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for Hollywood to purchase the rights, then
promptly make a million dollar movie
and have it become a hugely successful
movie and win an Academy Award Best
Film Editing and Best Sound, 2002. So
that was something that I never imagined
would happen with anything I’ve ever
done. It was fun. I remember I
flew out to Hollywood, actually
to Santa Monica to meet Jerry
Bruckheimer the producer
when he bought the rights, and
sat in his office with him. He
said to me that this movie,
which at that point was just
a concept, he wanted to be
different than other moves
that he made. He wanted to
make something very true
to the book I’d written, and
have a kind of documentary
feel to it. He said he wanted me to be
involved in it from the beginning to end.
I just remember thinking, “Yeah, right.
This is what they tell the writer when they
fly out.” But he was absolutely honest
throughout. I wrote the first draft of the
screenplay for that movie, which sucked.
They gave it to Ken Nolan, a really good
screenwriter who turned it into a screenplay.
I worked with Ken on that, learned
a lot about screenplay writing and have
since written … nine more.
I was involved in helping to select locations
for shooting. I was on the set in
Morocco for a couple weeks. They were
there for … three months, but I went over
for a couple of weeks, which was really
fascinating to see. It was literally a cast of
thousands, and when I was there I would
plug into all the meetings about story
discussions and dealing with how to stage
scenes and whatnot.
Ridley Scott, who is just an amazing
director, is a very inclusive person. He’s
not arrogant at all, although he has every
right to be as one of the great directors
of our time. He literally will grab
anybody around him and say, “What do
you think about this?”
When the movie came out, not just in
L.A., which we all went out for, my mom
too — “Hollywoody,” we call her — and
there were premieres at Army bases all over
the country, and then in London and Paris
and Madrid, Rome, traveling in private
jets with Jerry Bruckheimer and Ridley
Scott to these gala premieres. I left them
after Rome, because I had work to do.
I was working on this piece for The
Atlantic about Saddam Hussein and I
was really into it. I needed to get back to
work, and also I needed to be home. So,
I just said, “I’m leaving.” They were all
like, “How can you leave?” They went on
to Prague, Moscow and Tokyo and Hong
Kong and New Zealand — premieres all
over the world.
I remember coming home and getting
back to work and pulling the garbage can
up the driveway one morning and thinking,
“Man, the carriage just turned back
into a pumpkin.”
I even got to go to the Academy
Awards, which is the one event in life that
will cure you of any desire you have to
meet or hang out with a celebrity, because
literally every celebrity in the world is
www.wrightsvillebeachmagazine.com WBM
“In Somalia I was
just terrified pretty
much the whole time.
There’s fighting going
on everywhere and
there’s
10-year olds
with ak-47s.”
author interviews
Mark Bowden visits with
WBM. Left to right: editor/
publisher Pat Bradford,
Michelle Saxton, Daniel
Bowden, Gail Bowden, Mark
Bowden and Claire Parker.
Also present but unseen:
Cole Dittmer, Tyler Roberts,
Marimar McNaughton, Paul
Pastorini and and Allison Potter.