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How to survive the consulting process, or how not to give advice

© John Lovett

In my essay SO MANY EXPERTS, SO LITTLE TIME, I ventured an opinion that if you have the time and money to get the starlet's hair just right you have the time and money to get the weapons, uniforms, etc. correct. I hold with that opinion. I furthered that opinion by stating that history and fiction and intertwined and that a production company can produce an accurate representation of a historical event.

I concluded by suggesting that Hollywood does not listen to experts because of the varied opinions that experts project. Yours truly included.

Just recently, I got a piece of e-mail from someone (I do read all my e-mail and do respond at least with a thank you for sharing) that wanted to expose all the errors of SAVING PRIVATE RYAN. While I, too, had my problems with SPR I have gone on record of saying that it was one of the finer military motion pictures made. Steven Spielburg listened to what Dale Dye and Stephen Ambrose had to say about the representation of the action. Dale Dye went to some extraordinary lengths to get the actors to portray troops in combat.

I have also gone on record several times in these columns by stating that history and story must be cohesion for the movie to be entertaining as well as accurate. In my extremely humble opinion, I found that SPR met all the criteria of being entertaining as well as accurate.

Now, what this person conveyed to me that since I do military assistance to the motion picture industry I was therefore "fair game" and must be severely admonished for all the mistakes real or perceived for SPR. Ah, no. Responsibility given is not responsibility taken.

Here are some of the complaints this individual had with SPR.

- American Paratroops did not fight German Tigers just after D-Day.

- A family with four brothers in the 29th Division would almost certainly have come from Virginia or Maryland - NOT the Midwest. A Ranger officer serving in North Africa, Italy, AND France? Oh well stranger things have happened. Why wasn't he just in the 1st Inf. Div?

- An inland Radar station in that area? Guarded by one MG nest with no one around back?

- The whole thing with the heavy; jeep and glider was screwed up. In real life, the glider pilot of the ill-fated General's jeep knew all about the extra weight and it was no big deal. They had bad luck landing.

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