In other words, had Weinstein’s movie been snubbed altogether, I think people would remember it more fondly than they do. If I recall correctly, no one was complaining much that the movie was nominated, but the win immediately changed the perception of the movie.

I loved a lot of movies released in 1998, but only one of them was nominated for Best Picture. It’s a very tough year for me to pick a favorite. The nominees:

“Shakespeare in Love” – Only saw it once, and I liked it. Costume dramas really ain’t my thing, but costume comedies? Well, that’s…wait, I don’t like them much either. But I guess this one’s alright.

“Elizabeth” – See above. Never seen it.

“Life is Beautiful” – Roberto Benigni winning Best Actor for this remains one of the great whiffs in Academy history.

“Saving Private Ryan” - The invasion sequence alone remains worth the price of admission.

“The Thin Red Line” – For my money, this is a pretentious mess. I’ve got a buddy who says it’s his favorite movie. I say he’ s trying to seem smart. But what do I know? I’m the guy who would have nominated…

“There’s Something About Mary” - Stalker? Big time.

“The Big Lebowski” - Am I wrong? Am I wrong? No, you’re not wrong, Walter, you’re just an assh*le.

“Out of Sight” - You don’t have an extra clip I can use, do you?

“Rushmore” - Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I would have sons like this.

“Saving Private Ryan” - The Statue of Liberty is kaput. That’s disconcerting.

This is really an absolute squeaker. Why? Partially, it’s because I love all of these movies so much. But mostly, it’s because I’m stupid.

Peter and Bobby Farrelly established themselves with “Dumb & Dumber,” then made the box office bust “Kingpin,” which deservedly found an audience on video. No one expected much from their third movie. Leading man Ben Stiller was not yet a star or a box office draw, but he had honed the nervous stammering act of his in pretty solid comedies like “Flirting With Disaster” and turned in hilarious supporting work in “Happy Gilmore.” In 1998, he had a breakout year, appearing in the underrated “Zero Effect” and the misanthropic “Your Friends & Neighbors.”

Released in the middle of July, less than a week after “Lethal Weapon 4″ and just before “The Mask of Zorro,” the Farrelly’s comedy was a genuine word-of-mouth sleeper hit. It hovered in the lower half of the top five until the end of August, when it finally crept up to number 2 at the box office. First week of September, it claimed the number one spot — a full seven weeks after it debuted at number 4.

Its performance is part of the reason I pick it over the more obvious choices on the Academy’s list and my own list. I worked in a theatre at the time, and I witnessed the slow build. By September, older couples were coming to see the movie — and were loving it. The Farrellys had done something amazing; they had made a vulgar comedy that crossed over to people who would never see a vulgar comedy, much less embrace it.

The key to their success is the unconventional screenplay, and the cast.

Ben Stiller and Cameron Diaz have been more than overexposed by now, but in 1998, they seemed like a breath of fresh air. I don’t think I’ve ever rooted for a dude to get the girl more than I did in “There’s Something About Mary.” No one has ever deserved a girl who was so out of his league in the history of movies.

This is set up from the very beginning and then pounded into our heads, sometimes with subtlety and sometimes with the force of a sledgehammer to the nuts. The Farrellys make Ted (Stiller) go through hell to land dreamgirl Mary (Diaz); it’s a journey during which no good deed goes unpunished for Ted, and our heart sinks with his about a dozen times over the course of the movie. Consider:

- He comes to the aid of her mentally challenged baseball loving brother Warren (W. Earl Brown – fantastic performance) and almost gets his ass kicked for his trouble. He later gives the gargantuan Warren a piggy back ride.

- He shows up to pick up Mary for the prom and is told by her father Charlie (Keith David? Genius casting.) that Mary already went to prom with Woogie — a Mr. Everybody’s All American type from a different high school. Ted slumps, frowns, but what makes it UNBEARABLE is that he not only pretends that he’s not hurt by the jilting, but that he seems to think he deserves to be jilted. Of course, Mary’s dad is “just f*cking with” Ted, and Mary is home the whole time ready to go to prom with Ted.

- Ted offers Warren a baseball but inadvertently touches the big man’s ear; Warren goes psycho, tears the room apart and delivers a belly to belly suplex on Ted atop a coffee table. I love the  tension in the aftermath of this moment. Ted’s freaked out, Mary goes upstairs with Sheila, her hot mom (Markie Post), to fix her dress, and Charlie consoles Warren and barks at Ted. Ted defends himself, Charlie responds: “Are you yelling at me? Are you yelling at me in my own damn house?” Ted insists he’s not. Awesome. But the capper is when Ted asks where the bathroom is and Charlie answers, “Grrrrrrrrrrr!”

- The bathroom scene. One of the two most talked about scenes in the movie. “Franks & Beans!” Once again, a misconstrued situation — this time only a look, a glance, a harmless peek! — leads Ted into an uncomfortable situation. Perhaps the most uncomfortable situation in movie history. Sheila sprays Bactene on his nuts, a cop shows up (“What? The f*ck?” he exclaims), a fireman — pretty soon the bathroom’s packed with people and Warren is in the hallway screaming, “Franks & Beans.” If you don’t exit this scene with pee-stained pants from laughing yourself wet, there’s something wrong with you. More importantly, if you don’t exit this scene hoping Ted gets Mary, there’s something wrong with your soul.

- On Ted’s day off, he helps his boss’s brother move. Not his boss. Not his brother. His boss’s brother, who happens to be a crusty, mean, profane man in a wheelchair. Genius line: when Ted complains that a gigantic armoire is heavy, the guy in the wheelchair seethes, “Heavy?! What I wouldn’t give to know what heavy feels like, you insensitive prick!”

- He also, out of the goodness of his heart, offers a serial killer a ride, takes a fish hook to the mouth, and is made to dress up in a superhero costume. Nothing in the movie would have been as funny without our empathy for Ted. In “Mary,” the Farrelly Brothers dodge a landmine. She likes golf. She likes to drink beer and watch football. She likes to talk about football. In essence, she’s too perfect, and women should have rooted against her. But, using subtlety and a sledgehammer, the Farrellys make her vulnerable… to stalkers. She’s got so many stalkers she had to change her name. The only reason that Ted ever got a chance to go to the prom with her is because her high school boyfriend Woogie “got weird.” Like a stalker.

Ultimately, it’s my pick because from a pure story standpoint, it’s the most difficult of any of nominees (actual and in Cam-Land) to pull off — a comedy about stalkers that’s actually really sweet despite relentless vulgarity. Its unconventional-but-still-mainstream-and-not-weird structure (the romantic leads are apart for a good chunk of the movie — ask Gore Verbinski how hard it is to pull that off) makes it an even more difficult movie to pull off. But ultimately, it’s the constant barrage of jokes both verbal and visual, great characters and strong performances that make it my favorite movie of 1998.

But these great Americans are generally not members of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, and they don’t get to vote for who takes home the Oscar.  People like Sean Penn do.  And Tim Robbins.   And tranny vomit recipient Susan Sarandon.  

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These are the kind of folks who make up the majority of Oscar voters, so it’s no wonder that the Academy Awards show is so often a festival of nitwittery that leaves normal Americans scratching their heads wondering, “Um, what the hell was that?” 

Oscar has more than its share of astonishing failures, of crazy-uncle-locked-in-the-attic nods that the Academy sorely regretted about the time the after-party coke bowls ran dry.  The terrible Oscar choices listed here are only from the last few decades since the sting of choosing How Green Is My Valley over Citizen Kane and The Maltese Falcon has presumably faded since 1941– well, for some of us.  Oh, and you won’t find Marisa Tomei on this list – she rocks.  Deal with that, haters. 

