Matthew Modine is a moron

So this morning I listened to an interview of actor Matthew Modine who was on the radio promoting his new book. During the course of the interview Modine revealed that he had turned down a significant role in Top Gun (maybe Maverick?). When asked why he gave a story about visiting East Berlin before the wall came down where he met some Russian soldiers. Rather than the demons he thought they'd be they were actually "pretty cool."

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They smoked cigarettes together and the soldiers gave him some of their pins. He also said that he visited a Russian war memorial, not realizing that "a million" Russian soliders died during the war. Then he says that the experience made him really disillusioned, because he had been brought up (in Utah) to believe that Russia was really evil, adding that the visit took place during the height of the Reagan Administration. Thus, when he was given the Top Gun script he saw it as a Cold War movie that just perpetuated these unfair stereotypes.

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Now, believe me, I've never labored under the impression that actors are geniuses, but someone needs to buy Modine a clue. First off, I'm significantly younger than him and yet even I knew during the 1980s that many Russians died fighting the Germans in WWII. In fact, it was waaaay more than a million. Second, earth to Matthew, the Soviet Union actually was quite evil. Between repressing numerous other countries, butchering millions of their own people, dispatching others to the gulags and keeping the country in a general state of repression the Soviet Union didn't exactly qualify as a good time.

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Now, it's true that the Russian people themselves weren't evil, but I figured that goes without saying. The problem was always with the government. I don't recall Reagan or anyone else saying that our beef was with the Russian people. In fact they were as much victims of their own government as anyone else, which is why the U.S. worked to free Russian dissidents. Even as a kid I knew that.

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But I guess when dealing with low wattage light bulbs like Modine we need to be more explicit.