blaming the audience

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MENDES: 'AMERICANS DON'T GET JARHEAD'

Oscar-winning film director SAM MENDES claims American viewers don't understand his new movie JARHEAD as well as Europeans - because they expect war films to be one-sided.

The movie based on the novel JARHEAD: A MARINE'S CHRONICLE OF THE GULF WAR AND OTHER BATTLES by ANTHONY SWOFFORD, and focuses on the frivolousness of war, rather than the glory - something Mendes feels Americans don't grasp.

Mendes says, "I feel they've understood in Europe. In America, it's like talking about a different movie.

"Fundamentally, Jarhead disobeys all the laws of American movies, and not just the political laws of American movies right now which demand on some level to tell us which side they're on.

"In Europe, there's a sense this film comes from the tradition of absurdist war movies about the futility of conflict.

"It has more in common with BECKETT, SARTRE and BANUEL than it does with OLIVER STONE.

"In America, they assumed I was trying to make an Oliver Stone movie and that I'd failed."

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:01 (twenty years ago)

BANUEL

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:01 (twenty years ago)

i wish that was his misspelling

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:01 (twenty years ago)

Didn't the author of the book the movie is based on hate the movie??? Does he "not get it"?

― Allyzay must fight Zolton herself. (allyzay), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:11 (twenty years ago)

classic, esp. if you're blaming them for not being european

― jones (actual), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:13 (twenty years ago)

I hope he was smoking a cigarette and wearing a scarf when he was being interviewed.

― jaymc (jaymc), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:15 (twenty years ago)

IF YOU'RE CLEVER, YOU'LL LIKE MY MOVIE

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:15 (twenty years ago)

welcome to the suck

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:17 (twenty years ago)

I'm typing this one-handed while I pat myself on the back.

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:18 (twenty years ago)

Hang on, I've not read any rave reviews of Jarhead over here, either.

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:19 (twenty years ago)

I saw this yesterday on Defamer.

Ironic that Mendes should use that particular director as an example, for when Stone’s own Alexander was reviewed to almost universal disdain, he used a similarly deflective technique, saying, “They assumed I was trying to make a great historical DeMillian epic and had failed, when all I was really trying to do was to continue the treasured European theatrical tradition of spending $150 million, giving your lead a pathetic peroxide job and putting audiences to sleep with a protracted history lesson performed by a catatonic Anthony Hopkins. Those simpleton Yankee Doodle-heads have completely missed the point!”

― M. White (Miguelito), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:19 (twenty years ago)

Did anyone actually think that Mendes was even capable of making an "Oliver Stone movie", much less that he was going to attempt to, anyway??

― Allyzay must fight Zolton herself. (allyzay), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:21 (twenty years ago)

Did Sam Mendes fight in the Falklands?

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:22 (twenty years ago)

also: yeah, there's never been an absurdist american war movie! ESPECIALLY not one about the gulf war!

― s1ocki (slutsky), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:22 (twenty years ago)

David O Russell seemed to pull it off.

― detoxyDancer (sexyDancer), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:23 (twenty years ago)

You're thinking of Simon Weston

x-post

― Matt (Matt), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:23 (twenty years ago)

But did people "get it"? ;)

xxp

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:23 (twenty years ago)

welcome to the suck

hahaha I say that all the time now

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:25 (twenty years ago)

i see mendes' point insofar as neither beckett, sartre nor bunuel managed to make engaging gulf war films either. its kind of like how jake gyllenhaal is following in my tradition of not appearing on wheel of fortune.

― mark p (Mark P), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:28 (twenty years ago)

I just like the idea of him SHOUTING "BECKETT!SARTRE!BANUEL!"

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:29 (twenty years ago)

OLIVER STONE!

― [tuvan throat singer's profound lyric sheet-must read again] (nordicskilla), Friday, 6 January 2006 20:29 (twenty years ago)

one year passes...

Jarhead now running three times a day on Showtime or HBO. It hasn't gotten any better (except that I like viewing Jamie Foxx in the desert as a trial run for his Michael Mann persona) - perhaps Mendes was confused by the difference in "being one-sided" and "having a point of view"?

― milo z (mlp), Saturday, 10 February 2007 07:09 (nineteen years ago)

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blaming the audience - c/d