If Mark Steyn is to be believed that we are rapidly approaching endgame as far as the invasion of Iraq is concerned. And, barring unforseen disasters, it does seem as if Baghdad will be in Allied hands within the next few days.
But then we must turn our minds to the long-term consequences. No, I am not talking about the reconstruction of Iraq and the democratisation of the region. That’s all far too prosaic. No, I am talking about the movie rights to ‘Gulf War II’. Surely Hollywood will be unable to resist dramatising these world-shaking events. After all, this was not just a little local difficulty, this was epic reality. We’re talking summer blockbuster here!
And it isn’t as if they are going to have to hire a whole team of scriptwriters either. This story practically writes itself, though, there would have to be some artistic licence employed to herald in a few changes required by Hollywood sensibilities.
First of all, the current US administration just have to go. There is no way any Hollywood director could portray Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice et al with even a hint of sympathy. So they will just all have to be airbrushed out and the team from The West Wing drafted in.
The movie opens with President Bartlett deeply troubled by all this talk of war. All he wants to do is quietly get on with the business of extending emission controls and increasing pension benefits for social workers but he simply cannot ignore the growing chorus of extreme right-wing talk radio hosts calling for an invasion of Iraq.
In his desperation, he turns to the only man he can trust for counsel and advice. That man is the French President (Roberto Benigni) whom President Bartlett knows to be a man of boundless integrity, profound humanity, great learning and foresight. The French President urges Bartlett to be strong in the face of war pressure and embrace European wisdom and humility.
Bartlett knows that the French President is the voice of sanity. He wants to negotiate a peaceful solution and let the UN deal with terrorist-sponsoring states but he keeps getting outmanoeuvred by the ‘war-hawks’ in the Pentagon (led by Tommy Lee Jones) who, in turn, are sponsored by a shadowy cabal of ruthless oil barons (personified by Anthony Hopkins). Bartlett is on the verge of going back to the UN to ask Kofi Annan (Morgan Freeman) for another resolution when he finds out that, in fact, Saddam Hussein (David Suchet) is only a frontman for a gang of radical White Supremacists (led by an extravangantly maniacal Gary Oldman) who intend to get control of Iraq’s oil supplies and use the wealth to establish an Aryan Empire in North America.
Bartlett, now fired with rage, fear and contempt, immediately declares war and then the action scenes begin. General Tommy Franks (George Clooney) is placed in command. But Franks is a burned-out cynical wreck and a recovering alcoholic who loathes war, believes it solves nothing and is only taking this command because he cares deeply for the lives of his soldiers and wants to protect them from the irresponsible politicians who keep sending them off to die.
The battle scenes are entirely shot around Bruce Willis as a wise-cracking tank commander and Cuba Gooding Jnr as a gung-ho US Marine. Between them they carve their way through the entire Iraqi Army (Mexican Central Casting).
The emotional centrepiece revolves around Private Jessica Lynch (Alicia Silverstone) whose life is only saved at the very last second by the personal interjection of the passionate President Bartlett.
The British effort is dealt with in one short comical scene involving Hugh Grant coming off the telephone after receiving his orders direct from Tony Blair (Alan Rickman) and proceeding to bumble around ineffectually, stammering and apologising profusely before being rescued by US Navy Seal Sandra Bullock.
The Aussies will fare rather better in the image stakes (Hollywood despises Brits but they love Aussies) as they will be represented by Australian SAS Captain, Hugh Jackman and , by dint of some contrivance, he will spend the whole film without his shirt on.
Later, Jackman and Bullock will form the love interest when Jackman rescues her from the sweaty clutches of one of Saddam’s most homicidal (and lascivious) torturers (John Rhys Davies).
Finally, Baghdad falls to the Allies, Saddam is taken into custody, the White Supremacists are all killed and President Bartlett invites the most senior and respected Imam in the entire world (Ben Kingsley) to help heal the wounds of war. On the lawn of the Whitehouse, Kingsley makes the most important and stirring speech in the history of mankind calling for universal tolerance, mutual understanding, a rejection of violence and extremism and a heartfelt belief than we can, indeed, all learn to live together in harmony.
