Operation Hollywood: The Pentagon’s Intervention in Tinseltown
This policy has been in place since WWII and military assistance with films dates back even further, to at least 1927 (Fleischer 2004). It angers me that I am not able to see some movies in the true way the writer and director intended, and that some movie projects were completely scrapped because of their inability to get government assistance. This book has colored my view of many movies many of which now appear like expensive recruiting videos in hindsight.
Many films request military equipment, soldiers, stock footage or the right to film at an Army base from the Pentagon. Requesting equipment from the Pentagon for a movie is much cheaper than having to produce it yourself. However, when a request is made a script must be submitted for Pentagon approval. The Pentagon has its own employee whose only job is to work with Hollywood and make sure these scripts portray the government in a good light, the man who currently occupies this post is Phil Strub, who has had a much larger influence on films than many people will ever know.
Villains, that is if they are in the American government or military, are frequently turned into heros, themes of racism or sexism are removed, and heroic military rescues are added to scripts in exchange for Pentagon approval.
The goal of these changes are twofold, to increase recruitment and to instill the idea that the military is a heroic, glamorous institution with hardly any flaws, so the American public will support further military spending. It certainly has been successful, America puts far more money into defense spending than any other country in the world. This obviously cannot be totally attributed to the connection between Hollywood and the Pentagon but it hasn’t hurt. For example, recruitment in the Air Force jumped drastically right after the release of Top Gun, one of the Pentagons favorite movies.
Not only does the Pentagon demand that the government is depicted in a certain way in fictional stories but they also deny many historical events occurred where Americans have been responsible for war crimes or stupid behavior and thus these events don’t make it into movies. Of course this begs the question, why not forget Pentagon approval and just get the props department to supply what you need.
This sounds like a fine idea and many movies do end up doing it, yet it costs a lot of extra money to have props made and Hollywood, like any industry, is very money conscious. The big companies that fund these movies often don’t care about keeping the integrity of the script intact if it will save them several million dollars. Often the head of the studio tells 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” (Fleischer 2004).
There is a lot of self-censorship because these producers know they need the military’s approval. It is unfortunate that many writers and producers feel the government is looking over their shoulder even before they submit the script for approval. Is it fair that some movies can be made more cost effectively because they glorify the military? Since it is not necessary to get Pentagon approval in order to make a movie many people may ask what is the big fuss over.
Just spend the extra bucks if you want to make a movie your way, but then many movies would not get made. It also raises the larger question of the appropriateness of government involvement in media. If the government can show a preference that has economic advantages for certain movies than what is stopping them from giving preference to certain newspapers or television channels.
We have recently seen the effects of this as the government paid several columnists to tout the No Child Left Behind Act and Bush’s marriage initiative. When news of this relationship came out there was outrage across the country, so I ask why not outrage for the Pentagon’s Operation Hollywood? It is no different than paying a columnist to tout your policies, even though many right-wingers argued that these columnists already believed in these policies so the cash payment by the government had no affect on them.
It doesn’t matter if these columnists would have glorified the No Child Left Behind Act with or without the money. The question at hand is it appropriate for the government to show preference to media or people that espouse their virtues?
The Pentagon is most concerned with removing any evidence of American involvement in war crimes from movies. They also refuse to help movies that center around an alien invasion because generally the military is shown as ineffective against aliens.
It seems hard to imagine that someone would see the US military in a negative light because of their inability to defeat the aliens in Independence Day. Some of the Pentagon’s concern with scripts seem trivial as is the case with several James Bond movies. The navy was willing to loan some of its ships and helicopters to the film Tomorrow Never Dies on one condition, that one line of dialogue be removed from the movie. Phil Strub, the Pentagons film liaison, felt this one line could embarrass the new American ambassador to Vietnam and thus damage relations between the two countries. Despite the repeated pleas of the writer, Strub stuck firm.
One would think it must be a pretty loaded line for all this fuss. Yet, it is simply a joke Bond tells a CIA officer as he is parachuting into Vietnamese waters, the CIA man warns Bond not to get captured and says, “You know what will happen. It will be war, and maybe this time we’ll win”. The line is just a harmless joke, you’d think after all this time we wouldn’t be so sensitive. The Pentagon apparently has no sense of humor as the above case and the film Stripes attest to. Stripes is a very funny movie which unfortunately received military assistance and thus lost some surely funny scenes.
Stripes is not a serious film in any sense and it seems inconceivable that the viewer would think he was watching an accurate depiction of the US military. After all it features a Winnebago converted into a tank and it stars a young wise-cracking Bill Murray, yet the Pentagon forced the removal of all drug references and humor. Smoking pot is a big no-no to the Pentagon even in Vietnam where it was a common occurrence.
The movie Thirteen Days ran into trouble when trying to get Pentagon approval because they portrayed the Joint Chiefs of Staff as too one-sided. However, the producer Peter Almond had done lots of historical fact checking and even listened to the taped conversations of the incident. Almond and the rest of the production team felt they had gotten all the facts correct, he went on to say.
There is no doubt that all that would have satisfied them is to change the history, but they are smart enough to know not to say that. But they didn’t want to support a major film that showed their leadership taking positions that would very likely have led the world on the decent toward real nuclear confrontation (Robb 2004: 53).
Specifically the Pentagon was concerned that it made Air Force Gen. Curtis LeMay look like he would have started a nuclear war had it not been for President Kennedy. The Pentagon said this was a false and negative way to portray the general and they would not be a part of a script that was “revisionist history”. However, the tapes prove that LeMay had in fact argued for an invasion of Cuba so it was the Pentagon that was engaging in revising history, not the film producers.
