Part 3/5 – Review of American Sniper by Clint Eastwood

The movie ends with what appears to be the real footage of Chris Kyle’s funeral procession. Hundreds, if not thousands of well-wishers lined the highways. American flags almost outnumbered people, and a few cranes were even used to hang an enormous flag high against the skyline. I’d be lying if I said I cried because honestly, while I remember crying during the movie, I can’t remember if I cried at that specific moment. What I do know is that I was very, very sad–no different from you I’d guess.

But now it’s Wednesday and the immediate effects have worn off. So how do I feel about that funeral procession now, today? A little anecdote is necessary to explain it.

Judging by the fact that the show was cancelled after a single season, I’m pretty sure no one will remember an HBO show called John From Cincinnati. It came out after Deadwood ended and it had the same writer. Well I thought the show was just fantastic. One thing I learned from it was how to feel about the familiar, black POW/MIA flag. Up until that tv series I never wanted to look at the flag or think about it or even acknowledge its existence. I had no context for it. For whatever reason, I felt that I should be sad when I thought on it and its meaning, but I honestly didn’t feel sad or really anything when I saw it. And that embarrassed me. But then in that goofy little show there was a character who was a Vietnam veteran who showed me the way. The dude was pissed. Anger was his idea of the proper emotion to associate with the POW/MIA flag. The gist of his sentiment and why he proudly sported the flag was, “Our motherfucking government took these boys outta their home and lost them. That’s not right and needs to be fixed.”

With that in mind, how do I feel now about the procession, now after the emotions that the film stirred have calmed? I feel like only I understand what all those well-wishers wanted to communicate that day. I feel like no one else gets it. I feel like everyone who has seen Sniper and loves it, all they saw was some level of patriotism and/or patriotic support. But I know the truth. The truth that I know is that all those people who took time out of their day to line the highways did so because they wanted to communicate a solidarity that it wasn’t right for the government to put a man through what Kyle went through. Why would his leadership do that to him? Did they think it was fun? Did they like that their ‘boy’ was racking up their numbers? Did they want to be able to have a bullet on their performance report that said “rubbed shoulders with most lethal sniper in US military history?” Why would they keep sending him in? If there is one fact that I am certain of, and that I would like to believe people who are leaders are certain of, it’s that motivated individuals will drive themselves into the ground if left to their own devices. I learned this about myself through the most embarrassing experience of my life. Only a handful of people even know this prior to now. Want to know how lost I became as my wife and I sat alone in our town home for nearly three weeks after my first deployment, me being either drunk or hungover for the duration? I arrived at a place where I heard a nice sounding legal assistant on the other end of a phone hurriedly whisper, “You can’t ask that. You can’t ask what the punishment will be for going AWOL if you haven’t left.” A lifetime of leadership and decision making training was being put to use to gather all the data (step 2) so I could make an informed decision that going to prison would be better than going back.

I ramble a bit here to illustrate that while I was sad as I watched that scene of the movie Saturday night, today when I think about that scene I am angry.

****

Thursday – But, then, what do I know? I don’t have PTSD.

Friday – Or do I?

Part 2/5 – Review of American Sniper by Clint Eastwood

It’s no secret that we love people that are the best at something. We also respect military members tremendously, rightly so. So, as movie watchers, when we see that someone has made a movie about a military member who is the best at his craft, it is difficult to not be interested. (Anyone remember Top Gun?) My question is: Was Chris Kyle’s status as most lethal sniper in US military history relevant to the story Eastwood tells in American Sniper?

The story, remember, is about PTSD. Part of the reason I am taking an entire week to review this film is because some subject matter only ever has one reason to be put into a story. PTSD is one such topic. A movie about PTSD is made for only one reason. It is not made to enjoy watching, though if done well it might be enjoyable. It is not made to give non-veterans a glimpse of what veterans may or may not be going through after they return from deployed locations and/or combat, though if done well it might, in fact, provide a glimpse that they might not have otherwise gotten regarding why a loved one’s behaviors might be different than before. The reason someone tells a story about PTSD, especially in 2015 America, is because they want to help the surely tremendous number of military men and women who suffer, alone and quietly, as a result of their voluntary service.

So was his status relevant to the PTSD-centered story? The answer is yes and no.

