ABOUT FACE
You probably know actor D. B. Sweeney’s mug from a long-running Army recruiting spot. He’s the fresh-faced kid who tells his unhappy electrician Dad that he won’t be joining the family business because he’s joined the Army--but he’ll still “be a soldier and an engineer.” Dad tells him to “be a good one,” and they hug.
So what happened to our young soldier? Sweeney now turns up in Francis Coppola’s decidedly anti-war film “Gardens of Stone,” released Friday from Tri-Star--as a gung-ho young sergeant who gets a grim lesson about the reality of war during Vietnam.
The Army recruiting spot, filmed when he was 21, was Sweeney’s first acting job. Don’t expect to see it much longer. He’s “killed” it by not extending his contract after the promo’s standard 21-month run.
Sweeney “doesn’t see any irony” in doing an anti-war film after an Army pitch, and “I’m sure Coppola never even saw it,” he said.
Sweeney will next be seen with Charlie Sheen in Orion’s “No Man’s Land,” due in October.
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