Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies

by David L. Robb

The only thing Hollywood likes more than a good movie is a good deal. For more than fifty years producers and directors of war and action movies have been getting a great deal from America's armed forces by receiving access to billions of dollars worth of military equipment and personnel for little or no cost. Although this arrangement considerably lowers a film's budget, the cost in terms of intellectual freedom can be quite steep. In exchange for access to sophisticated military hardware and expertise, filmmakers must agree to censorship from the Pentagon.As veteran Hollywood journalist David L. Robb shows in this revealing insider's look into Hollywood's "dirtiest little secret," the final product that moviegoers see at the theater is often not just what the director intends but also what the powers-that-be in the military want to project about America's armed forces. Sometimes the censor demands removal of just a few words; other times whole scenes must be scrapped or completely revised. What happens if a director refuses the requested changes? Robb quotes a Pentagon "Well I'm taking my toys and I'm going home. I'm taking my tanks and my troops and my location, and I'm going home." That can be quite a persuasive threat to a filmmaker trying to keep his movie within budget.Robb takes us behind the scenes during the making of many well-known movies. From The Right Stuff to Top Gun and even Lassie, the list of movies in which the Pentagon got its way is very long. Only when a director is determined to spend more money than necessary to make his own movie without interference, as in the case of Oliver Stone in the creation of Platoon or Francis Ford Coppola in Apocalypse Now, is a film released that presents the director's unalloyed vision.For anyone who loves movies and cares about freedom of expression, Operation Hollywood is an engrossing, shocking, and very entertaining book.

Genres: Nonfiction, Politics, Film, History, War, American History, Conspiracy Theories

350 pages, Hardcover

First published April 30, 2004

Reviews

[Cwn_annwn_13 · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book documents how the Pentagon and branches of the United States military bully filmmakers into revising scripts, editing scenes from movies and even rewriting factual history by denying them access to military bases, use of soldiers as extras and use of tanks, jets, helicopters, etc if they do not make the alterations to the films. There are multitudes of examples and firsthand accounts of this being done in this book. In fact there are so many that it gets monotonous after a while.

One thing that shouldn't be surprising is that the overwhelming majority of the films that catered to the Pentagon/Military were complete and total garbage and great films like Apocalypse Now, Platoon and An Officer and a Gentlemen received no help whatsoever. But really what films are there that aren't full of propaganda and attempts at brainwashing. They do it overtly and in subtle ways. Probably even subliminally for that matter. Whats documented in this book is the overt public relations type attempts at propaganda. The real social engineers and mind benders in Hollywood operate in a much more shadowy way.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors
the Movies

by David L. Robb

Prometheus, 384 pages, hardback, 2004

This is an important book, and thoroughly to be recommended.
It is also, unfortunately, a flawed one in terms of its
presentation, filled with clumsy writing and egregious
repetition: it reads like a collection of essays written, rather
hurriedly, at different times, and it's somewhat shameful that
neither the author nor his editor made the least effort to knit
these into a coherent text.

The appeal to moviemakers of enlisting the cooperation of the
military is obvious. For a fraction of the outlay that would
otherwise be incurred, the military can lay on helicopters,
battleships, nuclear subs and a cast of thousands. The peril of
accepting such a huge cash savings — which may very well
represent the difference between a movie being made and not made
— is equally obvious. The non-cash price the military
demands is script-approval, more usually euphemized as "technical
advice." In Operation Hollywood Robb draws up an almost
mind-numbingly wide-ranging roster of movies that have been
substantially — often absurdly — compromised by the
military's refusal to support enterprises that they feel fail to
convey "the right message."

