In the book, he died in a car accident and they buried him in his dress blues.

http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/life/people/2005-11-03-jarhead-mother_x.htm

am i the only person who doesnt always get notified when someone responds to a post?
heres a link for jarhead deleted scenes. i think this is the one i watched yesterday but im not sure. the picture isnt great but you can watch for the info, not theexperience
yeah writing books or making movies based on real events is a screwy area to get into. you might want to pay tribute to real people but at the same time you probably dont want to make them look bad. and of course some people WANT to make people look bad. like, i always thought what they did to captain sobel in band of brothers was really unfair, irregardless of whether the real-life sobel deserved it or not. (if you dont know band of brothers, just skip over this.) they deliberately portrayed him as an idiot without the slightest possibility that hey, even if he IS an idiot maybe hes an idiot for a reason and maybe theres a side to his story. i always hate that when they make characters that are just worthless pieces of crap that were all supposed to look at and go, what a pathetic douche and we feel better about ourselves. blah blah blah, bottom line, im glad im not a writer because it would burden me wondering if id written anything that had done a person injustice.

Hmmnow I have to go back and watch the deleted scenes, that is very interesting. While I revisit the film around once a year I probably haven't viewed the deleted scenes since I bought the original DVD around whatten years ago? And since I tossed it when I bought the HD-DVD, then that for the BD; I don't even know if the BD even has the deleted scenes. Now that would be funny, repurchasing the DVD years later just for that, though it wouldn't be the first time.
As for changing Troy's name, it's an interesting situation. I would hope it was just lazy writing, as that was his first published book it's entirely possible. I just had this discussion with my nephew the other day, I asked him if he ever noticed the constant alliteration in comic book characters names (then I had to explain to him what alliteration meant lol) and how it's a tool of lazy (or busy) writers to quickly and easily remember characters' names. I would hope that might explain Swofford's choice of the character's name, just a first time writer's shortcut. I'd be shocked if there was any malice behind it.

and regardless of all thisif i had written the book or made the movie id have COMPLETELY changed the guys name out of respect to him and his poor mom.
and let me just say (just in case you're from a warm climate)black ice is bad news and can pop up out of nowhere and it doesnt matter how safe a driver you are. youre driving along on a road thats ice-free for miles and you hit one tiny ice patch thats completely invisible, and BAM, its all over.

in the movie it's stated that he had a criminal record and lied about it, no mention of drugs
ok youre right. theres a deleted scene where he explains that he got arrested for selling drugs, and this is probably what i was thinkingwho knows how far the filmmakers were going with this in their heads. i did think the sell some crack line was meant by the character to bewell, like 90% facetious, 10% serious.
i know a lot of people who have died, and (in my experience) friends and relatives ALWAYS make a huge point about how they died unless it waswell, ya know, suicide or drugs or drinking or whatever. then they are quiet. im sure someone could come up with a counterexample, but it seems to me that this also applies (in general) to movies, maybe even moreso because of plot-related stuff: i mean, we already know the character is troubledand since we know this i think to have him die without explanation implies something, not drugs necessarily but maybe one of the other aforementioned troubling things. and to be honest im completely distracted by the fact that were having a civil discussion on imdb so its hard to think straight.
That's what's great about art, everyone can take something different away from it
i agree, and i always find these discussions interesting. like, was barnes (platoon) from tennessee, or montana, or is it impossible to say? was the road warrior a true sequel? etc etc

In the book Troy is denied reenlistment because he failed a drug urine test, in the movie it's stated that he had a criminal record and lied about it, no mention of drugs. Troy (in the film) mentions slinging dope. There are no other instances in the entire film that would suggest that that was anything other than a joke or hyperbole, you're creating a narrative for the character that's essentially fantasy. And that's fine! That's what's great about art, everyone can take something different away from it, I just didn't see it myself.
Send in the clowns

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i just read here that in the book he dies in a road accident, so my guess about the book was incorrect, although the author seemed to use lots of poetic license and im not suprised at myself for being wrong about that. also i stand by everything i say about the movie. which is not to say i didnt like the movie or book.i read the book twice (a long time ago) and have seen the movie several times i think. to me, the scene where troy flips out is one of the best scenes ever, when you consider the context of how hard those guys trained for that one instant.

in the movie he was getting kicked out of the marines because of drugs and at least once the character himself makes references to drugs (maybe ill go sling some dope). then he dies at a very young age and no one mentions cause of death, which in my experience usually means bad news. so yeah, to me, drugs or suicide or crime or something negative is implied and i think its arguably part of the plot, since the character is depicted as troubled because he wanted so badly to stay in the marines. if you want to think he died from eating too many fruit loops that's fine with me

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Uh not sure where you got that inference, the cause of death isn't revealed or implied toward whatsoever in the film, let alone implied that drugs were involved.

i cant remember how he died in the book. im guessing that drugs was either implied or stated, which irritates me because alan troy was based on a real dude, troy collier, who in real life died in a ice-related road accident. check this out:
http://www.leatherneck.com/forums/showthread.php?23557-Marines�-mother-critical-of-�Jarhead�
hollywood is full of crap and audiences are dumb. so a REAL story has to be turned into a bunch of exaggerated garbage otherwise idiots (99% of the population) will tune out.