I was talking the other day to Luke Price.

‘You know what,’ remarked Luke handing me a roach, ‘I’m fucking glad the Americans are in Iraq.’

‘Ja, seeing Sadam in a courtroom …’ I said wistfully. ‘That fucker. He’s not gonna be gassing any Kurds now, the fucker, or throwing money at the families of suicide bombers who blow themselves up in Arab-owned restaurants in Haifa – the fuckwits, they don’t do themselves or their cause any fucking favours – or starting any more wars and getting a million killed or wiping out whole families. And boo hoo hoo; his sons are dead. That fucking Uday. He’s not going to be raping any more eleven-year-old orphan girls, the bastard. And that other one, the nebbish brother. Ja, so much for him inheriting daddy’s business.’

‘Sic semper tyrani,’ said Luke.

‘Damn straight!’

‘Although …’

‘Although what?’

‘Although … well, that’s not really why I’m happy the Americans are over there.’

‘Huh? Don’t tell me you buy into all this shit about this is the beginning of democracy in the Middle East?’ I put on my finest George C. Scott as Patton voice. ‘Inside every Iraqi is an American dying to get out.’

‘I couldn’t give a shit about democracy in the Middle East,’ said Luke. ‘I’m actually hoping that this whole thing turns into a quagmire. I’m hoping that they’re stuck there for years. I’m hoping it gets murkier and more confused and divisive and nobody can tell what’s right or wrong any more. I want more Abhu Ghraibs, more Falluja sieges, more terrorists, more bombs, more decapitations. I’m even happy to see the anti-war protestors in New York and LA getting out of hand and rioting and cops with clubs taking them down. And you know why?’

I shook my head, stunned by his uncharacteristic anti-American schadenfreude.

‘Hollywood,’ he said flatly. I didn’t get it. ‘What was the best thing about the Vietnam war?’ he asked.

‘Napalm?’

‘No.’

‘Agent Orange?’

‘No.’

‘Jane Fonda in Hanoi?’

‘No. But damn close.’

‘Alright, so what was it?’

‘Apocalypse Now.’

‘The best thing about the Vietnam War was Apocalypse Now?’

‘Yeah, pretty much. But it wasn’t the only good thing. There was also The Deer Hunter and Full Metal Jacket and Casualties of War and Coming Home. You understand what I’m saying?’

‘I get it. We need a violent and protracted war. We need a controversial and unpopular war otherwise we won’t have any film directors all worked up and filled with righteous anger or traumatised or disillusioned or, I dunno, filled with enough patriotic fervour or whatever to make a really important flick, rather than wasting their time on some indie-schmindie yawnfest about an alcoholic slacker loser with cancer of the testicles or some shit.’

‘Precisely.’

‘You know,’ I said, ‘in ten years when Hollywood is finally ready to face up to what’s going on, there are going to be some damn fine movies coming out.’

‘Oliver Stone will be back and this time he won’t be crawling up Castro’s legs to kiss his hairy-ass butt, he’ll be hitting us with the next Platoon, the next Born On the Fourth of July,’ said Luke. ‘He won’t be a fucking burden on the earth’s precious resources any more.’

‘You know what else is gonna happen?’ I asked. ‘There’s gonna be a huge revival of vigilante movies. If there wasn’t a Vietnam War, hey, there wouldn’t have been a Taxi Driver or a Rambo.’

‘That’s true, Travis Bickle and John Rambo needed to get fucked up in the head in Vietnam so they could do the shit they did.’

‘Ja. Ja. But it’s not just that,’ I said. ‘Think about it, hey. If you’re some ordinary guy with a nice family and kids and some fucked up punks came into your house and raped your wife and your granny and tortured your kids and battered your goldfish and ate it and you had been in Iraq and seen shit there and had been trained by America’s finest how to handle a gun and a knife and could kill with your bare hands and shit … what would you do?’

‘I would go all Charles Bronson on those fucker’s asses. I would be like Death Wish Two. With a vengeance.’

‘And it won’t stop there,’ I enthused. ‘All the villains are gonna come from Iraq. There are gonna be like more Die Hard blockbusters than you could handle. A mad villain blowing up schools and busses and national monuments and you would completely understand this guy’s behaviour because some American warplane dropped a hundred ton bomb on the house his family lived in in Baghdad and wiped them all out just because they happened to be living next door to a terrorist safe house. There’d be a sniper shooting Arab Americans and he’d turn out to be a crazed marine who’d seen his buddies wiped out and the hero would be a cop with Mediterranean features (an Italian or if they were really brave, a Sephardi Jew) and he would have to go undercover in the Arab community to draw the killer out and audiences would finally get to see a sympathetic portrayal of Arab Americans. And serial killers … so many serial killers would be from Iraq. Guy walks into a supermarket and blows everyone away with an M16. Why? Because he was in Iraq. That’s why. And think of all the sexploitation flicks we’d get to see. Step aside Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. Fuhgged about women in cages and the boring stories of O. Here comes the Lindie England story!’

‘I believe he’s beginning to see things my way,’ chuckled Luke. ‘And don’t forget the horror revival … How are they gonna stop us now from watching some CGI werewolf munching down on a prosthetic arm or a luscious femme fatale vampire licking blood from an open wound when all day on the news we got mobs tearing people apart and hanging their body parts on highway overpasses? And let’s not even talk about the Jihad TV shit you can download off the Internet.’

‘It’s gonna be a golden age for movies,’ I said.

‘Yes,’ said Luke. ‘And to think there are idiots out there who think this is only about oil or imperialism or geopolitics or imminent threats to our way of life or personal family vendettas or something as silly as trying to do the right thing by a people brutalised by a Stalinist tyrant, even though they’re about as grateful for the intervention as a crack whore is when the police come and throw her abusive pimp in the back of a paddy wagon.’

‘They should get their priorities straight,’ I said.

‘You said it, dude. You said it.’

Sean Shapiro
16 July 2004