Yes, I could admit that it was relevant if Eastwood’s angle was to show that “Look even the top sniper admitted he had PTSD and was able to find some peace after admitting it.” Yes, if Eastwood wanted to show that therefore there is hope for all because Kyle was able to begin to recover from it, then I can see his intentions were pure and he just didn’t manifest them very well.

But no, his status as top sniper was not relevant if he wanted to tell a story that would really help veterans. And here’s why. PTSD has a negative stigma. Hell, the word disorder is the D. Nobody wants to admit they have a disorder. What knucklehead academic even thought they were doing a good thing by terming a difficulty acquired from attempting to do good in the world a disorder? And of course everyone knows that the men and women who are actually around killing and death have experienced trauma (the T). But there are only a select few military members who are actually pulling triggers and having to duck on a regular basis. What about everyone else? What if they still experienced something that is causing their transition back to civilian life to be difficult? How anxious will they be to come forward when some Navy SEALs still might not be ready to admit they are having a hard time after they come home? How about pilots of the new remotely controlled aircraft that are pulling the trigger from half-way around the world and only seeing a black and white television image of a body going limp? Do you think they, when they think long and hard on it, actually believe they have anything in common with the macho dudes kicking in doors? Do you think they want to raise their hand when help is offered?

Here’s the truth that veterans don’t think to share with the world. We learn first-hand that every military member is capable of amazing feats. We know this because as we signed up we stereotyped and guessed who would do what when. But during our time in service someone proved our infinite wisdom wrong. Moreover, plenty of people never get the opportunity to demonstrate/discover what they hoped combat/service-before-self would teach them about themselves. By way of example, Chuck Yeager became an ace combat pilot in one day at age twenty-one. I didn’t even go to Iraq until I was twenty-five. And no enemy aircraft ever approached the slow helicopter I flew. Suffice it to say, I never did get my five aerial victories. (But I did log more combat NVG time than Yeager, which I am sure he loses sleep over.)

I have to believe that Chris Kyle admitted to someone at some time that he was just doing his job and while the status his circumstances bestowed up him was neat, he wouldn’t have cared if his tally put him last on some list. And I’ll even go one level further. If he really did care about helping vets like the story goes, (which I fully believe), I bet he’d trade every confirmed kill to help just one veteran.

In the end, we’re talking about telling a story to an audience who is short on hope. Seeing a finally smiling Bradley Cooper give a ride to the man who kills him, another afflicted veteran, just doesn’t turn the light on for me.

****

Wednesday – Never mind how I felt while I watched the funeral procession, how do I feel now?

Thursday – But, then, what do I know? I don’t have PTSD.

Friday – Or do I?

Part 1/5 – Review of American Sniper by Clint Eastwood

By Request

Reactions to recent posts have had an unintended consequence of making me believe you wouldn’t mind reading more about my military related struggles with the hopes of understanding your less talkative family members’ own strife (using the timely film American Sniper as a vessel). I am flattered and have decided to accept the charge. As you’ll see, though, while I began doing it with you in mind, I gained a clarity relevant to my own life. I saw how this challenge will help me. So that’s why I’m really doing it. But I believe that help is help is help, and that means if it helps me, it might help someone else. So here we go. Together.

Today I’ll set the stage with my criteria for the film review. Throughout the rest of the week we’ll get into the nitty gritty.

A magazine writing course taught the importance of asking yourself what your article, your story, is about about. Lucky for you and I, I recently came across a movie review that put that concept a bit more clearly. “It’s not what [the story’s] about. It’s how it’s about it.”

American Sniper is about PTSD. There should be no argument there. How does Eastwood go about PTSD? Lazily. Embarrassingly so. (Want a movie that doesn’t go about PTSD lazily? Check out David Ayer’s Harsh Times.)

Sniper’s story is fairly straightforward. There’s this tragedy that is inconceivable. Top US sniper Chris Kyle who only recently is beginning to overcome PTSD’s effects is killed by a veteran he was helping to overcome PTSD. Though you don’t find this out until just before the credits roll.

Surprise endings don’t do it for me. They never have. Consequently, I don’t mind spoiling this movie because the issue–PTSD–far outweighs any entertainment value that the surprise ending provides. Let’s be honest, movies don’t change the world anyhow. Stories do. And for me, if a story relies on a surprise ending for strength, besides being lazy, its power is diminished upon each subsequent telling. This thinking inevitably leads to: any story that loses power with each telling isn’t worth telling in the first place. (Test the Greatest Story if you don’t like my thinking.) But again, it’s not Sniper’s story that is lazy (powerless), it’s Eastwood’s telling of it–how he went about it.

