Black Hawk Up

NO!  That Is Not A Typo

Last year Your Humble Scribe got hold of a special sleeved 3-Disk version of 'Black Hawk Down', which I probably gloated about under pictures of 'The Haul' in late summer or whenever I got my hot sweaty mitts on it.  No I cannot find it easily in the back logs of BOOJUM! so the date will remain a minor mystery.  I also have to add that I saw it at the cinema when it came out <horrified shudder> a quarter of a century ago.

     ANYWAY Art!

    I have finally worked my way through most of the 3 disks, which meant watching the whole film again, then watching it with Ridley Scott's commentary.  It was interesting to see that Josh Hartnett wanted to appear in this film because he was looking to make a more serious impact in acting roles instead of being a frothy rom-com heartthrob.  Art!

     These two are one of the reasons I was a trifle cagey about claiming to have watched the whole set; the 'History Channel' documentary is an hour and a half long, and the PBS doc is an hour long, and I didn't have the time or moral fortitude to spend two and a half hours watching just to be a completist.

     One of the most interesting items on the extra disks is one I'm going to go into detail about here in the Intro; a breakdown of the 'helicopter insertion' scene when the action becomes verrrry intense.  This item was narrated by the Assistant Director, Terry Needham.  Art!

Tel telling

     For your information, Terry was also AD on 'Full Metal Jacket' so we may have mentioned him before.  He has known Ridley for over a dozen years and finds him extremely easy to get along with, bar one thing: the director is left-handed, so anything he drew or sketched needed to be reversed to make sense to the righties amongst us.  Tel described him as 'The most visual person I've ever met' which is a handy skillset for a film director.  Art!

     There are no helicopters here yet.  BE PATIENT!  

     Tel then describes what the duties of an Assistant Director.  This is the unglamourous daily grunt work that frees up the Director to be all arty.  The AD will organise and arrange a daily shooting schedule, assembling extras and props.  They would also have broken down the script, isolating out all the separate elements before shooting starts.

     The heli insertion scene was plotted and drawn by Ridley, then blocked out using model helicopters and cars before being filmed, as it was a complex scene to shoot.  Art!

     The helicopter pilots were briefed as if going on a real military insertion and were trusted enough to be in charge once they took to the air, their flight being complicated by the camera helicopter hovering over them all.  Tel was also liaising with the Moroccan police, who had evacuated the whole area of some 400 locals, because with multiple helicopters landing or taking off there's a lot of rotors churning.  You don't want anyone accidentally stumbling into a spinning blade or a speeding car.  To quote Tel: "Riley does not risk people."  Art!

     The DVD skips from one perspective to another.  One thing Tel didn't cover or mention is about the rapelling or 'fast-roping' down from the helicopters, done by stuntmen one presumes, as training actors to do this would be verrrrry dicey.  he also informed that the crew needed Formula One radio headsets to communicate with each other, since helicopters are INCREDIBLY LOUD. With them sitting in the air 50 feet up it was impossible for the cast or crew to hear anything at all.  Art!

     Apologies for the blurriness, this was only up for a second and I shot it on reflex, just to have a clapperboard illo.  Art!

     This is one of the shots where the crew needed to use their F1 headsets, because the helo is only thirty feet above street level.  One suspects that they were also wearing goggles because those streets are unpaved and unmetalled and the rotors throw up an enormous amount of dust and debris.

     So, there you have a glimpse of what an Assistant Director does, and you're welcome.

      

More Gentle Shoeing

As proof that Fat Caligula is really going gaga, I refer you to the above mention of rapelling, the rapid insertion technique that means helicopters do not land and become vulnerable.  Art!

     It's been in the news of late as South Canadian soldiery rappelled onto sundry Ruffian oil tankers.  Guess who watched one of these video clips?  That's right, the Senile Sepia Sackbut, who has now expressed an opinion that he'd like to try it himself.

     Word fail me.  

     The reason it looks easy is because the people doing it are young, fit, trained and have done it dozens and dozens of times.  A morbidly-obese 79 year old trying it?  A man who has to use a golf buggy to travel more than 50 yards?

     Of course - obviously! - J D Vance will be well up for Donold attempting a 100-foot rappell onto the White House lawn.  Art!

     This hideously unflattering photo is from 'Canada Hates Trump' over on Twitter and it's so ghastly I Bookmarked it.  You'd better believe it's going to get used in future.  Art!

     Well, BOOH, if you pancake into the rosebeds from 100 feet up, you will most certainly become thinner.

You Have To Be Joking

As in 'This is so funny you'll die laughing.'  Or just die.  Art!

    Back in the Fifties, Lorillard were big on their brand-new 'Kent' cigarette filter, 'Micronite', lying about how it made smoking so much safer and healthier.  What was the secret ingredient in their innovative filter?

     Asbestos.

     The Kent brand was sold for four years and by the end of 1954 Lorillard had been advised that smokers were inhaling asbestos.  They didn't remove the tainted filters until 1956 and by the Nineties were being sued by smokers who now had asbestosis, on top of smoking-related illnesses.  

Back To ' Charley's War'

Yes, back to Pat Mills and Joe Colquohoun and young Charley Bourne, suffering in the trenches of the Western Front in the fag-end of the Somme campaign.  Art!

     This is Charley doing a bit of No-Man's Land 'fishing' with a hook and wire, an activity Conrad has never read about in any memoir or history of the First Unpleasantness.   Pat Mills insists British soldiers did it, and that there was a bit of censorship involved, as originally Charley was casting for rats. The editor considered this too offensive, so it was toned down a bit.  One of the other things you might reel in from NML was bits of rotting corpse, as not all bodies were recovered - why else do you think there were rats?  Also, Conrad is unsure exactly what you'd do with a rat if you hauled one in on the end of your hook.  It would be quite cross and unlikely to make a good pet.  Art!

     It's Sergeant Tozer's job to call out the order to open fire, which seems to be awfully close to Conrad, too.  Allowing the Hun to get that close invites grenades in your trench.  Although, somewhat ghoulishly, at that range a bullet is quite likely to pass through it's first victim and hit someone else.

     Note also Joe's spot-on depiction of British infantry accoutrements, and the box full of spare Lewis gun drum magazines, and the much-prized sheepskin overcoat the Lewis gunner is sporting.

     Pat included this scene as he was well aware of the Teutons making endless counter-attacks during the Somme campaign; I seem to recall John Terraine counting at least three hundred of them.

Finally -

Going with a Biercism again to hit the Word Count.

"Refinement, n: drinking whisky out of a champagne glass."