger is on the trigger of your M-16. Here I come, you say to yourself, here I come with a gun full of bullets. How many rounds left in this magazine? How many days left to my rotation date? Am I carrying too much gear? Where are they? And where the hell are my feet?

A face. The face moves. Your weapon sights in. Your M-16 automatic rifle vibrates. The face is gone.

Keep moving.

And then you feet no longer touch the ground, and you wonder what's happening to you. Your body relaxes, then goes rigid. You hear the sound of a human body erupting, the ugly sound of a human body being torn apart by high-speed metal. The pictures blinking before your eyes slow down like a silent film on a defective reel. Your weapon floats our of your hands and suddenly you are alone. You are floating. Up. Up. You are being lifted up by a wall of sound. The pictures blink faster and faster and suddenly the filmstrip snaps and the wall of sound slams into you--total, terrible sound. The deck is enormous as you fall. You merge with the earth. Your flak jacket absorbs much of the impact. Your helmet falls off your head and spins. You're on your back, crushed by sound. You think: Is that the sky? "CORPSMAN," someone says, far away. "CORPSMAN!"

The book describes planes that fly them back "to the World" as silver Freedom Birds. F-4 Phantom jet fighters dropping napalm, bombs, phosphorous are described as birds. Gunship helicopters are described as circling like predatory birds that buzz into the horizon and vanish when out of ammo and fuel. When Rafter Man dies, he is given as having the expression on his face of a person who woke to find a dead bird in his mouth. Before the second sniper attack, hearing a sound, it's wondered if it's a bird or nothing or a rifle bolt going home.

It's likely that the song, with its repetitive lyric of "the bird is a word", is used in the film in relation to the choppers. Michael Herr, one of the screenwriters of Full Metal Jacket, a war correspondant who penned the well-known 1977 Dispatches, wrote in it how the Vietnam War was one of choppers and addiction to easy transportation, here one minute and there another. But Herr was a war correspondent, not a Marine. He'd get itchy if he rode in somewhere and it might begin to appear a chopper wouldn't be flying in that he could ride out on that same day. Hasford writes very little about riding around in choppers in The Short-timers. Almost all of the interviews I've listened to of Marines have them most frequently taking land transport from place to place, and sometimes having tremendous trouble evacuating injured.

Performed by The Trashmen, a cover combo of The Rivingtons "Papa-Oom-Mow-Mow" and "The Bird's the Word", "Surfin' Bird" was released November 13 1963 and reached No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100. The Trashmen initially tried to claim copyright with drummer and vocalist Steve Wahrer as the composer. They had disbanded by 1967.

We had a glimpse of an eagle in a battery ad overlooking the street in Da Nang. In the next sniper scene in Hue, that eagle will return, as well as a phoenix, a Vietnamese symbol for harmony, but the phoenix is only represented by a word, not an image.

THE KEY PLAYERS OF THE DOCUMENTARY

In the novel, things feeling unreal, the men play at pretending they are in a movie, voicing what roles they and the others would play, then Immediately after they run into combat like big birds.. T.H.E. Rock dies, shattered by sniper fire like Eightball and Doc Jay will be later. Crazy Earl dies, using his Red Ryder toy BB gun rather than his real rifle. Shortround dies as well but he was killed by Animal Mother. The only reference to a film crew in the book occurs before Joker and Rafter Man have hooked up with Cowboy, and it's one sentence about Walter Cronkite and his CBS crew being briefly there, surrounded by star-struck grunts, then rushing off to "photograph death in living color." This corresponds to the reporters back at the site of the massacre, which was the first time we saw a movie camera, in the hands of Kubrick's daughter, Vivian, who was filming a documentary of the making of Full Metal Jacket. That documentary was never released. The individual who plays the cinematographer in these scenes is perhaps an individual viewed briefly behind Vivian at the trench, face unseen, holding the microphone. Some footage filmed by Vivian can be viewed in Stanley Kubrick's Boxes. Vivian documents as the actors in the trench come back to life, dusting themselves off, and people clap with the shooting for that part having ended.

So, Kubrick has our introduction to the documentarians with Vivian behind the camera, filming the documentary for Full Metal Jacket. Now Kubrick brings the documentarians back in, replacing Vivian, and has them take on a significant role in the film, recording the men and their feelings. As I've discussed in Part Four, I believe their presence is already suggested in shot 365, during the battle, that shot in particular being very much in the style of lower tech hand-held documentary footage.

Joker calls out to the camera, "Is that you, John Wayne? Is this me?", which were his first words in the Boot Camp scene and returns us to near the beginning of the film. Cowboy exclaims, "This is Vietnam: The Movie." Whereas Cowboy, in the novel, says this is just a John Wayne movie, identifies Joker as Paul Newman, and he'll be a horse, EIghtball in the movie says Joker can be John Wayne and he'll be a horse. Who is Cowboy? It's not voiced here but it was when Joker reunited with him and called him the Lone Ranger.

John Wayne once commented on Paul Newman:

Paul Newman would have been a much more important star if he hadn't always tried to be an anti-hero, to show the human feet of clay.

Joker, in Full Metal Jacket, is an anti-hero.

Cowboy has on his helmet a fabric Confederate flag with a black-and-white image seemingly pasted in the middle of it. I'm reminded of the 1960s campaign buttons that showed Alabaman George Wallace in the middle of the Confederate flag, but Cowboy is supposedly from Texas (though not in the book) so it makes more sense that the individual in the photo on his helmet could be Buddy Holly, which it certainly resembles. Buddy Holly was also a Texan, and someone of whom Cowboy might have been quite proud.

In the novel, Cowboy, like Joker, had been a reporter for his high school newspaper, which isn't revealed in the film and isn't explored in the book, but is a point of bonding for them both.

In the novel, Donlon had said T.H.E. Rock could be a rock, and Alice had said he'd be Ann Margaret. Here, T.H.E. Rock asserts he'll be Ann Margaret as he bares his calf. Doc Jay identifies Animal Mother as a rabid buffalo. In the novel, it was T.H.E. Rock, his nick drawn from a large crystal he wore as a pendant, who had alerted Shortround to Animal Mother pursuing young girls again. As he was concerned about this in the novel, it may be that has been transferred to the film with his taking on the role of Ann Margaret due Lockhart's request for crotch shots of her. T.H.E. Rock does not have a speaking role during the interview section. We briefly see, in the first shot of him in the courtyard at the villa, that he is holding the pendant but it is instead of a crystal some kind of a naturally-formed rock with a hole in it that is suspended from his neck. On his helmet are the words "I'm Hard" and a packet of Wrigley's Spearmint gum is stuck in the band.

Donlon is the radio person, and something not voiced in the film is the difficulty Donlon would have had as the one working the radio, as the radio person was a target for snipers, and could easily be picked out by the antennae that stood up on most of the Marine Corps models. In the novel, a sniper shoots through his radio and Joker saves his live, pulling him behind a boulder. In the film, his helmet shows that he is from Alabama, the state's name appearing above a drawn-on Confederate flag. In the book, the only Confederate flag mentioned is one flying from a tank. Donlon is not given as White or Black in The Short-timers, which means he's going to be white. He argues with Joker about how Joker positions himself like Gandhi above everyone else, when he is just a grunt like the rest of them. In The Phantom Blooper , when he returns home he lives in California and is a protestor with Veterans Against the Vietnam War. He's nailed hard by cops at a protest and the last we see of him he's in the hospital, having lost an eye. In Full Metal Jacket, we're left to guess if Donlon's wearing the Confederate flag is ironic, or if it simply identifies where he is from, he wants to get back home to Alabama, and that is the bit of magic he wears in the hope it'll take him back home in one piece. I'll return to this subject in a moment with the character of Black John Wayne in The Phantom Blooper.

Eightball is, in the novel, Alice, who wears a necklace of voodoo bones from NOLA, and carries around a bag of the feet of individuals he's killed, considering them to be magic. His nick is Alice because he likes Arlo Guthrie's "Alice's Restaurant". He sticks an Ace of Spades between the teeth of his confirmed kills. In the novel, it's Joker who calls him "Jungle Bunny", while Cowboy calles him "The Midnight Buccaneer" as he wears a gold ring in his left ear. His vest is made from the skin of a Bengal tiger he killed one night. In the film, the "savage" aspect, which Joker mocked in the novel, is transferred largely to Animal Mother. The bone necklace is replaced with pucca shells and the magic is perhaps retained and implied by the Eightball on his helmet.

In the novel, Crazy Earl identified himself as Gabby Hayes, a grizzled character actor who was in numerous westerns, performing fifteen times with John Wayne. Why Gabby Hayes? I would think it's because he starred in the "Red Ryder" series with Wild Bill Elliott. In the film, Crazy Earl decides he'll be the ll-fated General Custer whose hubris led his regiment into slaughter with his intention to attack an Indian village. Every man under his command was killed at Little Bighorn. He raises his Daisy Red Ryder BB gun as he speaks, displaying it. The BB gun isn't ever mentioned in the film, it's only shown, but in the book it's how Crazy Earl is killed, because he finally goes berserk, as Cowboy expected he would, and uses the Red Ryder as his weapon and is blown away, which is how Cowboy becomes squad leader. One wonders what might have been the female name Kubrick might have imagined Crazy Earl gave his rifle?

Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer do. I'm half crazy, over the love of you.
It won't be a stylish marriage, I can't afford a carriage
But you'll look sweet, upon the seat, of a bicycle built for two.

Though, in the film and book, the cowboy association is with John Wayne, Red Ryder, for which this Daisy BB gun was named, was a popular cowboy and Indians comic strip that did heavy merchandizing, including the name having been licensed for use on the BB Gun. There was a Red Ryder radio show and films on Red Ryder were produced from 1940 to 1950. In 1944, Bugs Bunny, as the Masked Marauder, battled Red Hot Ryder who appeared as his nemesis in Buckaroo Bugs, the theme music for Red Hot Ryder being the Galop from The William Tell Overture, same as used for The Lone Ranger.

Who are the gooks, asks Rafter Man. We already can guess, but the "gooks" are identified as the Indians by Animal Mother.

On Animal Mother's helmet, in the film, is "I am become death", which will bring to mind Oppenheimer's response to the atomic bomb he'd helped create, when he saw the bright light of its fireball at Los Alamos.

If the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky, that would be like the splendour of the mighty one...Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.

Robert Oppenheimer, July 16th 1945

I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita. Vishnu is trying to persuade the Prince that he should do his duty, and, to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another."

Robert Oppenheimer later reminiscing on the inspiration for his statement.

