HBO's Generation Kill

rly hope this is good

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uSQ_7u2v_zs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HhDZCel68_M

anyone read the book?

The book is excellent, very insightful into what it's like to be one of the soldiers without getting all Dispatches-gonzo or anything.

I also read the memoir by the officer leading the platoon - pretty good when he's talking about entering the Marines and training/Afghanistan, but when he covers the same ground as Kill in Iraq he doesn't have much to offer that's new.

the latter is One Bullet Away.

Been meaning to pick up Thomas Ricks' Making the Corps, too.

well as an hbo follow-up by producer-writers of a beloved hbo series, it only has to surmount the high bar set by john from cincinnati.

last war book i read was probably this, years ago

http://www.randomhouse.com/images/dyn/cover/?source=9780345311979&height=300&maxwidth=170

I saw Ziggy in that last promo!

yeah i guess he's the humvee driver

btw every bus stop in b-more has a promo poster up for this with a grinning soldier wearing aviator shades. he looks not unlike the guy inside the tank here (NSFW)

the fuck, is that from the x-rated version of Kelly's Heroes? Where's Donald Sutherland?

"dirty" dozen

(i think it's from a penthouse mag or something)

I guess I think this looks good.

I feel like maybe Simon has a bit of a tougher hill to climb with telling us something new about the Iraq war than with telling us something new about police work, drug dealing and city government in a depressed American city.

well as an hbo follow-up by producer-writers of a beloved hbo series, it only has to surmount the high bar set by john from cincinnati.

i thought john adams was pretty good, and i believe it was a follow-up by the producers of band of brothers

I feel like maybe Simon has a bit of a tougher hill to climb with telling us something new about the Iraq war than with telling us something new about police work, drug dealing and city government in a depressed American city.

-- Hurting 2, Sunday, June 29, 2008 10:49 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

uh i don't. you really think there's less new "material" in iraq than in a cop show??

Cop shows (which The Wire is not, btw) are mostly made by people who have knowledge of police work and no interest in creating a realistic portrayal.

War, otoh, has been done many times as the subject of good literary fiction, high quality film, long form journalism and documentary, and my impression, at least, is that there have already been many strong attempts at giving "the real story" of the Iraq war in fiction or documentary form.

i hope you don't mean jarhead

Cop shows (which The Wire is not, btw) are mostly made by people who have knowledge of police work and no interest in creating a realistic portrayal.

-- Hurting 2, Sunday, June 29, 2008 11:01 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Link

the wire took a cop show as its starting point, even if you think that it transcended it.

and do you really think we're suffering from a glut of superior iraq war art?

i mean, people are still making good stuff about world war 2. this one isn't even over yet! i feel there are so, so so many stories that are yet to be told.

Looking forward to this. Gonna be crazy flipping from it right to Mad Men, though.

liked the first episode

swedish dudes accent is sort of distracting

"the commander offered no sitrep on j-lo's situation"

No sergeant major would be that much of a dick.

why the fascination with this? friends have been really excited about it starting - i couldn't care less

Same guys that did the wire, I thought.

this sucked. laughable even. it was like a 15 car pile-up of cliches. i'm not very sympathetic though. trying to make the iraq war look cool and badass just seems like bad taste to me. even the title of the episode - "Get Some" - made my teeth hurt. aw yeah yippi ay yay motherfucker welcome to iraq booyah towelhead fag bitchs! how colorful! if i were a marine i would cringe watching this thing. it makes almost everyone in it look like a complete idiot. and you figure this is just the tip of the iceberg. generation nu-metal now has years of sad material to work with. and i don't care how worldweary/warishell/whyarewehere? the POV of this shit is. it all just adds up to a sham mythos based on shit. no matter how dispirited your grunt's eye view is, you are still managing to romanticize something that in no way shape or form deserves to be romanticized. i can actually see recruitment numbers going UP after this whole thing airs.

sorry, i'm not usually such a sourpuss. i like war movies! it's just that this piece of shit war almost doesn't deserve art or something.

im curious to know what aspects of the war or being a marine you thought were being romaticized scott

like you said, 90% of the characters are portrayed as idiots; the marine corps is looked on as thoughtless, uncaring, and somewhat incompetent; the war itself is unglamorous (so far) and ultimately inhumane

xpost: Much like that piece of shit war in Southeast Asia.

I suppose I'll hang with this at least until the next episode. It's a little high on corn & cringe, sure, but there's a lot of sham mythos that you actually do buy into to some degree at the outset of any action. I thought "Get Some" expressed that pretty well. Guys do say shit like that. The anticipation of reality setting in -- as hinted in the conclusion -- is what will keep me watching.

