8th House Scorpions and How NOT to Recycle War Profiteers

In John Cusack’s brilliantly deranged War, Inc., Hilary Duff sticks a live scorpion down her pants, Cusack fights Sir Ben Kingsley in the back of a garbage truck, Dan Aykroyd does a moving portrayal of Dick Cheney on the toilet, and Halliburton-style war profiteers wage the very first American war to be entirely outsourced to a private corporation. Did I mention I love this movie?

I don’t think I’ve ever written so much about one movie before, but when Mr. Cusack cross-posted both of my previous pieces about War, Inc. to his MySpace blog, I made a rash mistake. In a comment, I wrote:

If you are going to keep cross-posting these, I'm going to have to find new angles to use to write about this movie. You know that, right?

Speaking of John Cusack’s movies, why do I suddenly hear the Carpenters on my radio? What if that devious mind keeps cross-posting this stuff? Have I just doomed myself by my word to an eternal damnation of writing about War, Inc. until Halliburton brings about the end times? This could get as scary as, well, Stephen King.

How do I get out of this self-inflicted imaginary obligation to a movie star I’ve never even met? I could fake rabid right wing conversion and write a demonic defense of why what’s good for Halliburton is good for the oil companies and hence, for America, but there are more evil fates than being doomed to write about one movie for eternity, and I dare not go into that dark night. Dick Cheney is one tormented soul I don’t want to find leaping out of the darkness of a chickenhawk bunker to embrace me and invite me on a hunting trip for moose with Sarah Palin.

Right. I’m just going to have to explain what scorpions, garbage trucks, vice presidential shit, and war profiteers have in common. Because that’s a secret I’m fairly sure John Cusack would be horrified to have you know.

Scorpio the scorpion: astrologically, this sign is located in the 8th house of the natural chart. The 8th house rules such mysteries as sex, other people’s money, symbolism, and hidden bunkers in undisclosed locations. Scorpio is ruled by Mars, the God of War, and by Pluto, the God of Death and Transformation.

Let me just say that if you’re a mythological being or even a fictional hitman in a movie, you do not want your daughter kidnapped, taken to an undisclosed location, probably fed pomegranate seeds somewhere along the way, and then taught to put scorpions down her pants. This type of thing tends to make a guy (or gal) want to lay the earth to waste. Best avoided.

Speaking of laying the earth to waste, that’s really what those old miscreants Pluto and Mars wanted in the first place, hence the reason for getting your daughter involved with kinky scorpionic sex. And here’s where the war profiteers come into it, not to mention vice presidential shit.

As Defense Secretary, Mr. Cheney commissioned a study for the U.S. Department of Defense by Brown and Root Services (now Kellogg, Brown and Root), a wholly owned subsidiary of Halliburton. The study recommended that private firms like Halliburton should take over logistical support programs for U.S. military operations around the world. Just two years after he was Secretary of Defense, Cheney stepped through the revolving door linking the Department of Defense with defense contractors and became CEO of Halliburton. Halliburton was the principal beneficiary of Cheney’s privatization efforts for our military’s logistical support and Cheney was paid $44 million for five year's work with them before he slipped back through the revolving door of war profiteering to become Vice-President of the United States. When asked about the money he received from Halliburton, Cheney said. "I tell you that the government had absolutely nothing to do with it."

No wonder Cheney’s bathroom habits are such a strain, as finally revealed by Dan Aykroyd in War, Inc. That is one huge stinking pile he’s trying to pass. Getting back to the 8th house and other people’s money, Cheney is hardly spending his own. U.S. taxpayers, those are YOUR billions going to Halliburton.

Lest we think U.S. war profiteering is Dick Cheney’s invention, however, let’s remember that General Smedley Butler admitted to having made Mexico safe for American oil interests way back in 1914, and that George W. Bush’s family has war profiteering interests going back to at least the 1920s, including dealings with the Nazis in the 1930s, according to the book American Dynasty: Aristocracy, Fortune, and the Politics of Deceit in the House of Bush, written by former Nixon staffer Kevin Phillips.

What, you might ask, does all of this have to do with garbage trucks?

Pluto, one of Scorpio’s rulers, has a morbid fascination with death, decay, and rotting, stinking garbage --- in other words, the Bush administration. And doesn’t this all just make you want to take the trash out?

Fortunately, in the sign of Scorpio, we have the opportunity to do just that on November 4th, when we can all get out and vote, support a transformational regime change, and let in a breath of fresh air. (But then we’ll have to put pressure on Obama to end the war profiteering once and for all.)

When disposing of famous British actors, however, please recycle.

How’s that for a load of “astonishing half-true frontier gibberish,” Ms. Hegalhuzen?

John Cusack explains this all so much better than I do.

John Cusack put my review of War, Inc. on his MySpace blog

I'm so stoked. John Cusack cross-posted my review of his movie War, Inc. from Progressive Blue to his MySpace blog after I sent him the link in a comment. Thanks, John. Just for that, I'm crossposting this like crazy.

Here's the review:

The Flicks Files: War, Inc. (2008)

The best new movie I've seen all year went almost straight to video after playing in a pathetically small number of theaters for a very short time. (Has anybody else noticed that Hollywood has been putting out some real crap this year? I'm not sure this corporate conglomeratization thing is working real well for them.)