The final scenes are a montage of Jessica Lynch being awarded a Congressional Medal of Honour, President Bartlett being re-elected with the biggest majority in American political history and the French President and Ben Kingsley being invited to the Vatican to join the Pope in formally declaring the establishment of peace on earth for all time.
Okay, that’s it. If any tinseltown producers happen to be reading this then all they need to do now is to join up the dots and they’ve got themselves a big-screen spectacular.
As for me, I think I’ll wait until it’s available for hire on video.
That one rates a multi-projectile, high velocity, *HURL*
BARF!
Put Jerry Bruckheimer or Paul Veerhoven in the director’s chair and it’ll be a smash.
Great, but it needs just a little tweak. I think you left out the passionate NGO worker (Halle Berry) who has been seeking an audience with President Bartlett to discuss the need for billions of dollars to build daycare centers throughout the middle east. She, a black lesbian muslim, is also besieged by deaththreats from white southern Christians (who play golf with the oil barrons) who clearly do not understand the great tolerant tradition of modern day Islam. After all, most middle eastern muslims are much more tolerant of independent unmarried lesbians with college degrees in Central Asian Literature than southern white Christians. At the end of the movie, she gets a presidential appointment in Bartlett’s 2nd term to run the newly created Department to Prevent All Racism, Homophobia, Xenophobia Unless It Involves Israeli Jews And Southern White Christians (DOPARHXUIIIJSWC)
And please, do not forget Robert Rall (played by Tom Cruise, trying to prove once and for all he’s a serious actor). Robert Rall, is loosely based on renouned journalists Robert Fisk and cartoonists of the oppressed, Ted Rall. Rall is an enbedded journalists who near the climactic end of the war portion of the movie, chooses to throw out journalistic ethics to act as a human shield for a daycare center that Bruce Willis’s tank commander wanted to blow up even after he learned of the ceasefire. After Rall’s touching speech about it taking a village to build world peace (or something like that), Gooding Jr. relieves Willis of his duties. The entire marine unit attend services at a local mosque.
And, I’m quite upset with your accusation about Hollywood’s stereotype of the British. The Brits would also be represented by the White House butler, played by Michael Caine. He’d act as Bartlett’s conscience and sounding board during those trying times.
Now THAT would be a GREAT MOVIE!!!!
What, doesn’t Michael Moore have a role as the populist and realistic Secretary of Defense? How can you mention the Aussies without bringing Russell Crowe into the mix?
You just pissed off some very important, and liberal, celebrities, my friend. 🙂
No no no…. this has got Joel Schumacher writen all over it….
Jerry Bruckheimer will produce…
Hans Zimmer (and Co.) will do the musical score…
the cinematographer will be John Lindey….
hmmm….we have to fit Chow Yun-Fat in there somewhere…
Someone forward this to Brian Linse of Ain’t No Bad Dude! 🙂
David
Congratulations. Brilliant. I hope this gets the wider blogosphere attention that it deserves. It’s not just that it’s a great notion. It’s the completeness of the implementation that really impresses.
A new war genre?
Three Queens
Gulf War II meets Priscilla, Queen of the Desert…
Hmmmmm. Is your day job in casting? Outfreakinstanding!
Russ, the DOPARHXUIIISWC is too hilarious!
I know you guys think this is pretty funny, but the reality — nay, the tragedy — is that this Treatment of Brother Perry’s isn’t far out compared to the shit that I have to read in what I amusingly refer to as my “job”, and is, in fact, better written than 99% of what gets sent to me!
So here’s what we do: Alica is out, Drew is in as Pfc. Lynch. The whole Brit thing is a problem because Hollywood requires the bad guy to always be British, so we need to find someone to play Robert Fisk (Ralph Fiennes?) and toss in a scene with him having tea with Saddam, chatting about their mutual friend Osama. At the end, Fisk gets beaten senseless by a mob of newly democratized Iraqi’s and has to be rescued by Bruce Willis. This way we’ve covered the bad guy Brit quota, and can include the British Armed Forces and Mr. Blair in the story.