So, in no particular order of insanity, here are Oscar’s 10 biggest recent screw-ups: ]

1. Crash: Best Picture 2006: Before Paul Haggis annoyed the Scientologists, he annoyed most of the rest of the world with Crash, a ponderous stew of liberal guilt and condescension that lucked into a Best Picture Oscar through a combination of pinko button pushing and the pure dumb luck of having an equally tiresome raft of competing nominees.  

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With fellow nominees Brokeback Mountain, Munich, Capote, and Good Night and Good Luck, Crash was up against sodomy, moral equivalence, more sodomy and George Clooney.  Apparently, the voters found Crash the lesser of five mediocrities. 

2. Shakespeare In Love: Best Picture 1999:  Well, I guess I’m just being petty.  I mean, Saving Private Ryan was merely a stirring, technically magnificent tribute to the unbelievable bravery of the heroes who stormed the beaches at Normandy and freed Europe from the grip of Nazi tyranny.  But Shakespeare In Love was about show business and it also displayed Gwyneth Paltrow’s epically unimpressive rack.  So I guess it was an easy choice for the Academy – they got to pick a flick about Actors and Acting while also dissing those dirty brutes who do Army stuff.  To pat themselves on their collective backs and diss the proles – how could they pass up that opportunity?  Well, they couldn’t, and they didn’t. 

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Now, there’s nothing really wrong with Shakespeare In Love.  It’s a perfectly serviceable film if you happen not to have testes, or merely hate all they stand for.  Sure, there are some guys out there who think a topless Gwyneth from 14 years ago is sexy, but movies need to appeal to more than just lonely shut-ins whose life partners are manufactured by the Kleenex Corporation.  This condescending, anti-American snob is to hot women what her husband’s band Coldplay is to cool music,and she needs to stick to her goop.com blog where she comments on the everyday problems that real moms face, like uppity butlers and “tiara hair.”  Enough said about her.  

In ambition and execution, Private Ryan – a film I have my problems with – was so manifestly superior artistically and technically that to overlook it could not simply be a mistake.  The electrifying initial landing scene is so unforgettable that it alone justified a Best Picture award regardless of what came after.  No, there had to be an agenda.  And that’s what makes this choice more than just risible – it was despicable. 

3. Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman: Best Actor 1993:  Oh, how the mighty have fallen.  From his iconic roles in the 70’s like Michael Corleone to the bizarrely over-the-top but unforgettable Tony Montana in the 80’s, you could always count on Al to deliver.  But this?  It’s bad enough that it came to this; it’s worse that the Academy acted as an enabler to Pacino’s sad decline into tedious caricature. 

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Hooah?  I don’t think so. 

4. Roberto Begnini in Life Is Beautiful: Best Actor 1999:  This award was so manifestly undeserved that it made President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize seem as underwhelming as a third place middle school science fair ribbon tossed at Albert Einstein.  Let me put this out there – Life Is Beautiful is perhaps the stupidest, most offensive major motion picture ever made.  When the Nazis came looking for Begnini, this holocaust comedy literally had people in the audience yelling, “Hey, he’s hiding in the alley!” 

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Someone told Roberto Begnini a terrible lie – that he was amusing.  In fact, he is the most annoying performer in the entire history of cinema, a history that includes Matt Damon and Channing Tatum.  What takes him to a whole new level of suck is that he thinks he’s hilarious, which he is – in the same way a giant herpetic lesion is hilarious.  

The “wacky” English-mangling acceptance speech he offered when presented with this award was brilliant…to those who hit the sauce in their limos beforehand.  For the rest of the audience, it was like a root canal sans anesthetic, but without the fun.  Fortunately, Begnini has faded into well-deserved obscurity and his movies are today largely forgotten, a tribute to the collective human mind’s ability to block out traumatic experiences. 

5. Alan Arkin in Little Miss Sunshine: Best Supporting Actor 2007:  “Let’s honor a trangressive indie comedy where the grandpa swears and drinks and does drugs – yeah, that’ll blow the collective minds of those squares out there in Jesusland!”  Such was no doubt the thought process that went into handing the little gold naked guy to veteran Alan Arkin for what was essentially playing the same curmudgeonly character he’d been essaying since the great Freebie and the Bean.  Now, that was an amusing, truly un-PC movie: 

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So rent Freebie and let Little Miss Sunshine fade into a vague, unpleasant memory. 

6. Diablo Cody for Juno: Best Original Screenplay 2008:  Once again, the Academy experienced the equivalent of a “double bagger,” where it wakes up in the morning, looks at what it brought home, and asks “What the hell was I thinking?” 

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Juno is not the most horrible movie of all time, despite the presence of the spirit-killing Michael Cera and Ellen Page and a soundtrack full of crappy, waify hipster alt-folk songs that are so twee they make Justin Beiber seem like Megadeth.  It’s just that Juno is embarrassingly pretentious, with the precocious heroine’s vocabulary packed with painfully cutesy words like “shenanigans.”  And when Rainn Wilson’s character calls her “home skillet,” well, you just want to slap him. 

This is the problem with a novelty act movie – the Academy is amused for a few minutes, votes it an Oscar, then spends the rest of eternity shaking its collective head after figuratively sobering up.  

7. An Inconvenient Truth: Best Documentary 2007:  It’s hard to believe that it was only four years ago that people actually believed in global warming.  But it’s not hard at all to believe that among the biggest suckers were the pampered quarter-wits who do most of the Academy Award voting.  Al Gore’s ridiculous exercise in propaganda, delivered with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, was a natural choice for the Oscar voters, but they were probably pretty disappointed they couldn’t also vote for the nominated documentary that dissed Christians or the other one that trashed America over Iraq.  Whoever said that Hollywood doesn’t embrace a diversity of thought?  

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In any case, An Inconvenient Truth is destined to be the Reefer Madness of 2007, with stoned UC Berkeley students from the Class of 2032 laying around their dorms laughing at how stupid people were back in the mid-aughts.  Well, some people. 

8. The English Patient: Best Picture 1997:  Perhaps the Academy wanted some balance after properly awarding the magnificent Schindler’s List Best Picture in 1994, which is the only possible explanation for why this over-praised, under-interesting celluloid atrocity could have won.  After all, this is the film that seriously posits that collaborating with the Nazis is perfectly cool if it will help you score with a mediocre chick who happens to be married to some other dude.  

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Sure, we can’t expect the film’s mere utter moral bankruptcy to dissuade the Academy voters – these are the folks who think Roman Polanski is the real victim.  But couldn’t they at least notice that this soapy melodrama is about the most boring way to spend nearly three hours outside of a Meet the Press marathon?  

9. Kate Winslet in The Reader: Best Actress 2009:  What the hell is it with Hollywood and Nazi sympathizers?  Well, admittedly Kate Winslet’s character had more going for her than just cavorting with brownshirts – she was illiterate and liked to do underage boys.  In Hollywood, that’s like an acting trifeca, and Kate went the full fascist-illiterate-pedo. 

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Oh, the performance itself?  Um, I have a question:  How did Kate Winslet get tagged as some sort of great thespian revelation?  In every movie she is in, she always seems to bear the same furrowed-brow, vaguely troubled expression, as if she was suffering from mild indigestion.  It must be something else – perhaps her willingness to doff her clothes and display her chubby charms in pretty much everything she’s been in.  Whatever.  

10. 3-6 Mafia’s “Hard Out here For A Pimp”: Best Song 2006:  Perhaps the most hilarious pick of all time, the Academy’s choice of the year’s Best Song from the rap/hooker extravaganza Hustle & Flow was just awesome.  For once, the saccharine Disney ditties and the generic pop hits were thrust aside in favor of a gritty urban tune that finally dared to musically explore the difficulties that industrious entrepreneurs face in their daily lives.  Yeah, nothing like a song we can all relate to. 