The ethical core of the book is summed up in a few lines
about two-thirds of the way through:

And to get an idea of what's been lost by the sanitizing of
hundreds of movies that the Pentagon has assisted, imagine what
the films that the Pentagon refused to assist might have been
like if they'd been subjected to the military's approval process.
Imagine a "toned down" Jack D. Ripper, the mad army general
obsessed with the purity of bodily fluids in Stanley Kubrick's
Dr. Strangelove; or a "more positive" Colonel Kurtz, the
insane renegade army officer in Francis Ford Coppola's
Apocalypse Now; or a less bitter Ron Kovic, the paralyzed
hero-turned-war resister in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth
of July; or a less goofy, more soldierlike Forrest
Gump [italics sic]. How would we have known if the
producers of these films had toned down their characters in order
to get the military's cooperation? And how would we have known
that our movie-memories had been tampered with?

The answer, of course, is that we wouldn't, without the help
of assiduous researchers like Robb. A case in point is the
relatively recent movie Windtalkers, concerning the so-
called Code Talkers, Navajos enlisted to serve alongside Marines
in World War II because their language was totally
incomprehensible to the Japanese and, as an evolved rather than a
created "code", was invulnerable to decryption techniques. I saw
this movie after I'd read Robb's book; the person I was with had
not. My companion assumed the historical underpinning of the
movie was, aside from the obvious Hollywood-blockbuster
conventions, fairly accurate, and was quite horrified to find
this wasn't the case. In particular, among countless smaller
changes, institutionalized racism toward the Navajos was
downplayed (there is a single violently racist Marine, and even
he "learns better" as the movie progresses), and, most specific
of all, the instruction given to each Marine teamed with a Navajo
that, should his charge fall into enemy hands, his imperative
duty was to kill him, in case the "code" could be tortured out of
him, was almost completely written out of the script: it's still
there in tacit form, but it's no longer an important dynamic of
the plot.

The list of movies that have been similarly tampered with is
a long one, as noted, and it spans decades up to the present.
Even a listing of the more famous titles would be too long to
reproduce here. I can guarantee, though, that many of your
illusions about the integrity of your favorite movies will be
shattered.

Also of interest are the tales Robb recounts of directors and
producers who simply refused to be cowed by the military "script
advisers" and who either scrapped their projects altogether or
had confidence enough in their own box-office draw to be able to
eschew the Pentagon's cooperation. Most such moviemakers have
been well established figures, for obvious reasons, but not all.
I was particularly struck by the story of Cy Roth, widely
regarded as one of the worst low-budget moviemakers of all time,
the qualities of whose three completed movies can be judged by
the title of one of them: Fire Maidens from Outer Space.
In 1953 he wanted to make a serious movie called Air
Strike about racism aboard a World War II aircraft carrier.
The Pentagon not only refused all cooperation — how
preposterous to countenance that there might be racism in the
military! — but also went out of their way to try to insure
the movie never saw the light of day: at one point they even
enlisted the FBI to see if charges of Communism against Roth
might be made to stick. Despite such persecution, Roth refused to
lie down and shut up, and finally he made his movie. By all
accounts it's a rotten movie — and not just because of the
lack of cooperation — but one cannot help admiring his
courage and gumption in managing to make it against all the very
considerable odds.

An additional point of interest in Operation Hollywood
is that Robb has managed to obtain copies of various bits of
correspondence between moviemakers and the military censors, and
these he reproduces in facsimile form. He also presents a
convincing counter-argument to the defense of the Pentagon's
attitude that refusing cooperation is different from censorship
in that no one would accuse (say) Exxon of censorship if it
refused to assist a movie fiercely critical of the company's
approach to clearing up oil spills. Robb points out forcefully
that, unlike Exxon, the Pentagon is not a private company: it is
in fact the property of the US public, and thus has no moral
license whatsoever to rewrite its own and US history for the
purpose of keeping that public in the dark.

Despite the irritation — even exasperation —
generated by the total dereliction of auctorial and editorial
duty in the preparation of its text, Operation Hollywood
is one of those must-read books: no understanding of movie
history is remotely complete without it. It certainly deserves
far more attention than it so far seems to have received.



This review, first published by Crescent Blues, is
excerpted from my ebook Warm Words and Otherwise: A Blizzard
of Book Reviews, to be published on September 19 by Infinity
Plus Ebooks.