In the Bhagavad-Gita, Arjuna, the prince, hesitates to go into battle because of the destruction that will ensue, he knowing friends and loved ones will die. His charioteer is Lord Krishna, an incarnation of Vishnu, supreme god of preservation, and time. Vishnu reveals the god's true form, in which everything is part of the one, of Vishnu, life and death are an illusion, and the end is already determined.

Arjuna saw in that universal form unlimited mouths and unlimited eyes. It was all wondrous. The form was decorated with divine, dazzling ornaments and arrayed in many garbs. He was garlanded gloriously, and there were many scents smeared over His body. All was magnificent, all-expanding, unlimited. This was seen by Arjuna...[Arjuna said] As the rivers flow into the sea, so all these great warriors enter Your blazing mouths and perish. I see all people rushing with full speed into Your mouths as moths dash into a blazing fire. O Visnu, I see You devouring all people in Your flaming mouths and covering the universe with Your immeasurable rays. Scorching the worlds, You are manifest. O Lord of lords, so fierce of form, please tell me who You are. I offer my obeisances unto You; please be gracious to me. I do not know what Your mission is, and I desire to hear of it. The Blessed Lord said: Time I am, destroyer of the worlds, and I have come to engage all people. .

What is revealed to Arjuna is it is his duty to act out his allotted role, which he does, he goes into battle. It doesn't hurt matters that it's also revealed to him he won't die.

It's far beyond the scope of this analysis to go into approaches to Hinduism that are dualistic, that are non-dualistic, the problem of evil in systems ruled by fate, the complexity of harmony, the concept of dharma and cosmic cycles of samsara/rebirth, nor is it necessary. But there are parallel concepts in Kubrick's work with his approach to circularity, his examination of duality and the between in which all resolves. Also, there is questioning, such as just because Animal Mother wears on his helmet a passage from Arjuna's realization that he must follow his destined path and go into battle as he is a warrior-prince, does not mean this is a "truth" to which Kubrick ascribes that is being expressed. The Shining touches upon the philosophical difficulties in Abraham's conviction that he must do as demanded and sacrifice Isaac, and just as Oppenheimer was unable to resign himself, as Arjuna, to his part in the making of the bomb, one can question the "harmony" and balance of assuming one's path is fated and following authoritarian mandates without question.

Traditional Vietnamese religion, I read, is a combination of Hinduism, Mahayna Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism, and it is sensible to look at possible expressions of Hinduism in the film. The dharma-wheel swastika makes an appearance in the final sniper scene.

THE BANDAGED MARINE

A curious presence is the man whose flesh, what isn't covered by his fatigues, is entirely wrapped in bandages, his face and hands. What is he doing there? Would he really still be up for battle? He waves at the camera, completely unidentifiable to anyone who might view this back home. Might he remind of the appearance of Frankenstein's monster in The Curse of Frankenstein, the movie that Lolita watches with Humbert and her mother in Kubrick's film Lolita (not in the book)? He was identified with Humbert, the monster, but in The Curse of Frankenstein the ending was left open for there to have been no monster at all, that it was but a figment of Frankenstein's imagination, and that Dr. Frankenstein, rather than the monster, of whom no evidence could be found, was the murderer of Justine. The duality of humans. The monster is perhaps Frankenstein's shadow that he's unable to accept, which he has completely split off. Indeed, in Full Metal Jacket, we are first shown the phantom mummy, then one by one Joker and Cowboy and the others give their alter-egos for the documentary.

THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

The Confederate flag appears as a symbol in the film and this seems as good a time as any to discuss Hasford's relationship to the Civil War, he being from Alabama. Nothing is mentioned about the southern Confederacy in The Short-timers, but it becomes a topic in The Phantom Blooper, when Joker returns home, fully anti-war, having identified the North Vietnamese with his family back home in Alabama trying to make their way on the land, living village life. Undoubtedly, Hasford saw in the Vietnam War parallels to America's Civil War, but it's a rather confused, complex relationship.

From the book, especially if one knows Hasford was obsessed with the Civil War, one might get the impression he was very simply pro-Confederacy. So it seems when he returns home and thinks about the Confederate Dream:

It's only a short hop on a Delta 707 to occupied Alabama, the Heart of Dixie, where they talk so slow that if you ask them why they don't like Yankees, by the time they finish telling you, you agree with them.

My plane lands in Birmingham and I catch a Greyhound bus north a hundred miles to Russellville, the county seat of Winston County, the "Free State of Winston."

I sit in the bus, an unreconstructed Viet Nam veteran, and I watch the familiar countryside of low rolling hills and red dirt farms and cotton fields that go all the way to the horizon.

The South is a big Indian reservation populated by ex-Confederates who are bred like cattle to die in Yankee wars. In Alabama there is no circus to run off to, so we join the Marines.

History is a Frankenstein's monster puppet whose strings are manipulated by the White House. Indians are murderous red devils who spitefully built their villages on top of gold deposits and in the paths of railroads and were unwholesomely partial to captive white women. Confederate soldiers are un-wholesomely partial to black women and had nothing better to do than whip Uncle Tom to death and sell black babies down the river. The Russians, who have never fired so much as a pea-shooter at an American soldier, and who have never taken a cupful of American soil, and who lost twenty-five million people saving the world from Adolf Hitler, are an Evil Empire spawned by Satan, and are our worst enemies on the planet. Because of our history, we drop bombs bigger than Volkswagens onto barefoot peasants twelve thousand miles from home and call it self-defense.

Black John Wayne saw it all: you can stay here and live with us in our constructed phantom paradise if you promise to pay lip service to the lies we live by. If you salute every civil service clerk who claims to be Napoleon, you may play in our asylum.

In America we lie to ourselves about everything and we believe ourselves every time.

Looking through the smoked glass of the bus window is like watching a movie. I see an abandoned black tarpaper shack with broken windows like open mouths. The inevitable stripped and rusting car bodies sit in the weedy front yard next to the inevitable collapsing tool shed.

I see scrub pasture being grazed by a bony red swayback mule.

Nothing but a few metal historical plaques remain to show that the Greyhound bus is rolling along a black strip of asphalt laid down over the graves of a defeated race of people who lived in a stillborn nation, rolling through a haunted region, over buried battles. It's Viet Nam, Alabama.

The South was the American Empire's first subjugated nation. We are a defeated people. Our conquerors have cured us of our quaint customs, quilting parties, barn raisings and hog killings, and have bombed us with revisionist history books and Sears catalogs and have made us over into a homogenized replica of the North.

The only visible relics of our conquered nation are crumbling brick walls and weed-grown fieldstone foundations and fluted white Doric columns being swallowed by swamp water. Crumbling earthworks, trenchlines and gun emplacements, are silent now in the shades of forests of virgin timber, all garrisoned until the end of time by ragged, barefoot Confederate grunts, sweet old ghosts wailing to be understood.

But the Confederate Dream lives on. The Confederate Dream, a desperate and heroic attempt to preserve from federal tyrants the liberty bequeathed to us by Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin. Stubborn sinews of the Confederate Dream live on, deep in our genes, a dream recorded silently and permanently by the metal in this soil.

The Greyhound bus pulls into Russellville. My hometown is moving on the other side of a piece of glass now and looks like television. We glide past the Confederate stone soldier. Beyond the stone soldier I can see a parade breaking up on a back street.

.................

The graves in the cemetery have been covered with special sand that is as white as sugar. On each low mound of earth are green wire stands holding plastic flowers mounted on Styrofoam blocks of pink or white. Once a year, on Decoration Day, the families of the dead come together and clean off the graves of their ancestors, and remember all of the generations that came before, just as they do on TET in Viet Nam.

In the Davis section of the cemetery lie about fifty of our people, going back to 1816. The oldest marker is for William Oliver Davis. The marker is a thin slab of orange fieldstone, weathered, the name and the date almost unreadable.

Near my father's grave is the impressive granite marker put up by the Daughters of the Confederacy back in the 1930s, when Solomon Davis was buried in his Confederate uniform, seventy years after the end of the War for Southern Independence. Grandpa Davis was a scout for Bedford Forrest and was wounded at the battle of Shiloh. He died in the middle of the jazz Age with a grapeshot the size of an iron golf ball still inside his chest.

My father's grave is freshly dug, not yet covered with white sand, but still the plain rich brown of turned soil, the color of soil in a freshly plowed field.

The character of Joker identifies his ancestor as a Solomon Davis who was a scout for Bedford Forrest. We know who Bedford Forrest was, he started the KKK. Joker seems to see in the Confederate Dream a gloried resistance against the evil Federals synonymous with the north and the Union. But...Hasford mentions the "free state of Winston" in this chapter, and what he's referring to is that Winston County, Alabama was largely pro-Union.

"An Examination of the Life and Work of Gustav Hasford" relates:

Hasford was raised on family legends of Civil War glory, like that of his great-great-grandfather James Curtis. As the story went, Curtis was:

imprisoned in Jasper because he refused to join the Confederate Army. A group of friends came down from Winston County, burned the jail, shot a couple of Confederate soldiers, and freed Curtis. In retaliation, the Confederates, who were members of the home guard, killed three of Curtis’ brothers. Curtis, according to legend, tracked down each of the guardsmen after the war ended and killed them in revenge.

Curtis’ civil disobedience was typical of the residents of Winston County, which included Hasford’s birthplace, hometown, and high school. The county was often referred to as the Free State of Winston, and Hasford proudly recounted in The Phantom Blooper how Winston refused to join Alabama’s secession from the Union and had a history of freedom-minded contrariness. Despite his great-greatgrandfather’s and Winston County’s refusals to participate in the War Between the States, the area’s history inspired in Hasford a lifelong interest in the Civil War that sometimes bordered (as Hasford’s interests often did) on obsession. Hasford’s Southern identity was also grounded in the day to day activities that a childhood spent in rural Alabama entailed.