Most amazing were the hip hop stylings of those past and future unknowns, 3-6 Mafia, cavorting on stage while a bunch of dancers dressed like Hollywood’s idea of “hos” gyrated and frolicked before the bejeweled and bewildered audience: 

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Simply spectacular.  Yeah, it sure is hard out here for a pimp who’s trying to get his money for the rent.  Who can’t identify with that?  Especially in Hollywood.  

And this year, Oscar, don’t forget to keep your pimp hand strong!

I can never hear Frank Sinatra’s version of “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” without  hearing it as the music playing in the background while a WWII deserter was executed on Christmas Eve before battle weary soldiers watching stoically.

The film is episodic and loaded with cameos of great European actresses like Jeanne Moreau, Romy Schneider, Melina Mercouri, Elke Sommer, and Senta Berger in memorable and poignant vignettes. I had a mini crush on Albert Finney whom I had just seen in Tom Jones but he doesn’t appear until the end of  The Victors and portrays a drunken Russian soldier in Berlin confronting George Hamilton one of the main American characters. George Peppard, Eli Wallach, Vince Edwards, Jim Mitchum, and Peter Fonda round out the excellent cast.

This was Carl Foreman’s first and only stint as a director. He had a formidable career as a scriptwriter for classics like High Noon; Bridge on the River Kwai; Guns of Navarone and others too numerous and notable to mention here.

As I said, The Victors is not anti-war but rather a “War is hell but still necessary” film. This is evident in a moving scene where the soldiers have liberated a concentration camp and the prisoners are overwhelmed by their rescue, kissing the hands of their saviors. Mr. Crowther may have found this movie to be overly sentimental and trivial but any film that demonstrates the terrible sacrifices made by our military deserves a wider audience. 

What has always puzzled me is why this film has never been made available for the public in either videotape or DVD format. There are no scenes from the film available on YouTube that I know of and only posters of the film are online. Can anyone in Hollywood answer that?

One such movie, “Saving Private Ryan,” is as priceless as it is ageless. And to me, the most valuable part of this great movie lies in the opening scenes, where Allied Forces land at Normandy under heavy German machine-gun fire, and succeed in their mission against seeming insurmountable odds.

In real life, the D-Day landing at Normandy (June 6, 1944) cost America roughly 2400 lives. That’s right, 2400 combat deaths in one day, at one location. The Americans who poured onto that beach, determined to break through the German forces, were scared and strained by the certainty that an enemy bullet or artillery shell could end their earthly lives at any second. Yet they did their duty, and in addition to the 2400 Killed in Action (KIA) there were untold thousands more wounded in action, and others lost to POW status and MIA (missing in action) status.

Like no other war movie I’ve seen, “Saving Private Ryan” puts the horror of all this before the viewer’s eyes by presenting battle scenes in a way that show the harsh realities of war.

From the depiction of how short life became for so many of our troops when the doors on the PT boats opened and exposed them to the relentless barrage of German bullets, to the dazed and confused look in the eyes of those who made it to beach alive, only to see their best friends and fellow soldiers pay the ultimate price on Normandy’s sands, the opening scenes grip the viewer and remind everyone that there are heroes among us.

I watch Saving Private Ryan every year on November 11th. And after doing so, I contact veterans I’m fortunate to know and I thank them for their service.

Today, maybe each of you will watch “Saving Private Ryan” if you get the chance. But no matter what you watch, I hope you’ll find a veteran and thank him or her for paying the price for our freedom. The Private Ryan’s of our world deserve every  ounce of gratitude we can heap upon them.

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Regardless, I wish to extend my gratitude to all those soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines who served in the Korean War. Please know that your memory does live on … in our hearts if not in our theatres.

Below is the only film in this series produced within the last four decades, and that it is not from Hollywood but rather Korea itself underscores the meaning of “the forgotten war.” It may be forgotten to the American people, but as Tae Guk Gi: Brotherhood Of War aptly reveals, it is still very much a part of the Korean psyche.

Tae Guk Gi: The Brotherhood Of War (2004): Seen through the melancholy eyes of an aged South Korean army veteran Jin-seok Lee, the story is one large flashback that begins profiling Jin-seok’s once happy and industrious family living in Seoul on the eve of war. The Brotherhood Of War follows two very dissimilar brothers in the family, Jin-tae Lee, the quick-fisted, street-smart older brother played with riveting power by Dong-gun Jang, and a teen-aged Jin-seok, the younger, frailer more bookish of the two played with equal conviction by Bin Won. Though they are quite different, their affection for each other runs very deep. 

The story takes us through them being roughly commandeered off the street into military service after the Northern attack and follows their horrifying experiences in the see-saw fighting all the way through to the end.  In that time, unknown to his kid brother, Jin-tae has made a pact with his commander to take on the most dangerous of missions if in return Jin-seok will be spared them. He sees his younger brother as his family’s best hope and is willing to sacrifice his own life to save that future.

As the war progresses, however, the dangerous missions bring Jin-tae fame as a war hero. Jin-seok’s resentment grows as he feels his brother relishes the glory even as friends die around them. He eventually disowns him when he discovers the deal Jin-tae made as he is racked with survivor’s guilt.  Tragically, through a series of confusing events in the fog of war, Jin-tae comes to think his brother was murdered by a South Korean officer and thus switches allegiance to fight for the North.   Jin-seok must now accept his brother is a traitor.

When they meet again face-to-face, this time it is as enemy combatants…Will their love overpower their duties as soldiers to fight?  A deep-seeded divide that engulfed an entire nation is aptly symbolized by these two brothers’ last desperate battle against each other.

It seems appropriate that one of the best Korean War films ever made comes from South Korea itself.  Who better to tell the story of what was to them a horrific civil war that literally pitted family members against one another. Director Je-gyu Kang provides the viewer with vivid and brutally graphic combat scenes in the manner of Saving Private Ryan and HBO’s The Pacific. 

It also is an important film in that it examines the war from the Korean vantage point and drives home to the movie-goer just how calamitous an experience it was for these still-divided people.

The 1998 film, just released on Blu-ray for the first time, stands as one of director Steven Spielberg’s towering achievements – no small praise given his iconic resume. Hanks gives a bravura performance as the head of a gifted ensemble, a Captain whose leadership pushes a rag-tag group to save a very special soldier.

The film’s first 20-odd minutes remain the most brutal depiction of World War II combat ever committed to film. It’s enough to make a grown man weep watching young men march straight into gunfire, many of them shredded before they even step foot on Omaha Beach.

Spielberg goes a bit overboard here, reveling in the kind of gore that would make “Saw” fans blush to hammer home the hellish conditions.

We see much of the chaos through the eyes of Captain Miller (Tom Hanks) – the deafening bomb blasts, the need to restore some semblance of order and the fear welling up as the earth shakes below them.

The story then switches to the other side of war – notifying families that their sons have died in battle. In the case of Mother Ryan, that means telling her three of her sons have been lost – and the whereabouts of the fourth – Pvt. James Ryan – remain a mystery.

So Capt. Miller is assigned to bring Pvt. Ryan back home before his mother must mourn the loss of her entire brood.

War films too often give us characters who don’t pop off the screen or, worse, are interchangeable when the bullets whiz by. Here, Spielberg casts a motley crue of actors, from Vin Diesel to Edward Burns, whose distinct personalities bring the war home.

And they all get a chance to shine, although Giovanni Ribisi turns in the most wrenching performance as a medic who can’t save himself after a blistering gun fight.

Compare that to productions like “The Pacific” currently showing on HBO, which showcase far less identifiable heroes.

“Ryan” might be Spielberg’s last epic movie of consequence. His recent films, from the disappointing “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” to the morally dubious “Munich” reveal a filmmaker whose talents may be in permanent decline.