[Varin · Rating 2 out of 5]

They say that if you like eating sausage and respect the law, you should not watch either one being made. I figure that applies to movies and tv shows too. The military does not give its assistance to any productions that put them in a bad light or can't be used for recruitment. And while they deny it, they're not squeamish about changing history. For example: In Windtalkers, they could not say in the movie the marines guarding the Navajo Codetalkers were ordered to kill them if they were in danger of capture by the Japanese. In reality, those were the orders.

My favorite chapter name: "Lose page six or you can't use our aircraft carrier."

[Jim Bob · Rating 1 out of 5]

I just don't know how this guy can make such mistakes. A few paragraphs in and he claims Tomorrow Never Dies was Brosnans first Bond movie when it was actually Goldeneye. And later he gets John Stebbins crime wrong which I won't detail but it took a few seconds to find the facts. I'm not sure how many other things he's got wrong between those two parts of the book but I'm not going to read any more because I just don't think he did any research and didn't get the book checked for facts as I can easily find them!

[Alberto Erazo · Rating 4 out of 5]

Operation Hollywood no es solo un libro sobre cine. Revela cómo la cultura estadounidense se ha convertido en un laboratorio de persuasión disfrazado de entretenimiento. David L. Robb recorre archivos, memorandos internos, entrevistas, contratos, correcciones de guion y decisiones oficiales para mostrar un sistema estable, rutinario y sorprendentemente descarado, mediante el cual el Pentágono ha modelado durante décadas la imaginación audiovisual de millones de personas sin levantar ni un solo escándalo. La sutileza de esta influencia parece inofensiva, hasta que uno comprende que cada sonrisa frente a la pantalla está cuidadosamente calibrada.

Desde 1950, el Pentágono no invade estudios: los compra en alquiler. Entrega portaaviones, tanques, aviones y soldados, y recibe guiones que obedecen la ley no escrita de la corrección política militar. El mayor David Georgi, asesor en Clear and Present Danger, llama a este juego “un comercial para nosotros”, y la frase resume todo el descaro de la operación: Hollywood presume de rebeldía mientras firma contratos que convierten la sumisión en rutina. La guerra no se muestra, se embellece; no se cuestiona, se vende.

La relación entre estudios y defensa se basa en un control absoluto de los relatos. Cada recurso proporcionado condiciona cómo se cuentan los hechos, qué se muestra y qué desaparece. Thirteen Days, Windtalkers, Black Hawk Down y The Perfect Storm ejemplifican esta lógica: muertes incómodas, órdenes dudosas y errores reales desaparecen, se reescriben o se asignan a otros actores para que todo resulte comprensible y emocionalmente digerible. La historia se pule hasta que encaja en un molde que ni siquiera intenta reflejar la complejidad de la realidad.

El alcance de esta influencia se extiende a los niños. Lassie y The Mickey Mouse Club muestran al ejército como un parque de diversiones heroico, donde perros salvan aviones y accidentes aéreos se transforman en accidentes “impredecibles” en lugar de fallas de diseño. Los niños aprenden a admirar sin cuestionar y a asociar disciplina militar con seguridad, aventura y diversión, mientras la estrategia de familiarización con la autoridad se despliega silenciosa y eficaz. Cada historia infantil funciona como un dispositivo temprano de adoctrinamiento emocional, estableciendo percepciones antes de que exista capacidad crítica.

La manipulación también se extiende a la representación social y racial. En Battle Cry, un personaje latino desaparece por denunciar discriminación; en The Tuskegee Airmen, se eliminan peleas raciales; en Blood Alley, los nacionalistas chinos se suavizan para no incomodar la política exterior. El Pentágono no combate el racismo, lo edita; la igualdad deja de ser un derecho y se convierte en un accesorio que se coloca o se retira según convenga.

Cada guion atraviesa múltiples filtros antes de llegar a la pantalla. Clint Eastwood pierde apoyo por referirse a Beirut; James Webb recibe censura por mostrar fragging; Oliver Stone queda sin tanques al denunciar la guerra. La creatividad se somete a revisiones que convierten cada diálogo, cada gesto y cada decisión de personaje en un instrumento de control emocional. La ficción funciona como un canal de percepción que oculta la complejidad y expone solo lo que la maquinaria militar considera conveniente.

