Among the Intellectualoids / Another Oliver Stone Opening
Lane, Bill
AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS ANOTHER OLIVER STONE OPENING • Within 30 minutes of watching the opening of Born on the Fourth of July all the Vietnam veterans who had been invited to see it were in...
...We generally advise all serious Vietnam veterans to wear an oxygen mask while previewing Oliver Stone movies...
...from various news accounts 4 C hould Have Been Born on May Day," the latest Oliver Stone Vietnam film, opened yesterday at the Bijou, and several dozen selected Vietnam veterans, in camouflage, were on hand to preview it...
...Yeah...
...Oliver Stone defended the fabrications in the Kovic film by saying, "I took creative license to make my point, and sometimes sacrificed smaller truths for larger ones...
...I'd give it three buddy-hugs," opined one counselor, "although I fainted seven or eight times and missed part of it...
...others were bayonetting or skeet shooting babies, as they shouted racial epithets at each other, lit joints, and fragged their cretinous, militarist officers...
...And all this time I'm trying to get over my rage at shooting a man from Venus—or Mars, whatever—like my wrestling coach told me to do in a dream...
...30 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1990...
...Sobs of "that's just the way it was,"and "this is even more realistic than Apocalypse Now," rang from the vets who had not yet fainted, and body fluids began raining down from the balcony as the honesty and realism of Stone's screen message caused the vets to hyperventilate, become nauseated, and even incontinent...
...His rage grew...
...Several rage counselors, wearing helmets, rushed to his side for treatment, only to discover that Ron Kovic, on hand for the premiere, had parked his wheelchair on the man's foot...
...Sometimes the opening credits throw them directly into flashbacks," commented another counselor, who specializes in reaching out to outreach group counselors who experience stress from counseling veterans with stress disorders...
...Lying on the floor hugging a buddy, or at least holding his ponytail, is good technique in case flashbacks, fainting, or uncontrollable psychobabbling seem imminent," he commented grimly...
...AMONG THE INTELLECTUALOIDS ANOTHER OLIVER STONE OPENING • Within 30 minutes of watching the opening of Born on the Fourth of July all the Vietnam veterans who had been invited to see it were in the lobby "on the verge of passing out...
...It gets messy," he said...
...They can't go to Florida or even to Syracuse games...
...Between the film premieres and monument unveilings I go through more fatigues than I did in 'Nam...
...Jane Fonda and a group of Vietnam veteran activists hugged each other and sobbed in a theater lobby after seeing Platoon...
...This is typical of the syndrome," said a vet who runs a Vietnam veterans counseling business called Excuses Bill Lane a Vietnam veteran, is a writer living in the New York City area...
...Nurses wearing Nixon masks used to do it...
...Some were slapping around and raping terrified female agrarian reformers...
...I used to look like Tom Cruise...
...Ten minutes into the film the aisles were filled with sobbing vets heading for the lobby, stressed-out and unable to bear any more realism...
...It was so real—just like a movie I saw in the Saigon EM club in '70...
...By this time the opening credits were rolling across the screen and a commotion was heard across the theater as the vets began fainting or diving for their oxygen bottles...
...Unlimited...
...I had to go see his parents, or at least I dreamed I did, but Oliver said it was too big a truth and too existential to leave out of the movie...
...Vietnam veterans outreach groups advise vets not to see films about Vietnam alone, and to spend time "decompressing" with friends afterwards...
...M ost of the audience never got to see the climax of the film, in which a 12-year-old handicapped Vietcong girl, whose father had been castrated, disemboweled, spoken harshly to, barbecued, and eaten by the Americans, routs them singlehandedly from her village, her face glowing with Communist fervor...
...At the mention of Syracuse, the Agent Orange vets sobbed and went down like tenpins, and then Kovic's rage knew no bounds: "You think you guys suffered the most from that stuff...
...One vet who had just awakened from a fainting spell saw the exodus, tore some buttons and medals off his fatigues and threw them to the slippery floor, shouting, "This reminds me of the parade I never got," and fainted once again, this time into the arms of two counselors who specialize in parade-envy stress disorders...
...You learn never to sit under the balcony during these movie openings," said a veteran vet who runs a counseling service for counselors who specialize in Oliver Stone premieres...
...In the lobby you could cut the rage with a c-ration can-opener...
...It was a definite five flashbacker," said another...
...If the American people gave a damn about the stress these movies cause the professional veteran they would provide physicians, psychiatrists, and non VA nurses for these film openings, or at least fund some more counselors with experience in film premiere flashbacks...
...Minutes into the movie you could cut the stress with a knife...
...On the screen a company of drug-crazed, racially polarized, mutinous infantrymen were preying on a Vietnamese village...
...And then those Syracuse cops who beat me to a pulp at the anti-war rally...
...One vet stood and screamed—long, anguished wails of rage...
...I mean, how can you beat a vet in a wheelchair, especially when he isn't even there...
...One veteran did faint . . . three others had to take oxygen...
...Only a couple of hefty checks in the mail seems to calm them down...
...Ron was in a rage about the war, the incompetence of Mexican bordellos, the Oscar committee, and especially the VA nurses...
...As the house lights dimmed and film began to roll, several of the vets began shrieking and crying hysterically...
...Did I ever tell you about how they used to give us back rubs with a cheese grater and then hose us down with Aqua Velva...
...When it was pointed out to them that what was running was a commercial for the lobby refreshment stand, one vet blubbered that it was the orange soda on the screen that reminded him of the Agent Orange that caused him to do heroin for twenty years, run up 4,000 unpaid parking tickets, and marry a water buffalo...
...By the time the surviving GI's had scurried away like vermin before her withering fire, and the strains of the North Vietnamese national anthem grew triumphantly in volume, the entire group of by Bill Lane professional vets had retreated to the lobby for rage-venting and the all-important decompression...
...They raved about the film...
...Anything orange can set them off...
Vol. 23 • June 1990 • No. 6
