Did you ever think, man, that rape scene from platoon should have been its own full-length movie?

No? Well, that sounds reasonable. I agree. No one wants that.

Let me ask you another. Have you at any point thought I wish Michael J Fox had been given more opportunity as a dramatic actor because his trademark reaction shot of dumbfounded exasperation would work just as well in a movie about wartime

atrocity as it does when he plays a teenage wherewolf. I bet you never thought

that either. So right off the bat, casualties of war answered a lot of questions no one asked.

But it didn't stop there.

Why didn't Jeff Spicoli and Alex P. Keaton ever appear on a special episode of LA Law?

Why doesn't Dale Die get more speaking parts? Did John C. Riley

look 54 when he was 24, or does he still look 24 now that he's 54? The real challenge here is that nobody wants to watch a movie about this.

It's based on the true story of what became known as the incident on Hill 192, which was the subject

of four courts marshal during the war and it really illustrates how the

Hollywood process of getting a film made can slowly go off the rails without anyone noticing

before it's too late.

You can easily picture the scene, a long conference table with 10 white guys in their 30s all wearing double-breasted gray suits with yellow paisly ties, the air redolent of hair gel, CK1, and last night's Bartles and James.

They need a Vietnam pick because those are hot, hot right now.

Somebody read a New Yorker article about the sadistic rape and murder of an innocent Vietnamese

girl and the subsequent wartime

cover-up that led to a handful of indictments and some slap-on-the-risk convictions, and that appeals

to their vanity as movie executives.

They are serious artists, not just making schlock. Hell, they're at least as smart as some dumb New Yorker writer.

Brian Napalm is attached. Anthony Michael Hall is cast as the sadistic sergeant and Ricky Schroeder as the kid with a conscience but both

drop out at the last minute. They try for Mel Gibson and Robert Downey Jr but

...