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An Open Letter to Tom Clancy
Dear Tom Clancy,
I'm pinning this all on you, Mr. Clancy. I don't care if
Phil Alden "Field of Dreams" Robinson directed
it. This whole film seems like something you'd pull, so I'm
assuming that it was your hand stirring the pot. You're the
executive producer, so don't give me this, "Well, you
know what Hollywood does to books..." Unless, of course,
sales are down and you were too busy figuring out how to ratchet
up the violence in your video games. That must just be your
way of reaching out to young people who aren't interested
in reading your books. I'll bet, though, that I can't tell
much difference between the plot of your novels and video
games anyway.
So, to begin: No wonder the rest of the world hates us. Millions
of dollars were spent—the amount of which, incidentally,
Doctors Without Borders could use to administer medicine to
the entire population of AIDS victims of Nigeria, Chad, and
Zaire—to make this piece of shit. The Sum of All Fears
is being marketed as important, thought-provoking, "relevant"
entertainment that should become a part of the "national
dialogue?" Kiss my ass, Tom Clancy. Some critics may
pass this off as "popcorn entertainment," but the
tone of film begs for it to be taken seriously. But why? You
can't write, you never could write—you have survived
on name dropping minor Israeli fighter jets long enough. I
can't bear to make it through one of your grandiloquent tomes
again. Really, Tom, do you think we're fooled by your glorified
b-movie pulp novels just because you blanket them with technical
military mumbo-jumbo? Much to my personal disgust, yes, we
probably are. That's why every single damn one of your overlong,
pompous books is a best seller. You play to the vanities of
your audience—comfortable, white missile worshippers
who get off on watching us blow the hell out of brown, non-Christian
people all over the world, even though they themselves were
too soft to get up off the couch and go into the military.
I also don't give a damn about your politics. There are a
few good conservatives whom I respect, ones who do good work
and have good heart, even if I might squabble with them over
policy. That list includes John McCain and Colin Powell, and
I'd vote for either one of those guys for President over anybody
the Democrats have to offer, except for maybe John Kerry.
And I don't give a damn that The Sum of All Fears is,
in part, a propaganda piece devoted to the hero worship of
the Bush administration. Don't tell me it's not. Hell, James
Cromwell even looks like Daddy Bush. The Secretary of Defense
is a safe-looking black guy; the dove is a pussy-looking liberal
in tiny glasses. If fact, the only part of your shitty movie
I liked was when the Dick Cheney stand-in (Philip Baker Hall)
had a heart attack. But this isn't about ideology or partisan
politics. Did you see the smack we laid down on your political
opposite, Robert Altman? To be fair, I'd probably agree with
some of Altman's politics, but our grievance against him is
how he espouses his ideology so didactically in his crappy
movies. Really, how are we supposed to rally to the cause
of the African people with O.C. and Stiggs driving around
in the Gila Monster sporting a Gabonese flag? Or engage in
class warfare with all those rich people stepping in poodle
poop?
But Altman got one thing right, and no sin of Altman's is
as offensive as this. Altman ruffled a few feathers (and probably
lost the Best Director Oscar) when he said that Hollywood
shouldn't be taken seriously because it treats catastrophic
violence so casually. I don't care how unfunny Gosford
Park was, Altman is correctly indicting you, Tom Clancy:
pop literature's, and now mainstream film's, most egregious
offender of the exploitative catastrophe. For time's sake,
I'll just stick to the offenses in this movie—if I were
to cover your books, I could write a The Hunt for Red October-sized
essay. First off, in the event of a nuclear explosion, "downwind,"
in relationship to your birthplace of Baltimore, might not
be the suburbs. It would be, in the least, Washington D.C.
But you must be right, because when the Token KGB Good Guy
shows up to give Ben a medal or whatever—as the President
is giving his big speech abolishing nuclear weapons—Ben's
not worrying about his balls falling off. Good thing, because
then he couldn't reproduce with his cute, socially-conscious
nurse girlfriend. Personally, this movie would have been a
lot better if Brenda Moynahan had stayed The Heartbreaker
and still tended bar at Coyote Ugly. But no, we had to have
our heartstrings tugged at so Ben's girl could show how compassionate
she is by tending to those wounded in the nuclear attack.
Which, oddly, isn't Ben, even though his helicopter crashes
and he tromps through nuclear winter as if it were a mild
Buffalo winter. I've felt more trepidation watching tornado
chasers on The Weather Channel. The cavalierness of the attack's
aftermath is inexcusably disgraceful. How can a movie named
The Sum of All Fears feel like nightmare minus the
gravitas?
Really, Tom, in the vastness of your military knowledge,
you couldn't come up with a better reason for Morgan Freeman
to give Ben Affleck such high security clearances, even though
he's such a bumbling idiot? He wrote a paper? Goodness, this
gets my hopes up that Jerry Bruckheimer will read Filmsnobs
and then let me and JimmyO in on all his production meetings.