The above paper is right on the Curtis family being pro-Union, but Hasford's direct Curtis ancestor wasn't James Curtis, they were instead John Wesley Curtis and Jasper Curtis. Hasford's grandmother, married to Thomas Pleasant Hasford, was Bessie Curtis, and John Wesley Curtis and Mariah Jane Shipman were her grandparents. John Wesley Curtis left Alabama to fight for the Union with the 10th Missouri Cavalry Regiment (the pension application shows G 2.; B 10. Mo. Cav). Thomas Pleasant Hasford's parents were Oliver T. Hasford and Ludella Parline Cole. Ludella's parents were Thomas Jefferson Cole and Condecia Vashti Curtis. Condecia was a daughter of Jasper Newton Curtis and Elizabeth Rebecca Shipman. Jasper, born in 1846, didn't serve in the Civil War, he was too young, but other brothers did, and other brothers were killed by Confederates on their home land in Alabama. Their brother Joel Jackson Curtis was killed "by the Confederate Home Guard" in December of 1863 in Jasper, Walker County, Alabama. Their brother Thomas Pinkney Curtis was killed by a Confederate Raiding Party in January of 1864 in Haleyville, WInston, Alabama. George Washington Curtis, who died June 1862 in Double Springs, WInston, Alabama, must have been the third brother killed by the home guard. As for their brother, James G. Curtis, his pension shows that he was Union, fighting for Co. B, 32nd Kentucky Infantry. The parents of these brothers was John Solomon Curtis, who died in 1860 and a Charlotte Heaton. It appears that Hasford may have derived the name Solomon Davis from John Solomon Curtis, and, down another part of his family tree, John M. Davis, who was the father of his mother's grandmother's first husband, a John Walter Davis. There was no blood relation.

Solomon Curtis was pro-Union and had asked all his children to remain loyal to the Union. A genealogical account states George Washington Curtis was murdered in his front yard by the Confederate Home Guards. Thomas Pinkney Curtis, a probate judge, was also murdered by the Confederate Home Guards. Joel Jackson Curtis was captured and placed in the Jasper County jail where he was shot and killed.

That's some heavy duty pro-Union ancestry and a reason to have strong pro-Union sentiment come down through the family. Though the Free State of Winston is mentioned in the novel, when Joker visits the family cemetery he gives the history of his father's ancestor as having been a scout under Nathan Bedford Forrest (a fiction, this individual not in Hasford's family tree) . Hasford also had ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, and the character of Joker is aligned with stories of the Confederate Dream. But in the novel Joker comes home with a different awareness than the one with which he grew up, he feels betrayed by his family and seems to likely distance himself from his family so completely as to perhaps cut them off, which was fiction, not the situation in his real life, he moving with them to Washington State when he came home from Vietnam. It may be that Hasford was partly trying to resolve the conflict of a southern ancestor and relations who were pro-Union and fought for the Union, who had relatives who were killed by Confederates in their home county, but were born in the south and remained in the south and must have instilled some pride in their southern heritage. Also there was conflict to resolve with their marrying into pro-Confederate families. This is only conjecture on my part. I don't know what he might have felt

"An Examination of the Life and Work of Gustav Hasford" also relates (more succinctly than I could relate it):

The other angle Hasford took in critiquing the Vietnam War that did not appear in The Short-Timers was inspired by his life-long fascination with the Civil War. The themes of the long-lost Confederate Dream of freedom and disdain for the federal government run throughout The Phantom Blooper, as Hasford draws a distinct separation between Joker’s duties as an American and Joker’s duties to the federal government of the United States. The notion of Confederacy is addressed early in “The Winter Soldiers,” using Black John Wayne as the proponent instead of Joker. Black John Wayne discusses the notion of a “Black Confederacy” with Joker, arguing that the disproportionate number of African American draftees was symptomatic of institutional racism and therefore entitled the “Black Confederacy [to] seced[e] from your Vietnam death trip” and “be tin-starred marshals of revolutionary justice” (Hasford 24) upon their return to the states. Though Joker initially disagrees with Black John Wayne, telling him to “belay all this Black Confederacy bullshit”, that discussion with Black John Wayne appears right after the only appearance in The Phantom Blooper of Joker’s John Wayne impression. In his John Wayne character, Joker tells “the true story of the War for Southern Independence”, which ends when Joker struggles to come up with an end to the story and abruptly declares that “the Civil War soldiers all got hammered out of their minds together and then the war was over and everybody got laid. Of course, the Damnyankees lied about it and told Walter Cronkite that they won and so that’s what they put on tv”. However after his experiences on raids with the Vietcong and his return from Hoa Binh, Joker reverses himself and adopts Black John Wayne’s position that the federal government of the United States no longer deserves his loyalty.

This may be where the idea came from to have a Confederate flag sketched on the front of Donlon's helmet.

From The Phantom Blooper:

The black Marines cheer while Black John Wayne continues, talking with the tone of a backwoods preacher delivering a fiery sermon: "Black Confederacy secedes from your Viet Nam death trip."

With one voice the men in the bunker say, "Amen."

Black John Wayne says, "Guilty rich kids marching for peace just wasting they shoe leather. Dumb grunts is stopping this evil war, a--men, and they won't never know the truth back in the World, the truth that the grunts have the power, the real power, because the fucking pogue lifers and the corrupt politicians are not even going to admit the facts, not even."

Black John Wayne waits for the "Right ons" to die down, then continues. "This heavily armed and highly motivated reinforced rifle squad of homeboys will go back to the block. We be tin-starred marshals of revolutionary justice. With my squad back in the World I could take over half of Brooklyn. Peace through superior firepower! Firepower to the people! History is not over yet! History collects its debts!"

The squad cheers so loud and claps so hard that for a few moments even the banging of the shells outside is drowned out.

I grunt. I say, "We got to have LPs. We're light. A ground attack could walk right over the wire. The gooks know that something is going down and until we sky out we're wide open to get hit. I got no time for your bullshit political rap, J.W. I'm not interested in politics."

Black John Wayne says, "Joker, m'man, you may not be interested in politics, but politics is interested in you. Or maybe you be here as a tourist? Politics is not hard to understand. Politics is somebody's nightstick upside your head. Hey, man, can you dig my progressive talk? Don't you know why the Phantom Blooper is here, man? The Phantom Blooper has come to take your white ass to school. Bone Six, that bad ol' Blooper, he everywhere, man. He maybe sitting in this bunker with us right now."

I say, "J.W., I'm sick of listening to your race-war movie."

Black John Wayne says, "Why, you silly Alabama white trash, you are misinformed. The white man is not the enemy. One day, by and by, you will see the revolt of the Uncle Tom white people. That's some cold shit, man, but there it is.

"The devil is a green man, the money man. They tell us we are small. But we not small, we tall, we be kings, and the President is not God in a black limousine. They calling you 'nigger' too, Joker. You just ain't got the word."

I say, "Sounds like a giant liquor-store robbery to me, J.W. Rich people got all the money. You take the money away from them. Then you got the money."

"We won't fight for money," says Black John Wayne, "we will fight to say that Uncle Sam ain't no damned uncle of mine. Uncle Sam he say to these Vietnams, you can live, but you can't be men. Dance and sing for us and be little yellow niggers, Mr. VCs, and we might be big-hearted and let you live. Uncle Sam say, 'Stick 'em up, your balls or your life.'"

Black John Wayne's voice booms inside the bunker: "Whitebread America find it impossible to relate to why these Vietnams stand up and fight. The green man don't care about nothing that much no more, he fat, he forgot what it like to fight. They traded in they balls for a split-level house, a nigger maid, and a lifetime supply of TV dinners, a long time ago. Dignity, m'man, that's what the Vietnams want, and that's why my homeboys want. I'm a black man with a brain, a black brain, and I am a very dangerous person. We are men! We want our dignity! If they fuck with us, they are going to die. Nobody ever calls me nigger when I'm carrying my grenade launcher."

Joker, who protests much of Black John Wayne's rhetoric, who says he's not interested in politics, is still in league with him in The Phantom Blooper. Returning home, he sounds like he's pining for the Old South, but he's also recognizing that the land he grew up in isn't what he had thought it to be.

Walking the streets of the town I grew up in, I marvel at Black John Wayne's relentlessly perceptive vision of reality--a vision I had to struggle to attain in the Viet Nam war, but which Black John Wayne seemed to have been born with. He was right all along when he kept saying that, sooner or later, what politics comes down to is a nightstick upside your head. They neglected to tell us that particular important piece of information in civics class at Russellville High School.

......

As a kid, I played war in these streets. I remember the screams and the war cries, the pock of light-bulb hand grenades and the clatter of the trash can lids we used as shields. Real war is exactly like it was when you played it as a kid. Until you get shot. When you get shot, it's different. Everything in life somehow ends up being different from what you've been told. And when you learn that, when you learn to what monumental extent you have been bullshitted in the land of a thousand lies, something in you dies, forever, and something else is born. From that moment on, you're in danger. In the land of a thousand lies, to be an honest man is a crime against the state.

When you return to your boyhood town, you find that it's not the town you were seeking, after all, but your boyhood. I'm not standing in the same town I grew up in. My old hometown has changed. My real hometown has been taken away and a replica left behind. The sun was bought on sale at Sears and then stapled to the sky. The American hooches along the tree-lined street are colorful and unbelievably large. The lawns are neatly mowed, precisely trimmed. Translucent plastic grass like they put into Easter baskets has been manicured to within an inch of its life--the jungle tamed.

......

Limping slightly, I walk the five miles to our farm, past the cotton-mill village, past acres of cotton fields. When I see the farm it looks like a foreign place. Home. Home, that's what we were all fighting for in Viet Nam. Home was where we all wanted to be. We thought we knew where that was, but we were wrong.

Joker isn't talking about a change in his home town that has taken place in the couple of years he was away in Vietnam, but how his experience of war has changed his perception of his home town and what he had been taught there.

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THIS IS VIETNAM : THE MOVIE -- REQUIEM SECTION

397 Crane shot from above of Hand Job and Touchdown lying on a tarp, tagged, nine fellow Marines standing around in a circle. (1:17:54)

398 Joker, CU from below. Sounds of gunfire in the distance. (1:18:01)

399 MCU Doc Jay from below. (1:18:06)

400 MCU T.H.E. Rock from below. (1:18:09)

T.H.E. ROCK (speaking to the camera/the dead): You're going home now.

Pan to Crazy Earl.

CRAZY EARL: Semper fi.

Pan to Donlon.

DONLON: We're mean Marines, sir.

Pan to Eight Ball.

EIGHT BALL: Go easy, bros.

Pan to Animal Mother.

ANIMAL MOTHER: Better you than me.

Pan to Rafter Man:

RAFTER MAN: Well, at least they died for a good cause.

ANIMAL MOTHER (off screen): What cause was that?

401 MCU Animal Mother from below. (1:18:44)

RAFTER MAN (off screen): Freedom.

ANIMAL MOTHER: Flush out your headgear, new guy. You think we waste gooks for freedom? This is a slaughter. If I'm gonna get my balls blown off for a word, my word is poon tang.

402 MCU Cowboy from below (1:19:08)

COWBOY: Tough break for Hand Job. He was all set to get shipped out on a medical.

403 MCU Joker from below (1:19:16)

JOKER: What was the matter with him?