Even “War of the Worlds,” which featured one of the greatest action sequences in modern memory – the aliens initial assault on Boston – limped to the credits with a milquetoast resolution.

“Ryan” tromps over familiar topics – the horrors of war, the price of a single human life and retaining one’s humanity in the belly of battle. Spielberg elevates each with haunting sound effects and rich compositions that feel painterly at times.

The film’s extras come on a separate disk, but the wealth of material makes hitting the eject button a tiny price to pay. Spielberg offers both an introduction to the film as well as some parting thoughts, while the cast discuss the boot camp-style measures they undertook to bond as a faux fighting force. The documentary “Shooting War” lets war photographers share some remarkable stories about their efforts to bring the battles home to U.S. viewers.

“Saving Private Ryan” will always be remembered for the beach battle sequence and the silence Captain Miller experienes after a deafening bomb blast explodes nearby. But the rest of the nearly three-hour film is just as remarkable, proving Spielberg was just the right director to salute the Greatest Generation on celluloid.

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What is the enduring fascination with a 55-year old flick that stars a fake Japanese reptile stomping Toyko into matchsticks?  The first thing is that Godzilla is a truly entertaining movie.  Actually, it’s two movies.  The version most Americans have seen on TV is the 1956 re-cut version of the 98-minute original Japanese movie, Gojira.  Some American producers decided it could make them a bundle, but it needed a bit of familiarization before the American audience would accept it.  They hired a pre-Perry Mason Raymond Burr to film some awkward footage as American reporter “Steve Martin,” cut out a lot of draggy filler, and shipped the slimmed down 80-minute final product to drive-ins all over the fruited plain.

Gojira is pretty cool on its own and is available in an awesome DVD collector’s edition (which also includes Godzilla, King of the Monsters).  Gojira is very dark, both literally and figuratively.  Black and white is really the only way to see Godzilla in action, and most of the monster attacks conveniently take place at night.  In the shadows and the flickering flames of the shattered city, you almost forget that it’s a dude in a dinosaur suit.

Under the capable, steady direction of Ishirô Honda, Gojira forgoes subtlety and is a pretty straightforward nuclear weapons allegory.  Godzilla represents the Japanese perception of what they saw as an uncaring, unstoppable and undeserved alien force of remorseless destruction wreaking havoc on their homeland, sort of like the rain of fire that descended upon Japan from American B-29s less than a decade before.

Accordingly, the central visual theme of the film is flame.  It surrounds Godzilla as he smashes through the city, it frames him on the horizon and it literally comes from within him, evoking both the pika don of the A-bomb detonations but also the even more destructive night fire bombing campaign of General Curtis LeMay.  There’s more going on here than just a monster movie – and post-WW2 Americans could not have cared less.

Of course, you don’t need to let this self-pitying revisionism get in the way of your enjoyment of the film.  I had two grandfathers bobbing out in the Pacific waiting to go in with the invasion the A-bombs ensured never happened.  I also served for nearly two decades in the 40^th Infantry Division, which was scheduled to be the first to hit the beaches and probably would have been wiped out on the sand.  Accordingly, my sympathy for the just consequences the Japanese suffered as a result of treacherously starting their brutal, savage war of conquest is distinctly limited.

But the film does provide an interesting insight into the attitude of willful indifference to the facts regarding the war that persists in Japan to this day.  For example, visiting the A-bomb museum in Nagasaki, one must search through the myriad, elaborate displays of destruction and suffering to find the most important thing any such museum might provide to its visitors – context.

Literally squirreled away near the back of the museum, I stumbled upon a small display of pictures.  They were not clearly labeled but it seemed that some were of Japanese-occupied China and one was particularly recognizable to an American – the burning hulk of the USS Arizona.  That was 2002; perhaps things have changed.  But walking out of that museum – or out of Gojira – one might be forgiven for thinking that the Japanese were just sitting around, minding their own business, enjoying some teriyaki and bottles of Asahi Super Dry, when all of a sudden these terrible things happened to them for no conceivable reason.

Sorry, Ishirô – you can try peddling that to somebody else cuz I’m not buying.

And the American producers were wise to cut that silliness out and American-ize Godzilla into something an audience that consisted of many people who had literally been shot at by the Japanese just a few years prior might want to watch.  They removed most of the allegory and, as the trailer shows, they gave Godzilla the full P.T. Barnum treatment, promising – and delivering – “dynamic violence” and “savage action.”

But they left the essential story elements in – Raymond Burr’s crudely inserted scenes simply frame the action and clarify the story so the movie can get right to the landscape-wrecking fun.  The movie starts off with some mysterious events going on out in the Pacific.  You don’t see the big guy at first – you just see shadows, bubbles, flashes, and huge footprints and you hear his legendary roar.  When Godzilla finally shows up in all his glory – the special effects here really are terrific – it’s just awesome.

There are still no laughs – well, no intentional ones – in Godzilla.  The people of Tokyo look and act terrified, and the movie plays the threat of the creature straight.  You see the injured and the dying – it’s not graphic, but the movie does show the figurative fallout of the monster’s rampage.  In the end, one character makes a noble sacrifice that will put a lump in your throat.  And, as with all the best monsters, you sympathize with Godzilla as he meets his fate.  It’s actually quite moving.

Sadly, after Gojira, the Godzilla series followed a regrettable pattern common to great genre flicks.  The first movie is a serious, uncompromising film made by serious people for serious people (but sometimes, as with Godzilla, fully appropriate for and beloved by kids too).  Then the series starts heading south.  Pretty soon your terrifying, mysterious, darkness-swathed wraith becomes a fat guy in a lizard suit wrestling King Kong for laughs in broad daylight.

It happens all the time.  The 1931 classic Frankenstein was a disturbing meditation on man and the limits of science.  By 1948, Dr. Frankenstein’s monster was chasing Abbott & Costello around while Dracula and the Wolf Man looked on.  The original A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984) is a very tough, very creepy little horror flick.  I think Freddy Krueger fights Jason in the last sequel.  Or maybe Chucky.  Or Optimus Primus the Transformerzoid.  Who knows?  Who cares?

I haven’t seen any other Godzilla films in years, and it appears I have not missed much.  The movies reached their nadir after 1969’s Godzilla’s Revenge, where the big guy stopped stomping cities and started helping out lonely latch-key children.  Yawn.  From its very loud, very explodey trailer, 2004’s Godzilla: Final Wars looks more like Godzilla v. The Matrix.

And don’t even mention the awful 1998 re-boot.  The new Godzilla featured a redesigned, doofy-looking monster plus some transplanted pseudo-raptors ripped-off from Jurassic Park chasing Matthew Broderick all over Manhattan.  This only reinforced one of the five key principles that guide my life – never see a movie starring Matthew Broderick that does not also feature Ben Stein.  Well, to be fair, Glory is pretty badass too – and itself no doubt a future “Movie We Like.”

Now, that is not to say that the later Godzilla films do not provide their guilty pleasures.  Godzilla v. The Thing (1964) is a lot of fun.  For some reason, a few years ago they insisted on re-titling it Godzilla v. Mothra, but to those of us who, in the 70’s, waited up late for Creature Features to see it, it will always be known by its original TV moniker.  And, as a bonus, it features the miniature Mothra twins’ ear-melting Mothra song.  And some of Godzilla’s later antics have a kind of goofy charm:

Another delightful Godzilla-related musical interlude is provided by the mind-boggling tune Save the Earth from 1971’s terrible, terrible Godzilla v. The Smog Monster. This is the one where Godzilla battles what appears to be a sentient, flying cow pie.  The song is the true lowlight.  It’s this combination of over-earnest 70’s enviro-nonsense and 60’s Japanopop that is mistranslated into English and served up for your listening pleasure.  You can almost see Al Gore sitting alone in his mansion, nodding his head, grinning, and snapping his fingers to its big beat as he gazes upon his Oscar and Nobel Prize.

