“This film cost $31 million. With that kind of money I could have invaded some country.”
Clint Eastwood. I wonder what particular country he had in mind.
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Samizdata quote of the dayMarch 19th, 2006 |
 16 comments to Samizdata quote of the day |
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Nowadays you can’t invade very much with 31m$.
Some 150b$, i.e. x 50 – has been spent so far in Iraq.
Maybe Clint would have done a better and less expensive job of it.
Grenada? Clint made a movie about that lil enterprise.
That’s x 4800 (approx.), Jacob. Added to which the US had a trillion dollars worth of hardware and infrastructure, and trained manpower standing by.
It’s hard to hire that sort of stuff in on a zero-budget basis. Though one does doubt the Pentagon, given a $31M-dollar invasion to do (St Pierre & Miquelon?), could manage it on budget and without unnecessary casualties.
If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit, there are probably quite a few African countries you could take over.
You can’t usually make much of a movie for $31m these days either. Clint is well known for his extremely frugal film-making. His films always come in ahead of schedule and under budget. In Hollywood that is virtually unheard of. As to whether he could apply this frugality to a war, that is another question.
I disagree strongly. That sum won’t fund top megastars, the most elaborate sets, or the most intense special effects – but if a film has a credible plot, compelling characters, and interesting dialogue, it will do well.
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, for instance, cost $15 million and grossed over $128 million in the US (and £686,386 in the UK).
Directors who can’t make good low-budget films lack imagination.
What about the isle of Man/Ellan Vannin? I hear they have good money-laundering contacts.
Sark/Sercq – pop 600?
Tuvalu – before it (apparently) sinks?
St. Kilda? (Atlantic, not Melbourne)
“If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit…”
Yes. Rumsfeld should have outsourced the Iraq job.
Hey now, Iraq is a bad example, no one would have invaded _them_ for profit.
But for 31m you could invade an awful lot of countries successfully. A substantially smaller number might be held on to, but given the rotten management of those, you rather think that the locals would support anyone that would enforce a little basic order, and wasn’t a homicidal lunatic.
For the rest: invadeable but not holdable. I fancy a little viking raiding, anybody else?
“I wonder what particular country he had in mind.”
Maybe California?
Beck. thirty-one mill would only cover setting up the Democratic Republic of Carmel these days…
If you spent the $31m on a good mercenary outfit, there are probably quite a few African countries you could take over.
-Chris H
Most of the easily-knocked-over outfits in Africa haven’t been knocked over because nobody with half a brain wants to knock them over.
Still, I seem to recall some South African outfit managed to bring a modicum of sanity to Liberia (or maybe it was one of the other hellholes) for a modest expenditure, before they got shut down by the UN.
That amount could get Zimbabwe out of the hands of the murderer Mugabe very easily.
It seems that £14 million will buy you the British government these days.
Okay, I will qualify with a “You can’t make much of a movie in Hollywood with $31m”, Hollywood’s cost structure being what it is. It is perfectly possible to make good movies for considerably less if you do it somewhere else.
Bollywood, for example. At some point, I expect they will start to make mainstream movies,