404 MCU Cowboy from below (1:19:19)

COWBOY: He was jerking off 10 times a day.

405 MCU Eightball from below (1:19:26)

EIGHTBALL: It's no shit. At least 10 times a day.

406 MCU Cowboy from below (1:19:29)

COWBOY: Last week he was sent down to Da Nang to see the Navy head shrinker. The crazy fucker starts jerking off in the waiting room. Instant Section Eight. He was just waiting for his papers to clear Division. (Freeze for a split second on 1:19:47)

397	398
399	400
401	402
403	404
405	406

NOTES

In shot 397 we see the feet of nine marines standing around Touchdown and Hand Job. The subsequent shots reveal them to be Joker, Doc Jay, T.H.E. Rock, Crazy Earl, Donlon, Eightball, Animal Mother, Rafter Man and Cowboy. We are only, by means of a pan, shown T.H.E. Rock, Cray Earl, Donlon, Eightball, Animal Mother and Rafter Man in relation to one another. Cowboy, Joker and Doc Jay are left isolated, disconnected from the group in this section.

SEMPER FI

In which we go from "Bird is the word" to "If I'm gonna get my balls shot off for a word I get to pick my own word and my word is poontang", so says Animal Mother, objecting to Rafter Man's idea that Touchdown and Hand Job died for the good cause of "freedom".

We saw the chopper carry off the wounded. Left behind are the bodies of Touchdown and Hand Job. Michael Herr's DIspatches supplies the story of Hand Job. Touchdown was originally Shortround, in the novel, who was secretly fragged by Animal Mother after an argument.

This works as the second interview section, viewed by the dead.

From the book:

Rafter Man says, "You been out for hours. Doc Jay said you got blown up by a B-40. A rocket-propelled grenade. But you only got the concussion. Some other guy got the shrapnel."
"Well," I say, "that sounds like a lifer-type thing to do."

Animal Mother grunts and spits. Animal Mother spits a lot because he thinks it makes him look tough. "Lifers never get wasted. Just the ones I frag, that's all."

Donlon takes a step toward Animal Mother. Donlon is glaring at Animal Mother. Donlon starts to say something, then decides against it.

Rafter Man says, "Doc Jay gave you some morphine. You were trying to punch him out."

"There it is," I say. "I'm mean, even when I'm unconscious. But that's some very good shit, that morphine."

Cowboy pushes his gray Marine-issue glasses up on his nose. "I could use a hit of something myself. I wish we had time to smoke some grass."

I say, "Hey, bro, who's on your program?"

Cowboy shakes his head. "Mr. Shortround is KIA." Cowboy pulls a red bandana from his back pocket and wipes his grimy face. "The platoon radioman was down. Some redneck from Alabama. I forget his name. Took a sniper round through the knee. The Skipper went out to get him. A frag got him. A frag got them both. At least..." Cowboy turns to look at Animal Mother. "At least, that's how Mother tells it, and he was walking point."

I shake the cobwebs out of my head and pick up my gear. "Where's my Mattel?"

Cowboy hands me a grease gun. "Your Mattel got wasted. Use this." He hands me a canvas bag containing half-a-dozen grease-gun magazines.

I check out the grease gun. "This thing is obsolete."

Cowboy shrugs. "I souvenired it off a wasted tanker." Cowboy scratches his face. "I got a new K-bar. And I souvenired Mr. Shortround's pistol."

"Where's Craze?"

Cowboy leads me outside a long row of body bags and ponchos stuffed with human junk.

We stand over Craze as Cowboy says, "Craze did a John Wayne. He finally went berserk. Shot BB's at a gook machine gun. The BB's bounced off the gook gunners. You should have seen it. Craze was laughing like a happy little kid. Then that slope machine gun blew him away."

I nod. "Anybody else?"

Cowboy checks his weapon, snaps the bolt to see that it's working smoothly. "T.H.E. Rock. A sniper. Popped his head off. I'll have to tell you about it. Right now we got a job to do. We got to find that sniper. I'm personally going to waste that gook son-of-a-bitch. T.H.E. Rock was the first guy to get wasted after I took the squad. He's my responsibility."

Alice double-times up the road. "That sniper is still there. You can't see him, but he's there."
Cowboy doesn't say anything; he's looking at the long row of body bags. He takes a few steps. I walk along with him.

Mr. Shortround doesn't look like an officer anymore. He's naked, lying facedown on a bloody poncho. His skin is yellow. His eyes are dry in their sockets, Dead, Mr. Shortround is just another meat-bag with a hole in it.

Cowboy looks down at Mr. Shortround. He takes off his muddy Stetson.

Donlon steps up to Mr. Shortround. There are tears in Donlon's eyes. He fumbles with his handset. Donlon says, "We're mean Marines, sir." He hurries away, fumbling with the handset.

Alice walks up to the row of body bags and kicks Mr. Shortround's corpse. "Go easy, bro."

The squad files by.

I kneel. I fold the poncho over Mr. Shortround's small body. I feel a great need to say something to the green plastic lump with the human feet. I say, "Well, you're short, sir."

I think about what I have just said and I know that making a bad pun was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.

Also from the book:

Alice stands up. "Stow that Mickey Mouse shit, Mother. You hear me?"

Animal Mother doesn't look up. He says, "Thank God for sickle cell."

Alice scratches his chest. "No racists in a foxhole, Mother. New Guy, you'll do fine. No sweat."

"Sure," says Animal Mother. "Just watch me. Do what I do. These guys will tell you that I am a monster, but I'm the only grunt in this squad that doesn't have his head up his ass. In this world of shit, monsters live forever and everybody else dies. If you kill for fun, you're a sadist. If you kill for money, you're a mercenary. If you kill for both, you're a Marine."

"Yes, sir," says the New Guy, dropping two chips into the pot.

"I'm horny," I say. "I can't even get a piece of hand."

Animal Mother groans. "That was real funny, Joker. I don't get it." He drops two chips, then three more. "I raise you three bucks. Dealer takes two cards."

The New Guy says, "I'll take three cards. And I'm not a hero. Just want to do my job. You know, defend freedom--"

"Fuck freedom," says Animal Mother. Animal Mother starts reassembling the M-60. He kisses each piece before snapping it back into place. "Flush out your headgear, New Guy. You think we waste gooks for freedom? Don't kid yourself; this is a slaughter. You're got to open your eyes, New Guy--you owe it to yourself. If I'm gonna get my balls shot off for a word I get to pick my own word and my word is poontang. Yeah, you better believe we zap zipperheads. They waste our bros and we cut them a big piece of payback. And payback is a motherfucker."

"Semper fi", always faithful, is a Marine Corps motto, but we may be reminded of Eyes Wide Shut and the password, Fidelio, which Bill used to gain admittance to Somerton, a place in which all were masked, but Bill was forced to remove his own when it was revealed that he didn't also know the password for the house.

Fidelity means faithfulness.It can also mean the adherence to truth or reality, as was postured with the Drome cigarette ad in Lolita, which read:

Clare Quilty says "I can write without a pen, but not without a DROME". DROME for the real true taste.

What was real as versus what was true? The picture of Quilty in the ad had a shadow side (literally) that revealed his later character as Dr. Zemph, the Beardsley High School psychologist, whose interview with Humbert was suggestive of his knowledge of Humbert's true relationship with Lolita.

This brings up something I've discussed in respect of all of Kubrick's films, but particularly in respect to certain images in Lolita (the peculiar Drome ad), and The Shining, the question of what is true and what is real expressed in the dominance-shift puzzles he sometimes uses, in which one person sees one thing and another sees something else. An example of dominance shift is the widely known image of the whirling dancer--she can be viewed as twirling to the left and then suddenly she switches direction and is turning to the right. Then there is the image of in which one sees a vase but then it transforms to two human profiles facing one another, or the image of the old woman that changes to a girl. This returns us to the scene in which Hartman demands if Joker believes in the Virgin Mary. He says he doesn't and s hit for this, but refuses to change his answer, because he knows that any answer will be wrong. It's much the same thing. And because of this, in the book, Hartman asks if he's seen the light, the white light, the great light, the guiding light, does he have the vision? Then makes Joker the squad leader rather than Snowball.

One may be reminded of the great and ecstatic light revealed to Arjuna by Vishnu, when he displayed his form as death, the destroyer of worlds (time), but that was also what inspired Arjuna to go unquestioningly into battle in fulfillment of a pre-destined fate, the role he'd been allotted (knowing also he would survive).

Real vs. true? Touchdown said he had played football for Notre Dame. The ad for Cotab Virginie cigarettes looks over the scene where two NVA, Hand Job, and Touchdown, who played for Notre Dame, lost their lives. The Notre Dame association is a Kubrick touch, so there's likely a link between the Cotab Virginie and the Virgin Mary scene. In the novel, during that part, Gerheim had asked Joker if he'd seen the great light. I am taking it for granted that Cotab comes from the British-American Tobacco Company, a rearrangement of its acronym. However, tobacco is a big export of the Philippines. The Notre Dame Broadcasting Corporation, founded in 1956, is headquartered in North Cotabato (Kota Batu, stone fort), Philippines, started by Bishop Gerard Mongeau (of Quebec, Canada>Texas>Cotabato) who, his bio states, began the program "that was to become famous, the Notre Dame Schools" of South Cotabato, including the Notre Dame University there. Joker doesn't ask which Notre Dame Touchdown played ball for and he would of course surmise it's the Catholic university in Indiana. But what if it was instead Cotabato? That's real versus true. The Notre Dame in America is real, as is the school in Cotabato. But which is the "true" one that Touchdown played at? Of course it would have been at Notre Notre Dame in Indiana.

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THIS IS VIETNAM : THE MOVIE -- INTERVIEWS SECTION

407 MCU of film crew from front. Man on right holds a clapper board reading Hue City, Roll #34. (1:19:49)

MAN WITH CLAPPER BOARD TO CINEMATOGRAPHER: You ready? Turn over. Hue City interviews, roll 34.

Full Metal Jacket

408 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:19:57)

ANIMAL MOTHER / RABID BUFFALO: Well, like, like you see, you know, it's a major city, so we have to assault with, uh, tanks, we roll, roll in the streets. So they send us in first to squat, make sure that there are no, uh, no little uh, no Vietnamese waiting with 3-40 rockets to blow the tanks away. So we clear it out and we roll the tanks in and basically blow the place to hell.

There was a break in time between 407 and 408. 408 is not a response shot to 407. In 407, the soundman as on the right (screen left) of the camera man. In 408 he's on the left of the camera man.