Maybe I’ve just seen more movies than most folks, but I was bored during the first half of the film. For most of it really. Not because I’ve been there or done that. But because every other recent contemporary war movie has been there or done that, and in most cases done it better. Two examples stand out prominently. The Hurt Locker for juxtaposition of home life vs. deployed life (ref cereal debate) and Zero Dark Thirty for realism (ref “Usama…Usama” whisper). As moviegoers, we’re not in a vacuum. Eastwood should’ve known better. He had a story that is so inherently powerful there was no reason to tell it in such a way that places it alongside those two films in my mind. Yet there it sits. Rather than do the story right, he (lazily) chose to compete and he loses. Like my brother often says, “It would have been a good movie…if every other movie hadn’t already come out.” In my words, American Sniper is a lazy telling of a story whose intended audience deserves better.

****

Outline For The Week:

Tuesday – Was it relevant that he had more confirmed kills than any other sniper?

Wednesday – Never mind how I felt while I watched the funeral procession, how do I feel now?

Thursday – But, then, what do I know? I don’t have PTSD.

Friday – Or do I?

It’s Not

It’s not. I promise it’s not.

It’s not that a four year old was beating me in Memory.

It’s not.

It’s not that I was even trying a little bit because two losses in a row to a child in anything is embarrassing.

It’s not.

It’s not that she was teaching me how annoying my victorious mannerisms were as she copied them instantly and completely, saying, “Haha! I’m cleaning up!” when she saw that she was on the home stretch and knew she could not lose.

It’s not.

It’s that her body position, essentially half-standing, half-sitting so that she could easily pivot on her knee and reach any card that she desired, had resulted in her other leg’s pant leg being pulled up to near high-water-Frodo-Baggins-hobbit height and every time she moved her now protruding bare foot I could not but think of the emphasis Peter Jackson placed on those abnormally long, obnoxiously hairy feet as if they were the most difficult piece of trick photography in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That’s what it was. That’s what annoyed me so. Promise.

Why Write Simon?

Why? Why write a book about divorce and doom and base it in contemporary America? I’ll tell you why. Because tomorrow hasn’t happened yet. More specifically, because I was about to go watch H- sing her heart out in some holiday concert. And her mother and her live-in boyfriend were going to be there. I was angry. I was afraid. I was afraid I would do or say something that I would regret. I could picture it. I could picture me yelling or even shoving and I could see the other parent’s reactions. I could see the circle of flesh forming and feel a hand on my shoulder asking me to calm down. I have never been in a fight but I was actually getting nervous that that night would break that streak. I didn’t know what it would be over. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that when the dust settled, the dust in my vision, I saw H- standing there looking at me. She was crying. Her left heel was tapping the ground rapidly.

Spiderman’s uncle reminds Peter that “with great power comes great responsibility.” So while I write and write and hope and hope, when I saw H-‘s face, I realized that I needed to quit effin’ around and write something valuable, write something that I would be really proud of. Not necessarily valuable to you, but valuable to me. And my ex. And hopefully to my daughter some day. The book is essentially an apology, maybe a reckoning.

Along the road to divorce and since then I heard many people express they were in the same boat that I was. They weren’t writers though. I believe I am a writer. So I wrote.

Reviews from friends, family, and strangers agree. It is dark. It is embarrassing. It is depressing. But the real truth is that it is full of hope. You just have to look for it.

Anyhow. Not a single new sale since last week. But I have four more days to give it away over the next 70 or so and create some momentum as the theory goes. So today it is free again on the kindle. If you like to read, read it and enjoy!

Bachelors

Have I told you much about Greeny? The following paints as accurate a picture of this war hero as any, I suppose.

Taking off his skis Saturday afternoon, he stops and says, “I just learned something about myself. See that woman over there? I watched her come down the mountain on tele’s and thought, ‘You know. I could marry her.'”

“Wow, man. Pretty deep,” my brother and I’s wide-eyed response.

“No, you don’t understand. You know what my girlfriend said to me the other day? She said, ‘It’s cold out here.’ I couldn’t believe it. It was like 60 degrees. I told her, ‘You can say, ‘I’m cold.’ But you can’t say ‘It’s cold.’ You can’t say it because it is not true.”

