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Pentagon helps Hollywood filmmakers© Nancy Benac, Associated Press
John Lovett gets quoted by the Associated Press!!!
WASHINGTON -- If Lt. Col. Jimmy Doolittle comes across as particularly heroic in the new war epic ''Pearl Harbor,'' the credit goes as much to the behind-the-scenes influence of the Pentagon as to the vision of Hollywood filmmakers. Likewise, if the Marines get a special mention during a rescue sequence in the coming movie ''The Sum of all Fears,'' it was their idea. In exchange for providing Hollywood with military advice, personnel and awesome equipment for movies and TV shows, the Pentagon gets an advance look at scripts and has a chance to negotiate changes. ''If you want to use the military's toys, you've got to play by their rules,'' says John Lovett, an outside military technical adviser to filmmakers. ''That's how it's done.'' It all happens at no cost to taxpayers, since moviemakers reimburse the military for any out-of-the-ordinary expenses. Like the $3 million Sony is paying for eight Army helicopters and 100 soldiers recently flown to Morocco for filming of ''Black Hawk Down,'' a movie about the 1993 Somalia raid in which 18 Americans died trying to capture a warlord. ''What you have here is mutual exploitation,'' says Lawrence Suid, a military historian who wrote about the relationship between Hollywood and the military in the book ''Guts & Glory.'' Moviemakers want to show all that cool equipment and the Pentagon wants the story told in terms that are favorable to the armed forces, or at least somewhat plausible, from its point of view. That's why the military provided no help for ''Apocalypse Now,'' about one officer in Vietnam dispatched to kill another, among many other movies it declined to assist. For ''The Sum of All Fears,'' about a terrorist plot to blow up the Super Bowl, at least one Pentagon wish was easy to accommodate: It wanted a team of rescuers to be identified as who they were, the Marines. Pentagon ''project officers'' often are on location when military movies go into production, watching every salute and bugle call. Each arm of the military has a Los Angeles office. ''We do it because we see it as an opportunity to inform the American public about the military and help our recruiting and retention programs at the same time,'' says Philip Strub, head of the Pentagon's film liaison office in Washington.
The copyright of the article Pentagon helps Hollywood filmmakers in Military Movies is owned by Nancy Benac, Associated Press. Permission to republish Pentagon helps Hollywood filmmakers in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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