From The Wire crew, I thought this had a strangely skewed ethnic make-up. The Marine Corps has got to be comprised of a near three-way split, black-white-hispanic, especially in a recon unit. No black or latino officers, and hardly any significant characters?

And that fucking Mr. Potatohead character! Hard-asses make Sergeant Major, but assholes get weeded out.

i haven't seen this yet (no hbo) but i heard part of an interview about it with david simon on npr yesterday. he didn't sound like he meant to romanticize war; one thing i heard him say was that he wanted Americans to understand the nature of modern warfare, because he thought that would make everyone loath to go to war. but that doesn't mean that he succeeded...

it's just that this piece of shit war almost doesn't deserve art or something.

i wish there were more art about it! the fact that there hasn't been much yet seems sinister.

http://www.hiphoplead.com/wp-content/uploads/2007/10/camron.jpg
no hbo

From The Wire crew, I thought this had a strangely skewed ethnic make-up. The Marine Corps has got to be comprised of a near three-way split, black-white-hispanic, especially in a recon unit. No black or latino officers, and hardly any significant characters?

the figures for enlisted marines in 2004: 62% white, 12% black, 14% hispanic, 10% other (according to this: http://www.armyg1.army.mil/hr/docs/demographics/FY04%20Marine%20Corps%20Profile.pdf)

77% of officers are white

"he didn't sound like he meant to romanticize war"

i'm sure he didn't! but that's just the nature of war movies. they ALL end up romanticizing war, whether they mean to or not. just as every cautionary movie about gang life or skinheads has made people want to join a gang or become a skinhead. doesn't matter if everyone dies in the end. or things end in tears. blackhawk down was kickass!!! fuck yeah! made me wanna go get some!

see i spent the whole hour thinking "wow that looks like it sucks" and "thank god im not in the marines"

77% of officers are white

For the entire Corps, but these are infantry and recon units. Come on.

i'm not saying don't make war movies. i guess i'm just saying be fucking careful if you make a war movie! or something. or make a documentary. i'm just so fucking sick of the us -vs- them shit. i'm sick of the demonization of the faceless majikal enemy/other too. and i know more of this shit is coming. i can feel it. vietnam was great for that kind of sci-fi mystikal hoodoo. we were fighting ghosts! i guess i'm just sick of all the cliches. raw recruit learns life lesson, trapped in a world that we never made, etc. all that crap.

none of this applies, however, to dolph lundgren or any ultimate fighting champion who happens to make a low-budget movie in south africa about rogue mahdi army operatives and their quest for saddam's hidden gold. to them i say: carry on, gentlemen.

I'm not sure if your criticism is that the idiocy level is too high or not high enough. Or that it's too real, or not real enough.

xp that stuff might be coming up but i think youre reaching to make that argument about this first episode, where the only contact with the 'enemy' is made as they surrender and are all presented as very fearful humans w/ families, loved ones, etc

i mean i didnt unconditionally love this by any means but i had a very different reaction to its treatment of the soldiers, the war, the enemy, etc.

"I'm not sure if your criticism is that the idiocy level is too high or not high enough. Or that it's too real, or not real enough."

i don't even really know what i mean. i'm a little hungover. and cranky. that show just bugged me. i think i'm just sick of that one-dimensional soldier/u.s. view. especially with this war. maybe i would like this thing more if it had that multi-dimensional multi-POV thing going on a la The Wire.

the book is pretty awesome and so far this sticks pretty close to it as far as characters and story goes. fwiw the ethnic makeup of this show so far is pretty much exactly what the book is, as far as i know. so short of making one of the in-real-life white dudes black or hispanic i'm not sure what could have been done on that point. i'm guessing the show will follow the book in that it will start out gung-ho and eventually begin to hint at the eventual clusterfuck. i also think it makes the marine experience in this war look pretty terrible and confusing and aimless and goal-free.

The ethnic make-up is a minor point, I guess, but in casting a show -- or writing a book -- decisions are made as to which characters are important. I'm just saying that in six years as a grunt I was never in a unit with no black officers, or in a hooch with one lone "dark green marine", as we say. And race hate was kept on the down-low -- any NCO would put a clamp on that shit.

"Eventual clusterfuck" exactly describes vibe I got from episode one. Or what I felt in early 2003.

The book reflects the people that were actually in the 1st recon unit vehicles with the author. The names used in the series are the real people's names too. But racism will be highlighted more in later episodes.

