Production backgrounds

Vietnam War and the film

The metafictional aspects

the unknowable in the film:  - The purposes of simulation of war?  - Eli as an Author-God?

(  the use of  icecream in Cameron's attack of police and paint in the basement scene with Nina.)

-- the film and the novel: (Ellis 239)

• Paul Brodeur's novel is humorless and bleak, an existential indictment of the war that ultimately says there is no escape from the war.
• In Brodeur's novel, Cameron is not a veteran but an AWOL draftee who witnesses the drowning of a stunt man.  The director he stumbles upon is Gottschalk (God's servant).
• Richard Rush's film: employs suspense and humor to implore the audience to confront its memory of the war, heal wounds, and move on.

• "I did the same as everyone else, just one of the boys.  I shot my M-16 at every sound."
• "I got out of Nam in one piece.  That's the hell of a stunt."
• e.g. He tells Ellis about his revenge against Burt: "I didn't get a chance to ask him.  He was coming at me too gaddamn fast.  You want to get home for Thanksgiving, you better figure the guy coming at you is trying to kill you.  Learning that from the gooks."
Actually in Vietnam war, the American GI's  are stunt men, but not the real actors.
2. mal-adjusted, insecure and suspicious--in the aftermath of the war and rejected by society:
• "I went home, and I guess I expected something--free car wash, double Blue Chip stamps.  They looked at me like I was gonna start killing babies or something."
• Cross said of Cameron: "he is like 'a land mine left over from some war that goes off suddenly."
3. his crime: knocking out a police officer with a tub of ice-cream.   (shifting of scenes from mud in Vietnam to egg on the face in the demonstration to ice cream at hometown and paint in the basement prop room.)

1. confusion of reality and the film within the film:

e. g. 1. the shooting scene at the beach in the beginning of the film.
2. The hotel-top chase -- into a hotel room -- the hotel guest : "find someplace else to play" -- Cameron hit by Chuck in the face -- Cameron falls through the skylight into a brothel, and then is carried to a tavern, with his clothes ripped off.
3. The biplane stunt: the pilot shot shows: Cameron clings to the wing in terror -- Nina in horror -- a long shot revealing the crane from which the plane hangs by a wire, rotating but a few feet from the ground.
4. Cameron's scream in action merged with that in having sex with Nina.

2. Elli the director:
a. all-controlling behind the scene: benevolent or selfish and cruel?

-- emerges regally from his helicopter.
-- "Don't worry about my crew.  They'll call you anything I wish them too."
-- Does he try to rescue Burt?
-- Why does he humiliate Nina in front of her parents?
-- Even Cameron's attempt at escape is included in his plan, with Nina complicit with him.
-- Does he care about Cameron's safty in the last stunt work?
-- After Cameron argues with him about the salary at the end, he says:

"rewrite the open reel.  Crush the little bastard in the first act."

b. a magician: -- change Cameron's appearance.

-- Before he leads Cameron into the building, he says: "That door is a looking glass.  Inside is a wonderland.  Have faith, Alice, and enjoy."  (The half-transparent window is also used to frame Nina -- an actress, a dream girl.  Nina: "I'm the movie.")
-- "How tall is King Kong?"
-- have different versions: "I have versions of all sorts.  Care to go back and see one?  In one version you fly the helicopter and I am driving the Duesenberg."

c. a savior -- an anti-war filmmaker

about his film:
-- He wants something outrageous, because "reality can be pretty outrageous" and anything can happen.
-- his purpose: "convince the world with [his] movie there is a reasonable, a better way of getting home for Thanksgiving."

d. "The man is the kindest, the most dedicated"; his relations with Nina?

3. The film within the film, its message?
-- about an interracial marriage between an Australian flyer and an German girl.
-- the use of erotic music box: the "outrageous" and "lively."

the unknowable in the film:  Eli as an Author-God?  Is Nina really in love with Cameron?

Theme song: "a world where nothing is what it seems" -- like Vietnam
The opening sequence: linemen -- buzzard -- apple -- police car -- a dog licking his balls

coincidence + ongoing beastly life

-- "That crazy bird just tried to kill us."
-- "That's your point of view.  Did we stop and ask the bird what his was?"

• War and Literature: Some Examples of Related Issues
• Reasons and Consequences in the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam civil war

Ellis, Caron Schwartz. "The Stunt Man: Remembering Vietnam through Forgetfulness." Literature-
 Film Quarterly. 20(3):231-42. 1992.