JOHNNY GOT HIS GUN 181
Artists, Trumbo opted to accept a $750,000 financing package put together by a
group of 25 investors led by Simon Lazarus (producer of Herbert J. Biberman’s 1954
strike movie, Salt of the Earth) and Ben Margolis, trusted friends and associates.
Production
The shoot lasted 42 days (2 July 1970–26 August 1970), was filmed at 23 loca-
tions, and went over bud get. According to an August 1971 article in American Cin-
ematographer, the hospital scenes were filmed at Producers Studio on Melrose
Ave nue in Hollywood. A small, private lake near Lake Tahoe, California, was used
for some flashback sequences. Battlefield sequences were shot in Chatsworth, Cal-
ifornia. The carnival barker scenes were filmed at El Mirage Dry Lake in the South-
ern Mojave Desert. The bakery was located in an abandoned factory in Culver
City, California. “Christ’s” carpentry shop was a shed in Highland Park, and the
house in which Joe’s father died, located at 55th St. in Los Angeles, was the actual
house where Trumbo’s father died in 1926. In post- production the film was edited
down from a rough cut of over three hours to its original running time of 112 min-
utes, and then to 111 minutes, to qualify for a “GP” rating.
Plot Synopsis
During World War I, a badly wounded soldier is saved by a trio of surgeons
(Eduard Franz, Ben Hammer, and Robert Easton), although the chief surgeon,
Col. M. F. Tillery (Franz), declares that the young soldier has no higher brain
functions. Tillery is determined to study the soldier as a living specimen and insists
that if he had more than mere basal metabolic functions, he would not allow him to
live. Unknown to Tillery or the other medical personnel, the soldier, a 20- year- old
American named Joe Bonham (Timothy Bottoms), has his full mental faculties.
While he lies in the hospital, drugged and swathed in ban dages, Joe won ders where
he is and drifts into a reverie of the night before he left for the war, when he was
with his sweetheart, Kareen (Kathy Fields). Despite her pleading with him not to
enlist, Joe insists that he must, and the couple makes love for the first time. Back
at the hospital, Joe realizes that although he can feel his blood pumping, he can-
not hear his pulse, which means that he is deaf. In great pain and sensing that he
is covered with ban dages, Joe surmises that he been critically wounded. Believing
that he can hear a telephone ringing, Joe then remembers the night that his father
( Jason Robards) died. When his mind returns to the pres ent, Joe realizes that the
stinging sensation he feels is Tillery removing the stitches from his shoulder where
his right arm has been amputated. Tillery then orders the staff to keep Joe in a
locked room, with the win dows covered so that no one will be able to see him.
Still completely covered, except for his forehead, Joe floats in a drugged state and
imagines himself at the train station before he and his new buddies shipped out.
They play cards with Christ (Donald Sutherland), who instructs the others, who are
describing how they are going to die, to leave Joe alone when they protest that he
will not actually be killed. In the hospital, Joe’s sutures are removed from his hips,
as both of his legs have also been amputated, and he shrieks in horror to himself. As
he is overwhelmed by his inability to communicate, Joe’s tenuous grasp on real ity