Sam Mendes To Take On Gulf War Movie 'Jarhead'

[Monday, April 26th, 2004]
Sam Mendes has decided on his next movie will be drama Jarhead, according to Variety.

Based on Anthony Swofford's Persian Gulf-set Marine Corps. memoir. Drawing on his own experiences as a Marine grunt in Vietnam, Broyles wrote a script that studio and producers felt captured Swofford's voice and vivid descriptions of war.

While Mendes has no background in soldiering, he liked the script enough to commit after reading a draft and doing some work on it with Broyles.

"This is new territory to me, but I hadn't spent two days in American suburbia when I directed 'American Beauty,' " Mendes said. "I only knew the script had an unusual and original voice and it was a challenge I wanted to take on.

"This is equal parts black humor, honesty, rage, lyricism, profanity and the mixture of machismo jarhead culture. With the exception of Three Kings, this is a war that has been overlooked but which has a burning relevance to what is happening right now in the Middle East," he added.

To tackle Jarhead, Mendes will have to postpone film adaptations of Stephen Sondheim's musical 'Sweeney Todd' and Khaled Hosseini's novel The Kite Runner.

Shooting is set to begins in the fall.

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