The criticisms above don't sit well with me because the story/book is a book about these specific people that Evan Wright encountered while embedded. They were interesting people and their stories made a great book. So far, the series is true to the book.

The only character that bothers me so far is Evan Wright's portrayal. I assume they're making him out to be a little bungling to show how he must have felt when he came on board. Because he's actually totally cool and immediately likable.

the nature of war movies. they ALL end up romanticizing war

I think the Deer Hunter is the only exception to this I can think of.

the only exception i can think of is maybe johnny got his gun. deer hunter was badass! russian roulette! yeah!!!

"aw yeah yippi ay yay motherfucker welcome to iraq booyah towelhead fag bitchs! how colorful! if i were a marine i would cringe watching this thing."

You've clearly never met a Marine, played team sports with any seriousness, been around frat boys or hung out with more than three men in a confined space.

been there and done that. i know what men are like! doesn't mean that it can't gross and/or tire me out sometimes.

me too and it's about to be over

i want a season 2

Johnny Cash was a bit much

am0n demands a prolonged occupation

Why'd it have to end? I am never deleting these episodes from my tivo.

LOVED Reporter's 'serpentine' dash to safety. AND the look Iceman gives Ray when he hands him the cup at the end (gin?).

Stay frosty.

i thought it was a spit cup

I never thought of that. Makes more sense, really.

Am so desperate for the show not to be over I've started reading the book.

haha yeah i went and bought the book after work today hoping to extend the feeling i had watching the finale. interested in hearing what the ppl who weren't as hot on the show think now that its all over if theyre still watching.

Jesus I haven't been left with this kind of feeling since the fourth season of The Wire.

Accidentally deleted my tivo'd episodes. Will now seek out torrents, since I do NOT like the idea of going without. Hell, I've already watched the final ep 3 times since Sunday. And a Dec 16th release date for the DVD is just too damn long to wait.

So far I'm finding the book to be very close to the series...aside from extra nuggets of background and scene setting, it's like reading the show.

http://council.smallwarsjournal.com/showpost.php?p=53860&postcount=54

Funny how every guy who tells his side of the story turns out to be preternaturally calm, patient, and reasonable in his story and Evan Wright is the bumbling craven opportunist.

So surreal.

http://www.rudyreyes.com/

HAHAHAHAHAHA fruity rudy!

is this good? i can't seem to find anyone who's actually enthusiastic about it... everyone's like "ya. you should see it. it's good." and says no more

I'm only three episodes in and it's quite good.

i loved it

nigga did u read the thread? hella pps was enthusiastic abt it!

also i decided i hate scott based on his not digging this

It was very good, though maybe not as engrossing as the book.

I will probably be more excited when I get around to buying the DVDs and watch them close together rather than having to wait a week.

nigga did u read the thread? hella pps was enthusiastic abt it!

― ㋡ (cankles), Tuesday, December 30, 2008 1:14 AM (23 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i didnt want to get spoilered. ok ill watch it!

Once you get a snapshot of Rudy, you'll understand

Haha yeah you can click on the link above. It won't really spoiler anything.

if he can do it, so can you

omfg

lolololo

http://www.rudyreyes.com/images/heroliving-1/rr-heroliving_16.gif
http://www.rudyreyes.com/images/heroliving-1/rr-heroliving_18.gif

Watched this a month or so ago and can't get it out of my head. So much better than rumored, reviewed, or advertised. I think it's one of the best "war movies" ever, the only major mistep being, I think, the Wire-traditional music montage scene where everyone walks out on the home-video screening.

http://photos-d.ak.fbcdn.net/photos-ak-snc1/v2283/119/117/36803967/n36803967_38491083_161.jpg

I thought it was definitely an idictment on war and the marines, partially considering the two actors from The Wire that were in this played the fuck-up dockworker's son, Ziggy, and the cop that got kicked off the force for beating on a black teacher waiting for a roadblock to be cleared. Pretty meta, yes, and the homicidal kid in the hmv had the same creepy stare that the guy who played Marlow had.

i didn't see it as an indictment on the marines at all, and really not on war either. i felt it was much more an indictment, along similar lines as The Wire, of what happens to the little guys when people play politics with war.

believe it or not, English is my native language...

i've been tempted to buy this, but it's so freakin sad and brutal, i'm not sure i want to watch it over and over again.

I watched it when it first aired, and I have it saved to re-watch but haven't been ready to go back. I think I'm nearly there though. But I agree, it's visceral enough that it stays with you long after you've stopped watching.

