Posted on 11/26/2005 4:19:14 PM PST by saquin
ANGERED by negative portrayals of the conflict in Iraq, Bruce Willis, the Hollywood star, is to make a pro-war film in which American soldiers will be depicted as brave fighters for freedom and democracy.
It will be based on the exploits of the heavily decorated members of Deuce Four, the 1st Battalion, 24th Infantry, which has spent the past year battling insurgents in the northern Iraqi town of Mosul.
Willis attended Deuce Four’s homecoming ball this month in Seattle, Washington, where the soldiers are on leave, along with Stephen Eads, the producer of Armageddon and The Sixth Sense.
The 50-year-old actor said that he was in talks about a film of “these guys who do what they are asked to for very little money to defend and fight for what they consider to be freedom”.
Unlike many Hollywood stars Willis supports the war and recently offered a $1m (about £583,000) bounty for the capture of any of Al-Qaeda’s most wanted leaders such as Osama Bin Laden, Ayman Al-Zawahiri or Abu Musab al- Zarqawi, its commander in Iraq. Willis visited the war zone with his rock and blues band, the Accelerators, in 2003.
“I am baffled to understand why the things I saw happening in Iraq are not being reported,” he told MSNBC, the American news channel.
He is expected to base the film on the writings of the independent blogger Michael Yon, a former special forces green beret who was embedded with Deuce Four and sent regular dispatches about their heroics.
Yon was at the soldiers’ ball with Willis, who got to know him through his internet war reports on www.michaelyon.blogspot.com. “What he is doing is something the American media and maybe the world media isn’t doing,” the actor said, “and that’s telling the truth about what’s happening in the war in Iraq.”
Willis is likely to take on the role of the unit’s commander, Lieutenant-Colonel Erik Kurilla, 39, a Bruce Willis lookalike with a chest full of medals, more hair than Willis and a glamorous blonde wife.
He was injured in August after being shot three times by insurgents “in front of my eyes”, Yon recorded in his blog: “He continued to direct his men until a medic gave him morphine and the men took him away.”
Kurilla now has a titanium plate in his leg. He met Willis at the ball and said that his men were “very excited and appreciative that he was there”. ”
Deuce Four has a chequered history. For decades it was a segregated black unit commanded by a white officer. It was disbanded in 1951 but veterans felt hurt that its past was considered to be a stain on the army and it was revived in the mid-1990s.
When the battalion arrived in Mosul in November last year the city was under threat from insurgents. “We faced very heavy fighting for about three months,” Kurilla recalled. “Every patrol was making contact with enemy forces. We would hit them where they slept, where they worked and where they ate.”
Today the picture was very different, he said. “I have watched a city that was in absolute chaos turn into one that has a viable Iraqi security force, which is taking the lead in fighting the terrorists.”
Yon, 41, went to Iraq after a friend from high school, Scott Helveston, a former navy Seal, was hanged from a bridge in Falluja in an incident that shocked the world. Yon had never blogged before but was the author of Danger Close, a book about his experience as a green beret when he killed a man in a bar-room brawl. He was charged with murder and acquitted on the grounds of self-defence.
“When I landed in Baghdad I was immediately struck by how much of a war zone it was,” Yon said. “Explosions were going off constantly. It was full-on.”
His first experience of Mosul was worse: “I got attacked on my first mission. One of our vehicles got hit with a car bomb and three guys were killed.”
In May, Yon took a photograph of a soldier from the Deuce Four cradling a little Iraqi girl who had been fatally wounded by a suicide bomber. He sensed that the inhabitants of Mosul were turning against the insurgents. “People began to realise that all the insurgents ever did was break things and kill people,” he said. “It started to switch from a firefight to an intelligence war. People started to talk more to us. They would pull us over and give us tips.”
The Iraqi security forces began to take pride in their work, Yon added: “These guys were getting slaughtered but they continued to volunteer and fight. It’s very dangerous now to be a terrorist in Mosul. They’re still out there but it’s not like it was.”
Willis said it would be wrong for Americans to give up on Iraq just as progress is being made. “The Iraqi people want to live in a world where they can move from their homes to the market and not have to fear being killed,” he said. “I mean, doesn’t everybody want that?”
Oh, don't say that...I'll start to believe it!
Thank you, Bruce Willis! This sounds like a movie that I would pay to see!
WTG Bruce, best wishes and hopes that it makes a bundle.. but screw the reviews because we know they'll be mostly biased.
I saw Tears of the Sun, which was a hard movie to do. It did about $60 million as I recall.
I say much lower given that since 1/2 of people won't watch it given the pro-troop angle. It will also contain violent scenes which means PG-13 or R.
To make that gross you would need about 30 million people to go and see it.
I'll go see it only if it looks good. Otherwise I will be part of the rental sales figures.
Why do we accept Hollywood's behavior now?
I don't. That's why I rarely go to the movies anymore and hardly ever rent a video or pay per view. I boycott watching award shows because I don't think too many of the recipients of those awards are really that talented(a few are but not many) I've pretty much declared my own little war on Hollywood.
That's only 10% of the population of THIS country. Add on at least the Brits and Aussies and it will be well over $250 million, IMHO.
Just doing a little editing on behalf of the truth.
BTTT
If Willis does this as a "traditional" war movie, then you probably will be right about the movie receipts -- Will probably do better in rentals. What we need to see in a movie is how successful the Coalition has been and how much they have accomplished in such a short time all things considered. The movie should also allow the Iraqi people to show their gratitude to us in this movie, something the MSM ignores. Our troops have rebuilt a country, destroyed not just by War, but first and foremost by Saddam who only cares about his palaces and rebuilding his vision of Babylon.
Too hard to do in under 2 hours and with a likely cost of $120 million in production and marketing costs. The movie would have to do about $200 million (I read studios get $.55/$1 of ticket sales) to break even. The movie will likely be dismissed as propaganda.
I'd be interested in watching it but it's a huge risk to undertake.
Maybe Bruce could enlist Michael Moore and get some of his techniques for making a cheap movie that is full of anti-American propaganda and thereby fooling many into believing it is an actual documentary...and then SLAM, Bruce's movie turns out to be pro-American propaganda that still tells more Truth about the War than Michael and his minions will ever acknowledge. Weirder things have happened. To the Lost on the Left, nothing will help them. It is that Middle group who doesn't know what to believe thanks to the MSM and the total ineptness of Bush & the Repubs at promoting anything positive.
..rent Tears of the Sun...came out in 2003!
It takes place in Nigeria but mirrors Iraq in many ways....
...specific moments & quotes stand out in that movie that definitely mirror Iraq....
..and the director and Willis both state their respect & homage to the military...(Bruce plays a Navy SEAL)....and does it excellently!
Truly, a very good movie...somewhat similar in some areas to Hotel Rwanda...
It ends with the famous Edmund Burke quote....All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing
Rent it!!!
Good stuff ~ Bump!
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