Forget the rest of the series.  Stick with the original – okay, the second original.  Godzilla, King of the Monsters is a terrific 80-minute thrill ride mercifully free of the kind of clichéd movie industry nonsense that ruins so many movies today.  There’s no nauseating shaky-cam, the shots last longer than 0.35 seconds, and the whole thing is just plain cool.  The kids dug it big time.  Plus there’s a guy in a rubber dinosaur costume smashing up Tokyo who represents the awesome, righteous wrath of the American people – what’s not to like?

Names like Ray Harryhausen, George Pal, Bernard Herrmann and H.G. Wells come to mind. As do those of Ken Toby, Less Tremayne, Paul Frees and Whit Bissell. Each of these names, plus thousands and thousands of others, can immediately conjure up a favorite film, a scene or even just a great line or look that impressed us as kids and perhaps continues to do so.

When I think about those elements that I love in my favorite sci-fi monster movies, my mind can easily dwell for hours on the creatures themselves, the settings, the art direction, the machinery and technology and everything in between. I never grow tired of that stuff. But I also love, with equal passion the characters that people the story. They are really what it’s all about. So, indulge me as I invite you to take a little trip through my memory, recalling some character moments that stand out for me in the B genre of scifi monster movies.

The Thing from Another World

This is without a doubt one of my all-time favorite movies, of any genre. There is so much great about The Thing, that I feel it should be used as a template of what to do right in making movies.

Every character from Scotty the newsman to Tex the radioman to the scientists, including my own personal favorite Bob Cornthwaite’s unforgettable Dr. Carrington, is each wholly enjoyable and rich in believable detail, even if they lasted only seconds on screen.

My mind moves along as I recall this great film touching on some memorable moments. Some that come to mind are the constant problem solving by Dewey Martin joined with Captain Hendry’s humorous jabs on his subordinate’s expertise in all things resourceful. Newsman Scotty’s incessant, but enjoyable whining about getting his exclusive story out through the morass that is the military. Without Scotty, the viewer would have needed another in to the technical details of what happens. Scotty serves both as story chronicler and informer for the audience. When thermite is to be used to melt the ice, it’s Scotty who asks, for himself, but really for us,  “What will that thermite do?” And it’s Scotty who soon after chastises the men for botching the job. “That’s just dandy. Standard operating procedure.” Brilliant.

How about that great sound cue from the Tiomkin score when the men recreate the shape of what lies beneath in the ice? The overlapping, excited utterances, “It’s almost…” “Yeah, almost a perfect….” “It is.” “It’s round.” “We finally got one!”, “ We found a flying saucer!” is priceless.

Speaking of scoring cues, another that ranks right up there is that great cut to Gort suddenly appearing on the ramp after Klaatu is shot by a nervous soldier in The Day the Earth Stood Still. Still another that comes to mind is an accented William Conrad uttering the dreaded “Marabunta” in The Naked Jungle.  The cue itself practically brings Leinengen’s house down to the dirt. Yes, there really is nothing like a good sound cue to raise the blood pressure.

War of the Worlds

“This is amazing!” Gene Barry exclaims at his first glimpses of how the aliens are able to move about. His excitement is that of a boy launching his very first model rocket from the backyard. This amazing film is a bounty of excellence in sci-fi monster movie making. As Stan Winston said, it has just about every special effect in it. He was more than right. The characters on display make the awesome visual spectacle a personal and lasting one.

There’s a throwaway moment in the opening at the ranger watch tower where one ranger while phoning in the ‘meteor’ is distracted while the other subtly takes a peek as his partner’s cards. Great stuff. Les Tremayne’s slow and deliberate sipping from the (empty?) coffee cup directly after uttering his ominous “once they begin to move, no more news comes out of that area” has never failed to stir in me that familiar excitement when watching a monster movie on a Saturday afternoon. Sure his drinking is a bit unnatural – his ‘business’ a bit clunky, but who cares? It’s a great movie moment.

After the kindly Pastor is unmercifully smote by the alien’s heat ray after doing nothing more than just trying to say ‘hello’, the Marine Colonel’s ‘LET ‘EM HAVE IT!” order to his men, unleashing the statement that no being, alien or native is going to get away with that kind of stuff. Our hearts join in as every man, religious or not, strikes back with all he’s got at that unprovoked act.

Most if not all of the actors in these films can be seen and enjoyed in scores of other films as well. This, the B movie, was their bread and butter. But their prolific on-screen work had not only a monetary benefit to their careers, but it also had an emotional one for the audience. Their formidable repertoire of recurring and usually similar roles created a growing bank of emotion within us each time we saw them anew. It grew and grew. Actors we’d seen in television series or other films retained the decency and integrity they evoked each time and that we came to rely on. We’d see their name in the opening credits, or see their face on screen when they walked in the door or answered the phone and think… “Hey, that’s the captain from The Thing. Now here he is in The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms. Boy, am I glad to see him!” Or, “Isn’t this doctor in The Day the Earth Stood Still the same guy who played the reporter in Them! - the one who wants to interview the mother of the missing boys?” This linking of character and body of work helped forged a connection with the audience that is stronger than a block of KL 93.

Some people criticize B movies, calling them pure escapism. I say, so what? Isn’t all film pure escapism? Personally, I think that’s the highest compliment you could ever say about a film, that it’s pure escapism.  By the same token one of the worst things you could say is “that film is so much like real life!” Give me a break! Who wants that? As Ray Harryhausen said when remarking about the over reliance of CG in special effects, “you don’t want it to be too real.”

Another criticism of Bs often heard is that the performances are poor, cliched or just plain bad. Sure they are! Some of them, anyway. And that’s often why we love them. But some performances, some scenes, are not bad in the least, and I’d argue, are as moving, as powerful and as emotionally charged as anything else on screen or in print.

To this day, I cannot watch the scene in the sewer pipes at the end of Them! without pure emotion welling up inside me. When James Arness consoles a mortally wounded James Whitmore who in his last breathes lets him know that the boys he rescued got out and are in the tunnel, it’s just too much.

That moment and what leads up to it, chokes me up every time. Even writing about it now, I find I’m moved to the point where I have to take my fingers off the keyboard for a moment. That’s greatness. Aside from Greg Peck’s final stare at a departing Audrey, Montagu Love’s reading of Kipling to the three remaining and one gone,  or pretty much every darn thing that happens after Jimmy Stewart finds Zuzu’s petals, there aren’t many other film moments that can evoke such an immediate and powerful effect on me just from memory.

When James Arness continues on in the tunnels and is trapped behind fallen earth and timbers it doesn’t look good. With nothing more than the rounds left in his Thompson he is all alone to fight off the giant ants that are now attacking from all directions. But just as the creatures close in, beams of light and firepower from the other soldiers breaks through the splintered wood and fallen earth and saves him with dramatic punch. Powerful stuff, and I’m quite sure Steven Spielberg lifted it for a scene in Saving Private Ryan, of course without the ants.

It’s true. The Thing from Another World, War of the Worlds and Them! and so many others were meant as escapism, as ‘Drive-in fare, as they called it, when there were things like Drive-ins. But it’s undeniable to many of us that these films, that B movies contain moments that are special, very special for their genuine ability to move us and remain with us for a lifetime.

And that’s what movies are all about, Charlie Brown.

Was it Spielberg with “Saving Private Ryan” who started the shaky-cam phenomenon or was it “NYPD Blue?” Whatever. My suggestion is that we build a time machine to locate and eradicate the host virus. Not through violence, through a plea to their humanity (unless it’s Paul Greengrass — we’ll ring his doorbell and run) and DVD examples of what their monster will become.  Then we’ll go back to 1941 where you can drop me off in front of Barbara Stanwyck’s house.

