This photo was taken last spring in Crystal Cove State Park, behind El Morro where I used to live. The ridge doubled as a Guantanamo Bay location in the film A Few Good Men. A silhouette of the ridge opens the film. There are also scenes of Tom Cruise riding in a jeep, getting a tour of what is supposed to be the Cuban base. In the above image, the ridge sports a fleeting springtime hue. The mustard only blooms a few weeks a year. I believe the film - which depicts the faux Guantanamo as a bit more brown and dusty -was shot in the drier months of fall.
The politics of the film, in which Jack Nicholson griped "you can't handle the truth," seem somehow displaced in the age of Guantanamo Bay detainees. The base is no longer a forgotten outpost or a Cold War relic, it is front and center in our politics. Military officials may have once positioned G-bay as being too close to home to ignore - a fundamental part of American soil. Now Guantanamo seems to exist because it is not part of American soil. It is, according to some, the only safe place to keep that what makes us unsafe.
As for the ridge itself, homes have now been built behind it and it could no longer double as Guantanamo. Future film scouts will only consider the location as a transitional space on the edge of our suburban sprawl. To this end, the neighboring ridge (with homes) was featured in the opening montage for The OC. I'm not smart enough to know what this all means. I do know that there are times when I would prefer not to handle the truth or even absorb it.
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