originally published — June 2008

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Dissecting Rambo

David Morrell Discusses The Icon He Created.

By Elaine Bergstrom

[Rambo] is a logical extension of what I was writing about. We've got to go back to the allegory of First Blood, both sides in the polarization of America failed. And the winner is Col. Sam Trautman, who is deliberately named Sam for Uncle Sam, who is the symbol of military industrial complex Eisenhower talked about. And the system that created Rambo kills him at the end. And the only one left standing is Trautman, who was quite different from the Trautman portrayed by the wonderful Richard Crenna.

In addition to some of these lines I couldn't believe I was hearing in a Rambo film, I was rather startled at the end ... when the crawl starts as he's walking down to his father's ranch, which was a really startling and beautiful scene -- and my wife gasped when she saw this -- the second item you see is "From the novel First Blood by David Morrell." And I had the feeling that Sly was sort of nodding to the source material, and where it had led him to go.

One thing that was interesting in this movie was the length. It seemed so short, especially in an era of two-plus-hour blockbusters.

The two guys who ran Carolco, Andy Vajna and Mario Kassar ... looked at a global market. So they said, "We don't want Rambo to talk much because we have to pay for the translations, and more than that, too often the translations are wrong and they're laughable." So they wanted a pure film with very little dialogue. In addition, they said, "We want the movie to be in the range of 95 minutes so that the audience can be in and out of the theater within two hours, so you can get an extra showing per screen." So the new company [for Rambo] was following the Carolco model in that. But like you, I agree that movie is too short.

One of the things Sly and I talked about a few years ago, was that he wanted to make his version of a Sam Peckinpah movie. Peckinpah happens to be the American filmmaker, along with Alfred Hitchcock, who had the most influence on me. Sly said he wanted to have the violence have this extreme quality to show the haunting impact it has on the character. When I saw the film and Sly is up there behind that huge machine gun and he gets wounded, and he is sort of hanging on by one arm, and he gets up and braces himself and starts shooting some more, that's right from the climax of The Wild Bunch. ... It's a little long for my taste, but I can understand why the battle does go on so long -- because we're saying, "Enough already!" but he can't get enough of it. And then he stands there and sees all this pain and suffering and it's sort of washing over him and suddenly we cut and he's in the United States. It indicates the catharsis he's gone through. He's come out the other side and he is now going to try to redeem his life. This is Sly again using metaphor rather than dialogue.

But we needed another five minutes or so to show the poor farmers being beaten in the poppy fields, and being beaten as they make the heroin and how the money is being exchanged.

So I give it three stars out of four ... this maybe could have been a three-and-a-half-star movie with a little bit more finessing. They know my opinions, they read my interviews and they are very pleased with what I say about the film. Maybe on the DVD there will be something to correct it.

Can you envision another Rambo film?

There is one in the works.

When you saw "First Blood," did Stallone meet the notion of what you thought Rambo would look like?

I thought he would be more of a hippie, with long hair and a long beard. But I don't visualize characters; I let audiences fill that in. ... But between '72 when the novel was written and '82 when the film came out, the world had changed in terms of styles. And when Brian Dennehy says, "We don't like guys that look like you come into our town," the audiences didn't get it. They asked, "What's the matter with how he looks?" So there was a danger that the movie was dated ... but people got over that and went with the character.

What are you working on at present?

A six-part Captain America comic. Marvel had come to me and said it might be fun for the creator of Rambo to do Captain America. And I said I would do it but that I needed the freedom to approach the character in a realistic fashion, that is to say we will grant the superhero status of the character, but that aside, he will be a real human being. The story will take place in Afghanistan, and there were will be a lot of emotion in it as well as action. It will deal with the theme of the burden of being a superhero in today's troubled world, especially if you are a superhero named after the United States. It's a six-part version and will be out in hardback in July along with a portion of the film script [the film is slated to come out in 2009] and an essay on what it was like to work on this.

In the fall, I have a book coming out that I am just so pleased about. It's called The Spy Who Came for Christmas. It's my first spy novel since 1996 [and is] set in Santa Fe where I live. It takes place on Christmas Eve.

Rambo airs June 28 on Pay Per View and Pay Per View HD. The film has, not surprisingly, been banned in Myanmar, where it has become a rallying point for the Karen people. Stallone has challenged the military junta to let him come and tour the country, if they have nothing to hide.

For more information on David Morrell, visit his website davidmorrell.net

originally published — June 2008

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