A Different Country

I watched The Last Detail last night. The Last Detail is a movie made in 1973, and stars Jack Nicholson, Otis Young, and Randy Quaid. It tells the story of two career navy guys, Nicholson and Young, who are assigned to escort a young enlisted man, played by Quaid, to the brig. Quaid’s character made the mistake of attempting to rob forty dollars from a charity box. Quaid’s character is also incredibly young and naive, and Nicholson and Young are appalled at the unfairness of his sentence. Quaid received his harsh sentence because the charity he robbed was his commanding officer’s wife’s favorite. Nicholson and Young decide to show him a good time on their way to the brig, where Quaid is to serve eight years in the old Portsmouth Naval Prison.

And that’s basically the plot of the movie.

I hadn’t seen The Last Detail in a very long time, but I had it on my computer hard drive so I decided to watch it, which is why and how I end up watching most movies anymore. The Last Detail isn’t a classic, but it holds up well as a portrait of America in the early 1970s, mainly because it was filmed on location all along the northeastern seaboard, from Norfolk, Virginia to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The people and places in the background of The Last Detail are real, not CGI. Also, The Last Detail stars Jack Nicholson, and everything Nicholson did between Easy Rider in 1969 and One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest in 1975, is worth a look.

The Last Detail isn’t a movie for everybody. The language is raw - it is about Navy guys, and the incessant use of the F-word caused quite a stir back in ’73 - and there is also some violence and sex depicted in the film.

What appeals most to me about The Last Detail is its realistic depiction of America circa 1973. 1973 America was almost a different country than America 2010. If you hadn’t lived during that era, it would be hard to explain to you how different Watergate-era America was from today, but being blessed (or cursed) with a good memory, I remember a lot about that time, and The Last Detail is very accurate:

• The cars in the movie are all pre-fuel crisis, American-made, steel constructed, behemoth gas guzzlers. They remind me of the cars my dad, grandpa, and uncles drove when I was growing up. I miss those big cars. They made the demolition derby at the Wasatch County Fair back then a lot more interesting than it is now. It’s hard to get excited about watching a 1987 Ford Taurus fall apart.

• The characters in The Last Detail are all throwbacks to a completely different time, from the redneck bartender who inspires one of Nicholson’s greatest lines (“Call the shore patrol? I am the m*th*rf*ck*ng shore patrol!”) when the bartender hesitates to serve a beer to Young (because he’s black) and Quaid (because he’s underage), to Nicholson’s old-school hedonistic character (booze and broads are his vice) Billy "Badass" Buddusky.

• I smell cigarette smoke when I watch The Last Detail. Seriously. The movie takes me back to an era when quite a few people smoked, even in small town, Mormon Utah. I remember being a nine-year-old sitting in a barbershop in Heber and every adult male there, except for my dad and the barber, was smoking. The movie also evokes memories of a snow sledding outing with my best friend and his older brother, who smoked and swore as he drove us up to Lindsay’s Hill in his old truck. It was sort of like going sledding with Billy Buddusky. That’s actually a pleasant memory, and one of the reasons that smoking doesn’t bother me as much as it seems to bother other people.

• Watching The Last Detail makes me cold. The movie takes place during winter, and it reminds me of all the old, drafty buildings we used to shop in (and live in) when I was a kid. It doesn’t seem like there were many new homes in Heber when I was growing up, certainly not like there are today. Most of the stores - except for the new Safeway, which replaced an old building that had burned down, and the brand new Day's Market that opened in '73 - were in old buildings, as were the library, movie theaters, and schools.

• Finally, although politics never come up in The Last Detail (Buddusky seems happily apolitical; he’s too busy chasing women and whiskey to worry about Watergate, and I can’t even imagine what his reaction to Don’t Ask Don’t Tell would be), it’s gotta be hard for politically aware people in their twenties and thirties today to imagine  how universally despised the President of the United States - Richard M. Nixon - was. Ol’ Tricky Dick Nixon - despite any good things he accomplished, like establishing the EPA or saving Israel during the 1973 Yom Kippur War - didn’t stand a chance because of the innate corruptness of his administration.

I could go on and on about the differences between 1973 and 2010, but I’ve made my point: things change, not always for the better, but not always for the worse either. Movies like The Last Detail don’t get made very often anymore. Only Clint Eastwood seems to make the same type of movie now. There isn’t anyone to really cheer for in The Last Detail. There aren’t special effects or big explosions. The underlying message is the unfairness of life and the dehumanizing effect people wielding too much unchecked power have.

The Last Detail is a realistic depiction of an era when mores and expectations were a lot different from what they are now. Whether that’s good or bad is up to you to decide.

Here's the original movie trailer for The Last Detail:

Thank You and Happy Veterans Day, Sergeant J

Kind of a preachy blog post today. Normally I try not to preach; it makes me feel hypocritical in a major way. However, what I have to say today is near and dear to my heart, so I’m gonna preach:

I have two little girls - stepsisters - in my class this year. Their father and step-father, Sgt. J, is a master sergeant in the army. In September he was severely injured by an IED - what used to be called a booby trap - in Afghanistan. Sgt. J’s job in the army was to actually defuse IEDs. For the last two months he has been recuperating in various military hospitals between here and Afghanistan. Tomorrow (on Veterans Day, no less) Sgt. J finally gets to come home. Like other returning Iraq/Afghanistan veterans in our area, Sgt. J will be escorted by the local fire department, and the main road into town will be lined with American flags. My class, along with several others, will be waiting by the roadside to cheer and demonstrate our appreciation as his entourage pulls into town.

I’m proud to teach this brave soldier’s children, and proud that he lives in our town. America wouldn’t have survived over the past two hundred and thirty-four years without men and women like Sgt. J and his family, who are prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice. I honor our country in a million little ways, but compared to heroes like Sgt. J, my efforts seems pretty inadequate.

This Veterans Day, let’s truly remember and appreciate Sgt. J and all the other brave men and women who have served - or are serving - our country. No other country in the world offers the freedoms and opportunities that we have here in the USA. The men and women serving in the military are prepared to lay down their lives to safeguard those freedoms and opportunities.

As the holiday season nears, let’s not forget we’re still fighting two wars. It doesn’t seem like a day goes by that there isn’t news of someone being injured or killed in Afghanistan and Iraq. There are also hundreds of thousands of servicemen and women who won’t be with their families on Thanksgiving later this month because they are sacrificing that time with their families to serve our country. 

Let’s not ever take any of them for granted.