NO ROLLING OVER:

Red Dawn’s New Day: An interview with John Milius. (Johnny Dwyer, 12/28/03, NY Press)

When I watched the film recently, it seemed like the Wolverines were sort of a mujahideen, at least in a strategic sense, the attacks on convoys–this is stuff we’re seeing now. Were you addressing the Soviets in Afghanistan?

Yeah. The movie was made because the Soviets were in Afghanistan. Actually, the Soviets had invaded Afghanistan the year before. Remember, we wouldn’t let them go to the Olympics or they withdrew from the Olympics, and that’s when the movie was made; that’s when the people at MGM decided we’re going to make this patriotic movie that’s mirroring the situation in Afghanistan, and we’ll release it during the Olympics.

And the movie was very successful. It was just roundly hated by the liberal community and critics. I was vilified and excoriated to a degree–and I was one who was used to being vilified and excoriated for my movies–but that movie really got their dander up.

I think the movie is a very complicated look at what war does to people. I don’t think any of the characters are resolved as to their role in the whole thing; it seems like a bunch of them want to be children rather than fighting.

Yeah, and you see the tremendous cost of everything. Nobody comes out of it whole or unscarred. The ones that in the end, when they get away, they’re looking down on this vast plain and say, "We’re free now." And he says, "Free to do what?"

In Iraq the tables have turned; the United States is in a situation where we’re occupying a country and we have to make ourselves open to the attacks that the Wolverines were perpetrating in Red Dawn.

I think that’s a whole other thing. We’re doing what we said we’re going to do. Bush was very clear after 9/11 about what he was going to do, and he hasn’t really deviated from that, even though people haven’t liked it or anything else. He’s been fairly resolute in saying, "You’re either for us or against us." And where we find people against us, we’re going to go get ’em and we’re not going to tolerate blowing apart our cities and killing tens of thousands of Americans. We’re not going to roll over.

It’s very interesting. Again, it’s one of these cases where, when people are not involved directly, they don’t seem to care. We have a more [divided] nation now than we did in Vietnam.

The simple fact is that while we've had little trouble pacifying the nations we've conquered, no one could pacify a resistant America.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 28, 2003 7:33 PM