Generation Kill on C4 tonight (Wed Oct 7th) at 23.20

[Pieface]

This probably won't go down very well but it's very funny and I think they succeed in mixing that up with the shitty realities of the war. Some of the characters really develop as well - by the end they aren't a homogenous mass, they're really conflicted from within the unit.

 

[Pieface]

and I found the first one pretty bewildering btw.

 

[mhendo]

Officer Colicchio hasn't changed his hairdresser since The Wire, I see.

Interestingly enough, Benjamin Busch, the actor who plays Colicchio in The Wire, actually had that haircut before he even went on the show.

Here is a picture from 2005 showing Major Benjamin Busch receiving the Purple Heart for his services as a Marine in Iraq. Here's another from the same ceremony.

Busch is actually a very interesting guy. His father, Frederick Busch, who died a few years ago, was quite a well-known author, and was especially renowned for his short stories. He had a PhD from Columbia, and for years was a professor at Colgate University.

Benjamin got a degree from Vassar College, where his major was studio art. While serving in Iraq, he continued to practice his photography, and an exhibit of his photos did a bit of a tour around parts of the US back in 2005.

Funny thing is, i never would have known any of this, except that i subscribe to Harper's Magazine, and in the February edition earlier this year i was reading a story called "Bearing Arms: The Serious Boy at War", in which the author talks about having a minor role on The Wire. I looked him up, and sure enough, there was Officer Colicchio.

The essay he wrote for Harper's is really quite good. It's only available online to subscribers, but i've uploaded a copy here (PDF) if anyone is interested.

 

[sim667]

I recorded it, will watch tonight

Im guessing by whats been said here, its good then? I generally like HBO war stuff anyway.

Well i watched the first, it was really good....... but it was overshadwoed by receiving some bad news about a freind who was serving out in afghanistan, which i got in the first 15 mins of it....

Ill have to watch it again i think

 

[London_Calling]

Interestingly enough, Benjamin Busch, the actor who plays Colicchio in The Wire, actually had that haircut before he even went on the show.

Isn't that interesting. Nice story!

The essay he wrote for Harper's is really quite good. It's only available online to subscribers, but i've uploaded a copy here (PDF) if anyone is interested.

d/l to desktop for a little later - it'll make a proper companion piece to Generation Kill. Cheers


Fwiw, I hope Mr Busch sticks to writing or photography rather than acting or hairdressing.

 

[butchersapron]

i luv fandungarees.

 

[London_Calling]

Second hour tonight, C4, 11.15pm.

Presume the first hour is still available on 4OD.

 

[DotCommunist]

Interrogative: this is assassin actual requesting fire permission on this thread, respond.

 

[DotCommunist]

Observe everything, admire nothing

 

[butchersapron]

You think these are good lines?

 

[DotCommunist]

good, or representative of how US marines talk?

Either way, entertaining. Be advised.

 

[butchersapron]

You tell me!

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm entertained (second watch through) and given that the fella wrote the dialogue while actually listening to the first recon' Marines talking I can only say that these are very funny bastards. All the ;oh it is over done ' stuff is a bit silly when the dialogue is lifted almost vertabim from real life. Who's to say these soldiers aren't grandiose and somewhat OTT grandstanders? They're the fucking elites! Of course they give it billy big balls in front of the journo

 

[kabbes]

The irony of this being that piece of dialouge was probably taken down verbatim by the journo. Kabbes probably has a term for the 'fiction better written than real life' phenomenon in the arts...

It normally has better verisimilitude, if that helps. Plus a more satisfying structure.

Did I mention previously the idea that fiction can actually be "more true" than real life? Because in a novel, you are given all perspectives and know the whole truth, albeit of a fiction. But in a biography, you are only given one perspective and a partial truth, but this is presented as being the final word.

In short, real life is rubbish.

 

[kyser_soze]

Thanks, that's exactly the word I was looking for.

I guess the best examples of where fiction is often better written than real life is examples of disasters when people are rescued, especially if there is an act of sacrifice on the part of another person to do it - in fiction this may well be written off as horribly cliché, but real life is jammed packed full of clichés.

