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Desert Rats

Recording:

"You have a choice, Tom: you can either win the Battle of Britain as Billy Fiske or you can win the Battle of El Alamein as Jasper Maskelyne.

Whatever choice you make, Tom, this will be your finest hour.

Should you, or any member of your paramount force, be caught out , the secretary will disavow all knowledge of your actions.

This tape will self-destruct in five seconds."

What's the latest with the Paramount film ?

Tom Cruise will star;Tom Cruise won't star;

Peter Weir will direct; Peter Weir won't direct.

To be released in 2003, 2004, 2005...

i.e., still in pre-production hell.

When news first broke about the Tom Cruise / Paramount production of the War Magician in early 2001, my immediate thoughts were: Cruise is miscast. He couldn't convince as an Englishman. Physically, he doesn't match Jasper. He's too short. And he lacks gravitas as well as stature.

Then I despaired when I considered the Hollywood version of war.

I've painfully sat through recent falsifications of the record - such as U-571 , a shameless submarine movie which gives America the credit for retrieving the enigma code machine from an enemy U-boat.

Indeed, I still haven't recovered from watching Sylvester Stallone play a goalkeeper in Escape to Victory. His handling technique was completely idiotic, though at least it matched his acting.

As a child, I still remember the controversy generated by the American TV series 'The Desert Rats' which had American heros winning the desert campaign. These beloved thespians are shown in the photo above.

I'm sure a very entertaining movie could be made, based on Fisher's book, but it would have only a loose connection with the truth.

There actually is an excellent forgotten movie starring Michael Caine and Nigel Davenport called Play Dirty (1969). It is set in the North African campaign and deals with deception, betrayal, and fakery. Melvyn Bragg shaped the screenplay.

Strangely, Caine himself hardly mentions this movie in his autobiography. He ended up hating it because of the awful filming conditions. In my opinion, "Play Dirty" is a Caine classic up there with 'Get Carter' and "Too Late the Hero".

American film festivals are becoming more aware of it. Here's a sharp description from the Siskel Film Centre, Chicago:

"One of the most thoroughly nihilistic war films ever made, PLAY DIRTY stands above the many scum-on-a-mission movies that followed THE DIRTY DOZEN (1967) and possibly even surpasses its prototype. A green captain (Caine) and a hard-ass veteran (Davenport) lead a group of sleazy convicts across North Africa to blow up a key oil depot. Film-noir veteran de Toth (PITFALL, RAMROD) directed with his customary hard-edged style and a visceral feeling for the desert locations, shaping the film into a fools’ quest through a harsh landscape with a devastatingly cynical punch line at the end. "

In the meantime, this is the kind of dire material you'll find on the Web publicising the new Paramount film:

The War Magician

Based on a true World War II story, the film is about Jasper Maskelyne, a handsome, famous British stage magician who believed he could use his sleight-of-hand skills to help fight the Germans. He went on to create one of the oddest yet most effective units in the British Army during WWII, elevating camouflage from a casual art to a major weapon. Among his amazing accomplishments: making the Suez Canal disappear, moving the Alexandria Harbor, and creating a phantom army before the battle of El Alamein.

January 19th, 2001

In addition to the book rights, Paramount also acquired a treatment for the project from writers Nancy Hersage and Shirley Tallman for Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner to produce through their Paramount-based C/W Prods. with Colleen Camp and Tony Eldridge. A writer has not yet been hired to adapt the screenplay, but sources said the studio will fast-track the project ...

April 9th, 2003

Weir is being enlisted to direct "The War Magician," the Peter Buchman -scripted story of magician-turned-war hero Jasper Maskelyne. Drawn from the David Fisher book, "The War Magician" tells the story of a patriotic British stage magician who volunteered his illusionist abilities to help battle the Nazis. After proving his potential value to skeptical commanders, Maskelyne and a few cohorts were sent to North Africa, where British troops were being pounded by Gen. Rommel.

According to the book, Maskelyne helped halt Rommel's charge through a campaign of deception. He camouflaged a key British-occupied harbor by creating a bogus one that bore the brunt of nightly bombing raids; shielded troops in the Suez Canal through a system of anti-aircraft searchlights and mirrors that blinded Nazi pilots; and camouflaged British weaponry and used props to give the appearance of a stronger fighting force.

Cruise and Wagner set the book up several years ago as a potential star vehicle for Cruise, but he plans to limit himself to producer at this point. Weir, who directed the World War I pic "Gallipoli," was intrigued by the latest draft by scribe Buchman, who scripted "Jurassic Park 3" and the version of "Alexander the Great" which IEG bought in a seven figure deal.

