Anyone noticed that Bravo channel is playing The Deer Hunter (1978) frequently these days? I think "Deer Hunter" was the first movie about Viet Nam, followed by Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, Born on the Fourth of July and more. The Deer Hunter had a scene near the end where the working class white ethnic types who comprised the story sang "God Bless America". Pretty uncool thing to do then. No doubt Cimino had several layers of irony in this scene. One reason the movie is interesting to see now is that it features a youthful Robt Di Niro, Christopher Walken and Meryl Streep.

I am wondering when and in what way Hollywood will treat Sept 11 and aftermath. Any speculations?

-- (lars@indy.net), February 11, 2002

Answers

It'll be treated with great respect to all points of view no matter how irrelevent or murderous...and soon.

-- Carlos (riffraff@cybertime.net), February 12, 2002.

If they make a TV movie it will be totally phony, just like most of the recent gung-ho American patriotism. I'm sure the fascist Bush administration won't let it air unless it makes him look like a hero, and makes the rest of the world look like the axis of evil. It will probably be very similar to the Nazi propaganda, except it will be Bush instead of Hitler and America instead of Germany.

I would hope that someone like Oliver Stone will make a feature film and get into the real truth behind how it happened.

-- (our@hero.Dubya), February 12, 2002.

Carlos, I agree except I don't think it will be that soon for anything serious.

OTOH, Stone is probably in production as we speak.

-- (lars@indy.net), February 12, 2002.

Young Man Lost, The Biography of John Walker Lindh, starring Leonardo Di Caprio, is currently being filmed on location in Marin County CA.

-- (Algernon C. Braithewait III@Cambridge.MA), February 12, 2002.

For those who think Leonardo Di Caprio is such a lousy actor...might I suggest 'What's eating Gilbert Grape" and "The basketball diaries". You may just change your mind.

-- (cin@cin.cin), February 12, 2002.

Cin loves Leonardo, Cin loves Leonardo, Cin loves Leonardo

-- (nemesis@awol.com), February 12, 2002.

I think I'll pass up "Who'se Eating Gilbert Grape", thank you very much.

-- Peter Errington (petere7@starpower.net), February 12, 2002.

Leonardo Di Faggio is gay, that's why he's so good at eating Gilbert's "grapes".

-- (leo@sucks.grapes), February 12, 2002.

Ah liked Gilberts maw. Now thars alotta woman!

-- (willy clinton@pickup.truck), February 13, 2002.

I think there are many human-interest stories (heroic, tragic and life-affirming) that will be worthy of dramatizing. Some will be epic, (like the WTC firemen and the passenger revolt on the plane that crashed in PA) and some will be beautiful miniatures like this.

-- (lars@indy.net), February 14, 2002.

Wednesday, 13 February, 2002, 14:15 GMT

Film plan for Twin Towers hero Susan Sarandon is an Oscar winning actress Hollywood couple Tim Robbins and Susan Sarandon are to make a film about the 11 September attacks in New York, focusing on the bravery of a British security officer.

Robbins and Sarandon are to base their film on the bravery of Rick Rescorla, a Cornwall-born war hero, who died in the attacks saving thousands of people.

The film is based on an article by James Stewart in the New Yorker magazine, All The Heroes Are Dead, and is one of three productions about the attacks on the Twin Towers currently in planning.

Rescorla moved to the US a the age of 23 and served in the US army in Vietnam, his exploits later recounted in the book - and now film, When We Were Soldiers - in which he was described as a "battlefield legend".

Drama unfold

He was the head of security at Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and died evacuating people from one of the New York towers.

In 1993, he was the last to leave the tower when a bomb was found in the centre.

As the buildings came under attack he phoned his wife at home, who was watching the drama unfold on television .

He told her: "I don't want you to cry. I have to evacuate some people now. If something happens to me, I want you to know that you made my life."

Oscar-winning actress Sarandon will play Rescorla's wife Susan Greer, and she and Robbins hope to have a studio deal in place shortly.

The film will concentrate on the love story between the couple, described as "two fractured people who found each other late in life and enjoyed a storybook romance".

The World Trade Center disaster will provide a cruel finale to the film.

MGM has made a deal with writer Lawrence Wright to adapt his New Yorker article The Counter-Terrorist, while ABC is preparing a major documentary based on Dennis Smith's book Report from Ground Zero.

-- (one@of.many), February 14, 2002.