DOD

For anyone hoping that the end of phase 3 of the MCU would bring some respite from the relentless schedule...

As I work through the DOD’s file on Michael Bay’s Pearl Harbor I keep finding curious and often bizarre requests...

Under Siege is by far the second best Steven Seagal movie, but untold until now is the story of how...

The military support on Pearl Harbor was extensive, including mothballed battleships being towed around, access to bases in Hawaii and...

I’ve been spending some more time going through the Pentagon Film Office file on Pearl Harbor and among the numerous...

Pearl Harbor (2001) is the perfect example of how to spend a lot of money making a terrible film.  Beset...

Yesterday, NPR’s podcast Marketplace released a new episode titled How Chinese censorship changed “Top Gun” (and the rest of Hollywood)....

1992’s Patriot Games was supported by both the Pentagon and the CIA, filming at Langley and the US Naval Academy...

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

It has been another curious week of half-truths, spin and outright falsehood as culture commentators get to grips with recent releases Jack Ryan (on Amazon), For all Mankind (on Apple TV) and Midway (in theaters now).

Good Morning, Vietnam is perhaps the most popular Vietnam war film ever made.

In March 1991 the producers of Hot Shots!

There aren't very many films about the first Gulf War, which is ironic because if ever there was a war for PR purposes, that was it.  While Jarhead and Three Kings were rejected by the Pentagon's Hollywood office

As prep for my forthcoming video on Amazon's Jack Ryan as next-gen propaganda I've been keeping an eye on promotions and events around the launch of season two in November.  The first episode was shown at New York Comic-Con a few days ago, and at a panel disc

A few macro points on government whistleblowers, leaks and the media. If the media, journalists, did what they are supposed to be doing, would there be any need for channels such as Wikileaks? But the media, and almost all coopted alternative media with a large reach, have been doing the exact opposite- Here’s how. The […]

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 f

In this video I briefly discuss Edward Snowden’s new book, the facts governing publishing books when it comes to government intel whistleblowers, government intelligence agencies’ Prepublication Review and Authorization process, and provide you with a broad overview of three types of Government Whistleblowers. The Lone Gladio Paperback The Lone Gladio e-Book Classified Woman Paperback Classified […]

The US military’s attempts to duplicate action movie technology took another leap recently as the Guardian XO robotic exoskeleton wa

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 documen

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 techni

The US Navy SEALs are known as the ‘quiet professionals’, but in recent times they have become the highest-profile of all US special forces.

Captain Phillips tells the story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama - a US container ship - off the coast of Somalia, and the subsequent US Navy intervention that killed three of the pirates and arrested the fourth.  It is also one of the least historically accurate films

Walt Disney World Resort’s Star Wars: Galaxy’s Edge opens this week - 14 acres of Star Wars experience for those who want to waste their money on plastic replicas of pod racers, Jar Jar Binks masks and hair dye so they can look like Vice Admiral Gender

Lone Survivor is a piece of absolute militaristic schlock, starring the whiny-voiced Marky Mark Wahlberg as Navy SEAL Marcus Luttrell - the only survivor of Operation Red Wings, a 2005 special forces joint operation in the summer of 2005.  Over 100 pages of Navy documents show their heavy involvement in the film and how they covered

GI Jane is a crude, clumsy attempt to show a 'woman's perspective' on being in the military, that ruined Demi Moore's career as a leading lady.  Little known until now is how the Pentagon negotiated with Ridley Scott to rewrite the script, and even though the film didn't qualify for military support some of the scr

One issue that comes up repeatedly in the script changes enforced by the Pentagon is war crimes, and other violations of the Geneva Conventions.  As is so often the case I'm left thinking 'if only the DOD applied the same rules to real life wars as they do to the depiction of wars i

In the second part of our discussion (following Combat Obscura), Henri, Keagan and I talked about the 1989 Oliver Stone classic Born on the 4th of July.  Based on the real life experiences of Ron Kovic, we charted the film's development in the late 70s and into the 80

Why isn’t the ‘political film’ a genre of cinema? Hollywood puts out a consistent stream of politically-themed films, but rarely if ever promotes them as such.

I was looking forward to Godzilla: King of the Monsters, having been a fan of giant creature features since I was a young boy.  The blend of massive-scale action and affirming our need to respect nature is a winning combination for me.  Then I watched it

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

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 mo

The US Army's emails on The Long Road Home show that not everything ran smoothly while filming progressed as Fort Hood.  While all of the information on script input is redacted, one email contains production notes from the Army's project officer Lt Col.

The teaser trailer for season 2 of Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan depict John Krasinski as the eponymous hero in a Latin American country where there is an uprising against the government (coug

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.

A story doing the rounds in the last few days claims that the producers of Top Gun: Maverick changed the decals on the back of his leather jacket in order to 'appease Communist Chin

The US military's negotiations on the 1980s Clint Eastwood vehicle Heartbreak Ridge were protracted and complex, resulting in numerous changes before the movie could be approved for Pentagon support.  This included changing Clint Eastwood's character from a so

News about this site appears to be spreading - after the flurry of articles citing Spy Culture around the release of Captain Marvel earlier this year, the Washington Business Journal put out a piece on the Top Gun: Maverick trailer using the production assistance agreement I o

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

NCIS is a wildly successful TV drama, one of the most popular series of the last 20 years. This week I recount how the DOD, Navy and Marine Corps routinely rewrite episodes of NCIS to fit their PR and propaganda goals.

Tom Cruise dropped into San Diego Comic-Con this week to premiere the trailer for Top Gun: Maverick, which is nothing short of a fan service nostalgia reel and some cheesy dialogue about how Maverick is still - you'v

The Pentagon’s Film Office file on Hear

The in-development film Raven Four-Two tells the story of a battle in 2005 between insurgents and a Kentucky Army National Guard Military Police Unit, during the war in Iraq.  Documents released by

The Pentagon recently released the Production Assistance Agreement they signed with the producers of Top Gun: Maverick.

The PRISM Awards are an entertainment industry ceremony that gives out gongs for accurate depictions of substance abuse and mental health problems in films and TV shows.  In 2012 the Pentagon were asked to attend and p

Fields of Fire is one of the greatest movies that was never made. A brutal but sympathetic portrait of the Vietnam War, it was denied military support despite being written by a former Secretary of the Navy. This week I examine the story of Fields of Fire using a file from the DOD’s entertainment liaison office.

When James Webb approached the Pentagon to ask for assistance making his Vietnam war drama Fields of Fire he had every right to expect their support.  A former Marine and short-term Secretary of the Navy he was a military veteran who had written his novel based on his own real-life experiences of V

Today I received an email that I thought I would share with you, from the publishers of the American Journal of Economics and Sociology.  It said that the two articles I penned for the journal were among the top 20 most-downloaded arti

The DOD's directive on working with Hollywood says that they can provide production assistance if it is deemed 'in the best interest of the Nation', but as with all their criteria for deciding whether to give support the