The sound man is on the right of the camera man in the interview with Cowboy, shots 409 and 414 and 419, the interview with Crazy Earl, shot 411, the interview with Donlon, shot 415, and the interview with Joker, shots 421 and 423. He is on the left of the Camera Man in the interviews with Animal Mother, shots 408, 416, 418 and 420, Rafter Man in shots 410 and 417, Doc Jay in shot 412, Eightball in shot 413,

409 MCU of Cowboy. (1:20:27)

COWBOY: When we're in Hue, when we're in Hue City, it's like a war, you know. Like what, what, what I thought about a war, what I thought a war was, you know, was supposed to be. Uh, there's the enemy, you kill them.

410 MCU of Rafter Man. (1:20:46)

RAFTER MAN: Well, I don't think there's any question about it. I mean, we're the best. I mean, all that bullshit about the Air Cav. When the shit really hits the fan, who do they call? They call Mother Green and her killing machine. (He gives a thumbs up sign, grinning.)

411 MCU of Crazy Earl. (1:20:59)

CRAZY EARL / GENERAL CUSTER: Do I think America belongs in Vietnam? Um...I don't know. I belong in Vietnam, I'll tell you that.

408	409
410	411

412 MCU of Doc Jay. (1:21:08)

Full Metal Jacket

DOC JAY: Can I quote LBJ? "I will not send American boys eight or ten-thousand miles around the world to do a job that Asian boys ought to be doing for themselves."

413 MCU of Eightball. (1:21:24)

EIGHTBALL / HORSE: Personally think they don't really want to be involved in this war. you know, I mean, like they, It's sort of like they took away our freedom and gave it to the gookers, you know. But they don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free, I guess, you know. Poor, dumb bastards.

414 MCU of Cowboy. (1:21:47)

COWBOY: Well, the ones I'm fighting at are some pretty...pretty bad boys. I'm not real, uh, I'm not real, uh, I'm not real keen on some of these fellas that are supposedly on our side. I keep meeting them coming the other way. Yeah.

415 MCU of Donlon. (1:22:11)

DONLON: I mean, we're getting killed for these people and they don't even appreciate it. They think it's a big joke.

416 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:22:20)

ANIMAL MOTHER / RABID BUFFALO: Well, if you ask me, uh, we're shooting the wrong gooks.

417 MCU of Rafter Man. (1:22:26)

RAFTER MAN: Well, it depends on the situation. I mean, I'm here to take combat photos, but if the shit gets too thick, I mean, I'll go to the rifle.

418 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:22:34)

ANIMAL MOTHER / RABID BUFFALO: What do I think about America's involvement in the war? Well, I think we should win.

419 MCU of Cowboy. (1:22:41)

COWBOY: I hate Vietnam. There's not one horse in this whole country.They don't have one horse in Vietnam. There's something basically wrong with that. (Laughs.)

420 MCU of Animal Mother. (1:22:53)

ANIMAL MOTHER / RABID BUFFALO: Well, if they'd send us more guys, maybe, and bomb the hell out of the North, they might give up.

413	414
415	416
417	418
419	420

421 MCU of Joker. (1:23:01)

JOKER (JOHN WAYNE): I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I, uh,I wanted to meet interesting...

Full Metal Jacket

422 MCU of film crew. (1:23:10)

Full Metal Jacket

JOKER / JOHN WAYNE (off camera): ...and stimulating people of an ancient culture..and kill them.

423 MCU of Joker. (1:23:14)

Full Metal Jacket

JOKER / JOHN WAYNE: I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.

NOTES

THIS IS VIETNAM: THE MOVIE -- I WANTED TO SEE EXOTIC VIETNAM, THE JEWEL OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

The third section of interviews are the one-on-one, in which the cinema is introduced behind Doc Jay and Joker.

From the book:

"Yeah," Cowboy says, nodding his head. "Yeah, I guess so." He looks away. "I hate Viet Nam. They don't even have horses here. Why, there's not one horse in all of Viet Nam."

Chili Vendor shakes his head. "No Victor Charlie ever raped my sister. Ho Chi Minh never bombed Pearl Harbor. We're prisoners here. We're prisoners of the war. They've taken away our freedom and they've given it to the gooks, but the gooks don't want it. They'd rather be alive than free."

Sitting on my rack, I type out my story about Hill 327, the serviceman's oasis, about how all of us fine young American boys are assured our daily ration of pogey bait and about how those of us who are lucky enough to visit the rear areas get to see Mr. John Wayne karate-chop Victor Charlie to death in a Technicolor cartoon about some other Viet Nam.

The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to convince people that war is a beautiful experience. Come one, come all to exotic Viet Nam, the jewel of Southeast Asia, meet interesting, stimulating people of an ancient culture...and kill them. Be the first kid on your block to get a confirmed kill.

The Marines express their diverse opinions on the war, answering questions that would suggest the crew filming them isn't military but civilian. A fascinating thing about this section is to consider that Kubrick sometimes has them speaking to the observed camera of the documentary crew, and instead to the Kubrick's film camera doubling as the documentarian's camera.

As I've noted above, there was a break in time between 407 and 408. 408 is not a response shot to 407. In 407, the soundman as on the right (screen left) of the camera man. In 408 he's on the left of the camera man. The sound man is on the right of the camera man in the interview with Cowboy, shots 409 and 414 and 419, the interview with Crazy Earl, shot 411, the interview with Donlon, shot 415, and the interview with Joker, shots 421 and 423. He is on the left of the Camera Man in the interviews with Animal Mother, shots 408, 416, 418 and 420, Rafter Man in shots 410 and 417, Doc Jay in shot 412, Eightball in shot 413,

With Animal Mother, he speaks both to the observed camera on screen right and to a space between the camera and the sound man, presumably to Kubrick's camera. He is the only one who speaks to both.

Cowboy speaks directly to the audience via an unseen camera, so it's Kubrick's camera doubling as the documentarian's camera.

Rafter Man speaks to the documentarian's observed camera screen right.

Crazy Earl speaks to the documentarian's observed camera screen left.

Doc Jay speaks to the documentarian's observed camera screen left.

Eightball, as with Cowboy, speaks directly to the audience via an unseen camera, Kubrick's camera doubling as the documentarian's camera.

Donlon speaks directly to the audience via an unseen camera, Kubrick's camera doubling as the documentarian's camera.

Joker speaks directly to the audience via an unseen camera, Kubrick's camera doubling as the documentarian's camera.

THERE'S THE ENEMY, YOU KILL THEM

Barry Lyndon

This is one of the common disorienting experiences about fighting in Vietnam, veterans couldn't see who they were fighting, at most they were distant fleeting shadows. The war demanded body counts but "confirmed" kills were near impossible so there are accounts of them being manufactured numbers. There might be a lot of firing done, such as in this film, a lot of ammunition expended, but a number of veterans state they had no idea if they ever shot anyone. Gustav Hasford claimed the same, that he spent a lot of ammunition but had no idea if he killed anyone. One Marine veteran, who had no confirmed kills, spoke of seeing clearly, one day, in the distance, a trail of men, and as you were trained to shoot at anything as anyone could be the enemy, he was shooting at the trail of men, only to learn that they were fellow Marines. He said he only hoped they were distant enough that he didn't shoot anyone, but he had no idea. There were plenty who were injured or killed by friendly fire.

Marine Corps veterans also often felt that what they had been taught about combat didn't begin to prepare them for the style of warfare in Vietnam.

With Barry Lyndon, as in the novel, Kubrick communicates the brutality of the military toward its own soldiers, the brutality of the soldiers toward civilians, and eventually with Barry in his home life we have more than a hint of the suspected traumas of war, as well as his youth, that dictate how he feels about women and contribute to his moments of savagery as well as his dissipation. In the duel with his stepson (not in the novel), in his age and experience he expends his shot into the ground,showing empathy for the youth who has never been to war. For this, he loses a leg.

A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MICHAEL HERR'S DISPATCHES AND HASFORD'S THE SHORT-TIMERS

In the novel, Joker, writing about Hill 327, states, "The article I actually write is a masterpiece. It takes talent to convince people that war is a beautiful experience." But it is never communicated as a beautiful experience. From beginning to end it is either horrifying or repulsive or both. There is nothing attractive about it. And the brotherhood of the Marines is blown apart by Animal Mother fragging Shortround and this being ignored as it can't be proven, and it's intimated that this isn't the only time this isn't a singular incident, just as atrocities aren't isolated incidents.

Michael Herr wrote a great non-fiction book in Dispatches, but you get toward the end and suddenly he flips away from the trauma and horror.

He [a correspondent friend of Herr's] began talking more and more about the war, often coming close to tears when he remembered how happy he and all of us had been there.

One day a letter came from a British publisher, asking him to do a book whose working title would be "Through with War" and whose purpose would be to once and for all "take the glamour out of war." Page couldn't get over it.

"Take the glamour out of war! I mean, how the bloody hell can you do that? Go and take the glamour out of a Huey, go take the glamour out of a Sheridan. Can you take the glamour out of a Cobra or getting stoned at China Beach? I'ts like taking the glamour out of an M-79, taking the glamour out of Flynn." He pointed to a picture he'd taken, Flynn laughing maniacally ("We're winning," he'd said), triumphantly. "Nothing the matter with that boy, is there? Would you let your daughter marry that man? Ohhh, war is good for you, you can't take the glamour out of that. It's like trying to take the glamour out of sex, trying to take the glamour out of the Rolling Stones." He was really speechless, working his hands up and down to emphasize the sheer insanity of it.

"I mean you know that, it just can't be done!" We both shrugged and laughed, and Page looked very thoughtful for a moment. "The very idea!" he said. "Ohhh, what a laugh! Take the bloody glamour out of bloody war!""

There's a great deal of "war is hell" in Dispatches, of villages being burned, and bewildered people holding their dead children. There are battle-dazed Marines amazed when they learn a war correspondent hasn't been forced to be in Vietnam, that they are there of their own accord. The people who have lost their homes and their families will never think of the glamour of war. Hasford doesn't enthuse over the undeniable glories of war.

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DOUBLE FEATURE AT LE NGOC

424 Woman in purple pants and a Vietnamese soldier, Xuan Lam, ride up on a moped. (1:23:22)

425 The woman alights off the moped. (1:23:40)

MARINE (off screen): Ten hut.

426 The Marines before the cinema. (1:23:48)

COWBOY: Good morning, little schoolgirl. I'm a little schoolboy too.

427 The woman postures. (1:23:53)

COWBOY: What you got there, chief?

LAM: Do you want number-one fucky?

428 The woman and Lam standing before the Marines. (1:23:58)

COWBOY: Hey, any of you boys want number-one fucky?

