A video essay presenting my breakdown of Amazon's Jack Ryan, including how the CIA, DOD and other US government agencies were involved in producing it. I outline some of the history between the government and Tom Clancy productions before breaking down how seasons 1 and 2 are propaganda for US foreign policy.
US Coast Guard’s Hollywood Office Takes 3 YEARS to Release 20 Pages of Documents
In March 2016 I put in a FOIA request with the US Coast Guard. Several appeals, a lot of ignored emails and well over three years later they finally released just 20 pages of documents on the activities of their entertainment liaison office. I thought the CIA's FOIA office was bad, but this is perhaps the worst FOIA experience I've ever had with the US govern
The Final Countdown is a classic of good bad cinema, featuring an aircraft carrier that goes through a wormhole and goes back in time to the day before Pearl Harbor was attacked. In this episode I review and analyse the film, which benefited from full DOD support.
Napalm, Ambushes and Russian Roulette: Why the Pentagon Rejected The Deer Hunter
The epic war drama The Deer Hunter won five Oscars, despite the central conceit and metaphor of the film being inaccurate. This conceit - that the Viet Cong forced American prisoners of war to play Russian Roulette - is the main reason the film was rejected for DOD support, along with scenes that made the US Army look incompetent or needlessly cruel.
One of the most common conspiracy theories you hear in this line of research is that the Pentagon and CIA fund Hollywood movies. This isn't entirely untrue - the CIA covertly funded productions of Animal Farm and 1984 in the early Cold War period - but on the whole, it is untrue. In all the many thousands of documents I have about the government involvement in the entertainment industry, there are very few indications
Revolving Doors: Technical Advisors and The Entertainment-Propaganda Complex
The role of the technical advisor is crucial to understanding the military-Hollywood relationship, but very few people know who these people are or what they do. Even less well known is that a significant number of private industry technical advisors used to work for the Pentagon's entertainment liaison offices, and are effectively continuing that work even after leaving th
From Premises to Character Arcs – How Deeply the Military Rewrites Film & TV
Sometimes the US military's rewriting of scripts is very specific - take out this joke about the US losing in Vietnam, swap this bottle of beer for an energy drink, remove this scene where soldiers set fire to a village and rape all the women. At other times their requested changes are very broad in scope, affecting the overalls arcs and even the premises of films and TV shows.
Why Amazon’s The Boys is the Most Subversive TV Show of the Year
Amazon Prime's The Boys is not only the most enjoyable TV show I've seen all year, it's also the most subversive. While it will appeal to audiences suffering from superhero fatigue after more than a decade of relentless Marvel and DC products, it is so much more than that. It subverts both superhero pop culture and the role that culture plays in promoting the military-industrial complex.&
Co-founder of the Village People and co-writer of 'YMCA', 'Macho Man' and 'In the Navy' Henri Belolo died last saturday at the age of 82. Born in Casablanca, Belolo was a key member of perhaps the first openly gay disco outfit. He also participated in one of the funniest co-sponsorship deals the US Navy has ever seen.
ClandesTime 187 – When Entertainment Liaison Offices Go Bad
The relationship between government liaison offices and the entertainment industry usually works well, resulting in added production value for the industry’s products and the furtherance of the government’s agendas. But sometimes things go wrong.
“Shame on them, they know better” – When the Pentagon Fell Out with NCIS
For over a decade the CBS action drama NCIS has enjoyed a very close working relationship with the US military, which allows the entertainment liaison offices to review every script, even for episodes where they provide no support. This unusual situation nearly fell apart in early 2014 when the producers refused to rewrite an episode the DOD didn't like, and then produced a pilot