Películas como Top Gun elevan el reclutamiento a cifras desorbitadas; guiones como Stripes mutan de sátira a publicidad militar tras múltiples reescrituras. Cada ajuste en personajes, acciones y resultados convierte la guerra en un espectáculo organizado, emocionante y moralmente digerible. La audiencia celebra sin saber que celebra la preparación psicológica para conflictos reales.

La experiencia cinematográfica infantil refuerza este patrón. Cada héroe, cada mascota y cada historia contribuye a establecer un marco de comprensión donde los conflictos, la violencia y la autoridad se vuelven naturales y deseables. El Pentágono llama a esto “relaciones públicas”; los psicólogos lo llaman programación. La infancia se convierte en laboratorio de aceptación, y la obediencia se instala como una respuesta automática ante figuras de autoridad.

Operation Hollywood muestra que el cine estadounidense funciona como un terreno donde cultura, política y logística militar convergen con precisión inquietante. Cada relato, cada modificación histórica y cada ajuste emocional forman un paisaje donde el público aprende a admirar, aceptar y participar de un mundo en el que la guerra aparece limpia, comprensible y hasta emocionante. La ficción se convierte en norma y la verdad histórica, en lujo que solo algunas producciones marginales pueden permitirse.

La próxima vez que un F-14 surque la pantalla, su vuelo no busca entretener. Cada escena, cada movimiento y cada emoción funcionan como herramientas de orientación, calibrando la percepción, dirigiendo la admiración y formando la obediencia de manera silenciosa y precisa. El libro de Robb desmantela esta maquinaria con una claridad que incomoda, revelando un cine que deja de ser arte para convertirse en laboratorio de manipulación, donde la espectacularidad oculta la crueldad del control institucional y la persuasión se disfraza de diversión.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite an interesting premise but it's just so repetitive. Sometimes within the space of three pages the same thing is basically written, just slightly reworded. It feels like it needs a much stronger edit.
Some of the examples also feel kind of weak, to be frank.

[Sean O'Hara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Anyone who's ever listened to the commentary track for big-budget action movies has probably heard tales about how the producers received help from the Pentagon -- actors allowed to take part in training, military advisors on set giving tips, temporary use of tanks and helicopters, etc., etc. Occasionally someone will mention that the military suggested changes to the script. Usually it's played off as technical advice -- "Oh, they told us that real soldiers wouldn't do a certain thing," or "We wanted an F-15 to hover over the Golden Gate Bridge, but it turns out we needed a Harrier for that" -- though sometimes you'll hear a director talk about how they couldn't get Pentagon assistance because of some element of the script, like the use of Area 51 in Independence Day being a deal breaker.

But the truth is, the Pentagon's interference can go a lot deeper. Their official policy is that they'll only help out on films that promote recruitment and are historically accurate. That first caveat is troubling by itself -- it's essentially a backdoor for propaganda. It's doubtful such restrictions would stand up in a legal challenge, but Hollywood studios aren't about to mount an expensive lawsuit when they can drop a couple thousand bucks on a writer to change the script. The rule about historical accuracy turns out to be propaganda by another name. When the producers of the Cuban Missile Crisis film Thirteen Days asked the Defense Department for help, DoD demanded they alter the script to make Curtis LeMay look less like a deranged warmonger, even though the script was based upon the actual transcripts of Kennedy's ExComm meetings. The producers told the Pentagon to take a hike and made the film without government assistance.

These are just some of the instances Robb uncovered for this book. Some are fairly minor; some sound like something you'd expect out of the Soviet Union. Overall they paint a portrait of a military-Hollywood complex that molds public perceptions of the military in a way that have had disastrous effects on Americans' ability to make rational choices about foreign adventures.

