Team Infidel
Forum Spin Doctor
Washington Post
June 26, 2008
Pg. C3
The Reliable Source
By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Former Marine sergeant Eric Kocher served in a battalion in the vanguard of the Iraq invasion -- and later as a consultant for a new HBO series about the war, "Generation Kill" -- so he seemed like the ideal person to ask the question that's bedeviled Hollywood lately:
Why have so many critically acclaimed movies about Iraq failed so miserably at the box office?
Kocher, the darkly handsome recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valor during an enemy ambush near Fallujah, didn't hesitate.
"Because they kind of suck," he told us. "In 'Stop-Loss,' the whole platoon grew up in the same town, which never happens. Or in 'Jarhead,' which wasn't that bad, but at the end where everyone shoots up in the air . . . they throw so much fallacy into these movies that nobody believes them, and they lose the whole thread of the plot."
Hard to argue with that! We met Kocher at an HBO/Brookings screening at the National Press Club Tuesday, packed with journalists, foreign policy experts and other such types who peppered co-creators/Baltimore homeboys David Simon and Ed Burns ("The Wire") with variations on the "well, in my experience" non-question during the panel discussion. Simon said he didn't really care what these folks thought of the series, debuting next month -- he'd already vetted it with the toughest audience possible, the Recon Marines depicted in the show.
"None of us were beaten up," Simon joked. "No heavy weapons were used against our domiciles."
June 26, 2008
Pg. C3
The Reliable Source
By Amy Argetsinger and Roxanne Roberts
Former Marine sergeant Eric Kocher served in a battalion in the vanguard of the Iraq invasion -- and later as a consultant for a new HBO series about the war, "Generation Kill" -- so he seemed like the ideal person to ask the question that's bedeviled Hollywood lately:
Why have so many critically acclaimed movies about Iraq failed so miserably at the box office?
Kocher, the darkly handsome recipient of two Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valor during an enemy ambush near Fallujah, didn't hesitate.
"Because they kind of suck," he told us. "In 'Stop-Loss,' the whole platoon grew up in the same town, which never happens. Or in 'Jarhead,' which wasn't that bad, but at the end where everyone shoots up in the air . . . they throw so much fallacy into these movies that nobody believes them, and they lose the whole thread of the plot."
Hard to argue with that! We met Kocher at an HBO/Brookings screening at the National Press Club Tuesday, packed with journalists, foreign policy experts and other such types who peppered co-creators/Baltimore homeboys David Simon and Ed Burns ("The Wire") with variations on the "well, in my experience" non-question during the panel discussion. Simon said he didn't really care what these folks thought of the series, debuting next month -- he'd already vetted it with the toughest audience possible, the Recon Marines depicted in the show.
"None of us were beaten up," Simon joked. "No heavy weapons were used against our domiciles."