Another is the wild disparity between legal dramas and real life. I remember the the first time I went to Crown Court and heard a barrister mounting a defence, having been primed by Rumpole, and being bitterly dissappointed at the stuttering, incoherent and barely logical idiocy I saw in the actualité of court proceedings. Much funnier than Rumpole once you get into the swing tho

 

[butchersapron]

I'm entertained (second watch through) and given that the fella wrote the dialogue while actually listening to the first recon' Marines talking I can only say that these are very funny bastards. All the ;oh it is over done ' stuff is a bit silly when the dialogue is lifted almost vertabim from real life. Who's to say these soldiers aren't grandiose and somewhat OTT grandstanders? They're the fucking elites! Of course they give it billy big balls in front of the journo

Don't buy it. For me it undermined the 'reality' it was trying to present, the boring humdrum petty nature of the army, the waiting around, the petty bureaucracy and so on. I know that musicians don't talk the way that they're presented in interviews, i know the work the journos do for them, and that, i think, is what's happened here - plus added re-writes and script changes by people very slkilled in that art. I think it leaves a show of two halfs with each side undermining the other. There's nothing particularly wrong with that, done well it can offer interesting perspectives on seemingly straightfowawrd themes whilst using traditional forms - and i think this did manage that in the last 3-4 episodes, but the first three appeared very clumsy to me.

 

[kabbes]

www.tvtropes.org contains a lot of examples where we have become so atuned to the fictional version of something that we (as an audience) actually object to it being unrealistic if it portrayed accurately. As they put it, Reality Is Unrealistic. For example, in real life gunfire does not have an unmistakable sound full of bass resonance. And silencers don't actually make guns have a "pfft" sound.

 

[silverfish]

Just watched an episode. Not impressed. Military stereotypes badly done, overblown dialogue...the only realistic thing was the trigger happy attitude of some of them

Tour of duty for the naughties 3/10

 

[Metal Malcolm]

Is it wrong that I saw:

I subscribe to Harper's Magazine,

and instantly thought:

 

[DotCommunist]

Just watched an episode. Not impressed. Military stereotypes badly done, overblown dialogue...the only realistic thing was the trigger happy attitude of some of them

Tour of duty for the naughties 3/10

And yet, it is taken from the writing of a journo actually there at the time with the troops. So perhaps your perception of how the US Recon Marine military talk and operate is flawed.

 

[Pingu]

tbh american call signs have the best names

ours are all like bravo, bravo1, bravo1 aplha etc etc

theirs are

Killgore, Dragons Breath, Iron Rain

 

[silverfish]

And yet, it is taken from the writing of a journo actually there at the time with the troops. So perhaps your perception of how the US Recon Marine military talk and operate is flawed.

Sorry DC, I've work with USMC both serving and former in most of the main nasty places over the last 14 years.

They don't have Irish parliaments and wry philosophical discussion every time they are ordered (not asked) to do something

Journalist have agendas, are human therefore subjective and more often than not get caught up in the "romance" of conflict and all its attached group psychology, especially when embedded

Throw in a screen writer and a director and see what you get........

 

[DotCommunist]

I'm sticking to my impression of them as modern day warrior poets in the scottish vien. 'Gotta look to your own honour dog'

 

[sim667]

tbh american call signs have the best names

ours are all like bravo, bravo1, bravo1 aplha etc etc

theirs are

Killgore, Dragons Breath, Iron Rain

godfather ftw!

 

[silverfish]

Is there a reason that Godfather sounds like he's been gargling with domestos

 

[sim667]

Is there a reason that Godfather sounds like he's been gargling with domestos

Throat cancer...... the journo asked him in the first episode iirc........ he's never been a smoker, i remember that bit too.....

 

[likesfish]

tbh american call signs have the best names

ours are all like bravo, bravo1, bravo1 aplha etc etc

theirs are

Killgore, Dragons Breath, Iron Rain

anyone coming on the net with call sign steel fist would just be mocked endlessly

 

[London_Calling]

*bump*

I think this finishes tonight. My view of it might suffer from watching most of it, due to the late hour, semi-comatose.

I suppose it might suffer from their not being much of an enemy to base the action on, and soldiers not having too diverse a range of characters on which to build character studies. Currently kind of middle-whelmed.

Anyone else stuck with it?

 

[DotCommunist]

Yeah, as much for the dialouge as the plot though. It manages to be gleefully gung ho without shying away from the realities (ineptitude, boredom, civilin deaths etc)

e2a

this is a second run through for me.

 

[g force]

I think it's very good...showing soldiers basically doing nothing, then coming face-to-face with the stark reality of where they are, then back to doing nothing.