Maybe, possibly, inside the jittery mess that is “Gamer,” there sits an ‘80’s style actioner — an unpretentious time killer with an interesting premise,  lots of action and a little gratuitous nudity to get you through a slimmer than slim story. There’s just no way to tell because you can’t see anything, and the epileptic camera is only part of the problem. The cinematography’s completely washed out and every time you get any kind of fix on what’s happening a wavy, electronic-transmission effect is added for no reason other than to add it.

The “Running Man” meets “Avatar” story is built on the idea of a nano-cell, a synthetic cell let loose in the human body that replicates until it dominates. When the program’s complete the host can then come under the full control of a gamer, who, for a fee and from the comfort of mother’s basement, can do whatever he wishes with his electronic counterpart. The result is a sub-culture of desperate individuals willing to come under this control in order to make a living — and because you have to be pretty twisted to find control over another human being entertaining, think “Sim City” at midnight on Sunset Boulevard.

The nano-cell has also made “Slayers” possible, a pay-per-view reality show where death row inmates serve as avatars in a series of urban shoot-em-ups sanctioned by a federal government desperate for revenue.  The show is a national phenomenon thanks in large part to Kable (Gerard Butler), who’s on death row for murder, desperate to get back to his family, and just a few games away from becoming the first prisoner to win full pardon with thirty wins.

The nano-cell was created by Ken Castle (Michael C. Hall), a celebrity billionaire and fidgety sadist with SPECTRE-like plans for world domination. With the help of “Humanz,” an underground group on to Castle’s arch-villainy, Kable escapes a game he wasn’t supposed to survive and targets Castle for revenge.

With another draft or two of the script (and a tripod), what is arguably a pretty imaginative premise could’ve risen to something. Instead it’s a waste of Butler, one of the few not-a-metrosexuals working today, and The Great Keith David, who does the same thing here he did in “Crash”: makes his single scene the most memorable one.

But back to that shaky-cam. “Gamer,” and all those filmed like it, do not represent a “style.” Confusion does not equal style. This is cover for filmmakers not only lacking in style but too lazy to choreograph compelling action sequences – which is probably the most difficult job a director can come up against.  You not only have to stage the actors and props, you also have to figure out where to place the camera.

But not anymore…  Just set the camera to “seizure” and the edit machine to “nonsensical.”

If our government really wanted to earn pay-per-view revenue they might consider a cage match to the death between two of the worst styles to hit the movies in their 100-plus year history: The Shaky-Cam vs. Quirky.

That I’d pay to see.

J.R. Head: Thanks so much, Dale, for taking the time to talk with me.

Dale Dye: You’re most welcome. It’s a pleasure to be anywhere talking about the business we love these days. Hopefully, things will loosen up a bit, we’ll all go to work and I won’t have time for this in the near future.

JRH: Well, I’m glad I caught you when I did. First, let me say that I’ve enjoyed so many of the projects you’ve worked on.

DD: That means a lot coming from a guy with a military background. The reason I work so hard at it is to ensure guys like you and millions of others who served get a fair shake from Hollywood.

JRH: With more than twenty years in the business under your belt, there’s a lot I’d like to cover. Let’s start at the beginning. To many folks, making the jump from the Marine Corps to Hollywood seems counter-intuitive. You seemed to make headway very quickly, retiring from active duty and getting right to work on a high-profile project, Oliver Stone’s “Platoon”. How did that come about?

DD: Well, that takes a little explaining…so bear with me here. I guess it does seem counter-intuitive to come out of a full career as a Marine and just head to Hollywood to find work in the motion picture or TV industry…and frankly, if I’d known anything about this industry at the time, I probably wouldn’t have tried it. You can do a lot of things people tell you are impossible when you’re blissfully ignorant. You might want to write that down. I had no idea back in 1985 when I came to Hollywood what it takes to get in the door out here. I just had this notion that someone who knew what they were talking about regarding the military needed to show these guys doing the writing, directing and performing what the real military was like…how we look, how we think, how we walk, talk and fight in the real world. That came from decades of watching military or war movies and walking away pissed off at what I was seeing. I knew that what was on the small or large screen at the time was not what I’d experienced and I sensed that it could be corrected if someone who’d lived that life could just demonstrate that the reality was much more dynamic, interesting and dramatic than what was being imagined by people who were clueless about our military. So, thinking it was just that simple, I cadged a plane ticket and came on out to set things straight. And wallowing in my own ignorance of how things get done in this town, I just started making calls and kicking down doors and sort of turning it into an all-out frontal assault. Needless to say, I didn’t have much luck except with the security guys who were constantly called to escort me off sets and studio lots. What I was trying to bring to the table was a whole lot more than just advice on which ribbons were correct, or how to get a proper military haircut, how to wear the uniform or how to handle a weapon. There were people out here already who could do that. I wanted to work from the inside and find a way to make the writers, director and actors really understand what it’s like to soldier. As I said, I wasn’t having much luck. People said…you know, we’ve made war movies for years and did just fine without you, so take a hike. I had trouble making them see that there could truly be a significant difference and it would make for a better movie or TV show. Then I ran into a guy named Oliver Stone who was a combat vet from Vietnam. He understood what I was trying to get done. He knew from his own military time as a combat soldier that you can’t translate the experience believably without living the life in some sort of full-immersion training regimen. He let me do it my way on Platoon. When we eventually won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture, I began to find a little more receptive attitude with people. The rest is history, I guess.

JRH: Now, I’m just going to run down a list here…and I’m omitting a lot: “Born on the Fourth of July”, “JFK”, “The Last of the Mohicans”, “Forrest Gump”, “Starship Troopers”, “Saving Private Ryan”, “The Thin Red Line”, “Tigerland”, The Great Raid”, “Tropic Thunder”… the list goes on and on. These are some tremendous films and you’ve had a hand in all of them. Which one did you most enjoy working on?

DD: Well, I’ll always have a soft spot for “Platoon” as it kick-started my career and gave credibility to my methods. I’m also partial to a few others. I loved working on “The Beast” with Kevin Reynolds. It was a story about Russian tankers in Afghanistan and we shot it with real captured Soviet tanks in Israel. It was something like being Erwin Rommel for a while. And I love working with Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks so I’m quite fond of the experiences on “Saving Private Ryan” and “Band of Brothers”. I guess from the perspective of satisfaction derived as a Military Advisor, I’d have to single out “Band of Brothers”. It took us a full year to get that done and because of the training we gave the guys, we stayed in character as a WW II airborne infantry company the whole time. I was filling some mighty big boots following in the footsteps of Major Dick Winters, but it was nice to be the second guy in command of a second Easy Company for an entire year. It’s really hard to play favorites when I’m searching around in the memory banks. Every project has its merits, its personalities and its wild experiences. They all add up to a hell of a ride for an old military guy.

JRH: Speaking of (the HBO miniseries) “Band of Brothers,” many of our readers will recognize you from your fantastic portrayal of Colonel Robert Sink. You were also working as an advisor on the series…

DD: Thanks for the kind words about my portrayal of Col. Bob Sink. It was an honor that few actors get to bring a real, legendary character to life on screen. And that brings me to a word or two about my humble efforts as an actor. You’ve probably noted that I tend to double-dip in many of my projects as both Military Advisor and actor in one role or another. I never started out to be an actor, farthest thing from my mind early on…but Oliver Stone had a different view. He watched me training troops and decided it would be effective if I could bring that sort of professional military persona to the screen. So, I became Captain Harris, the Bravo Company Commander, in “Platoon”. I was scared shitless when we started shooting scenes with me and pros like Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Johnny McGinley and others but I just did what I would do in real life and Oliver loved it. That was the start of it all and now I really enjoy it. I think I’m probably the most typecast guy in Hollywood and that’s OK…but one of these days I’d like to stretch a little. Maybe someone out there will give me a shot at the homosexual hairdresser role…but I’m not holding my breath. So far I think I’ve played everything military from a senior sergeant to the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs. When I do military roles on screen, I see it as just another high-profile opportunity to give audiences a factual look at a professional military guy.