The Pentagon also demanded the removal of a scene where an American spy plane gets shot down over Cuba insisting that it never happened. Historical documents and the widow of the pilot have a different story however, the producers even showed Phil Strub the letter of condolence President Kennedy had written to the pilots widow proving that the Pentagon was lying.
“They never responded to that,” the producer said. Even with the backing of a senator and the defense secretary the film producers could not sway the Pentagon. It is disturbing that even historically accurate movies cannot get funding if that historical accuracy includes a negative portrayal of the military. The Pentagons film office actually includes historical accuracy in the description of an acceptable film, yet we’ve seen that, “they’re much less interested in reality and accuracy than they are in positive images” (Fleischer 2004).
Not only did the Pentagon refuse to help Thirteen Days, but they refused to allow it to be shown by Kevin Costner at an Air Force base. This seems ridiculous, are they really worried about soldiers being influenced by the movie. Is it that harmful to depict an American general as the war-hawk that he was? The Pentagon seems to be insulting the intelligence of the soldiers at the Air Force base by disallowing this movie.
Just because someone sees an American screw up doesn’t mean he or she will turn against America or lose confidence in the military. Showing historically accurate movies might even be a positive thing, after all you are doomed to repeat history if you don’t learn from it. So these movies that portray war crimes or deranged generals may lead to more public condemnation of hawkish individuals and infractions of the Geneva convention. Maybe we would see that the American military has its flaws like any institution and thus demand more probing of it. By not allowing issues of racism or sexism in movies the message is sent to Americans that it is not a problem in the military, when in fact it has been.
Instead of covering up these events and pretending they never happened why aren’t they embraced and learned from. The desire of the Pentagon to protect Americans from critical views of the government is extended throughout our society. The network news has recently become incredibly soft, tough questions are rarely asked and the interviews that take place with George Bush are an absolute joke.
Every interview he has had has been a cake-walk and he always has knowledge of the questions before hand so his advisors can prepare solid answers. I think Americans would be shocked to see other world leaders interviewed on their states networks. I recently saw an interview with Tony Blair where the BBC reporter throw out some incredibly tough and confrontational questions.
Not only does the Pentagon like to revise history in movies but they also flat out make events up. Such was the case with The Perfect Storm, where a helicopter rescue scene was attributed to the Air National Guard which had no role in the actual event. This goes directly against the Pentagons guidelines for movies which states that, “the production must be authentic in its portrayal of actual persons, places, military operations and historical events” (Robb 2004:57).
This is also the case in the movie, Windtalkers, which has a grisly seen of an American solider removing gold fillings from dead Japanese soldiers mouths. It is no surprise the Pentagon wanted this scene gone despite the footage in the National Archives that show a US Marine yanking gold teeth from the jaw of a dead Japanese soldier.
As a Pentagon official said, Okay. Here’s the problem. Now you look at various books about Marines in World War II, and this obviously happened. I know that these things happened. Horrible, awful atrocities happened, especially in the Pacific. And that was different from what happened in Europe because those were white people fighting white people, and these were, you know, white people fighting Asians. And so, because we didn’t look like each other, we tended to do more dehumanizing things. That’s a fact (Robb 2004:61).
Interestingly the Pentagon official who made this statement joined the Air Force after seeing Top Gun, one of the militaries most successful recruiting movies.
The Pentagon is also interested in instilling respect for the military in our nations youth which explains their involvement in “The Micky Mouse Club” and “Lassie”. When this propaganda is aimed at children it seems all the more perverse because they are much more impressionable, a child cannot discern propaganda. It seems like something that would go on in a oppressive communist nation rather than the “free” and socially liberal United States. The Pentagon recognizes children as future recruits and tries to instill the idea that the military is a cool, fun organization.
In “The Mickey Mouse Club” small documentary clips called “Mouse Reels”, one of which showed the mouseketeers touring a new nuclear Navy sub. The Pentagon feels, “this is an excellent opportunity to introduce a whole new generation to the nuclear Navy.” The desire to reach children is also evident in the example of the film The Right Stuff , a glamorous look at the early days of the space program which originally contained a lot of obscene language. However, the Pentagon felt that, “if distributed as an ‘R’, it cuts down on the teenage audience, which is a prime one to the military services when our recruiting bills are considered” (Fleischer 2004).
Robb argues that the Pentagon’s policy violates the First Amendment because, ” it prevents the government from favoring one form of speech over another”.There was a Supreme Court case in 1997, called Rosenberger v. University of Virgina, which said, “Discrimination against speech because of its message is presumed to be unconstitutional” (Fleischer 2004). Yet, this is exactly what the Pentagon is doing, they are economically favoring the movies that deliver the message they want, and subsequently disadvantaging the movies that portray the military and government in bad light.
Congress has the power to change the Pentagons policy but they have only looked into it twice, and the last time was in the 1960’s. The result of Congress’s investigation was the Pentagon claiming that they do not intend to influence Hollywood in any way, and Congress accepted this. This is obviously not true as the following examples will show.
Bibliography
Robb, David
2004 Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon shapes and censors the movies.
Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books
Fleischer, Jeff
2004 Operation Hollywood. MotherJones.com, September 20
Shannon, Keely
2004 Speaker Claims Pentagon Influences Hollywood. FSView, Sept. 13
