To keep the Pentagon happy, some Hollywood producers have been known to turn villains into heroes, remove central characters, change politically sensitive settings, or add military rescues to movies that require none. There are no bad guys in the military. No fraternization between officers and enlisted troops. No drinking or drugs. No struggles against bigotry. The military and the president can’t look bad (though the State Department and Canada can).
“The only thing Hollywood likes more than a good movie is a good deal”,David Robb explains, and that’s why the producers of films like “Top Gun”, “Stripes” and “The Great Santini” have altered their scripts to accommodate Pentagon requests. In exchange, they get inexpensive access to the military locations, vehicles, troops and gear they need to make their movies.
During his years as a journalist for Daily Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, Robb heard about a quid-pro-quo agreement between the Pentagon and Hollywood studios, and decided to investigate. He combed through thousands of Pentagon documents, and interviewed dozens of screenwriters, producers and military officials. The result is his new book, “Operation Hollywood.”
Robb talked with MotherJones.com about deal-making that defines the relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon.
MotherJones.com: How far back does collaboration between the U.S. military and Hollywood go?
David Robb: The current approval process was established right after World War II. Before that, the Pentagon used to help producers, but it wasn’t very formalized, like it is now. They helped producers going back to at least 1927. The very first movie that won an Oscar, “Wings,” — even that got military assistance.
MJ.com: What steps does a producer take to get assistance from the military? How does the process work?
DR: The first thing you have to do is send in a request for assistance, telling them what you want pretty specifically — ships, tanks, planes, bases, forts, submarines, troops — and when you want this material available. Then you have to send five copies of the script to the Pentagon, and they give it to the affected service branches — Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard. Then you wait and see if they like your script or not. If they like it, they’ll help you; if they don’t, they won’t. Almost always, they’ll make you make changes to the military depictions. And you have to make the changes that they ask for, or negotiate some kind of compromise, or you don’t get the stuff.
So then you finally get the approval, after you change your script to mollify the military, put some stuff in about how great it is to be in the military. Then when you go to shoot the film, you have to have what I call a “military minder” — but what they call a “technical advisor” — someone from the military on the set to make sure you shoot the film the way you agreed to. Normally in the filmmaking process, script changes are made all the time; if something isn’t working, they look at the rushes, and say, “let’s change this.” Well, if you want to change something that has to do with the military depictions, you’ve got to negotiate with them again. And they can say, “No, you can’t change it, this is the deal you agreed to.” As one of the technical advisors, Maj. David Georgi of the Army, said to me, “If they don’t do what I say, I take my toys and go away.”
After the film is completed, you have to prescreen the film for the Pentagon brass. So before it’s shown to the public, you have to show your movie to the generals and admirals, which I think any American should find objectionable — that their movies are being prescreened by the military.
MJ.com: At that stage, with the film finished, what can the military do if they have a problem?
DR: This happened on the Clint Eastwood movie “Heartbreak Ridge.” He finished the film, showed it to them, and they went through the roof. There was a scene in the script where he shoots an injured and defenseless Cuban soldier. They said, “You have to take that out. It’s a war crime. We don’t want that.” They hate having war crimes in movies. So with “Heartbreak Ridge,” Eastwood shot the film, and the scene ended up in the movie anyway. They said, “We told you to take that out.” He said he thought it was only a suggestion, that he didn’t know he had to. So they withdrew their approval. The film was still released, of course. But at the end of a movie that gets military assistance, there’s always a little tagline that says “thanks to the cooperation of the U.S. Army” or whatever branch. They said, “We’re not going to let you put that on there. We’re withdrawing cooperation.” And they can stop it from being shown in military theaters overseas or on bases in the U.S., which can really hurt the box office of a film. They’ve done this to numerous films. Also, at that time, Clint Eastwood was the chairman of Toys for Tots, the Marine Corps Christmas gift program for poor children. He wanted to screen the movie at a premiere to benefit Toys for Tots, and they said, “We’re not going to let you do that.” They can be very spiteful, they can hurt the box office of a film, and they don’t forget, either. So you do this at your peril. They can’t arrest you, they can’t stop the film. But if you want cooperation again, and you’ve screwed them like that before, you’re not going to get it. People almost never screw the Army on these deals.
MJ.com: What criteria does the Pentagon use in deciding whether to help a film?
DR: The most important one is that the film has to “aid in the retention and recruitment of personnel.” I don’t want to say that’s the whole thing, but it’s the main thing. They also say it has to reasonably depict military operations. And if it’s based on history, they say it has to be historically accurate, which is really a code. They’re much less interested in reality and accuracy than they are in positive images. They often try to change historical facts that are negative. Like with the movie “Thirteen Days,” which was very accurate but very negative toward the military during the Cuban missile crisis, showing that they would have taken us down the path toward World War III. During the negotiations with the producers, Peter Almond and Kevin Costner, the military tried to get them to tone down the bellicose nature of Gen. Maxwell Taylor and Gen. Curtis LeMay — who the record is very clear on, because before Nixon was taping in the White House, Kennedy was taping in the White House, and all the conversations from October 1962 are on tape. When Kennedy rejected LeMay’s insistence that we attack Cuba — when Kennedy said let’s put up a naval blockade, we don’t want to get into war — you can hear Curtis LeMay say, “This is the worst sellout since Munich.” He actually said that, when he didn’t think anybody was listening. Well, the military wanted to change it anyway, saying he was too bellicose and they had to tone it down. To their credit, Kevin Costner and Peter Almond stood up to the military, refused to buckle under, and made their film without military assistance.
MJ.com: Why don’t more producers take that approach?
DR: A lot of the studio heads tell their producers, “We’re not going to make this film unless we get military assistance, because it would be too expensive. So you’d better make sure the script conforms to what they want.” Also, what you don’t see in these documents is the self-censorship that goes with knowing you need their assistance and that they’re going to be your first audience. Writers write stuff to get that military assistance. So there’s no documents saying, “In “Black Hawk Down,” let’s leave out the whole part about the soldiers being dragged through the streets of Mogadishu.” Jerry Bruckheimer knows that if they have that in there, the military’s just going to tell them to take it out or they won’t help them. I asked Ridley Scott, the director, if “Black Hawk Down” could have been made without military assistance. He said, “Yeah. We just would have had to call it ‘Huey Down’.” So there’s this self-censorship. When you know the government is looking over your shoulder while you’re typing, that’s a very bad situation.
Read the rest of this story at its source: MotherJones.com
Jeff Fleischer is an editorial intern at MotherJones.com
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