Reply #: I'm sure there's a market for old tanks, which... [View All]

[JackRiddler]

can then be dressed up as newer ones. You can also do amazing things with models, Potemkin cut-outs, painted backdrops, stock footage, etc. etc., and of course more recently you have digital effects.

Now, if you want to speak an informed opinion, you can do your research. Or at least check out the research others have done.

For example, you can watch the documentary I referred to, "Operation Hollywood," made for Australian TV, at the following link, which includes an informative review. In the film, a spokesperson for the Pentagon movie office specifically says why they would never have helped Apocalypse Now: because it involved the dispatching of an assassin to kill a rogue US officer who was committing atrocities.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8163.htm

So why, they would argue, should the Pentagon spend its money on pacifism or promoting the darker side of the soldier's world? Why reward a Platoon when The Green Berets is what you're after?

Among those with an opinion in Operation Hollywood are Australian director Phil Noyce, Phil Strub from the US Department of Defence, historian Lawrence Suid and Joe Trento, author and president of the anti-war Public Education Centre. This, they all agree, is a world where lines, plots and nationalities are changed so that film producers can gain access to expensive military hardware.

In the 1995 James Bond movie Goldeneye, for example, the original script had a US Navy admiral betraying state secrets. This was changed to make the traitor a member of the French navy. After that the military's co-operation was forthcoming. Pacull and Robb takes us from the pedantry to the powerful in examining the changes to scripts. They list the producers and the movies that have fallen into line and show how the military's script editors work. Interestingly, it's not the censors who come under fire here quite so much as those co-operative, self-censoring filmmakers.

Still, as Robb says, in what has become ostensibly his campaign against this system, the long-term effect on generations of young Americans is an unknown. “How many of those killed in Iraq died because they joined up after they saw what was presented in a film?” How many have died as the result of unknown recruiting propaganda?

All a producer needs do for assistance, it seems, is submit five copies of his script to the Pentagon for approval, make whatever script changes the Pentagon suggests, film the script exactly as approved by the Pentagon and preview the finished product for Pentagon officials before it's shown to its broader audience. And, according to Robb, as he puts the boot firmly into Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Goldberg (Stripes), John Woo and other producers and directors, many do this gladly. It is, he insists, Hollywood's dirtiest little secret.