He always has been a stickler for the truth.

What I really want to share though is what happened at the club Saturday night. The seven of us in the bachelor party play pool for a few hours until most are losing interest and ready to head back to the condo. I convince Greeny to hang out a bit longer, because, well, we’re good friends and you never know when some new war will break out etc, etc. It was about midnight, and we had had enough to drink that I finally suggest we tempt fate on the dance floor where there are probably eight ladies and only one dude. (Focus on the decent odds, not the lame club.)

The entire floor cleared when we walked onto it.

I couldn’t stop smiling. I felt my body move more from laughter fits than any attempt to bust a move. Greeny was more still. He gets this look. The wheels are clearly turning behind his thousand yard stare, but from experience I assure you not necessarily very fast. He scans the room one last time and then reports, “Pete. If you and I are in any other country in the world and walk onto a dance floor, the women would leave their seats to join us. Here, they return to them.”

Now, ladies, I know what you’re thinking.

Wait. No, no I don’t. Never have. Same for Greeny.

Um…help?

I Love Filmmaker Michael Mann

He is the absolute best filmmaker ever. Hands down.

My favorite film of all time is Last of the Mohicans. It is probably no coincidence that this is also the first film of his I ever saw, and it might be the first rated R film I ever watched. I know for sure that at the time I didn’t even know his name or, for that matter, that movies were made by different people. While most people I run into shy away from ever choosing their favorite, my training prevents me from fearing and so after much deliberation, to repeat, I proudly pick Last of the Mohicans.

I say all of that to introduce the fact that any movie buffs can imagine my shock when upon completing Heat in college I discovered that in that crime tale–the first time Pacino and De Niro gloriously face-off on film–again, it was Mann at the helm.

My memory is a bit fuzzy at this point, but I think my next it’s-a-small-world-after-all shock was discovering that he created one of my mom’s favorite early-80’s television shows–meaning I’m pretty sure she watched it while I was in the womb–Miami Vice. It shouldn’t take much convincing then that when I heard he was making a stand alone film of Vice, I lost my breath. (“Do you dance?” “I dance.”)

After heading to the local video rental store to get caught up with Thief, Manhunter, and The Insider, Ali marked the first time I saw one of his films in the theater. And you can bet I was first in line for when he teamed up with my raision d’etre, TC, in Collateral.

Naturally, my younger brother is also a big fan. Not as big, but big. So to cap off his bachelor party ski extravaganza he and I went to see Mann’s latest release Blackhat. It has been a long time since I left the theater believing that someone knows how to tell a story to adults. I had hoped Interstellar would end the streak of disappointment, but I have to agree with the masses that while very, very good, it was also a little silly. Not Blackhat.

What makes Mann stand head and shoulders above the competition? Pacing. His pacing. No one else comes close.

Now, we’re all adults here, right? You know how there is a standard line during sex where when in passion’s throes one partner sensually requests that the other develop the bliss a little more competently? When, in a voice that quiets to little more than air rushing by your ear, you hear the plea, “Don’t rush”? Well Mann’s grasp prevents his lover from ever contemplating such a petition. Unlike most other film makers, he is in complete control. There is no doubt that every particularity of every moment is exactly as he wants it. There is no “film by committee” with him. It’s his way or the highway. And Blackhat reminded me of this once again.

Need one more example of how I know he’s the best filmmaker? I know because the previews for his movies are horrible. They are horrible because he doesn’t make previews. He makes movies. He makes motion pictures. He makes art. Could a single measure of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony do that song justice? Or one star in Van Gogh’s Starry Night? No, the answer is no.

In a word, compared to Michael Mann, all other filmmakers are simply salesmen.

Getting High

Nobody ever asks me what really sustained me while I was in Iraq. I figure that’s because my friends and family know I’m just so tough. But the truth is I had moments (sometimes so long that you might call them days) of despair, no different than anyone that has visited the sandbox. I argued the war was unconstitutional. I argued that Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. I argued that no one, no military, no amount of anything is ever going to quell the unrest in the middle east. I argued that the thinking that it’s fight them over there or over here is flawed because they don’t have ships to get people across the ocean. I went to some dark places, of that there is no doubt. But, like nearly everyone, I found my strength. I found my hope.

