Operation Hollywood

How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies

David L. Robb

• Publisher: Prometheus
• Year: 2011
• eBook ISBN:
  9781615924516
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Film History & Criticism

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 spokesman: "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.

Table of contents

• Foreword
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. Censoring James Bond
• Chapter 2. “A Commercial for Us”
• Chapter 3. “Discrimination Against Speech because of Its Message Is Presumed to Be Unconstitutional”
• Chapter 4. “Revisionist History”
• Chapter 5. Changing History
• Chapter 6. Bending Over Backward
• Chapter 7. “The Producers Will ‘Punch It Up’ in Any Manner We Dictate”
• Chapter 8. “The Mooning of a President by a Uniformed Soldier Is Not Acceptable Cinematic License”
• Chapter 9. Rewriting Renaissance Man
• Chapter 10. “It’s All in the Negotiations”: The Films of Jerry Bruckheimer
• Chapter 11. “Show Stoppers”
• Chapter 12. Self-Censorship Is Still Censorship
• Chapter 13. The First Amendment Doesn’t Always Come First
• Chapter 14. Approval Denied
• Chapter 15. “Dishonest Propaganda”
• Chapter 16. Sanitizing JAG
• Chapter 17. “A 45-Minute Commercial for Marine Aviation”
• Chapter 18. Bending the Rules
• Chapter 19. “I Want Page Six and Seven Completely Thrown Out 149 or You Don’t Get to Use Our Aircraft Carrier”
• Chapter 20. Turning Vodka into Water
• Chapter 21. Censorship: The Final Frontier
• Chapter 22. Almost Sunk by the Navy
• Chapter 23. Turning Movies into Recruiting Posters
• Chapter 24. “Editorial Control Over the Product”
• Chapter 25. Changing Stripes
• Chapter 26. An Officer, But Not a Gentleman
• Chapter 27. “Writing the Scene to the Admiral’s Specifications”
• Chapter 28. Join the Navy—Be Indicted
• Chapter 29. Join the Army—Be Indicted
• Chapter 30. Clint Eastwood versus the Pentagon
• Chapter 31. “Is That Not Propaganda?”
• Chapter 32. Sanitizing The Great Santini
• Chapter 33. “A Wonderful Public Relations Tool”
• Chapter 34. Mooning the Pentagon
• Chapter 35. Let There Not Be Light
• Chapter 36. “The Propaganda Value of the Film”
• Chapter 37. Bowing to Political Pressure
• Chapter 38. Erasing Private Pedro
• Chapter 39. “A Shameful Attempt to Impose Censorship on a Film”
• Chapter 40. Lassie Wants You to Join the Army
• Chapter 41. Babes in Arms
• Chapter 42. Babes in Gas Chambers
• Chapter 43. The Cy Roth Story
• Chapter 44. “Cooperation by the United States Navy Should Evince 329 a Certain Reciprocity in Making Changes in the Script”
• Chapter 45. Even Good Men Do Bad Things: The Frank McCarthy Story
• Chapter 46. Covering Up the Cover-up
• Chapter 47. Religiously Incorrect
• Chapter 48. Torpedoed by the Navy
• Chapter 49. Heroes and Villains
• Conclusion
• Sources