JRH: Well, it has always come across. Let me tell you, Dale, “Band of Brothers” was, in my opinion, the most important thing to come out of this town in the last twenty years. Airing, as it did, during a very dark time in our nation’s history, I believe it helped lift people’s spirits by illustrating the courage and sacrifice of the people who serve our country. Is this a common sentiment among fans of the series?

DD: That series really hit an emotional note with viewers. It’s probably one of our best known efforts in the WWII genre and fans of the series are both legion and fanatically loyal. To address your question about it being aired in a dark time in our nation’s history, I guess that likely had something to do with it. It’s hard to say. Certainly my experience leads me to believe that well-made and effectively presented World War II films, mini-series or TV shows are likely to get good reception from worldwide audiences practically anytime. If there’s a war movie sub-genre that you can take to the bank, it’s likely something based in World War II. That was the last military struggle where so much was at stake and both the bad guys and the good guys were clearly identifiable and unambiguous. You don’t have the blame-game political machinations, political correctness or ideology and cultural elements involved as you do with so many modern conflicts. It was a simpler time and the conflict was fairly black and white. For some elements of the fan base for “Band of Brothers”, I think that was both refreshing and reassuring. We may be in a similar position right now with all our economic and geopolitical woes. That’s part of the reason I’m getting ready to do another World War II D-Day film that I think will be very well received. In fact, I’m hoping it will do for the 82^ND Airborne Division what “Band of Brothers” did for the 101^st Airborne. We’ll talk some more about that later if you want.

JRH: Absolutely. First, I’ve always wanted to ask you about this: you often run a “boot camp” for the actors you’re working with. Have you gotten any particularly good results with any actors?

DD: I don’t “often” do it, I always do it unless the Producers adamantly refuse and that usually doesn’t stop us either as the actors nearly always demand the experience. After “Platoon” for which I spent three weeks in the Philippine jungles with the cast making them live the life of combat soldiers 24/7, and after which we got such phenomenal, convincing performances out of them, my so-called “boot camps” became de rigeur on all war films; whether I did them or not. I’d guess we’ve put about a thousand performers through the full-immersion field training at this point and they all seem to point to it as the highlight of their experience; something that taught them a whole lot more than acting techniques. I hope that’s true because that’s what it’s designed to do. I won’t bore you with a lot of military leadership philosophy here, but in broad strokes I’m more interested in getting to a performer’s heart and mind than I am his body. Sure, we teach them by doing how to look and act like a field soldier, how to handle the weapons, equipment and their bodies so they look convincing on the screen, but that’s really a small part of the equation. What I want them to understand is how real soldiers rely on each other, how a unit functions above and beyond the concerns of any one member, how there are things in the military mind-set that make a mission more important – more worthy – than any one individual. I want them to understand the concepts of comradeship, service and sacrifice from first-hand experience. Now that’s a tough lesson for young actors full of ego and self-importance who grow up in pursuit of success or notoriety thinking the sun rises and sets on their ass and their ass alone. I understand that and it’s one of the reasons we make our “boot camps” so physically rugged and so mentally demanding. In essence, we do what the real military does. We tear them down and build them over again in the right mind-set. I’ll let the record speak here, but there’s no doubt it works. Their perspectives and performances alter and improve radically. It’s rugged – some would say brutal – but it works. If it didn’t we wouldn’t be allowed or encouraged to do it.

And here’s an interesting sidelight to the whole boot camp question. Most people don’t know that we usually train a unit of enemy forces at the same time we’re training the good guys. It’s always been my opinion that you ruin the effect – diminish the jeopardy – if you field a bunch of clueless extras to play the enemy in war movies. In the real world our enemies have never been cartoon characters and they shouldn’t be portrayed that way. Over the years we’ve trained units of German and Japanese soldiers, NVA and VC forces, Mujahideen resistance forces, Cubans, Native American warriors and a bunch more. It always pays huge dividends in how the combat scenes look. 

–

JRH: You recently finished work on “The Pacific” which follows the Marines in their battles with Imperial Japan. What battles can we expect to see?

DD: This new HBO miniseries is really close to my heart as a Marine. It follows my old outfit – the 1st Marine Division – through all of its major battles in the Pacific campaigns of World War II. We follow three major characters – one from each of the division’s rifle regiments, 1st Marines, 5th Marines and 7th Marines – from the opening salvos at Guadalcanal, re-fitting in Australia after the Solomons Campaign, on to Cape Gloucester on New Guinea, to Peleliu and then on to Okinawa and back home at war’s end. 

JRH: How would you compare this series to “Band of Brothers”?

DD: “The Pacific” is presented in the same ten-part format as “Band of Brothers” and I think it will prove to be just as popular as the ETO series…especially among Marines and veterans of the Pacific Theater of Operations. That said, it’s very different from “Band”. It’s as different as World War II in the Pacific was from World War II in Europe. It’s much darker and more brutal but that was the nature of fighting on those Pacific islands. Just ask any veteran for confirmation of that. Tom Hanks who is one of our Executive Producers likes to say it will take the audience on a brutal journey to hell and back; the same sort of journey that was experienced by the men who fought the real battles. I think he’s right on the mark with that. From a personal perspective as the Senior Military Advisor, it was an honor and a real treat to command a unit of World War II Marines – actors and special ability extras – for a full year. As we did with Band of Brothers, we stayed in character the entire time. And the training in the jungles of Far North Queensland, Australia was really rugged. I don’t think any of the guys will ever forget that. 

JRH: When can we expect to see it?

DD: We’re finishing post-production on “The Pacific” right now. HBO tells me they plan to air it beginning early in 2010. I’m trying to get them to do an exclusive preview at the traditional home of the 1st Marine Division just down the road at Camp Pendleton.  

JRH: Outstanding. I’d like to change gears here for a second… One of the things that drives me insane, and I’m sure I’m not alone in this, is when a film or television show screws up the military stuff. For example, simple things like uniforms. Nothing takes me out of a scene faster than realizing that some actor’s rank insignia is upside down or a “Marine” is saluting indoors, uncovered, etc. Tell our readers a bit about exactly what it is you bring to a production as a military advisor and why it’s important that Hollywood get it right. 

DD: Well, you’re getting to the very heart of my philosophy as a Military Advisor and filmmaker here. For years there was a sort of arrogant attitude on the part of a lot of filmmakers that audiences didn’t know or care what was real about war or the military, so they’d willingly suspend their disbelief to accept whatever the writers or directors saw fit to present. That mind-set was ignoring a couple of facts that I quickly recognized. First of all, entire generations of Americans – but very, very few filmmakers – had personal experience with the military through the draft that lasted right up through the mid-70’s. Secondly, we live in a media-saturated society where news footage or live feeds from battlefields around the world show potential audiences what the real military, real conflict looks like. Ignore that and you’ve got what the psycho-babblers call “cognitive disconnect.” People watch the nightly news and see what real soldiers in real combat look like and then you want them to give you twenty bucks to see make-believe soldiers doing something that looks entirely different? Won’t work…and no marquee star or powerhouse director is going to make it work. It goes against human nature. I started thinking about this on a minor-league level early in my efforts to get into the business as a Military Advisor. I’d had the same experience you talked about, you know, ribbons worn wrong, bad haircuts, sloppy salutes and all the inaccuracies that piss us military veterans off so badly when we see them on screen. That led me to wonder why filmmakers got these simple, easy-to-fix things wrong all the time. And that led me to understand the arrogance situation and that, in turn, led me to develop my own techniques of getting it right from the inside out by training performers and carefully staging combat scenes to reflect the realities or what people were seeing on the nightly news. That’s what I was bringing to the table. It just took a long time and a lot of hard work in proving the point to get filmmakers to eat it. In our business nothing succeeds like success, so as time went on and I became more skilled, producers and directors wanted me at their shoulder as a reality check and they let me do more and more of the staging and coaching for them. It was a process of education for both of us.  

