Benjamin McKenzie - Johnny Got His Gun#2 (Joe Bonham) The body of war. The heart of a man.

**LoveBEN** · 11-03-2008, 12:41 PM

I left the same title because we didn’t use this one for too long

Johnny Got His Gun

The story of a young American soldier hit by an artillery shell on the last day of the First World War. The film takes place in the mind of a quadruple amputee who has also lost his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Regaining consciousness, 20 year-old Joe Bonham slowly discovers that while his brain is healthy and able to reason, the rest of his body is irreparably shattered, leaving him forever trapped within the confines of his own imagination. He struggles valiantly to find some way to communicate with the outside world. Tapping his head in Morse code he breaks through and pleads with his caretakers to be put on display as a living example of the cost of war.

Info from IMDB

"The film will have a limited distribution this fall to coincide with the upcoming general election. It is anticipated that the movie will screen at art house cinemas in selected major cities. The release dates & cities will be posted on this website as they become available. It is also anticipated that the DVD version of the film will be available before the end of year".

Movie site:Johnny Got His Gun the movie

Poster:

Movie stills:

On the set:

**LoveBEN** · 11-03-2008, 12:43 PM

From the last thread:

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoveBEN (View Post)

^It lok great! Thank you for bringing it over Hanna

Also brining this over from the news thread:

More Johnny Got His Gun reviews:

From: Hollywood and Fine

This critic, (Marshall Fine) is the chairman of the New York Film Critics Circle.

Quote:

Johnny Got His Gun’: Solo power

It’s never the wrong time for an anti-war film – and the timing seems perfect for Rowan Joseph’s unique and powerful new version of Dalton Trumbo’s “Johnny Got His Gun.”

Joseph, a theater director, has taken a one-man stage version of Trumbo’s novel – which had a legendary and short-lived off-Broadway run by Jeff Daniels in 1982 – and recreated it on a simple set with a single actor. His cast consists of Ben McKenzie, who completely sheds “The O.C.” to play a World War I doughboy caught in a hellish situation.

Simply put, he’s a living corpse: Hit by a shell on the last day of the War to End All Wars, he has been saved by doctors, surviving without arms, legs, eyes, hearing or the ability to speak. He is a doorstop of a human being, a brain trapped in an immobile lump of flesh, kept alive by tubes in a hospital bed.

Trumbo himself directed a film version in 1971 that was much more literal and viscerally horrifying. Trumbo was one of the legendary Hollywood 10, a screenwriter who served jail time for contempt of Congress for refusing to testify during House Un-American Activities hearings about communists in Hollywood. (Yet somehow Karl Rove, Harriet Miers and others thumb their noses at Congressional subpoenas with impunity.)

But Joseph’s version, while packing the same emotional power, is a more poetic, more imaginative version. Working on a bare stage decorated only with a chair and a plain wooden bench (and a few strings of lights), McKenzie conveys a mind that is alarmingly alive, trapped in a nightmare. He shows how we avoid reality by escaping into memory – and how a resourceful, vital young man can learn to grab a tiny measure of control over his existence: to rejoin the world, if only by figuring out how to tell time based on the schedule of nurses and by the feeling of the sun’s heat on a small, uncovered patch of skin on his neck.

When he makes that discovery, it is a moment of triumph that is genuinely moving – both for the accomplishment and for the audience’s realization of just how small a victory this is. By taking control of time, he has sentenced himself to an awareness of how long the rest of his life will truly be.

Using only lighting, camera angles and McKenzie’s full-bodied performance, Joseph blends horror and hopefulness and a muscular anti-war message. The particular conflict it depicts may have occurred almost a century ago but the message – that war kills young men, while sparing those who put them in harm’s way – remains current and vital.

Hollywood and Fine Reviews Blog Archive ‘Johnny Got His Gun’: Solo power

From "The L magazine":

Quote:

Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun

Johnny Got His Gun is a war film — certainly, in many ways a powerful one — but it is also something of an oddity, falling outside the typical purview of the genre. A filmic adaptation of the 1982 Off-Broadway play by the same name, (itself being an adaptation of Dalton Trumbo’s novel, which was published in 1939), Johnny puts viewers into the mind of Joe Bonham (Benjamin McKenzie), who ships off to the Great War as the prototypical American boy of yesteryear and returns, isolated and distraught, to a purgatory of the evilest kind: one he can never truly escape from.

Joe, we quickly learn, should have died on the final day of the First World War, when an artillery shell ripped through his body, leaving him a quadriplegic and a deaf-mute. In the world at large, Joe lies on a bed in an English hospital. But like Joe, the hospital — which is grounded in a tangible world — is a place we are not privy to. What we do see, what we only see for the entire drama, is a dark and box-like stage, bereft of everything except for a bench and a high-backed chair.

McKenzie performs admirably on stage, convincingly relating the schizophrenic shifts of Joe’s psyche through his movement, demeanor, and speech, and yet one cannot help but wonder how different everything would have been if someone had simply stuck a camcorder in an empty theater and returned to pick it up an hour and twenty minutes later. There are very few flourishes a director can employ in a movie where the protagonist cannot, for the most part, interface with the physical world.