As devoted as you are to worshipping our intelligence agencies,
perhaps the truest part of your film is the FBI scrutinizing
Russian surveillance videos like they're watching "One
Life to Live." You are one of the biggest perpetrators
of the myth of pansophical American intelligence, yet in this
movie you tap into a certain truth: American intelligence
is based mostly on hunches, not legwork and logistics. How
can you argue with Ben's logic of "I just know
the Russians didn't do it"? Gosh, it's terrible that
this big bad bureaucracy had to stand in between some minor
agency drone's gut instincts and the demolition of the Earth.
I sincerely hope that President Bush's Homeland Security plan
works because it's obvious that more accountability is necessary.
And yes, The Sum of All Fears makes the point, perhaps
the point, that bureaucracy stands in the way of our
protection, but is a story in which Ben Affleck's hunches
stand between us and nuclear annihilation supposed to make
us feel better—or more importantly, contribute to the
national dialogue about our intelligence agencies? And yes,
Tom, this responsibility does fall upon the filmmakers: The
responsibility falls to you because you choose to titillate
us, exploit our genuine fears, by filming a nuclear explosion.
If you are going to prey upon those fears, then you must respect
those fears by treating them respectfully in the storytelling,
not with some garbage that treats intelligence like a high-stakes
game of Keno.
You don't know this, Tom, but I grew up thirty miles from
the home of the B-2 Bomber and America's largest stockpile
of nuclear weapons. Those planes are truly an awesome sight.
In the distance, they look like little slivers of night in
the sky, and most remarkably, they make no sound until they're
nearly overhead. I might even say that they're "pretty
cool," but I think a machine with that sort of destructive
capability deserves weightier words. After the USSR dissolved
and declassified certain KGB intelligence, we found out that
Whiteman Air Force Base was the Soviet's third most desired
target. That scared the hell out of me. But if I'd have known
that I could just walk around in the nuclear winter with little
or no concern for the effects of radiation, I'd have been
more relaxed during those monthly bomb shelter drills. Hell,
being a nearly thirty miles south and east of the base itself,
there's a good chance that we'd have been downwind from
the explosion! Tom, your movie has made me feel a lot better
about the future. With such an honest look at the ramifications
of nuclear engagement, including the peace-of-mind that some
minor FBI bureaucrat will be able to tap into the President's
private line to Russia and help avert nuclear disaster, I
can now totally believe that our government will act in a
cautious, rational manner. There's no way that the
right information will just end up on a stack of papers on
an agent's desk in, say, Phoenix. And even if it does and
a dirty bomb is let detonated on Whiteman Air Force Base,
I'm going to jump in my car and drive up there and fish my
relatives out of the rubble (assuming, of course, that I'm
downwind of the explosion), just like Ben Affleck did in your
hometown of Baltimore. Thank you, Tom Clancy, for this and
all your well researched, plausible, important fictions about
the military and government. And it's a good thing that Bush,
Cheney, and Ashcroft seem like they want an honest debate
about the state of US intelligence, especially when they release
"Breaking News" about an arrest made a month ago,
even though right now happens to be when the issue
is in debate on the floor of Congress. Between Bush and Tom
Clancy, I have total confidence in those in charge, be they
real or fictional.
In summation, Tom, I think it best that you leave all the
"moral investigation" and "national debate"
to Seymour Hersch, Christopher Hitchens, Sebastian Junger,
Howard Fineman, and a few other very good journalists. Playing
golf with the Joint Chiefs of Staff doesn't make you a writer,
nor should you be considered a soothsayer just because you
think terrorists might blow up the Super Bowl. Rather than
telling us the names of at two dozen German fighter planes,
why don't you just shut the hell up and reinvigorate the economy
by going back into the plumbing business? Or are you going
to start an "honest national debate" by selling
out your movie and making the Evil Mastermind a Nazi? I'm
sure I don't know nearly as much about European politics as
you, but isn't it true that the neo-Nazi's are probably more
of a threat to deface German subways rather than play Yojimbo
between us and the Russians? I did like the afterthought assassination
of all the Nazis set to Puccini's "Nessun Dorma"
from Turandot. If I remember the opera correctly, I
believe this is when Calaf says that no man shall sleep until
his name is discovered, but don't you think we already know
the name of the terrorist villain? It is Osama bin Laden,
right? That name and what it stands for? Le Pen's result in
France doesn't seem to have returned fascism to Europe, has
it? Or are the Nazis just the most politically correct villain
you could think of? Is that the sort of "honest debate"
you claim you were looking to promote? The least you could
have done is give us the book-version smorgasbord of villains.
Listen, Tom, the only reason you're a best-selling author
is because your books satisfy the urges of American males
who vicariously masculinize themselves by loving our bombs.
So stop with "the research" and quit trying to be
"relevant." You're in bad company, Tom, when you
make Robert Altman look like a sober voice of reason.
Sincerely,
Shimes of The Filmsnobs
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