3-14-25

I don’t know about you…..but being a child of the 80’s there are certain things that

just became generational icons…..the 80’s for me were Ronald Reagan, Pac Man,

and seeing Van Halen live in ’81……it was big hair, and big bands…..it was

cruising SE Huntsville in my ’68 Mustang with Journey’s Escape album playing

on an a near endless loop……the 80’s were hanging out at the Mall when I wasn’t

working at the Mall…….it was High School football games, prom dates, and

hating Algebra……every one of us could see ourselves in one of the characters in

The Breakfast Club……the 80’s were just cool……the 80’s were the era of growth

and pride in who we were as a nation…..we were coming out of the Carter era and

things were already feeling different…..the man in the White House was a real

leader who really led……and the movies were about things that we could really

get into……there were Top Gun, Iron Eagle, First Blood, Uncommon Valor, An

Officer and a Gentleman, and perhaps the galvanizing classic of a generation the

movie that every High School guy wanted to be a part of …….drum roll

please……Red Dawn……

I went to basic training as a cadet in 1985……Fort Knox Kentucky……it was my

first foray into anything military……so I plussed myself up before I went……and

one of the things I did was watch Red Dawn……that movie had everything…..it

was red, white and blue, hard pressed, overcoming odds, courage under fire, stare

down your enemies ‘Merica!......

"Red Dawn" premiered on August 10, 1984, and stars Patrick Swayze, Jennifer

Grey, Charlie Sheen, C. Thomas Howell, Lea Thompson and Powers

Boothe…..and a host of teen stars from the day played High School students from

a small Colorado town when the Soviets invaded the US and they took to the

hills…..they had no idea what to do, but they knew how to survive……and along

the way they accidentally became guerilla fighters……terrorizing the Soviet

occupiers…..raiding supplies…..it was Robin Hood, Green Berets and Key Club

all wrapped up in one fell swoop…..and everything they did, every Russian vehicle

they blew up, they painted the name of their high school mascot on

it……Wolverines!.......there was one adult who joined them….a fighter pilot

named Lt. Colonel Andy Tanner played by Powers Boothe who was shot down and

found by the Wolverines ….he was asked by one of the kids how he got shot

down….he said, “it was five to one. I got four.”…….

At one point he described the big picture of the war….he told them about nuclear

strikes that took out DC….Soviet paratroopers who came in an jumped into the

Rockies…..he said, and I quote……

“Infiltrators came up illegal from Mexico. Cubans mostly. They managed to

infiltrate SAC bases in the Midwest, several down in Texas and wreaked a

hell of a lot of havoc, I'm here to tell you. They opened up the door down

here, and the whole Cuban and Nicaraguan and Latin American armies come

walking right through, rolled right up here through the Great Plains……

Cheyenne, Wyoming... across to Kansas. We held them at the Rockies and the

Mississippi River. Anyway, the Russians reinforced with 60 divisions. Sent

three whole army groups across the Bering Strait into Alaska, cut the

pipeline, came down across Canada to link up here in the middle, but we

stopped their butt cold here. The lines have pretty much stabilized now.”

One of the kids asked, “What about Europe?” to which the Colonel said, “I

guess they figured twice in one century was enough. They're sitting this one

out. All except England, and they won't last very long.”

why did we love that movie so much?......why did it become an instant hit and an

enduring classic?.....I think partly because it felt somewhat real……there was an

enemy that hated us….there was always the threat of the Soviet bear on the

horizon…..the cold war was in its final years but it was still going and America

was in a resurgence on the world stage…..and it also felt like something that we

would want to know would be handled the way the movie portrayed…..the good

folks, who lived normal lives, would rise up and do abnormal things if the times

called for it……and to be honest, every kid in America pictured themselves as a

Wolverine……the movie was also made less than a decade after the fall of Saigon

and just a few years after the Iran Hostage saga…..American pride on the world

stage had been wounded…..Red Dawn was described by Time Magazine as a “Pop

cultural inoculation against the Vietnam Syndrome of self -doubt about the

morality of US foreign policy”…… I don’t know about all that, but I do know it

struck a much needed chord……

And Red Dawn became an instant classic among the U.S. armed forces. Years

later in 2003 after the invasion of Iraq, the mission to capture Saddam

Hussein was codenamed OPERATION RED DAWN, with the target labeled

WOLVERINE I…… Army Captain Geoffrey McMurray, who chose the

name, said “I think all of us in the military have seen Red Dawn.”……

well, I just realized recently when I stumbled across an article about it that we just

had the 40 th anniversary of Red Dawn……the director, John Milius, was one of the

few openly conservative filmmakers in Hollywood……he wanted a movie that

showcased patriotism, a love for the American military and that also warned about

giving up our liberties like speech, and the right to bear arms…..his daughter

recently told Fox News that Hollywood didn’t really like his movie…….

In the Fox interview she was asked why the film struck a chord and has resonated

for more than a generation……she said that a line from the movie where Swayze’s

character was speaking sums up why the movies characters so desperately to

defend America against steep odds. "Because we live here" Swayze said…."That

scene basically means, in her words ‘We have to do this. We have to take care of

the country… This is our responsibility,"she said. "It's like this very American

idea of, Im going to go and I just know in my bones that if somebody were to

invade my land, I would go and protect it in whatever way I could with my high

school friends in a truck."

The film was an instant hit……it made waves…..it drew the attention of patriots

everywhere…..former Reagan Secretary of State Al Haig said, “it captures the

stresses of patriotism, the emotions of love and above all the futility of war.”

But Hollywood didn’t go for it……director John Milius was pretty much

blackballed after that……told that his work was too political and he needed to

calm it all down a notch…..movie critic Roger Ebert blasted it saying the movie

was “corrupt from beginning to end” with a “right wing ideology that the picture

doesn’t deserve”…….what an asinine thing to say!.....the national coalition on

television violence decried it as the most violent movie ever made with an average

of 134 acts of violence in one hour…..well it was about war, soooooo yeah……but

it was supposed to be right wing….it was patriotism…..it was liberty….it was

defending that which is ours from those that would dare try to take it…..and we

loved it and it made the Director John Milius rich…..but he didn’t make many

movies after that…..You may recall hat in 2012 there was a weak attempt to

remake the movie starring Chris Hemsworth…..Milius ‘s daughter says they don’t

acknowledge the remake in her house…..I’m pretty sure that most of America

joins her in that….why mess with perfection?.....why water down the message……

Red Dawn,…..just over 40 years ago…..a classic…..an American classic….a

movie for a generation that made you feel like we might take a lick but we’ll give

back double…..I say make some more like that…..

Wolverines!

And that’s a wrap for the Rightside Way