JRH: You are the founder of Warriors, Inc., the military advisory company. What kind of services do you provide? 

DD: I’m very proud of Warriors Inc. I think it’s still the preeminent military advisory service in the industry although there are a lot of imitators out there. That’s OK. Competition just improves the product or service. But we still bring the big stick and produce the most tangible results. We do it differently on a whole different level and bring a huge amount of experience to a project. That said, I recognized early on that relying on standard military fare in movies or TV was not going to pay our bills. There were just too few appropriate projects to keep us busy all the time. So I started chasing films that you wouldn’t think necessarily needed a full-time Military Advisor. We worked very successfully on Last of The Mohicans and Starship Troopers, for instance. I also started looking around to work with established writers, providing them ideas and advice on military-themed projects. And Warriors Inc. has expanded into a lot of different fields these days. We do themed entertainment work such as the Star Trek ride at the Hilton in Las Vegas and the Terminator T-2/3-D rides at Universal Studios in Hollywood, Orlando and Osaka, Japan. We’ve got a Warriors Inc. imprint for publishing now that’s been getting my novels out on the market. We’re doing corporate leadership and team-building seminars based on the military model for major clients around the world. We’ve even consulted on several music videos. And I’m always writing screenplays with military themes, so we stay busy even in the down times. Anyone who’s interested can track all this at www.warriorsinc.com.  

JRH: Do you actively recruit veterans to work for Warriors, Inc.? Or do they find you? 

DD: Warriorsinc.com is probably the first hit for veterans searching for work in showbiz when they get out of uniform. At least it seems to be according to our webmaster. She’s regularly flooded with requests from veterans who want to work as Military Advisors to film and TV and my email gets jammed with similar requests all the time. We’re very selective about the people we respond to because our guys have to be leaders and teachers as well as combat vets. We get a lot of requests from high-speed, low-drag types – Army SF, Rangers, Marine Force Recon, SEALs, etc. – but ironically those guys don’t work out very often. What we need are basic infantry squad leaders who can teach and who can think creatively. That’s hard to find, believe it or not. We need guys who can do extensive research; who can flex and bring their military leadership experience to bear in any uniform we may have to wear for a project. It’s about a hell of a lot more than weapons and tactics. And I run Warriors like a rifle company. We don’t have a CEO or managers. We have a Commanding Officer, an Executive Officer, an Adjutant and Platoon Sergeants. That makes the suits in Sacramento crazy, but it’s the way we operate. I’m a stickler for loyalty and in my outfit loyalty runs up and down the chain of command…with emphasis on the latter direction. I have a staff of good, proven guys – no surprise that most of them are Marines – who always get first shot at projects before we go looking for new Cadre recruits. My XO Mike Stokey, for instance, has been with me now for twenty years and he often runs shows on his own while I’m off working on a different project but it’s always under the Warriors Inc. umbrella. We were young sergeants together in Vietnam and share the same leadership philosophies and filmmaking techniques. In fact, all the Warriors Inc. Cadre guys share those things. We teach them and demand a very high-level of performance. I guess another of the reasons we’re so particular is that I’m not interested in training people who will take what we offer and then quit to form their own military advisory service in direct competition with us. It’s happened before. I’m not brilliant but I’m not stupid either. 

JRH: What advice would you give to an active duty service member that is considering a career in the entertainment industry? 

DD: I get this question all the time and the answer is always the same. First, narrow your focus. What is it specifically you want to do in the entertainment industry? Do you want to be a Military Advisor, a writer, a director, a producer, a cameraman, work in props, special effects, visual effects or what? Most folks coming off active duty have no idea how segmented and synergistic making films is these days. So, I tell them to do a little practical research and a lot of soul-searching to determine what it is they really want to do beyond “make movies.” The next thing I tell them is to get a regular day-job to pay the bills while they work toward cracking the showbiz nut. And in the most discouraging, harsh and realistic terms I can express, I tell them what a bitch-kitty this industry can be for people trying to get a start. Those that survive that usually have the guts, tenacity and determination to make it one way or another. I hate to do it that way, but painting some sort of pie-in-the-sky rosy picture would be a disservice to veterans and I won’t be a part of that. What’s really tough is talking to young vets – men and women – who want to be actors. This business is built on the bones and carcasses of wonderful young people who’ve driven themselves to destruction trying to make it big because they’re focused on stardom and not the creative process. Still, I find it hard to burst a bubble or destroy a dream. I do what I can through contacts and sage advice to give them a little hand up.  

JRH: I’ve read that you’ll be directing your first feature. Earlier, you mentioned something about the 82nd Airborne. Is that the project? Can you tell me about a bit about that? 

DD: Lord knows I’ve been to the finest film school in the world with no classroom time involved. I’ve worked with the best writers, directors and producers in the business – Oliver Stone, John Frankenheimer, Steven Spielberg, Michael Mann, Wolfgang Petersen, Bob Zemeckis, Tom Hanks, Billy Friedkin, Dave Nutter, Roberto Benini and a whole host of others. They were all kind enough to teach me filmmaking on a very practical level while we worked together and now it’s time for me to put that knowledge, skill and creativity to work on my own projects. The first of these is a World War II film that I wrote titled “No Better Place To Die.” It’s a really impactful story of the stand made by elements of the 82nd Airborne Division on D-Day to take and hold open a vital bridge over the Merderet River in Normandy. Had those guys not held that bridge, the break-out from Omaha Beach and subsequent capture of the vital deep-water port at Cherbourg never would have happened. Much of the success of the allied landings on D-Day depended on what these 82nd Airborne paratroops were able to do in the face of astronomical odds. I’m raising money to do it right now and trying not to depend too heavily on traditional sources. I want to do this my way as a writer/director. We’ve got deals in place to shoot it on the actual battlefields in Normandy where the fighting took place in 1944. And it’s going to be a film made by genuine combat veterans. Our line producer Marty Katz, Director of Photography Levie Isaacks and myself as writer/director are all combat veterans, so we’ll bring a very special look and feel to the film. If there are any real money players in your audience, I’m open to make a deal.  

JRH: (laugh) All the real money players read my stuff. “No Better Place to Die” sounds like it will be a great piece and I’ll be looking forward to it. That said, after more than twenty years slugging it out in Hollywood, are there any other goals you want to achieve? 

DD: Well, obviously I want to get this first Dale Dye film made and turn it into a hit. If I can pull that off, I’ve got a slate of three other military pictures already written that I want to do using the World War II film as proof of performance. I want to do a film on the Chosen Reservoir Campaign in Korea, a true-story Vietnam film based on a Combined Action Platoon and a story from Iraq that involves events in Mosul during the first free Iraqi elections. These are all written by me and I’ll want to direct them all. I’m approaching all this in the same way I approached breaking into showbiz in the first place twenty-five years ago: fix bayonets and charge. Remember what I said earlier. You can do a lot of things people tell you are impossible when you’re blissfully ignorant. I’ll get these pictures done through sheer force of will if nothing else.  

JRH: I have no doubt at all about that. Captain Dye, it’s been a real pleasure.