Good Morning, Vietnam

I try not to worry about people who don't like Good Morning, Vietnam. I wonder if they're exactly the type of people Robin Williams' character wouldn't like anyway.

If so, then they probably wouldn't like me either.

In high school, I got a copy of this film on glorious VHS. Within a few weeks, I had most of Robin Williams' lines memorized. My buddy Josh and I used to recite Williams' on-air monologues and annoy anybody within earshot.

"Too much time on your hands," people used to say.

Williams plays a fictionalized version of Adrian Cronauer, an Air Force radio personality, but everything I've read indicates that Cronauer's life and experiences differ substantially from the film. I don't care. That's not the point.

Williams made radio look like a ginormous amount of fun — all smartass remarks and rock music — and for a teenager, that was perfect.

My high school had a student radio station, and so did my college. I pissed off the management in both places. I've never been good with uptight people.

I went on the air for the first time in high school. I was 17. I didn't know what I was doing, and I was so nervous, I nearly yacked on the microphone. I didn't know what to say between songs. What Robin Williams made look so easy, I couldn't do at all.

I got comfortable while doing off-air production and reading the news on-air. In an act of rebellion and as a challenge to myself, I refused to rehearse the news, just so I could cold-read on the air and not mess up. Yeah, I still messed up.

I pissed off the station manager a few times. I once read Bush vs. Clinton presidential campaign slurs over "The Star Spangled Banner," which got his panties in a twist. I played "banned" music from artists such as the horrifying Simon & Garfunkel and the obscene Bachman Turner Overdrive on the air.

For good reason, the station manager had to keep a tight grip on things. You don't let a bunch of teenagers have their run of an FM radio station, even in the middle of nowhere with a 10-watt transmitter. I understand the risks now, but at the time, I couldn't help but compare that station manager to Cronauer's superiors in this film. The man, trying to keep me down.

In college, I joined the student station and started playing my own CDs, which I learned later was forbidden. Then I ran my mouth a little too much one night (shocker).

I was throwing my show to the next guy, and as I was talking, I realized I'd never listened to the next guy's show — or any other show on that station.

So I said, "You know, I'd love to tell you about the next guy's show, but to be honest, I never listen to this radio station." Funny to me at the time. Not so much to the students who managed the station. They made a big deal of that. Meh.

Eventually, I got away from radio when I realized I couldn't just screw around all the time, and that there were no jobs and thus, no future for me. I started realizing how much I liked writing more — I could edit myself before I blurted out something stupid.

Mom really loved Good Morning, Vietnam. When Williams goes on the air for the first time, he riffed so fast that Mom couldn't stop laughing. Then Williams went to the music. That quick shot of the VU meter clearly pegging the red prompted Mom to say, "Man, he's really pumping it out."

She knew all the songs in the film. She'd heard of most of the places. Her brother, my uncle Paul, served in Vietnam. He joined the Marines. I don't know the story exactly, but apparently someone near him stepped on a land mine, and he caught some of the shrapnel. He was honorably discharged and sent home, and was never right again.

The film devolves into sentimentalizing the conflict a bit, and as a result, some people — especially some veterans — tune out. If the filmmakers deliberately tried to minimize the conflict or pull a little revisionist history for the sake of drama, I still don't care.

For me, the film still resonates. "What A Wonderful World" juxtaposed with explosions and fighting now seems pretty heavy-handed, but I still don't care. War films aren't all John Wayne dodging bullets and coming out unscathed. This was one of several Vietnam-themed films of the '80s that made Americans acknowledge the kind of shit they sent people to do.

Ah, but this film is sneaky. You're lured in with a cracking good soundtrack and some hilarious monologues, but then the film starts turning, starts revealing a soul, as if the smartass were just a Trojan horse for a message. Don't like the message? Still don't care.