You mean Jamie Foxx, right?
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
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."
Yes, I think I will avoid this movie at the theaters.
The more that I hear about the film, the more inclined I am to avoid this bit of tripe.
Whenever the preview for this film comes on, Mr. Legs and I can't help snickering at Jamie Kennedy's limp-wristed, girlie little "Ooh-rah".
I wanted to know what "portrait" this film was going to paint of our bravest and best. Based on a lie, I guess.
Pick a little talk a little pick a little talk a little cheep cheep cheep talk a lot pick a little more...
Yeah, my husband read the book and was dis-enchanted with it because it has quite a bit of officer bashing in there as well
Has BOYCOTT written all over it.
More liberal anti-war propaganda mascarading as 'film'.
We plan on going to one of the multi-screen theaters and paying to see something else and then stepping in to see "Jarhead" afterwards just to see how accurate the movie is.
I will post my review.
Semper Fi,
Kelly
Uh, its Jamie Foxx not Jamie Kennedy. I'm intrigued by this movie, but I'm not going in with high hopes that it isn't anti-military.
You mean Jamie Foxx, right?
If you want a Google GMail account, FReepmail me.
I think it's Jamie Foxx, and I find his Hoo-Rah to be fairly menacing, if understated. I don't think it will help this movie though.
Durting WWII, when Hollywood put movies out, there was no question they would be pro-American, pro-military, patriotic, anti-enemy movies.
How far they've fallen.
Of course, the book was written by a marine (not Hollywood)...and it is the book to which the mother takes issue.
Such a disappointment, I was hoping the movie would have some merit.
Don't know about the movie (it looks worse) but I read the book and wasn't impressed; it was an attempt to make a whole lotta drama out of nothing.
How far they've fallen.
I read the book and it pissed me off. None of the military officers I know act like that punk, Swofford.
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