JOKER: I'm so horny, I can't even get a piece of hand.

DONLON: Me want sucky.

429 The woman and Lam. (1:24:06)

LAM: Sucky, fucky, smoke cigarette in her pussy. She give you everything you want, long time.

430 The Marines before the cinema. (1:24:11)

COWBOY: Everything you want. Hey, how much there, chief?

431 The woman and Lam. (1:24:15)

LAM: Fifteen dollars each.

MARINES: No.

432 The Marines before the cinema. (1:24:17)

COWBOY: Fifteen dollar beaucoup money. Five dollar each.

433 The woman and Lam. (1:24:23)

LAM: Come on, she love you good. Boom-boom long time. Ten dollars.

COWBOY: Five dollars.

LAM: No. Ten dollars.

434 The Marines before the cinema. (1:24:28)

COWBOY: Be glad to trade you some ARVN rifles. Ain't never been fired and only dropped once.

MARINES: (Laughter.)

435 The woman and Lam. (1:24:34)

LAM: Okay, $5. You give me.

436 The Marines. (1:24:38)

COWBOY: Okay, okay.

437 MS. Eightball steps forward with his money. The woman refuses it. (1:24:41)

EIGHTBALL: Let's get mounted.

The woman argues with Lam in Vietnamese.

EIGHTBALL: Something wrong there, chief?

LAM: She says no boom-boom with soul brother.

EIGHTBALL: What the motherfuck?

LAM: She says soul brother too beaucoup, too beaucoup.

EIGHTBALL: What is this, man?

438 The Marines before the cinema. (1:24:57)

COWBOY: I think what he's trying to tell you is you black boys pack too much meat.

439 Lam, the woman, and Eightball. (1:25:03)

LAM: Too beaucoup, too beaucoup.

EIGHTBALL: Oh, shit. This baby-san looks like she could suck the chrome off a trailer hitch.

LAM: She say too beaucoup, too beaucoup.

EIGHTBALL: Excuse me, ma'am. What we have here, little yellow sister, is a magnificent...

440 His back to the camera, Eightball shows his penis to the woman. (1:25:20)

EIGHTBALL: ...specimen of pure Alabama blacksnake.

441 CU of Eightball. (1:25:23)

EIGHTBALL: But it ain't too goddamn beaucoup

442 MCU of the woman and Lam from beyond Eightball's left. (1:25:26)

WOMAN: Okay, okay. Okay, okay.

443 MCU of Joker and Cowboy. (1:25:30)

COWBOY: Okay, okay!

444 Eightball takes the woman's arm. (1:25:305)

EIGHTBALL: All right. Yeah. This is my boogie.

COWBOY (leaning forward and grasping Eightball's arm): Hey, we need a batting order.

ANIMAL MOTHER (stands and grabs her other arm, tugging on her): I'm going first.

EIGHTBALL: Back off, white bread. Don't get between a dog and his meat.

ANIMAL MOTHER (pops Eightball's hand so he releases the woman): All fucking niggers must fucking hang. (He enters the cinema with the woman.) Hey, hey, I won't be long. I'll skip the foreplay.

MARINE: I don't want it after you, man.

424	425
426	427
428	429
430	431
432	433
434	435
436	43
438	439
440	441
442	443
444

NOTES

JOHN WAYNE

John Wayne on American Indians: "I don't feel we did wrong in taking this great country away from them, if that's what you're asking...There were great numbers of people who needed new land, and the Indians were selfishly trying to keep it for themselves."

John Wayne on White supremacy: "I believe in white supremacy until the blacks are educated to a point of responsibility."

John Wayne on the Western: But you know, I'm very conscious that people criticize Hollywood. Yet we've created a form, the Western, that can be understood in every country. The good guys against the bad guys. No nuances. And the horse is the best vehicle of action in our medium. You take action, a scene, and scenery, and cut them together, and you never miss. Action, scene, scenery. But when you think about the Western--ones I've made, for example. Stagecoach (1939), Red River (1948), The Searchers (1956), a picture named Hondo (1953) that had a little depth to it--it's an American art form. It represents what this country is about. In True Grit (1969), for example, that scene where Rooster shoots the rat. That was a kind of reference to today's problems. Oh, not that "True Grit" has a message or anything. But that scene was about less accommodation, and more justice. They keep bringing up the fact that America's for the downtrodden. But this new thing of genuflecting to the downtrodden, I don't go along with that. We ought to go back to praising the kids who get good grades, instead of making excuses for the ones who shoot the neighborhood grocery man. But, hell, I don't want to get started on that!

WHERE ARE WE

Shot 407 establishes the backdrop for the film crew. Though we see that they are interviewing in a variety of settings, there is a pacing to the interview with Joker, shots 421 to 423, that gives the impression of their reacting to him in shot 422 and so we expect them to be opposite him, which is not the case. Joker is standing in front of the cinema...

...and though the cinema is opposite the right side of the Leyna buildng, much of it is beyond and behind the Leyna building. If you examine the shot of Joker you'll see to the screen left of the cinema an alley, and there's a bus located there. The camera crew is down that alley, beyond that bus, facing away from the Leyna building.

Let's return to shot 389. The Leyna building is opposite Crazy Earl, on the right hand side of the screen. On the left hand side of the screen we see the facade of the cinema with its canopy jutting out. The NVA run from behind the Leyna building, across the road, before the COTAB sign, and appear to even run into the cinema.

In shot 363 we see clearly how the slab displaying the Hynos ad is a twin to and aligns with the Cotab cigarette ad.

Below, facing up the road from the cinema, we see the large slab on the other side of which was the Hynos toothpaste ad featuring Brother Seven Cha. We may have a glimpse of perhaps the low, one-story building from which Crazy Earl had been firing, but I'm having a difficult time discerning the building behind which Animal Mother and Hand Job had been. Beyond the line of palm trees we can vaguely make out the support A-frame structures that are visible in shot 363.

In the below shot we clearly see the side of the Leyna building from which the snipers had been firing.

Also here, in shot 413, when Eightball is being interviewed, we see the side and rear of the Leyna building beyond the circular structure across from the theater. In the background is the reverse side of the tower on which is the Hynos toothpaste ad.

We are now facing from the theater behind the Leyna building.

In shot 444, the last shot of this section, Kubrick finally establishes where we are by briefly displaying the Cotab ad.

PERHAPS THE CINEMA THE SET IS BASED ON?

It seems likely Kubrick's cinema may have been modeled after the below one, the picture taken February 17, 1968 in Hue, copyright Bettmann/CORBIS.

Another view of the cinema, 1966-1967, grabbed from Flickr.

Though most conspicuously Kubrick's set shows the large illustrated flat of a movie Indian on the right, as Animal Mother enters the cinema in shot 444 we get a glimpse of a large illustrated flat of a figure with the kind of spread legs one views in the Hung-Dao theater photo from Hue in 1968.

WHAT'S PLAYING

In the book, the cinema scene occurs at the opening of the novel's switch to Vietnam. The Green Berets is playing.

We go into a movie theater that looks like a warehouse and we watch John Wayne in The Green Berets, a Hollywood soap opera about the love of guns. We sit way down front, near some grunts. The grunts are sprawled across their seats and they've propped muddy jungle boots onto the seats in front of them. They are bearded, dirty, out of uniform, and look lean and mean, the way human beings look after they've survived a long hump in the jungle, the boonies, the bad bush.

I prop my boots on the seats and we watch John Wayne leading the Green Beanies. John Wayne is a beautiful soldier, clean-shaven, sharply attired in tailored tiger-stripe jungle utilities, wearing boots that shine like black glass. Inspired by John Wayne, the fighting soldiers from the sky go hand-to-hand with all of the Victor Charlies in Southeast Asia. He snaps out an order to an Oriental actor who played Mr. Sulu on "Star Trek." Mr. Sulu, now playing an Arvin officer, delivers a line with great conviction: "First kill...all stinking Cong...then go home." The audience of Marines roars with laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time.

Later, at the end of the movie, John Wayne walks off into the sunset with a spunky little orphan. The grunts laugh and whistle and threaten to pee all over themselves. The sun is setting in the South China Sea--in the East--which makes the end of the movie as accurate as the rest of it.

We have a bit of a problem. The Green Berets was released 19 June 1968 and the action in the book was taking place immediately before the beginning of the Tet Offensive in January 1968. The Green Berets wasn't released until about four months after the book's action. My assumption is that Hasford was taking poetic license, just as poetic license was taken in the killing of Gerheim/suicide of Pyle scene, which according to Marines couldn't have taken place post graduation.

In the film, the cinema scene has been moved so it is after the making of This is Vietnam: The Movie segments, and the action has been moved so the Marines are sitting outside the theater, but are still in theater seats, so one can take them as observing and also being part of the action. The prostitute scene is different from but very much like the one in Da Nang, the second prostitute scene in the film, so I'm assuming we can connect the two and this scene may be, in part, a commentary on the first.

In Lolita, a scene has Humbert, Lolita and Charlotte sitting in a car at a drive-in theater watching The Curse of Frankenstein on the big screen. This wasn't in the book and is suggestive of Humbert as Frankenstein, but even more significant is that there is no proof of Frankenstein's monster left in the film as he was dissolved in acid, so at the end there is left open the possibility that the monster was entirely imaginary and Frankenstein is responsible for the crime of Justine's murder, his fiancée. We have the same problem with Eyes Wide Shut as to what has actually happened in the film, though we are assured that Bill did attend a party at Somerton and that he was followed and threatened.

In A Clockwork Orange, with the Ludovico treatment, Alex must watch films in which we have not only extreme violence that appears to simulate the actions of Alex and his droogs--confusing to him, however, as he can't tell what is acting and what is not--he also watches footage of WWII and Nazis and has the same aversion therapy for these images, which accidentally includes the music that is played on the soundtrack. The theater audience is involved both as witness and perpetrator. Alex breaks the 4th wall, watching the audience as if they are the movie screen (including the film crew), and the audience watches the films with him. Earlier in the film, theater was explicitly involved in the casino scene where a rival gang began to carry out a rape on a stage when Alex and his droogs appeared in the "audience", a gang fight ensuing which gave opportunity for the sexually assaulted woman to escape.

What's playing at the cinema in Full Metal Jacket? A double feature. We see Mao-Giang, which is perhaps translated as "Red River", it's in huge letters, but that's not what the images depict.

We will certainly be reminded, however, if we know what Mao-Giang means, of another red river.

The Shining

The second feature, which we see billed above the entrances to the theater, is The Lone Ranger of 1956. The 1948 Red River, filmed by Howard Hawks and Arthur Rosson, wasn't for Warner Brothers, it was for Monterey Productions and distributed by United Artists. We can see the words "Warner Bros" below "Mao Giang" on the marquee and that's problematic.

