it'll be hard to put a worse face on the war than the book did, but i bet they'll try... i bet they drop him telling about hanging out in fag bars from the movie too. the guy is a real loser!!!
Posted on 11/03/2005 11:24:19 AM PST by wmichgrad
GREENVILLE -- Diantha Eldridge remembers all the Marines in their crisp dress blues, how they came to her home in Greenville in 1992 to pay respects to her son.
Although he signed the funeral guest book, she has no memory of one certain Marine -- Anthony Swofford, author of "Jarhead," a gritty account of the Gulf War and now a major movie, opening Friday.
She does take issue with the book's depiction of her son, Marine Lance Cpl. Troy Collier. Eldridge said she tried to reach Swofford to give him a piece of her mind.
"We would have had a talking-to," she said. "A lot of things in there aren't true."
Collier is a major figure in Swofford's book, a battlefield comrade credited with saving the author from suicide. But Eldridge and other Greenville-area residents are convinced Swofford's account of their town and the events surrounding his funeral is as much fiction as fact.
As for the movie, the name Troy Collier no longer exists. A major character in the film, "Allen Troy," played by actor Peter Sarsgaard, appears to be a composite character that includes elements of Troy Collier. One of the movie's final scenes depicts a funeral for Allen Troy, though the movie doesn't reveal how he died.
The real-life Troy Collier died Feb. 23, 1992, killed instantly about 7:30 a.m. when he lost control of his 1989 Nissan pickup and slid off M-91, striking several trees. He was 22.
Eldridge said her son, a 1987 graduate of Greenville High School, had been out of the Marines just two months when he died. He was on his way to work as a nurse's aide at an adult foster care home in Saranac.
When she learned about the book "Jarhead," which made the 2003 New York Times bestseller list, Eldridge felt like she lost her son a second time.
"I was devastated when I read some of the things in that book," she said. "Things rushed back at me. I felt like I was going through his death all over again."
Except for the scenes set in Greenville, Eldridge, 56, said she didn't read much of the book, a blunt, profanity-laced account of the Gulf War and the Marine subculture.
Eldridge said she was most troubled by this comment of Swofford about her son: "I also knew that just like me, he believed in no God."
Eldridge recalled that her son "wasn't very happy" after he got out of the Marines and came back home to live. He was studying to be a nurse at Muskegon Community College and still piecing together life after his time in the military.
But on this, she is adamant: "Troy did believe in God. Troy went to church after he came home. Nobody made him."
The book recalls his burial at a Greenville cemetery on a bitterly cold day with below-zero wind chill, an inch or two of snow on the ground. Eldridge said it was unusually mild, the ground not even frozen, the day she buried her son.
Later, the book recounts how Swofford and the other Marines decided to go for a drink at a "bar in the basement of an antique shop."
There's no such bar in Greenville, but locals agree that was most likely a bar called Legends, in the basement of the Winter Inn.
They are skeptical about what "Jarhead" says happened there. The story recounts a spectacular fight between the Marines and about a dozen local toughs. One of the Marines is insulted, the book says, and the Marines soon are taking on all comers, busting chairs and breaking bottles over heads. Swofford says he threw the instigator of the fight over the bar in a crash of broken bottles.
Barry Thornton, partial owner of the Winter Inn, was an ID checker at the entrance to the bar at that time. He recalls a fight involving some Marines or Army soldiers, but nothing like that account. The bar closed about nine years ago.
"I remember a lot of glasses got broken," he said. "But there was no time when anyone got thrown behind the bar. I don't recall anything where glasses were ever broken over anyone's head. I would remember that."
The book also recounts how the police came and took them into their cars and told them they should leave town the next day.
Bruce Schnepp, Greenville's director of public safety and a lifelong resident of Greenville, said he has no recollection of anything like that.
Though she differs with much of "Jarhead," Eldridge said the book does get one thing right about Marine life.
"They all did a lot of drinking. They were always drinking. That part is true."
Swofford didn't see any action in the Gulf. I wonder if the movie will change that.
it'll be hard to put a worse face on the war than the book did, but i bet they'll try... i bet they drop him telling about hanging out in fag bars from the movie too. the guy is a real loser!!!
I'll let you know...
we're going to try and catch it tomorrow when it opens...
Bump for a later read.
j kennedy needs a shot of whiskey to brace up that limp wrist.
I didn't read the book...
maybe I should before we go to see the movie...
now this is the author who was "hanging out in fag bars" and who did not see any action in the war???
...on this, she is adamant: "Troy did believe in God. Troy went to church after he came home. Nobody made him."
Swofford sounds like an opportunistic scumbag to me...
Roger that.
Exactly. Is it presented as fiction or non-fiction? If it's fiction, then it's just another trashy book (movie).
If it's supposed to be true, she has a b!tch coming.
In any case, I will avoid it. Of course that's not going to be much of a strain because I don't go to movies much anyway. I believe the last one I went to was Jurassic Park. ":^/
Bull. Jamie Foxx's line is very bad-ass regardless of the content of the movie itself. Its not like he said "you go boy" with a lisp...
But whatever.
yeah... he talks about it before going to Iraq. he says he just "Hung Out" in them but his justification was weak and i really don't know why he even put it in the book. the book sucked enough as it was, that didn't help.
Tne moment I found Jake Gyllenhaal was in it, I knew it would be a leftist rant. He is a big time lib.
Swofford probably got his PhD in poetic license from Oliver Stone.
"Bull. Jamie Foxx's line is very bad-ass regardless of the content of the movie itself."
Agreed. Best part of the previews.
"Tne moment I found Jake Gyllenhaal was in it, I knew it would be a leftist rant. He is a big time lib."
As opposed to other actors, huh?
and the author didn't see any "action" in Iraq?
I saw that it was recommended by "The Village Voice" and "The Rolling Stone", so I figured I would skip it.
that wasn't my post... but in the book, he says yes he did.
He has also said that the movie is nothing like his book, and is for entertain purposes only.
oh, okay
well I guess I'll just have to see the movie and labor through the book. LOL
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