Also agree that it's definitely more of an indictment of the war machine, the politics of leadership etc. Some of the marines come off a little poorly in their portrayals in book and tv show, but as a whole you end up thinking that it's to their credit that they will still stand shoulder to shoulder with each other regardless - even with all the bullshit from Godfather, Casey Kasem and Encino Man, that with few exceptions the rest of the men still will always respect chain of command no matter what. Maybe that's a failing too, but watching the show made me appreciate it a little more.

[oy, sorry for longwindedness...got carried away]

i didn't see it as an indictment on the marines at all, and really not on war either. i felt it was much more an indictment, along similar lines as The Wire, of what happens to the little guys when people play politics with war.

Maybe it's pure semantics - indictment of the structure and systemic dysfunction of the marines and the war, yes, but these structural and systemic dysfunctions can't be easily separated from "marines" and "war," and I'll stop before this starts to sound like things I had to read and write in college.

i think the show's creators were careful not to turn the series into some kind of left wing anti-war, anti-Marine, statement is all. they say in the special features that they made the series for the soldiers, and it made sense to me.

everyone in that movie who was portrayed as a contributing factor to the systemic dysfunction of the marines were people who did not live by the 'warrior code', and instead were either psycho or people excelled in kissing ass and impressing the right people, or sometimes both i guess.

i think the main intent of the series was to illustrate to the viewer the toll that war takes on human beings, both physically and psychologically, and then say: do not take this shit lightly; do not use these guys as a political tool, and do not let the suits from the pentagon dictate military strategy once they are on the ground.

Great thread (finally finished going back and reading). I think the show manages to mingle empathy and admiration for the soldiers with the possibility that what we're watching is a crime.

For lack of anything to watch, yesterday, I started watching this. I'm curious to see where it goes.

rockapads super otm

this was fucking great; did all eps in a two day stretch and wish i'd watched sooner.

Weird weird weird coincidence... Last night I found out that one of my high school teachers was the father of the real-life Damon Fawcett character (Damon later took his own life in 2008 after succumbing from PTSD)

I'm very late in this as I had never heard about this show until now.
Somehow I found it by chance last week and binged watched the whole thing within a few days.
it's fantastic.
As someone said upthread, I think it's one of the best war movies I've ever seen (it's more of a movie than a series to me).
at first it does seem drifty/boring but then I found that's part of the power of the show. the fact that it's not overdramatized (like Band of Brothers or most/all war movies).
Also the fact that there's no soundtrack music (except J. Cash at the end).
and it reminded me of the feelings you get when you're in the context of a group of young guys (minus the big difference of war obviously) : it is often dumb, sometimes moving or unnerving and funny. but mostly it depicts well the bonding and caring that you develop in these situations.
and as an adult, the issues regarding hierarchy/management/petty office wars are also very strong (cap America and the second to encino guy are unbearable).
and of course the stupid/criminal/pointless aspects of most decisions during war time (the surprise of the house bombing after they had been watching it for a while was shocking and I think it's the first time a bombing actually felt real in a fiction : the sound, the shockwave...).
also agreed with many people upthread : as soon as each ep was over I was craving for the next one (that's the good thing of not watching it upon release, you don't have to wait a week inbetween !)
I actually started rewatching it !

Yeah, it was really good, and no one talked about it, not really, despite the connections to The Wire. Likewise, few people talk about The Corner, which preceded The Wire.

We should watch this again. good revive

Rudy's website has been updated to the current style
http://www.rudyreyes.com/

It's very Patagonia catalogue now.

was rewatching ep2 yesterday and it reminded me of one thing that I found, maybe not realistic : when they go throw the city that 7000 marines couldn't take and make it through the heavy fire, none of them get killed or even injured although they're like an elephant in a hallway during the ambush. I had the same thought in a later ep when they're stuck at night in front of a bridge surrounded and shot at.
but I suppose that's what really happened as told in the book and also they're like the elite of an elite corp (I found online that they were like 300 in recon for 300 000 marines at the time) of the mightiest military in history against non professional guerilla...
Fruity Rudy is awesome (as are the gay jokes with him, somehow, since they're the kind of terrible jokes - gay, racist, macho - that may be ok within a certain group of people with close relationships... unlike the "jokes"/harassment towards the female marine later on, for instance).

http://68.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ljvq8fwCgx1qj9e4to1_1280.jpg

speaking of which : a very minor detail but I was wondering why they would wear extra scarves when they already have to wear so many things and it must be crazy hot !

RIP: https://deadline.com/2024/07/evan-wright-dead-author-generation-kill-obituary-1236013714/

That’s a shame.