War, Inc.

"War, Inc." (Joshua Seftel, 2008) It's hard to say exactly when the satire of "War, Inc." starts to outwear its welcome. It does a very neat job of skewering so much that was wrong with the Bush Administration and its gung-ho weldng of the Military-Industrial Complex made simple, while at the same time being rather prudish about why it might not be such a good thing to export American culture to other parts of the world. Perhaps the problem is it doesn't take anything seriously, not its believes-in-nothing protagonist, not its comical situation (it's trying to be "Dr. Strangelove" but has more in keeping with "The Americanization of Emily" or even "John Goldfarb, Please Come Home"), it would probably sneer at the legitimate instincts that might engender such over-reactions...and then when it decides to get serious about something, you start looking around for the apple-pie salesman. Let's review.

Hauser is a corporate hit-man (what inspires John Cusack to play assassins—not enough action movie offers?) working for the multi-national, multi-faceted Tamerlane Corporation. Hauser gets a new assignment from the just-out-of-office Vice President (Dan Aykroyd, animating Dick Cheney) to assassinate one Omar Sharif (seriously), the head of UgiGas in Turaqistan, where America has just won the first-in-history 100% "completely out-sourced" war. Hauser is posing as an event-planner for Tamerlane's first Corporate meeting in its new acquisition, the centerpiece of which will be the marriage of Turaqistan's jail bait pop-star Yonica Babyyeah (Hilary Duff, miles away from Disney) to one Ooq-Mi-Fay,* all in an effort to inspire Democracy in the Turaqistanis with American culture.

Already you can see the combination of deep thought and juvenilia mixed in one big lumpy stew, but the movie occasionally scores grisly points: reporters in Turaqistan enjoy the "Imbedded Journalistic Experience," a Six-Flags-like jerk-ride that lets them gape at high-def war-footage while strapped into comfy high-chairs feeling the buffets; and one point Hauser checks in with a chorus line of Turaqistani women high-kicking...with artificial limbs. All visitors be they friendly or terrorist walks away with a Tamerlane SWAG-bag, a running gag that doesn't stale.

Hauser is so dead inside, that the only way he can feel anything is kicking back with a shot-glass of hot-sauce straight, although he is frequently diverted by a left-wing journalist (Marisa Tomei, excellent...again!) trying to get to the bottom of anything. Yonica Babyyeah is your basic Britney-Jessica-Christina-Paris-Lindsey-Miley sex-'tween (authentically played by Hilary Duff, who convincingly curses like a sailor) although the point of the vapidity of America's pop-culture is done to death. John Cusack's sister Joan is his administrative assistant in a performance that is extreme even for her. Sir Ben Kingsley rounds out the cast as Tamerlane's Supreme Commander Walken, in an American accent highly reminiscent of the bad ones Laurence Olivier used to sport, when he deemed to slum as a colonist.

Eventually everything comes to such a frothy rabid boil that it curdles, so much so that even someone sympathetic to its ideas (like me) would rather invest their time in writing a letter to their congressman than sitting through this thing again.

* His father's name is Ooq-Yu-Fay. That might be the tipping point right there.

Don't Make A Scene: The Right Stuff

The Set-Up: It's one thing to hear Tom Wolfe's niche-tech-pop-phraseology coming from the male squad of test pilots and astronauts in "The Right Stuff." But it's quite another hearing it come from they-who-also-serve—their wives.

Director Philip Kaufman did an amazing job of screen-interpreting Tom Wolfe's tome that broke through the PR myths of NASA and the Air Force and created its own mythology for America's fighter-jocks and missile-men. Even when the Wolfe-speak isn't there, the breezy, his slightly wise-acre tone is, and bristles and infuses each scene of wind-bag bureaucracy and puffed up politics. The blustery jostling-for-position world of the test-pilots and astronauts is told with a slightly more serious air, while the cadre of alpha-male test-pilots is treated with, finally, a kind of respect.

And then, the wives.

The day-to-day terror of the test-pilots' wives is addressed by Kaufman within the opening minutes, and their frustration with the tight-lipped fraternity of their jet-set husbands, and their own banding together for support and PR transformation into pastel-cotton-clad "proud and happy" sisters-of-Jackie are explored in passing throughout the movie.

Except for in this scene, where the wives of "Gus" Grissom, "Deke" Slayton, and "Gordo" Cooper are sequestered inside (in the shade from the desert, thinking dark thoughts) and discuss their lot at Edwards AFB while their husbands talk shop and gossip about their affluent neighbor and remain clueless about the pain ...and fears...of their wives. In pushing the outside of the envelope, they've neglected a glass ceiling.

And patio door.

The Scene: It's the week-end at Edwards AFB, and around the government housing, both wives and husbands are talking shop. "Pud-knockers" Grissom (Fred Ward), Slayton (Scott Paulin), and Cooper (Dennis Quaid) eye their rival Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard), while inside the wives (Veronica Cartwright, Mickey Crocker, and Pamela Reed) eye their husbands.

Chuck Yeager: Good one, son. Fire it in here!

Deke Slayton: Look at ol’ Yeager. On top of the pyramid for five goddamn years.

Deke Slayton: Every time somebody goes faster he just goes up again.

Deke Slayton: He stays the fastest man alive.

Marge Slayton: You know, sometimes all it will take...

Marge: ...is just the sound of a truck starting. I think...

Marge: ...“That’s the crash-truck!”

Marge: Anyway, I’m really glad we could talk.

Marge: I thought I was the only one who had these nightmares.

Trudy Cooper: Yeah, me too.

Marge: Nobody ever wants to talk about anything around here! Everybody’s always trying to…

Marge: ”...maintain an even strain.”

Betty Grissom: Well, you marry a fighter-jock and you marry the military.

Betty Grissom: I’ll tell you one thing, though, the military owes me for all this. One day I expect the military to make good.

Betty: Well, I do!

Betty: Anyway, it sure ain’t your average dull life.

Trudy: I went back East to a reunion and all my friends could talk about was their husbands’ work.

Trudy: How dog-eat-dog and cut-throat it was on Madison Avenue.

Trudy: Places like that...

Trudy: Cut-throat…I wondered how they would have felt if each time their husband went in to make a deal...

Trudy: ...there was a one in four chance he wouldn’t come out of that meeting.

Trudy: I’m going home to my folks in San Diego.

Betty: What did Gordo say?

Trudy: He "maintained an even strain."

Marge: Look at them out there.

Marge: You’d think they were talking about sports.
Deke: Hey, Gordo!... (The untended barbecue has started a fire and is burning their food, the men attempt to put it out with their beers)

Gus Grissom: Go, hot-dog! Go!

Betty: Men! Sometimes they’re just such…ass-holes.

(The women laugh hysterically. Betty gets up, embarrassed, even changing her chair)
Marge: Sometimes they sure are handy ass-holes, though…

Trudy: Sometimes. Sometimes...(She breaks down, and turns away from the women, not wanting to show her tears. It's at that moment, Cooper notices her)

Gordon Cooper: Hey honey!!

Gordon Cooper: Ya wanna hot dog?

(Trudy backs away from the window, and is lost in the reflection)*


"The Right Stuff"

Words by Philip Kaufman and Tom Wolfe

Pictures by Caleb Deschanel and Philip Kaufman.

"The Right Stuff" is available on DVD from Warner Home Video.

* And in case anyone doesn't "get" it, a line is dubbed in once Reed is out of sight "I'm leaving, Gordo'" as if we couldn't remember what was said ten seconds before, and the empty frame wasn't already suggesting it.