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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Bowden, who spent several weeks on the set in Morocco, confirms that the military was involved in shaping the film. "The movie people had to negotiate with the Pentagon people in order to get Black Hawk helicopters and Rangers," he said. Yet to his knowledge, most of the issues the military raised were "very technical ones -- the way soldiers would carry their weapons and move."
That's not to say that there weren't ideological skirmishes. Initially, Bowden said, "The Pentagon wanted the movie people to promise not to have me involved at all." Not because they were unhappy with his book "Black Hawk Down," but because they were enraged by his 2001 "Killing Pablo," a newspaper series and book about the hunt for Pablo Escobar that revealed the role of U.S. Special Forces in South American death squads. However, the filmmakers didn't relent, and Bowden said once things got underway there was no friction between him and the military people.
Bowden said the biggest change the military insisted on was one of the characters' names. Ewan McGregor's character was based on a man named John Stebbins, but whose name was changed to Grimes for the film. That's because Stebbins is currently serving 30 years in prison for molesting his daughter, and the Pentagon didn't want him being held up as a hero. "I don't consider it a substantial concession. It doesn't change anything about what happened in the battle," Bowden says.
He also insists there was no ideological bias in the movie. "I've been somewhat amused by efforts to discern a political subtext or message in the film because in my opinion there is not one," he says. "I worked very closely with Ridley and Jerry, and they never intended one either. It's a film about a group of young men who desperately want to experience combat and get their wish and are considerably wiser, those who survive, at the end of it. It's extraordinarily accurate to events of that day and I know more about the events of that day than just about anybody." Given the film's intense focus on the terror of battle and the ravages artillery inflicts on the human body, Bowden even considers "Black Hawk Down" an antiwar film.
As for Sexton, Bowden didn't call him a liar, and even conceded that the screenplay went through so many revisions that it's possible Sexton was given questioning lines that were later cut. If anything, he sees him as a bit of a pawn. "There's this whole school of leftist interpretation and writing on the film that's just ludicrous," he said. "I gather they found in this hapless young actor a spokesman for their theory that there was a plot to change the movie."
Yet even if the military didn't directly intervene to tilt "Black Hawk Down," that doesn't mean the movie isn't serving the Pentagon, even inadvertently. Especially in the current political climate, the film's reluctance to even hint at the roots of Somali rage reinforces the simplistic American perspective that our battles abroad are clear contests of good and evil.
Bowden doesn't fault the movie for jettisoning this background, pointing out that it's impossible for a film to provide the kind of context that a book does. Yet by completely ignoring the Somali history, the film confirms the myopic idea that anti-Americanism is a primal madness.
As for Sexton's statement about Bruckheimer profiting from propaganda -- well, the last few weeks have proven him right. It's been widely reported that Bruckheimer is collaborating with the Pentagon on a reality TV show about American soldiers in Afghanistan. "There's a lot of other ways to convey information to the American people," said an admiral in the New York Times.
Plenty of people outside the military-entertainment complex have decried this new alliance, but not enough people on the inside have spoken out. Brendan Sexton III is risking a position other young actors would sell their souls for in order to condemn his industry's role in obscuring reality. He's not on CNN, but he's doing what he can, speaking at Vassar and at Columbia (with fellow "Black Hawk" actor Danny Hoch). Sure, his message is littered with naiveté and hyperbole. There's truth there, too.