Toss in a nude shower scene of either Drew or Sandra, and have Bruce and Drew fall in love after the rescue and you got a guaranteed “green light”.
So sorry, it was Brother David who knocked out this wonderful treatment. As I recall, Micklethwait had a great Arnold treatment that he pitched when I was in London…Hmmm. Maybe the whole lot of you should head out to Casa BadDude and start making the Hollywood rounds!
What about the Iraqi information minister ? You have to fit in a scene where he declares Bruce Willis dead.
Jacob, while I’m at a loss to explain why, but I keep thinking Iraqi Information Minister, played by Joe Pesci. It has a Quinton Terantino feel to it, though. Too bad more people aren’t having fun with this post. There must be a war going on or something.
Gulf War – Part Deux. OK, Russ Goble, Halle Berry, an NGO worker, has been desperately trying to get an audience with the president (who socialises with the Board of Halliburton and CEOs of multinational corporations) to explain the daycare centre crisis in Baghdad. Fine! The only person between her and the president is the cruel, patrician Donald Rumsfeld. In one memorable scene, he leans across a big polished desk in the White House and tells her that if she manages to get even one daycare centre built, he personally will order an entire squadron of Black Hawks to bomb it back into the dark ages. Because he’s Ivy League and preppy, maybe Rumsfled could talk with a kind of English accent. This would take care of getting an English nuanced bad character into the action early on. Rumsfeld’s accent could be balanced off against the fact that we’ll have to make the one of the good guys, Tony Blair, an American. (Michael Douglas.)
Disappointed and bitter, Halle goes to Baghdad anyway, as a human shield, with marine Kim O’Keefe, played by Sean Penn. She tries to get an appointment with Saddam Hussain (Ali G) who, unlike the selfish, uncaring American president, agrees to see her immediately. She finds him strangely sympathetic and open to the development of daycare centres. As they talk, Halle feels drawn to him and begins to experience recovered memory syndrome as she realises that the old man dying on the bed is actually her long lost father. I mean, talk about coincidence! Her mother had often spoken of him as the Boucher of Baghdad, but Halle didn’t speak French. Actually, though, he’s on his death bed, and he clutches her hand and says, “Go forth – build a hundred thousand daycare centres and make the desert bloom …” Or something along those lines.
Anyway, just then mad dog Bruce Willis flies over and bombs the palace again (illegally, according to UN Resolution 10 million and 20). The bomb is so powerful it shakes the building like an earthquake, causing some of Halle Berry’s clothes to fall off or become torn in strategic places. So she has to stagger, gasping for breath, down smoke filled corridors, dodging falling avacado bathroom suites, gold taps and mother of pearl inlaid toilet roll holders until she finally makes it out into the topiary.
She is just running across a lawn, her skirt ripped by a badly trimmed hedge, when Bruch Willis, this time having unaccounatably lost his uniform and wearing a torn vest, flies over again to strafe Dustin Hoffman (Nicholas Cage) waving a Not In My Name Poster, but a helicopter comes down and she is rescued by reservist Danny Glover, who she recognises as the long lost sweetheart she met at that lesbian outreach coffee morning in college all those years ago and is now a leading scientist specialising in global warming. As the helicopter turns to fly over the temporary morgue housing tens of thousands of human remains, Halle holds back a sob. “Some may call him a dictator,” she says, “and many people did cruel things in his name that he knew nothing about, but to me he will always be a warm, caring human being who got 99% of the popular vote and was a romantic novelist par excellence.” As the helicopter, piloted by kickass Susan Sarandon, flies off into the pink desert sunset, the sound of Barbra Streisand singing “People” swells, emptying the theatre.
This is just a rough outline, mind you. I realise it needs work.
You missed your calling Liberty Belle.
Ah…Good Times. Good Times.
Russ Goble, The only thing is, I couldn’t find room for Tarik Aziz. I think the problem was, I just didn’t see Joe Pesci in the part. I was thinking more Danny de Vito. Or Angelika Huston, playing against type.