Johnny gets off its anti-war agenda just fine, but Chicago it is not: it’s a drama that most will agree is better suited for the stage.

The L Magazine, New York City's Local Event Guide

Someone that saw the movie and bloged about it:

Quote:

You should see this movie!

I saw an amazing movie last weekend, Johnny Got His Gun. It's based on a play and a book of the same name, about a soldier who was wounded horribly in World War I. The way it was done was spectacular! It's only star was the heartthrob from the OC, and man could he act!

The set was a small room, with only a chair, a bench and the main character. You never see his mutilated body or the events surrounding him. Instead you look inside of his mind as he is being saved, treated and forgotten. His narrative paints a vivid picture of his life before and after the war, especially as he trys to cope with not being able to communicate and experience the world as he once used to.

Sadly, it's not playing in many theaters, so if you want to see the movie you have to seek it out.

The Road Less Traveled: You should see this movie!

Also the Hollywood Reporter review has been posted on this site:

Film Review: Johnny Got His Gun

QUAD Cinema E-news:

Quote:

Opening today at the QUAD is NOT A FILM FOR EVERYONE. The film, DALTON TRUMBO'S JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN, is the heroic story of a seriously injured American soldier who had to have his arms and legs amputated. His struggle to survive and his inspiring accomplishments are vividly documented in this film.

Here's a brief synopsis and showtimes:

DALTON TRUMBO'S JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN: The film takes place in the mind of an American soldier hit by an artillery shell on the last day of WWI. He is a quadruple amputee who has also lost his eyes, ears, nose, and mouth. Regaining consciousness, Joe Bonham discovers that while his brain is healthy and able to reason, the rest of his body is irreparably shattered, leaving him trapped forever within the confines of his own imagination. He struggles to find some way to communicate with the outside world. Tapping his head in Morse code, he breaks through and pleads with his caretakers to be put on display as a living example of the cost of war. The film explores the interplay between science, medicine, religion, and politics.
Not Rated/Running time 1:17
Showtimes: 1:00 2:55 4:35 6:20 8:00 10:00

Quad Cinema, 34 West 13th Street, New York, New York, Greenwich Villiage, Now Playing

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoveBEN (View Post)

Hee. He look so cute there!

I love this part:

Quote:

McKenzie signed on when Joseph was able to find a friend of his who could get the script in his hands.

"I knew that his agents were going to fight him on it," said Joseph, of his low-budget film. So he found a connection through Ernie Sabella (who played Pumba in "The Lion King") and discovered that McKenzie had spent a year sleeping on Sabella's floor before he got his television show.

"He put us together," Joseph said.

Oscar-nominated film editor Jay Cassidy was brought onto the project to edit, and he mentioned to Joseph that the video could easily stand as a movie in theaters.

There wasn't time to show the film at festivals, which is usually how the two percent of picked-up films get picked up.

"We wanted to get this out before the election," he said. "We knew it would be timely."

Truly Indie, owned by entrepreneur Mark Cuban, picked up the film almost immediately.

"We sent it in," Joseph said. "And to our utter amazement they picked it up when it hasn't played in one festival."

Quote:

Originally Posted by LoveBEN (View Post)

This is the guy Rowan mentioned (Ernie Sabella):

Quote:

Originally Posted by swedish_girl80 (View Post)

Thanks

I think I have the un-tagged picture somewhere

**swedish_girl80** · 11-03-2008, 12:45 PM

Oh I saw it was a new thread time

thanks Michal

San M · 11-03-2008, 12:47 PM

thankies Michal

**LoveBEN** · 11-03-2008, 12:57 PM

You welcome

I kept the title because we didn’t use it for too long

**swedish_girl80** · 11-03-2008, 12:58 PM

It is a great title

iaylah · 11-03-2008, 01:12 PM

thanks Michal! the title fits so perfectly that it would make it through threat to threat!

**-Alicia-** · 11-03-2008, 02:01 PM

TFTNT!

Love the title!

ollen · 11-03-2008, 06:05 PM

Thanks for the new thread.

**swedish_girl80** · 11-04-2008, 07:40 AM

Facebook has updated pictures from Berkeley premiere

Johnny Got His Gun | Facebook

Johnny Got His Gun's Photos - Johnny in Berkeley, CA | Facebook

kait · 11-04-2008, 01:19 PM

TFTNT Michal!

**LoveBEN** · 11-04-2008, 06:54 PM

Thanks again Hanna

I wish Ben was there with them but I guess its good that he's not because that mean he's working on LAPD, hopefully

**swedish_girl80** · 11-05-2008, 10:37 AM

Hopefully he worked on LAPD

ollen · 11-05-2008, 06:40 PM

Thanks for that.

**LoveBEN** · 11-05-2008, 08:35 PM

There's only two more cities to screen the movie in; Reading, PA on Nov. 7th, and at the Laemmle Sunset 5 in Los Angeles on Nov. 14th.