That being said, this is a subject that demands a far better book than this. The organization is a mess. There are fifty-some chapters, most dealing with just one or two movies, but there's no pattern to them, either chronological or thematic. You'll go from a recent-ish blockbuster to something made in the '80s, jump ahead to the '90s, zoom back to the '60s, then come back to the present. And it's not just the ordering that's disjointed. The book reads like a collection of magazine articles that were never meant to be read through in one go. The author hammers home the same points again and again -- the military uses films as recruiting tools; the military demands that filmmakers distort inconvenient facts, the military uses films as recruiting tools; the military demands that filmmakers distort inconveninet facts ...

Then there are problems that should've been caught by an editor. Many of them are minor -- referring to the subtitle of Star Trek IV as The Long Voyage Home, which would make for a very different film, and claiming that Flight of the Intruder takes place in Bosnia instead of Vietnam (presumably he mixed it up with Behind Enemy Lines). I didn't notice anything major, but there are enough such mistakes to make me leery of accepting this as a definitive source.

The author seems to've used two main sources -- interviews he conducted with the major players on both sides, and documents he received through FOIA requests. The ebook includes facsimiles of many of the FOIA documents, and the interviews are pretty obvious, but the book doesn't use footnotes. Instead it just has a list of the interviews he conducted. That's fine and well, but there are a couple cases where it's not clear where his information comes from. The book doesn't list any interviews with Harve Bennett, Nicholas Meyer, Leonard Nimoy or anyone else I recognize as being involved with Star Trek and there aren't any copies of FOIA documents included with the chapter, yet he gives an extensive rundown of alternate scenes (Uhura and Chekov having to sneak aboard an aircraft carrier because the transporters aren't working, and then Sulu rescuing Kirk and company from the roof of a hospital in a helicopter) that have never been mentioned in any other source on the film that I'm familiar with. I asked around on a Trek forum, and nobody has ever heard the slightest hint of this version of the screenplay. Without citations, it's impossible to determine the factuality of the claim.

Given the subject matter, the book is worth reading, but it requires a critical eye.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

What? The military strongarms the entertainment industry and tries to control how it's portrayed? I'm shocked, shocked! As Gomer Pyle always said, "surprise, surprise, surprise..."
The most important book ever written about the military? Give me a break. This book does a good job of documenting the fact that the armed forces give technical support to films that enhance their image, withhold it from those that don't, and often make their support conditional on the filmmakers' changing their scripts to omit details the military finds uncomplimentary.
Is there anyone who finds that a surprise? On the one hand, it is interesting to read about some of the specific films involved; on the other hand, the basic message of the book could have been printed on half a page.
So this is a decent read, but it gets redundant fast except when the reader is interested in an anecdote related to a specific film or TV show. It hardly lives up to the breathless tone of the cover blurbs or the reviews; it would only be shocking or an expose to someone who had lived under a rock before reading it.
Particularly for those of us who have spent a lot of time in uniform, it's a given that the military is intensely image-conscious due to the CYA factor, to the impact on recruitment, and to the impact on funding from Congress. Yes, that's wrong, and yes, Congress should force the military to share public records (i.e. film footage that's part of public-owned archives) equally, at least with any American citizen who's making a film. But it's hardly news that they don't.

[Nathan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So we all know that the CIA was one of the biggest movie producers in the 50's and 60's. Now we know that the Pentagon has been in on the game as well. Definitely worth reading about in days of Homeland Security, wiretapping and Patriot Acts. Whole films have been shaped by military officials to be recruitment advertisements. History has been rewritten several times, entire scripts have been rewritten to shape public opinion toward US military goals. All of these accusations would sound like paranoid conspiracy ideology were it not for the fact that David Robb, a three-time Pulitzer prize nominee, avoids the appearance of conspiracy by getting direct interviews with the military officials who changed the films and the producers, directors, writers and even actors who relented to Pentagon intervention in the creative process. If you've ever found your opinion of something has been changed by a movie, you might like to read this book just to know the kinds of tricks used by the Pentagon in censoring films to shape your opinions. Somewhere, George Orwell is laughing at us.

NC

[Steven Jay · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very interesting read regarding the Pentagon teaming up with Hollywood to promote the U.S. military.