"Operation Mincemeat"

[Aqua Letifer]

[George K]

@george-k said in "Operation Mincemeat":

If there were ever a true story designed to be a movie, it's Operation Mincemeat.

Link to video

Looks very very Hollywood.

That's not to say it'll be bad, but I'm skeptical.

[George K]

On Netflix.

Guess what I'm doing tomorrow.

[Mik]

Yeah, maybe not. We just watched half of this somnolent snooze fest. Too bad, good cast. We turned away.

[George K]

@Mik said in "Operation Mincemeat":

Yeah, maybe not. We just watched half of this somnolent snooze fest. Too bad, good cast. We turned away.

Damn.

One of the best stories of WWII. macIntyres book was great.

They fucked it up? Really???

[Mik]

It became a wartime soap opera. The dialogue was tedious.

[Aqua Letifer]

@George-K @Mik you guys see George Clooney's Catch-22 miniseries? I'm almost through it now. Some observations:

• A hell of a lot closer than the 1970 movie.
• Still, the book was about 98% absurdist. The show? About 50. Although I don't know how you could ever make a truly faithful adaptation in a film format that people would actually want to watch.
• I really enjoyed some of the ways the show interpreted parts of the book. Direct quotes were injected into much of the dialogue, but in appropriate places. Also, whenever Milo's explaining how the syndicate actually works, a plane flies by overhead so you don't actually get to hear it. Hilarious.

If you've never read the book and don't give much of a crap, it's still a pretty good WWII thing to watch.

[jon-nyc]

George - there already was a film.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was

[Doctor Phibes]

@jon-nyc said in "Operation Mincemeat":

George - there already was a film.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was

That's really weird - just yesterday I listened to the Goon Show parody of this from 1956 on my drive to work with Peter Sellers and Spike Milligan on BBC sounds.

It contains the immortal line:

"You're a spy"
"I'm a shepherd!"
"You're a shepherd spy!"

Incidentally, for lovers of British comedy, the radio show The Goon Show was a huge influence on Monty Python, and is really where Peter Sellers became well known in the UK. It still makes me laugh now, it is frequently very surreal.

[George K]

@jon-nyc said in "Operation Mincemeat":

George - there already was a film.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Man_Who_Never_Was

Yup. I knew that.

[George K]

I read MacIntyre's book a long time ago - 15 years? - so many of the details are just a hazy memory. But...

I watched about 45 minutes of the movie.

First of all I hate when TV shows and Movies go with "Six months earlier..." Just tell the damn story. I don't need melodramatic flash-forwards to hook me into the story.

Secondly the role of Ian Fleming is WAY overstated in the beginning of the movie. His participation was really minor.

Third, there's little description of how the plot was really hatched. This was a major part of the book, and is just glossed over in the beginning of the movie.

As much as I enjoy the female lead (Mary McDonald - she was great in "Boardwalk Empire"), her role in the story was very minor. I guess a war story about spies and submarines during WWII needed to have menstruating uterus-possessing female persons because of diversity. After all, it's their strength.

Lastly, the book makes a huge deal about how the to serve as bait was chosen. All the false starts, all the decisions, were hugely important. The movie makes it look like they just stumbled on it. Disappointment.

I need to read this book again - Macintyre is great.