Let's just imagine, for the moment, that one of these films is indeed the Howard Hawks Red River starring John Wayne. The two films are going to refer to Joker and Cowboy. Joker has been associated with John Wayne throughout, stating, "Is that you John Wayne? Is this me?" at the beginning of the "Vietnam: The Movie" section, and as well back at the boot camp when Snowden was harassed by Hartman. I've already pointed out, however, how Cowboy originally makes the statement in the book, and Joker later uses it. In the film, at the opening of the reunion with Cowboy, Joker calls Cowboy "Lone Ranger".

Note that "Red River" is in Vietnamese, whereas Lone Ranger is not, it's in English on the signs that show a gun and a mask. The mask may remind us of Eyes Wide Shut and the use of prostitutes at Somerton.

The illustrated flats for the movies out front show very clearly on the left the large figure of a movie Indian and then above the front of the cinema there's the man throwing an Indian over his head. He doesn't look very much like John Wayne at all.

The movie being advertised is actually The Charge at Feather River from 1953, which was produced by Warner Brothers and was in spectacular 3d, which is why the Indian is being thrown through the frame, he is escaping two dimensions into the audience.

I'll take a look at Red River in a moment, because it is a John Wayne film, and it may be that it's being referenced, but the big images are from The Charge at Feather River. It had, Wikipedia says, in 3D, "many arrows, lances and other weapons flying directly at the audience in several scenes." Perfect. It also originated the name of the Wilhelm scream, for Pvt. Wilhelm's scream after he is shot with an arrow, though the recording is from the 1951 Distant Drums.

The Charge at Feather River has at its beginning the Lt. Colonel of a fort being drawn by an artist, who was sent out to do pictures of soldiers. The Lt. Colonel is drawn as charging with his sword raised high, riding a horse, but he is sitting on a pommel horse. He's called for Miles Archer (Guy Madison) to discuss with him the iron horse coming through the territory, which it's believed will stir the Cheyenne to war. He wants him to rescue two White girls who were taken captive in 1862 and are being held at a Cheyenne village on the Kincaid River. The C troop is moving out to guard the RR, so he needs Madison's help though he is a civilian. "You move like an Indian, you think like one," the Lt. Colonel pleads. At first Miles says he won't do it, then decides to take on the job when he finds a man who used to be his Drummer Boy is the remaining family of the two girls. Most of the men who are given him to help served in the Union (as did Miles), but one was a Rebel soldier and this hints at perhaps some conflict to come, though Miles says he's a good soldier. We are shown them going through a kind of boot camp as they quickly prepare, crawling on the ground, practicing with knives (throwing them at the audience). For rifles they are given new-fangled repeaters. They will be dressed as civilians rather than soldiers so as not to attract attention. The artist, who is also a news correspondent, volunteers to come along. I won't get into the subplots that go along with the soldiers who form Miles' company but it's predominately composed of soldiers who were prisoners in the guard house for various infractions and who Miles says he's going to have to convince to stick together. When they rescue the two girls, Jennie doesn't want to return as she's Cheyenne now and is betrothed to the chief of the tribe, Thunder Hawk. The other sister, Ann, doesn't want to return because of all the things that have happened in five years that she doesn't want anyone to know about. Eventually she reveals that she was raped, but her sister wasn't as she was too young. They are able to return to the fort where they find the Indians have attacked and the men there are dead with the exception of one who was locked in the brig. Miles decides to follow Feather River to Ft. Darby. Along the way, Jennie reveals where they are by signalling to the Cheyenne with the bright light of the sun reflected off a mirror. Trapped, almost without water, two men are sent to try to get through to Ft. Darby. Jennie, who has remained antagonistic, having gotten hold of a pistol, shoots her already wounded brother while attempting to escape, then falls to her death down a cliff. They make it to the river with the wounded brother where the Indians stage a brief attack. In horror, they watch as the hill across the river fills with Indians on horseback. As they begin their attack, arrows fly at the audience. A number shot dead, they retreat and prepare for another attack, during which time Miles proposes to Jennie. The Indians attack again, led by Thunder Hawk. More arrows fly at the audience. Overwhelmed, the small company looks doomed, but they kill Thunder Hawk and the Indians retreat again. The artist/correspondent killed in the last attack, the cavalry arrives to save the day. As they approach to meet them we see the artist's drawings of The Guardhouse Brigade left behind on the battlefield.

Unless I missed it, Miles never throws an Indian over his head, he's never in hand-to-hand combat, and no Indian ever takes captive one of the two women on screen.

Now, let's assume that Kubrick was suggesting he's referencing Red River through the name Mao Giang. What is it about? Red River opens with a young John Wayne leaving a wagon train to go down and start a cattle ranch in Texas, taking land from other people he feels free to take it from as they got it from the Indians. It's all up for grabs, as far as he's concerned. He leaves behind a woman he loves who begs to come with him, but he tells her women aren't strong enough and he'll send for her. Later they see smoke in the distance and realizes it's from the wagon train, that they've been attacked by Indians. Assuming they've all been killed, he and Walter Brennan, his side-kick, go on. At night, they realize they've been tracked and we have a very brief darkness shrouded scene in which several Indians attack. The Indians are viewed so quickly we barely get a glimpse of them. One leaps at John Wayne and he pitches him to his side into the river, but it all happens so fast that it's all a blur. Wayne sees that the Indian is wearing a bracelet he had given his girl. In that scene, Much later in the film there is an Indian raid on another wagon train but that's all blurry Indians riding in circles around it. There's no hand-to-hand combat. There are never any shots in the film of the river flowing before tall sandstone cliffs.

On the other hand, The Lone Ranger throughout shows the Indian with whom the Lone Ranger will eventually fight in hand-to-hand combat. He throws him over his head once and defeats him by throwing him into river.

Full Metal Jacket

The geography in The Lone Ranger is depicted as a river through red sandstone cliffs. On the left is a matte painting of what is supposed to be, in the film, Spirit Mountain, a sacred place for the Indians on thier land.

Full Metal Jacket

I was surprised by the plot of this 1956 Lone Ranger film. Indians are getting blamed for thieving from cattle ranchers and causing trouble. The ranchers, led by a rancher baron who owns a great deal of land, wants to move the Indians off their land and further away. The Lone Ranger and the Bureau of Indian Affairs agent say that will be breaking another promise to the Indians and are against it. The Indian Chief, Red Hawk, says they aren't the ones stealing cattle, and it is ultimately revealed that the cowboys working for the cattle baron have been dressing up like Indians and staging raids. In the meanwhile, the cattle baron's wife, from the east, is in conflict with her husband as she doesn't care for living on the ranch, and she's unhappy that, as they haven't had a son, her husband is raising their daughter like a boy, preparing her to take over the ranch. While Red Hawk has been striving for peace, Angry Horse prepares for war against the ranchers. Things have heated up enough that the cattle baron sends away his young daughter, Lyla, only she is taken captive by Angry Horse's faction. The Lone Ranger warns Red Hawk that Angry Horse's interest is in becoming chief. He fights Angry Horse for the girl, wins her back, and he and Red Hawk become friends again. As it turns out, the cattle baron wants the Indian's land as a mountain on it is loaded with silver. In the end, the bad cattle baron is killed, the bad cowboys are defeated, the Indians are vindicated and get to stay on their land. The cattle baron's widow isn't taxed with exhibiting any grief over her husband's death. She decides to take over the ranch and run it peacefully and reputably.

The Lone Ranger film is not an anti-western, but, surprisingly, it is one in which broken treaties are brought up, the many broken promises made with Indians, and instead of the Indians being the bad guys it's instead the cattle baron trying to move the Indians off their land in order to get their minerals. Sound familiar historically? Very. That's what is surprising about it, to hear, in 1956, the Lone Ranger arguing for the rights of Indians. Yes, he's the white guy protector who saves the day and keeps the peace, but I'm still impressed by a 1956 film talking about broken treaties and Indian rights.

Red River is not an anti-western, but it's not your typical western, with John Wayne sharing star credit with Montgomery Clift, his adopted son, a lone survivor of the Indian attack on the wagon train in which Wayne's girlfriend was killed. Clift is a soft spoken more-brains-than-brawn cowboy who knows how to handle a gun but doesn't throw his weight around. Indeed, when John Wayne (Thomas Dunson) becomes a tyrant on a post Civil War cattle drive to get the cattle up north, Clift (as Matt Garth), refuses to let him hang deserters from the drive, forces Dunson out of the drive and takes it over. Dunson spends the rest of the film in a fury, determined on killing Garth when he catches up with him. Instead they have a really ridiculous fist fight scene in which Garth's girlfriend insists they make up with each other because they love each other and they do. Indians are scarcely in the film at all, and they're just plain bad the couple of times they do show up. No worries about Indian rights or broken promises here. Thomas Dunson is a self-made giant of a man who took his land from others who took it from others, he became a full-fledged tyrant, but now that he's helped build America and give it beef he will come under the civilizing influence of Garth and Garth's girlfriend, will now see he can't be a tyrant, and that Garth is right and he was wrong, which will go down easier with all the money Garth made for him. He even makes Garth a co-owner of the ranch and designs a new cattle brand showing this.

I was also a little surprised by The Lone Ranger film in that a woman takes over the ranch--and while the baron was a bad guy, he did raise his daughter in a manner defying the strict gender role to which her mother initially subscribed. The evil husband and dad dead, the women of the family can now flourish.

In Red River, Dunson's initial error was not taking along the girlfriend, believing she wasn't strong enough, that this was a man's job and once things were settled he'd send for her.

Kubrick has chosen two films for the cinema that aren't your simple cowboys vs Indians fare and one that is. Though Indians are bad guys in Red River, they scarcely appear, and in The Lone Ranger are depicted as people who have been shoved off their land, treated as criminals, mis-represented by interests who want to take advantage of them even further and keep them the enemy. This works well with Full Metal Jacket making a clear comparison between American Indians and the Vietnamese.

However, due The Charge at Feather River, the signs out front of the movie theater represent the double-feature as classic cowboys vs. Indians fare.

