Movies rely wholly on sight and sound. I’m not going to win any big academic awards for saying that, but it’s something I must remind myself of when dealing with a film like Johnny Got His Gun. It’s like when there’s a mass power outage and you realize how much you take electricity for granted: You could make a phone call, but your phone is cordless; you could use your cell phone, but local towers are out; you could get some cash, but all the ATMs are down. I could tell you how to better adapt a story set in the mind of someone who is deaf, dumb, blind, and limbless, but it wouldn’t be a movie.
Yet in 1971 Dalton Trumbo did just that, writing and directing a film version of his tremendous 1939 novel. For the last couple decades it’s been hard to find and known more as the better parts of the music video for “One”, by Metallica, who bought the distribution rights and did absolutely nothing else with them. Just another step on a long path of fucking up since Cliff Burton’s death.
