A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

(C) 1996 Berkley Books and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership On November 1, 1996, Berkley Books (which at the time was the paperback division of G.P. Putnam's Sons but has since been folded into the larger Penguin Random House conglomerate) published Tom Clancy's Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Force. Co-written by Clancy's researcher and defense expert John D. Gresham, Marine is the fourth volume in what is now billed as The Tom Clancy Military Library but was originally known as the Guided Tour series.  Fans of the late novelist and conservative commentator know that Clancy was an unabashed admirer of the United States Marine Corps. His best known fictional character, John Patrick Ryan, Sr. started his career in government as a second lieutenant in the Marines, a fact that has been mentioned in three of the five "Jack Ryan" films and Amazon's Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan, as well as in several of Clancy's novels.  "Marine." S...

Fighting soldiers from the sky. Fearless men who jump and die. Men who mean just what they say. The brave men of the Green Beret. -- Staff Sergeant Barry Sadler, "The Ballad of the Green Beret." Since the mid-1950s, a time when the Cold War between the United States and the former Soviet Union was at its coldest and the threat of a third world war seemed to loom behind every crisis, the United States Army has deployed very highly trained commando/special warfare teams to Europe, the Middle East, Latin America, and other regions to assist and train local military forces and to fight against conventional and irregular forces (such as communist guerrillas in Southeast Asia and Al Qaeda terrorists in Afghanistan and elsewhere). And ever since President John F. Kennedy authorized the various Special Forces Groups to adopt a previously frowned-upon bit of headgear, the Army's SF troops have been popularly known by the nickname "Green Berets," ...

(C) 2008 20th Century Fox Home Entertainment The Longest Day (AKA: Darryl F. Zanuck's The Longest Day) Directed by: Ken Annakin (British Exterior Episodes), Andrew Marton (American Exterior Episodes), Bernhard Wicki (German Episodes) Written by: Cornelius Ryan (with additional material by James Jones, Romain Gary, David Pursall, and Jack Seddon)   Studio: 20th Century Fox and Darryl F. Zanuck Productions Genre: War/Historical Epic Year of Release: 1962 The Longest Day is a vivid recreation of the June 6, 1944 Allied invasion of France, which marked the beginning of the end of Nazi domination in Europe. Featuring a stellar international cast, and told from the perspective of both sides, this fascinating look at one of history's biggest battles ranks as one of Hollywood's truly great war films.   - From the Blu-ray package blurb, The Longest Day (2008 edition) Today, June 6, 2017, is the 73rd anniversary of D-Day, the first day of the Allied invasion ...

One of the problems about making a movie an actual conflict while said conflict is still raging is that sometimes events on the ground tend to overtake the filmmakers’ production schedule, especially if the movie is set in a specific place where battles are being fought.  This is exactly what happened to producer Robert Fellows when he was making  Back to Bataan , a blend of action-adventure, wartime propaganda, and a not-so-subtle reminder to the American public that the Philippines wanted independence not only from their Japanese occupiers but also from their U.S. “protectors.”  Written by Ben Barzman (who was pro-Communist, as was director Edward Dmytryk), William Gordon, and Aeneas MacKenzie,  Back to Bataan  starred John Wayne as a U.S. Army colonel who stays on Luzon to help organize a U.S.-Filipino guerrilla group to fight the occupying Japanese forces and help pave the way for Gen. Douglas MacArthur’s long-promised return.  During the filming of...

In December of 1945,  Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Loews released director John Ford's They Were Expendable, a film about a U.S. Navy motor torpedo boats fighting against the Japanese during the dark days of late 1941 and early 1942. Starring Robert Montgomery, John Wayne, and Donna Reed, They Were Expendable is an adaptation of William L. White's 1942 best-selling book of the same title.  Written by Frank "Spig" Wead, a former naval aviator, the screenplay dramatizes White's "non-fiction" account of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron  Three and some of its officers and men, covering the dark days of the Japanese invasion of the Philippine Islands (December 1941-May 1942). Though its factual veracity is, shall we say, doubtful, is one of the best war movies made during World War II, (or the period shortly after) partly because - except for the score - They Were Expendable tries hard to capture the emotional truth of the PT men's struggles to survive under th...