Cowboy and Joker and others are seated in theater seats as if they are the viewers of a film, and the gigantic ad for the film over them has a White man throwing an Indian overhead out of what can even be taken as a "frame", blurring the boundary between film and real life...in a movie. The scene of the White man in a flowing shirt pitching an Indian overhead doesn't occur ike this in either film, he's not John Wayne in the buckskin shirt shooting a couple of Indians and throwing another to the side and into the vier where he finishes battles him under darkness of night, he's not the masked Lone Ranger either but the scene connects more with the Lone Ranger film, the Indian he battles resembling the one in the movie. The scene that plays out before--and with--Joker, the Cowboy, and the others, returns us to Da Nang and Joker and Rafter Man's encounter with the prostitute, she having been dressed Indian-style with a miniskirt cut so it looked like a loin cloth composed of front and back flaps. The lower caste Black-Indonesian Brother Seven Cha brightly smiled over it all in the Hynos toothpaste ad. Now Brother Seven Cha is replaced with a cigarette ad, and, over the cinema, a glowering Indian and hand-to-hand combat between a White Man and Indian that escapes the frame of the picture as if into real life. The prostitute in this scene is younger, pimped by an ARVN, and unlike the prostitute in Da Nang she doesn't speak until at first she turns down Eightball. He shows her he's not a stereotype, she accepts him, and Animal Mother steps in and bullies himself into being the first to have sex with her.

Full Metal Jacket

In Da Nang, just as the price negotiations were finished, Joker standing with the woman as Rafter Man took pictures, a Vietnamese man ran up and stole his camera. Rafter Man was flabbergasted and took it as a personal affront against him as a Marine making his sacrifice in Vietnam (an opinion shared by Donlon). Joker had treated it as just business. Here, as soon as negotiations are finished, Eightball taking hold of the woman's arm, Animal Man stands up to take possession, interrupting much as had the man who had stolen the camera. The woman stands between, one arm in Eightball's hand, the other arm in Animal Mother's. The thief had made theatrical martial arts moves with which no one was going to seriously engage and then had ridden off. Animal Mother's going to draw someone's blood if he doesn't have his way, pops Eightball's hand, and Eightball stands back rather than engage as Animal Mother says "All N****** must hang" and shoves the woman into the theater.

The way that Kubrick works with dualities, there's a lot going on here, the woman caught between the two men. On the surface we see that with the war comes racism against the Vietnamese, and underneath the tensions of the war are the racial tensions brought over from America, bequeathed by White supremacy and enslavement of African Americans, unresolved after America's own Civil War and generations of Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Act only passed four years earlier in 1964. That's really enough to absorb, for all intents and purposes.

We can't neglect that the theme music for The Lone Ranger was "March of the Swiss Soldiers" finale from Rossini's William Tell Overture and that Kubrick had already used this twice in his films--in A Clockwork Orange for the frenetic scene in which Alex had brought to his home two women from the music store, and in The Shining, Wendy singing a bit of it as she and Danny ran out to the maze to explore it while Jack played handball against a mural of Navajo Yeis, holy spirits. As they ran out, with the cross-fade, Jack the Giant had towered over the pair.

Wendy had called out that the loser would have to "keep America clean", recalling the Keep America Beautiful campaign, its film of an American Indian (Italian-American Iron Eyes Cody) weeping over a land ruined with pollution. As they explored the maze, Jack stood within the lobby of The Overlook and stared over the model of the maze which expanded to become a world maze, Danny and Wendy at the center of its elaborate mirrorings.

Full Metal Jacket

The diamond patterns we see on the theater and the Leyna building might remind us of the diamond pattern upon which Jack stood as he flung his handball at a diamond-patterend rug on a far wall and rather than returning to him it bounced off to screen right, down the hall. Nearby rested Danny's Big Wheel, which may give some pause as we look at the big circular structure opposite the theater. Wandering then over to the maze Jack noticed the bat with which Wendy will later defend herself. The miniature maze, too, is set on a diamond design.

THOSE DIAMONDS AND WHY I'VE FOCUSED ON THEM

The theater's name is Le Ngoc. The meaning in VIetnamese is "valuable gem stone or expensive diamond".

When Joker is interviewed before the cinema, he states, "I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I, uh,I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture..and kill them. I wanted to be the first kid on my block to get a confirmed kill.

The name of the woman who plays the Vietnamese sniper is given as Ngoc Le.

TO FILM GUSTAV HASFORD'S POETRY OR NOT

There's no recreating Hasford's discordant poetry of war. Not even a similar movie of uneven rhythms and surreal impositions assembled by Francis Goya and Pieter Bruegel would be able to duplicate what its fractured sensibility conjures. Kubrick was attracted to Hasford's telling, but he wasn't going to be able to film Hasford's Hue. He was able to borrow from the authentic voice of its psyche.

Hasford's book is utterly surreal throughout. One can see how this surreality comes out of the same WWI trauma that gave birth to post-WWI surrealism. Though surrealism, as it was initially conceived (and still can be) is decidedly political, Kubrick is often a surrealist in his approach to film, however discreet about it so that in his films, with discordances that are often ignored, there is an easy surface flow of story line. That surrealism is woven throughout Lolita, A Clockwork Orange, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut, while not being overt, it's stylistically subversive. The first half of Full Metal Jacket owes much to The Shining while the second part returns to 2001, though seeming aesthetically far-removed from it, and even Barry Lyndon. Inserted in the middle of the second half, with the documentary, is A Clockwork Orange. There are some who have seen the Vietnam portion as seemingly aimless, like short stories, and though 2001, after-the-fact, gives the impression of a film moving single-mindedly towards its end monolithic goal, its approach is much like Full Metal Jacket in its radical disjointing of an idealogical landscape. I see a good bit of Joker in Dave Bowman's attempts to navigate a world that has been put together for him by Earth government/military/science that never told him the ful story, HAL, and the monolith.

Michael Herr composed a beautiful write-up in 1987 on Full Metal Jacket that addressed his initial response to Hasford's novel and how it had been too much for him:

At the very moment in 1979 that I was making my No More Vietnams oath, I was sent a novel in bound galleys called The Short-Timers, by Gustav Hasford. I meant to read only a few pages, but I could see immediately, in one paragraph, that this was impossible. When I finished the opening section, I felt as though I'd read a whole novel, and it was twenty-eight pages long. I knew I was reading an amazing writer. He was telling a truth about the war that was so secret, so hidden, that I could barely stand it. I certainly didn't want to be associated with it in my neo-postwar period. It was a masterpiece that absolutely anybody could pick up and read in a couple of hours and never forget; and it went out into the world seeking shelf life without the albatross of my blurb around its graceful neck. I didn't answer the publishers, I didn't write to the author. I folded. I felt vaguely ashamed, but I got over it. I repressed it. Later, when Stanley was looking for war books, I may have mentioned it, but I'm not certain that I did. When he came across it, he knew immediately that he wanted to film it. I'd recoiled so far from it that I couldn't remember anything about it. It came straight back when I re-read that first great page.

Michael Herr

Herr had thought Hasford's work brillant, but initially recoiled. Kubrick must have thought it brilliant, but Kubrick also was going to do Kubrick, Hasford acting as a vehicle. Friends of Hasford's have said that Hasford worried his book would be lost in the process and fought for it.

Bernston: Anyway. Michael Herr was hired as a screenwriter. So, Stanley was picking Gus's brain all night long, and then he was giving it to Michael Herr who was turning it into Clockwork Viet Nam. I mean, it was literally going into the genre of the anti-war, dope-smoking, baby-killing, all the typical up to this point, Apocalypse II, you know, Viet Nam genre that we've been experiencing. And Michael Herr was just writing it as bad as he could. Gus got wind of this. Jumped on a plane, went to England, went right up to Stanley's place and said "Uh-uh, you aren't doin' this." Stanley said, "I bought it, it's my property." Gus said, "I'll fight you on it." Now this is pretty gutsy for a nobody out of Alabama, self-educated, who used to get beat because he read books instead of working. He'd go up against Stanley Kubrick and say, "You ain't gonna do it." But he did. Gus forced Stanley into saying, "Okay fine, I'll let you co-screenwrite with Michael Herr." Well, that set up such a battle, because Gus battled for the integrity. He did. He battled for the integrity of what was in that book. He wanted it on the screen. He was successful. When you look at the movie and then read the book, you'll see that he was successful in keeping the core, the meat of it.

GUS HASFORD SYMPOSIUM TRANSCRIPT, with Steve Bernston, from the now defunct website on Gus Hasford

Herr and Hasford both came out of the same war, and Herr wrote personably about it, with a great sense of immediacy, but his time spent in Vietnam was part of his career, whereas Hasford was a Marine and so had a radically different experience from Herr as he could not have opted out at any time, he was tied to the war by a contract. He went into it being, despite Joker's satirical distancing, something of a believer, and came out fully against the war. He wrote a mortally-wounded, pull-back-the-curtains-on-hell poem about the war. Kubrick was a great filmmaker who poured years into Full Metal Jacket then Eyes Wide Shut, a productive giant. Herr did quite well for himself. Hasford could, by accounts of his personal life, be read as eccentric and egocentric and naive, but more than anything else he was quickly being killed by PTSD and alcoholism. His death was suicide by alcohol and physical neglect of Hasford for Hasford.

Three very different people working on this film and only one knew how it would fit into and carry on the goals of his previous work.

Approx 18.000 words or about 36 single-spaced pages.

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STANLEY KUBRICK'S Full Metal Jacket Shot-by-Shot Analysis Part Five

PART FIVE

THIS IS VIETNAM: THE MOVIE -- CREDITS SECTION

NOTES

THE PLAY WITHIN A PLAY

SURFIN' BIRD

THE KEY PLAYERS OF THE DOCUMENTARY

THE BANDAGED MARINE

THE CONFEDERATE FLAG

THIS IS VIETNAM : THE MOVIE -- REQUIEM SECTION

NOTES

SEMPER FI

THIS IS VIETNAM : THE MOVIE -- INTERVIEWS SECTION

NOTES

THIS IS VIETNAM: THE MOVIE -- I WANTED TO SEE EXOTIC VIETNAM, THE JEWEL OF SOUTHEAST ASIA

THERE'S THE ENEMY, YOU KILL THEM

A DIFFERENCE BETWEEN MICHAEL HERR'S DISPATCHES AND HASFORD'S THE SHORT-TIMERS

DOUBLE FEATURE AT LE NGOC

NOTES

JOHN WAYNE

WHERE ARE WE

PERHAPS THE CINEMA THE SET IS BASED ON?

WHAT'S PLAYING

THOSE DIAMONDS AND WHY I'VE FOCUSED ON THEM

TO FILM GUSTAV HASFORD'S POETRY OR NOT

STANLEY KUBRICK'S Full Metal Jacket
Shot-by-Shot Analysis
Part Five

424	425
426	427
428	429
430	431
432	433
434	435
436	43
438	439
440	441
442	443
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