Want to know what I would use to lift me out of despair? The Rocky Mountains. That’s right. Ski resorts in particular. I told myself that if someone made the argument that if we don’t go to Iraq and do what we were doing, then the bad guys would come here, eventually making their way to the ski resorts where they would mess everything up. (And don’t kid yourself, they would ruin them). So to prevent that from happening I would stare despair in the face and happily do my duty. I would wake up before my alarm went off. I would hold my head a little higher. I would focus a little sharper. Mess with the Rockies? Not if I had anything to do with it. There is nothing like them and no replacing them. I can hardly hear the word America without seeing the flag draped against a backdrop of the purple mountain’s majesty. When I see America on a globe, I notice most the bumpy yellow and orange band about three-fourths of the way to the left of the Atlantic.

This is on my mind, because I’m going skiing with my brother this weekend (and a good friend that is currently a company commander in the Marines). And I tell myself that I, me, played at least small part in keeping the mountains open. And that makes me smile.

Table of Contents or Try From Memory?

“What is the deal with the traffic?” he muttered, alone in his car. It was 6:44pm and that meant he only had sixteen minutes to drive the twenty minutes of pavement that separated him from his destination. “I wanted to be there right now,” he continued.

As predicted, twenty minutes later he arrived. Transforming what should have been a three-point turn into an eleven-point turn, he finally came down off the curb and shifted to park.

“Oh man. I didn’t expect anyone to be dressed up. Oh well,” he thought, seeing a few other stragglers walking up to the building.

Not knowing what to expect, he approached the door and was yet again immediately greeted with a welcoming handshake from a stranger.

“This place is amazing,” he thought.

He knew some of what was going on. He wasn’t dumb. He sat in pews like these week after week for a decade as a child. “It’s just muscle memory,” he could hear the critics say. It felt familiar and familiar feels good. “You go to what you know,” Hollywood wisdom taught about behavior during trying times. But he didn’t care.

“So what?” he thought. “Who cares if I only like this place because it is familiar? Why is that wrong?”

Then he heard it. It couldn’t have been louder than a whisper, but boy was it distinct. When the church was a little fuller on Sundays, it wasn’t as audible. But on this night, it sounded like the crack of thunder.

“Tonight’s,” a pause, “scripture reading,” the man looked up, “is from the Gospel of Luke,” the man stopped. “Turn with me,” he continued, “to Luke chapter eleven,” he took a breath, “where we’ll read,” and another, “verses one through two.”

Pages ruffled.

American

A text from my brother last weekend informed me both that Europe had recently been terrorized and that three (point seven) million people demonstrated unity in and around Paris. My thoughts were “no surprise” and “that’s seems pretty remarkable” in that order. Honestly, as you can tell by there being no post released this morning, the show of unity has actually rendered me speechless. (Mon and Tues were kinda already developed over the weekend). I’d love to comment on such a big event. But there didn’t seem to be anything to say. It seemed awesome that that many people gathered together. When was the last time that many people got together? I want to say the million man march way back when claimed a million, but it’s always hard to count. Several other marches here have attempted to gather a million people, but they never succeed. One million people is a lot of people in the same place.

But here’s the thing. I don’t think any relatives of terrorists were in that show of unity. Were any parents of terrorists there? Or sibilngs? Or first cousins? Second cousins? How about their children or wives, did any of them show up?

Scratch that.

I want to talk about America. There are three hundred sixty million Americans. Subtract the approximately seventeen million college students and their professors who believe the terrorists may have a point, and that leaves three hundred forty million Americans walking the streets in unity against terrorism daily. Does anyone really doubt our resolve? Where’s that headline? Where’s that photo op?

Moreover, the United States’ active duty military numbers over one million men and women. And these people are serious. They don’t march down streets of peaceful cities lined with world-renowned architecture. They walk down dirt roads lined with IEDs. It’s easy to let piecemeal news stories about a couple fuck-ups ruin the larger organization’s image, but honestly the only image that counts is the one that includes American men and women serving this country today, American men and women who put their family through hell and risk their own lives near daily, American men and women who volunteer to do this because they were born (or fought their way) into a country that knows its way of life is better and worth sacrifices, American men and women who are constantly setting higher standards of honor, respect, service, integrity, excellence, decency, dignity, and a whole host of other virtues unlike any of their armed predecessors, American men and women who travel away from their neck of the woods to yours because you can’t get your shit together.

So yeah. It was neat that over three million Europeans went to the park. But when are you going to impress me?