April 11th, 2004

The Independent on Sunday ran an article claiming that Tom Cruise will star in a film called "The Few" about real-life American hero Billy Fiske who fought in the Battle of Britain . It will be directed by Michael Mann, responsible for the aerophallic hit movie Top Gun.

I thought , in pure MacEnroe style, you can't be serious.! The article is dated April 11th. A belated April Fool's joke? Did they mean 'Billy the Fish" the cartoon character from VIZ comic?

Variety describes the film in dramatic terms: "In 1940, expert German fighters had decimated the Royal Air Force to the point that there weren't enough pilots left to fly the Spitfire planes sitting idly in the hangars. Unable to rouse the US into action, a desperate Winston Churchill hatched a covert effort to recruit civilian American pilots to join the RAF."

To their credit, the Independent interviewed Bill Bond, from the Battle of Britain Historical Society.

Bill Bond responded: "It's hilarious. Totally wrong. The whole bloody lot. They flew Hurricanes for a start. Recruited by Churchill? Crap. What a load of bloody rubbish. We did have a pilot shortage but not to that extent."

I admire Bill's brave and blunt stance.

Here is further uncritical publicity about the War Magician movie written by another rent-a-hack:

Hollywood honours hero magician by Steve Cunningham

THE unsung hero who moved Alexandria, hid the Suez Canal and created armies out of thin air will be honoured by Hollywood.

The amazing story of Jasper Maskelyne is to be told in a film starring Tom Cruise.  Many studios have been considering filming The War Magician, David Fisher's 1983 book about his exploits.

Maskelyne's ability to 'magic' armies and battleships out of thin air and create diversions with smoke and mirrors saved thousands of lives in the Second World War.

 Maskelyne, grandson of magician and typewriter-inventor John Nevil Maskelyne, amazed music hall audiences with his illusions. When war broke out, he decided to mobilise the world of magic against Hitler.

Army chief Lord Gort was sceptical, until Maskelyne made a German warship appear in the Thames, using mirrors and a scale model. He was put in charge of the Royal Engineers Camouflage Corps and, with a team of designers, known as the Magic Gang, was sent to Egypt.

 Soon, he was asked for ways of protecting the Suez Canal from German bombs.

He took his inspiration from the searchlights at anti-aircraft batteries along the 100-mile waterway. If enough searchlights were installed along the canal, Maskelyne thought, a curtain of bright illumination could be created. German airmen trying to see through that intense light would find it impossible to see the canal in their sights.

Searchlights were in short supply, so Maskelyne and his gang magnified the power of each light by attaching tin reflectors and then - with the aid of the Royal Engineers - altered the lights so that they would spin, creating dazzling cartwheels of light.

A chain of 21 of these searchlights was put along the length of the canal and despite the Luftwaffe's many missions, the canal remained hidden.

Maskelyne's finest hour came in 1942, when he was told to convince Field Marshal Erwin Rommel that the Eighth Army was in the south of the Egyptian desert and that an attack would begin there, rather than the north.

 A brass hat hold him: 'You must conceal 150,000 men with 1,000 guns and tanks and the Germans must not know anything about it. You can't do it, of course, but you've bloody well got to.'

 Dummy tanks were made and model men created to depict a huge encampment in the south.

 The Allies also knew Alexandria harbour was a strategic target for the Luftwaffe bombers and wanted Maskelyne to hide it. Instead he built a duplicate harbour three miles away. The Nazis obligingly bombed it.

Despite his remarkable feats, magic shows went abruptly out of fashion after the war and Maskelyne moved to Kenya to be a farmer. He died there, aged 71.

October 13th,2004

Peter Weir taped an interview with Alistair Maskelyne c. six weeks ago. Alistair gave him a copy of my collected articles. A couple of weeks later Peter Weir rang him back to say he was withdrawing from the War Magician film. According to Alistair, Weir said he couldn't make a film that he did not believe in. He praised my articles and said that they came closest to the truth about Jasper Maskelyne.

I wonder if the movie will be shelved? Or will some new director take over the planning? I assume a great deal of money has already been sunk into the project.

Peter Weir is working on "Pattern Recognition", a sci-fi movie based on the novel by William Gibson.

I loved one particular adjective from Gibson's book:

"haute nerd"

October 16th, 2004

"Now, this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning."

Winston Churchill, November 1942.

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