My Publicist Note Book

With  A History Of Violence , Tom Breihan picks the most important action movie of every year, starting with the genre’s birth and moving right up to whatever Vin Diesel’s doing this very minute. First Blood  (1982) John Rambo was supposed to die. In David Morrell’s 1972 novel  First Blood , the source material for the 1982 movie, Rambo dies at the end. In a few different versions of the movie, in the scripts that bounced around Hollywood for nearly a decade before getting made, Rambo dies. Filming the actual movie, director Ted Kotcheff shot a scene in which Rambo, exhausted after laying waste to a small Pacific Northwest town, convinces Colonel Trautman, the father figure who trained him, to shoot him, so he wouldn’t have to be shot by the police and National Guard surrounding the police station where he’s trapped. But the movie didn’t use that scene. And instead, Rambo went on to become the great iconic cartoon action hero of the ’80s. Life is funny. ...