Analysis: Hollywood and the war

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 29 (UPI) -- Just because major studios are ready to release war-themed movies -- such as "Behind Enemy Lines," due in theaters this weekend -- that doesn't necessarily mean that Hollywood has decided how best to respond to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Some movie industry critics are calling Hollywood "clueless," basing the conclusion on a misreading of the movie studios' initial response to the attacks. They may have a point, but only insofar as other sectors of the economy also groped for clues of their own for an appropriate response to an unprecedented disaster.

To be sure, there was plenty of news coverage when studios and filmmakers decided to delete images of the World Trade Center from movies and trailers for coming attractions, and when Warner Bros. announced that it would not open Arnold Schwarzenegger's action picture, "Collateral Damage," because the plot came too close for comfort to the reality of Sept. 11.

Now, less than 12 weeks after the terrorist attacks, Hollywood is about to release a war movie, and some cynics are accusing the entertainment industry of coming late to join the current groundswell of patriotic fervor.

Such criticism betrays a lack of understanding for the ways of Hollywood.

"Behind Enemy Lines" is coming to theaters years after the incident on which it was loosely based -- the downing of a U.S. airman during hostilities on Kosovo. The movie was shot and in the can before most Americans had even heard of Osama bin Laden.

Its release at this time is scarcely a studio's statement of patriotism. Rather it is an expression of opportunism, grounded in 20th Century Fox's astute reading of a test screening audience that cheered for the movie weeks before U.S. and allied forces put the Taliban on the run in Afghanistan.

It was also a focus group response that persuaded Warner Bros. to schedule "Collateral Damage" for a February 2002 release date.

Why does Hollywood need focus groups and polling to provide guidance for such difficult decisions? For the same reason that Procter & Gamble, Budweiser and both major political parties rely on such tools -- effective marketing.

Ray Greene, who wrote about Hollywood and the movies for several publications during the 1990s, said in an interview with UPI that Hollywood's immediate response to Sept. 11 was to sound a retreat.

"When you saw those horrifying images of the World Trade Center," said Green, "it was almost impossible to feel like you hadn't seen something like that before, if you'd been to the movies in the last 10 years."

For reference, Greene sited the image of Mel Gibson and Danny Glover in the "Lethal Weapon" movies -- "running in slow motion out of an office building with an explosion behind them." The image has been repeated countless times in countless action pictures, achieving the rare status of immediate and universal recognition as movie cliché.

Greene said Hollywood's initial retreat was motivated by fear.

"Hollywood is very afraid of someone pointing the finger at them, saying you were responsible for this," he said. "In the immediate days after the attacks, you heard people say family movies would make a comeback, or maybe we'll reactivate the movie musical."

But a funny thing happened on Oct. 5 when Denzel Washington opened in "Training Day" as a rogue cop in a violent world. The movie was a hit, and Hollywood -- where it is said everybody wants to be first to go second -- had a more complicated reassessment on its hands.

"The weekend after the catastrophe the top rental title, I believe, was 'Diehard,'" said Greene, "and the studios said: 'Wait a minute, morality is all well and good, but we're a business. Let's sift the tealeaves and sniff the wind and see what people are willing to see.'"

Gradually, movie studios and TV networks have managed to catch their breath and consider business decisions somewhat more rationally than they apparently were able to do immediately after the attacks.

Studio heads met with high-ranking officials from the Bush administration, amid speculation as to whether Hollywood was handing Washington the keys to the production machinery. Greene wasn't surprised by the show of support for the war effort by the movie and TV brass.

"They're terrified of the government anyhow," he said. "They just want to make their millions and pick up their Oscars and be left alone."

Whatever kinds of projects Hollywood generates in response to Sept. 11, Greene is fairly certain that it will be a rare movie or TV show that dares to criticize America or the U.S. military -- largely because most productions are vetted by the Department of Defense, which provides consultants, hardware and other production assistance for such projects.

"We'll see the same sorts of messages we generally see in films about the military," said Greene. "In the end, the military comes out smelling like a rose. There'll be conflict, but it's always about the decency and heroism of men who have joined the military."

Director Ridley Scott's upcoming movie, "Black Hawk Down," is about an American military misadventure in Somalia, but Greene expects the movie will use the debacle as a context for making the larger point that "soldiers are good."

On the other hand, he doubts that present conditions would tolerate the release of a scene such as the one in "Three Kings" (1999), in which a U.S. soldier played by Mark Wahlberg is tortured as an Iraqi lectures him on the pain inflicted on Iraqi civilians in the Gulf War.

"Wouldn't happen," said Greene. "Movie wouldn't come out."

The way Greene figures it, about the only way that Hollywood will challenge the prevailing public infatuation with military solutions to difficult problems would be if "some crackpot visionary" or "a real heavy hitter -- someone like Oliver Stone used to be" -- finds a way to work out the financing for it.

"The number of pictures that come down the road in the next few years will be completely worshipful of the military, I suspect," he said.

In any event, Greene said the public is getting what it wants -- even if it means the quality of filmmaking has to suffer.

"This is a general cultural problem that really comes as much as anything from the fact that the current generation has pretty much all been socialized by TV," he said. "That sort of smiley face that we paste on our culture in the movies is even more gargantuan on TV.

"People's expectations have been conditioned by that," said Green. "They're not really conditioned to complexity in film."

If Hollywood undertakes to make propaganda-type war movies, the result might be a boost for patriotism and more fervent public support the war effort, but Greene expects the consequences would be negative both for the artistic and the commercial prospects of the movies involved.

"It's a very safe response," he said, "and it will result in bad movies. And I don't expect it will result in movies that the public will be interested in seeing."

In Greene's view, patriotic movies produced during World War II are among the worst ever made, largely because "the subject matter had little to do with the complex range of human emotions."

He called "Three Kings" the most responsible movie made on the subject of the seriousness of war. Writer-director David O. Russell's movie told the story of U.S. soldiers trying to heist a cache of Saddam Hussein's gold at the end of the Gulf War -- only to become involved in the tragedy of Iraqi civilians caught up in Hussein's brutality.

The main characters -- played by Wahlberg, George Clooney and Ice T -- came across as decent human beings, said Greene, because "they refuse to participate in the madness," not because they're wearing American uniforms.

The most important consideration in making movies about war, said Greene, is to be truthful.

"Asking guys to go over there and die without telling them the truth is irresponsible," he said. "If we're going to ask them to die we at least owe them the truth."