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Connecting Actors and Soldiers
Here’s a surprise that popped up in YouTube’s recommended videos: Adam Driver (aka Kylo Ren) talking about his transition from United States Marine to Hollywood actor. Driver’s speech is only 9 minutes (half the video) and impressive in more ways than one. In a rapid-fire presentation, he touches on differences between military life and civilian life while also noting similarities between soldiering and acting.
Like all actors these days, it seems, Driver sponsors an organization. But his is a strange one: Arts in the Armed Forces. The basic mission statement is ho-hum. But the explication, like similar statements in Driver’s speech, is fascinating:
[….] Importantly, after each of AITAF’s performances, the actors interact with the audience through a question and answer session as well as a more informal mingling period.
The goal is not simply to provide an enjoyable evening, but to use the powerfully emotional shared experience of live theater to open up conversations capable of bridging the divides between military and civilian, service member and family member, the world of the arts and the world of practical action.
I’m sure there are benefits for both sides of that equation. But it’s especially nice to know that a few more actors are being exposed to “the world of practical action.” @garymcvey is absolutely right that conservatives should do more writing and acting, less complaining about others who do. But this is helpful too.
Driver’s speech also highlights a vital ingredient in so many success stories, both civilian and militant: drive. Victory is achieved by those who will accept nothing less.
Published in Culture
This is a terrific clip and an amazing story, Aaron. Thanks for posting it. I’ve seen Drew Carey speak about his service experience and I hope more actors like Adam Driver will continue to emerge from genuinely, honest-to-goodness diverse backgrounds of life experience and thought.
Generally speaking, in Hollywood the most Left branch is screenwriting. The actors do have some of the biggest Lefties, and some of the most colorful outsized personalities around, but there’s an important distinction that keeps most of the acting branch more mainstream than writers or other intellectuals: unlike most other workplaces in America, actors are unabashedly judged on the best of looks, which come from everywhere.
Forty-plus years ago, pretty much every guy in the movies, in front of or behind the camera, had been in the military because most men had been in the military, period.
Have seen this before…It’s AWESOME!
Thanks for that. The Batman performance was also moving, if you can get all the way to the end of it.
“Voluntold.”
Hearing that word again made me smile. :)
Somebody ought to translate this for our civilian friends.
Is it anything like being made an offer you can’t refuse? (Makes me smile, too.)
In the words of Slick Willy Clinton, “Close but no cigar.”
Can’t blame a gal for trying…Can you? (-: [Mail call, pls/ty]
Update: Research tells me that the offer that will brook no refusal involves performance of an unpleasant, unrewarding, non-transferable , non-buck-passable task. Closer, this time, ST?
Been there, done that. In hind sight I can smile.
I am not a big fan of Star Wars. I am a huge fan of the USMC. Glad to see this Lance Corporal making the best of the life skills honed, shared and honored by the Corps.
Maybe I will buy a ticket to the next Star Wars movie……..eventually.
Nanda, I volunteer my kids, Army-style, for unpleasant tasks all the time. Builds character and team work while exercising the obedience muscle. Good deal…
I love how Driver explains how the plays he was acting as a student revealed himself to him because they were articulating important human truths that had nothing and yet everything to do with being a soldier.
Thanks Aaron!
Close. It’s basically what it sounds like: An officer or an NCO comes to a guy and says, “I need a volunteer. How ’bout you?”
I really liked Driver in a supporting role in Ben Stiller’s While We’re Young. He’s not just Kylo Ren…
I always got loaned out as a kid. Even as an adult, one must be careful when neighbors stop by family gatherings.
One more Driver comment: He is in a Martin Scorsese movie coming out, Silence, based on a novel of the same name by Shusaku Endo.
I’ve read the book and it is extremely powerful. I will see this movie.
The Silence movie does look really interesting–also, it’s the second impressive outing for young actor & former layabout Andrew Garfield, after Hacksaw ridge. The kid has acting skills…
Now, Mr. Adam Driver also acted in this year’s Midnight special, one of the two Jeff Nichols movies to come out this year, Loving being the other–about the best name for a court case in US history, Loving v. Virginia, the anti-miscegenation ruling of ’67. I recommend both & will review the latter presently.
Now, as for the project, this looks like it’s going to do some good. Maybe something great comes of it. The least we can do is give it the publicity of putting this on the Main Feed.
Mr. Miller, I’d be grateful if you found the time to say a bit more about it.
Folks, we’re at 8 votes here–4 more & we can share with the world a lovely Christmas moment, an ex-Marine talking about bringing acting to servicemen. Let’s do it, folks!
My kids learned about being voluntold at their school (a Hillsdale charter). Oorah!
Great talk. I have only seen him in Force Awakens, and I liked him in the movie. Have no other frame of reference, but yeah -sounds like an interesting program.
I enjoyed the monologue afterwards, though I confess I have no idea what it means.
Thanks for posting this Aaron. Loved every minute. Made me want to give a Marine a hug … and Batman too.
It means the Hispanic boy is thinking of heroism as a way to get his father to act like a father-
Could you maybe elaborate on that?
There are two kinds of crime in the story. One of them is a kind of petty crime, really more of a sin than a crime–an old loser who goes boozing & whoring. Or maybe on Ricochet we should say negotiating the affection of a lady of negotiable affection?
Then there’s another kind of crime–real crime, theft, murder.
These somehow correspond to the psychological states of father & son.
Heroism may be the only thing that answers to that psychological state without causing a descent into the abyss.
What the boy hopes for something from heroism, that it could get him his father back.
@aaronmiller
I marked this post the moment I saw it, because I was so intrigued by it. Thank you so much for sharing this. I enjoyed both Adam’s tsk and the monologue.
Does the hug thing include former Marines? If so, I will try to make myself available at your earliest convenience.
I thought there were no “former” Marines? I’d give you a hug right now if I could. Wrap your arms all the way around yourself, good, now squeeze tight and say to yourself, This is a hug from Mama Toad.
Very nice and comforting hug – thanks. I was taught that there is no such thing as an ex-Marine, but there are former Marines. Maybe that has changed but if so, I did not get the memo.
TempTime?