Operation Hollywood: How the Pentagon Shapes and Censors the Movies

By David L. Robb

Book Overview

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... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1591021820
• ISBN13: 9781591021827
• Release Date: April 2004
• Publisher: Prometheus
• Length: 350 Pages
• Weight: 1.52 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.9" x 0.8" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Critics Pay Taxes Too

Robb's book is an invaluable resource for those interested in the mechanics of propaganda from Hollywood. The author shows again and again how the Pentagon sanitizes its image through the raw power of institutional trade-off. Movie and tv producers simply do not get the Pentagon's money-saving goodies unless their scripts conform to the high command's self-serving demands. Unsurprisingly, the result is often a subtle but sometimes dangerous departure from reality which may benefit the Pentagon's recruiting program, but in turn witholds important facts from public scrutiny. In Vietnam, American troops experienced a particularly savage disconnect between the war they expected and the war they got. It's at least an open question whether the disconnect would have been as great had the post-war years featured more of the unsanitized realism of "Attack" or "Paths of Glory" instead of the relentless banality of stereotypes like "Battle Cry", "Operation Petticoat", or scores of other unchallenging recruiting posters for the Pentagon. I'm sure thousands of others like myself were similarly seduced into paying a personal price for Hollywood's deals with the Defense Department. (And In response to the anonymous reviewer from "Heartland"-- the 5th Amendment applies only to legal proceedings, which hardly applies in this case.) On the downside--and I'm sorry to say there is one--the book would have benefitted from better editing. As far as I can tell, the chapters follow in no particular order, adding up to a loose format that scatters both focus and impact. I don't know whether the chapters could have been grouped around common themes, but some such would have helped sharpen the presentation. Moreover, facts tend to be needlessly repeated as though someone has lost track of the earlier text. In short, the text could use some honing and reorganizing. Nonetheless, Robb has performed a genuine service by calling attention to this long-standing sweetheart arrangement. The chapters on "The Green Berets", "Battle Cry", and "Lassie", are particularly revealing of how the system works. In the future, I hope some enterprising researcher will go further back to produce a history of Hollywood's relation to the armed services, which would lend valuable perspective to Robb's findings, and perhaps open up options for reforming the process. At book's end, the author lists some Hollywood personalities notable for their resistence to Pentagon pressure, such as Clint Eastwood and Kevin Costner. With this book, Robb shows that his name deserves a place among them.

Fascinating Look at Hollywood's Relationship With the Army

Operation Hollywood is an interesting book about the common practice in which studios alter scripts to meet military PR requirements in return for free access to both bases and equipment.The book shows how pro-military movies leads to spikes in recruitment and as a result, the military wants to control everything that goes into a movie. All too often, Hollywood acquiesces to their demands. The military believes that they are only enforcing accuracy, but they also maintain that any film that does not reflect well on the military is "inaccurate."This baleful influence has altered the view that Americans now have of the military. They believe that the U.S. military is intrincsically good and is incapable of doing anything wrong. Operation Hollywood is an interesting and revealing book. As such it is recommended.

Operation Hollywood Presents an Amazing Tale

Operation Hollywood describes how the U.S. military controls what we see in many movies made for the big screen. I would not have thought this was possible in our society.Yet the author, David Robb, makes it all too true. Most of his information comes from files obtained from the armed services themselves. The book is full of household-name movies, directors, actors and studios, and tells the actual stories of what happened to them under this seedy system.The Pentagon richly rewards producers and directors who give military censors control over a film's script, characters, scenes and final cut . The reward comes in the form of hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of planes, equipment, locations and military personnel shared with the movie-makers. The objective is always the same - to have a film that boosts the image of the U.S. military.The Pentagon even changed scenes in episodes of the Mickey Mouse Club television show! An important subtheme to Operation Hollywood is the utter lack of constitutionality in this cozy and venerable relationship between Hollywood and the Pentagon.This is a fascinating book with all kinds of ramifications. Highly recommended.

The Pentagon and Hollywood Dissected

Operation Hollywood has come out at a time when the Pentagon's relationship with the American public is being evaluated -- at the height of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal. Operation Hollywood gives us all a rare glimpse at the Pentagon's stealth tactics in shaping the content of television shows and films. Using the Pentagon's own documents, Robb expertly delves into the behind-the-scenes machinations of Hollywood producers kowtowing to Pentagon censors. The result is suprising and disturbing changes to a slew of films that include the box office blockbusters "Independence Day," "Top Gun," and the Harrison Ford-starrer "Clear and Present Danger." Robb also reveals how the Pentagon wanted to change history in the Nicolas Cage-starrer "Windtalkers" to the detriment of the Navajo Indians whose unbreakable codes saved this country in World War II. But, as Robb points out, it doesn't stop there. Who knew that even "The Mickey Mouse Club" and "Lassie" were not immune from military tinkering? Or that the Pentagon objected to a military man taking shots at a target that looked too much like Osama Bin Laden in the popular television show "JAG?" Or that, in our recent history, the military objected to exposing racial and religious prejudices against Hispanics and Jews? It's no wonder, as Robb writes, that his "heroes" Clint Eastwood, Kevin Costner and Oliver Stone have rebuffed the Pentagon's requests to change the content of their scripts. Robb is not only my friend, but he is also a great investigative journalist. This book serves as a wake-up call to anyone who loves the very backbone of this country: The First Amendment.

Spectacular work!

With his new book, Operation Hollywood, Dave Robb demonstrates why he continues to be Hollywood's best investigative journalist. Taking a subject that has never been addressed, Robb unveils the film industry's dirtiest secret--that movie producers have been allowing the Pentagon to censor movies while placing propaganda into films and television shows for more than fifty years. Congress needs to take a hard look at Robb's outstanding book and his overwhelming evidence.