The only new movie I've really cared about seeing this year was War, Inc., the bitterly biting satire of Halliburton-style war profiteering, which stars John Cusack, was directed by Joshua Seftel, and written by Mark Leyner & Jeremy Pikser & John Cusack. As might be expected by anyone who has become as cynical as I am in this land of the corporate controlled press, the movie struggled for distribution and promotion for a brief weekend or two in May, then was quickly swept under the red carpet. This, despite an all-star cast that includes Hilary Duff, Marisa Tomei, Joan Cusack, Ben Kingsley, and Dan Aykroyd.

Of course, we wouldn't want to jump to conclusions about the reason the movie "flopped." Maybe it was censored. Maybe it just sucked. At least, that latter explanation was one I was willing to entertain up until the point where I finally saw the movie this afternoon. No, it was censored. And that really pisses me off.

This movie has a great cast and a hilariously absurdist script. It's been said, probably in what little marketing there was of this movie, that it's the spiritual twin to Grosse Pointe Blank, but after seeing it, I felt like it was more a modern day Dr. Strangelove. There was a time in America, and it was not so long ago, when this movie would have been shown widely in the theaters, boycotted by some right-wing groups, and would have generated a storm of controversy in the press. In 2008, you hardly heard it whispered about. And that is much more scary.

Full disclosure here. I wanted this movie to succeed, artistically, even if not at the box office. The issue it discusses is of critical importance. Besides that, I really like John Cusack. I have liked him ever since my sister and I first cracked up laughing during a preview of Better Off Dead when we were in high school. I like him much more now that he's become an outspoken progressive blogger.

I've blogged about this movie before seeing it, which is pretty unusual for me, and I announced ahead of time that I would review it. Yesterday, knowing that I would probably get the DVD in the mail today, I was a little stressed out hoping that my honesty would not force me to give it a bad review. Fortunately, honesty intact, I can say that I loved it.

John Cusack's character in the movie, Hauser, is a corporate hitman for Tamerlane, a fictional Halliburton kind of company. He's sent to do an assassination in a fictional Middle Eastern country called Turaqistan, during the first American war completely outsourced to a private corporation. The movie opens with him doing a shot of pure hot sauce before a hit. This is one tough dude.

To pull off the assassination, he has to pose as the organizer for an American trade show showcasing the benefits of American corporate culture to a Turaqi audience. An inquisitive reporter for The Nation (Marisa Tomei) gets in his way. You get the feeling he might kill her, if he didn't start falling for her. As part of his trade show organizing cover job, he also has to babysit a bratty, oversexed Turaqi pop star (Hilary Duff). Fortunately, his hyper and perky yet menacing secretary (Joan Cusack) is there to help him do his job. It doesn't take too long before we start realizing that Hauser has some growing moral questions about his work.

Forget realism. If you're looking for an intellectual, balanced critique of American policy, you're not going to find it here. This movie makes its point by taking everything to an absurd, yet all too believable extreme. This is a sharp and cutting picture of the ridiculousness of extreme corporatization, where you can have a clandestine meeting in an undisclosed location hidden underneath a Popeye's restaurant.

The improbable relationships between Cusack's hitman, Tomei's progressive journalist, and Duff's pop star were risky. Initially I thought they were not going to work, because they just seemed way too unlikely, but in a few quiet human moments that were a haven in the madness of this movie, those relationships came together and actually became even touching. Hauser seems at times a little too nice to be a hitman, but at those moments, the character has a soul that you wish you could see evident in some of the members of the Bush administration. His capacity to question what he is doing ultimately makes him a sympathetic character.

The people who made this movie took a big risk to make an important point. Progressives will love it for its frank presentation of the huge problem America has with corporations that lobby our government so that they can make money through killing other people. Conservatives will no doubt screech loudly that John Cusack hates America.

At least, that's what I imagine will happen if the movie manages to be seen on DVD by enough people to even become a subject of discussion. See the movie, then go out and show it to others. This movie is a teaching opportunity, as Democratic congressional candidate Alan Grayson recognized while running in Florida's 8th District. Spread the word.

War, Inc. is rated R for some bad language, a little sexy stuff, and some pretty graphic violence. Given the subject matter, the violence makes sense, but be forewarned.

Watch the trailer:



War, Inc. receives the coveted Edge of My Seat rating in the black cat rating system, the highest rating possible.

Looking forward to War, Inc.

I've blogged about War, Inc. before. This is the satire of war profiteering starring John Cusack, Joan Cusack, Marisa Tomei, Hillary Duff, Dan Ackroyd, and Ben Kingsley, which I had been looking forward to earlier this year. I never got to see it, however, because it never made it out of a few cities in its theatrical release.

I tend to suspect it got effectively censored by corporate movie distribution due to the political message.

With a cast like that, it seems illogical that the movie wouldn't get wide distribution, even if it was truly bad. I don't know about the quality, because I still haven't seen it. The preview looks very funny.

Anyway, War, Inc. comes out on DVD tomorrow, Tuesday, Oct. 14th. I plan to review it later this week, so check back for the review. Probably the review will go up on Progressive Blue first.

And yes, I've been excited about this movie, because it's got a message I agree with and believe is important, but that doesn't mean I've come to a conclusion about whether it's a good movie before seeing it. I'll review it honestly, as I always try to do. Expect the review on Thursday or Friday. Unfortunately, I pre-ordered it from Amazon, and I don't think the shipment is getting here in time for me to do it earlier than that.