Vets in Hollywood and TV

In this episode we examine the history of the military, Hollywood and the veterans who brought real-as-can-be portrayals of that world to big and small screens. I interviewed some of the contemporary players – actors, advisors and writers – who made some of those portrayals a reality. 

• Host Drew F. Lawrence interviews contemporary actors, writers and advisors involved in movies and TV.

 Additional Resources

• 'Top Gun' Boosted Recruiting and Brought the Tailhook Scandal. So What Happens After the Blockbuster Sequel?
• Meet the Man Who Puts Movie Stars Through Boot Camp
• 10 Army Veterans Who Made It Big in the Movies

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Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Jim LaPorta, Drew F. Lawrence, Caitlin Bassett, Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

I love to portray as an actor, I love to portray people who are real…I played Colonel Robert Sink, who later became Major General Sink. And I studied him constantly. I was fortunate enough that his family was able to send me some recordings of him making speeches and I was able to get that North Carolina drawl that he used. I ought to have you all shot! There’s nothing less than an act of mutiny while we prepare for the god damned invasion of Europe.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s retired Marine Corps Captain, actor and military movie advisor Dale Dye. He was in the 2001 show Band of Brothers, a World War II series heralded for its accurate portrayals of the men of Easy Company, 101st Airborne Division and their exploits before, during and after D-Day.   Here, he’s portraying a scene where some of the enlisted men protested their company commander, Capt. Herbert Sobel, and his leadership. It was an act of defiance that Sink – played by Dye – had to squash, but consider carefully.

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

All of you NCOs have disgraced the 101st Airborne. You can consider yourself lucky we’re on the eve of the largest action in the history of warfare. Which leaves me no choice but to spare your lives. Now get out of my office and get out of my sight.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Dye’s performance was a portrayal of tough love under the threat of death. But the message from the men was heard. TThose non-commissioned officers would not jump into France with Sobel – and it was through his own experience in Vietnam combat and elsewhere that Dye said he was able to give Sink the full humanity he deserved, and that the audience watching deserved.

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

Because of my own military experience, in particular as an officer and as a leader, I understood this guy. I understood Col. Sink. I understood why he was the way he was. I understood why he acted the way he was, I understood the decisions he made.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Have you watched a show or movie with veterans or service members and it didn’t quite look right? Awards stacks out of order or salutes in weird places? You’re not alone.

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

Well, it's really a story that I think almost every military veteran who is a movie fan will understand. The plain fact of the matter is, I'd seen, I think, practically every military movie there was, because it was supposed to reflect my life. And certainly my interest. The common denominator, Drew was that the vast majority of ‘em just pissed me off. They simply did not reflect what I knew to be the real world of a military guy

Drew F. Lawrence 

In this episode we examine the history of the military, Hollywood and the veterans who brought real-as-can-be portrayals of that world to big and small screens. I interviewed some of the contemporary players – actors, advisors and writers – who made some of those portrayals a reality.

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

So I just decided, I'm gonna go to Hollywood, and I'm going to find who these people that are making these military movies, and grab them by the stacking swivel and tell them they're screwed up. And I'll tell them, I've got a better way to do it.

Drew F. Lawrence 

For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence. It is April 26. And this is Fire Watch.   

Drew F. Lawrence

The silent, but sound-synchronized 1927 movie Wings is a romantic war thriller that follows two young American men on their journey into the Army Air Service during World War I. The film was supported by the War Department, now known as the Pentagon, to include supplying planes and training ground for the film. Some of the featured actors were even in the military and it went on to win the first ever Academy Award.  It’s one of the first examples of that relationship between Hollywood and the military, the formal one at least. Often, when a movie portrays the military, the Department of Defense will have its paws in the creative soup. Sixty years later, the Pentagon would support another blockbuster, Top Gun, starring Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer as daring pilots out of the Navy’s flight school of the same name. It would go on to inspire major cities to ask for recruiting booths outside of cinemas, capitalizing on the potent portrayal of Naval aviators.

Caitlin Bassett 

You grow up and you watch movies, and you watch Top Gun, and then you join…when I have kids, hopefully I get that in my life and, and if they want to join the military, I would love that the media that they're consuming to have been a more honest portrayal of what it is. And you only get that if you have people that have done it in writing or in front of the camera or holding the camera.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Caitlin Bassett, Army veteran and actor who was recently featured on the show Quantum Leap. You’ll hear more from her later.  And while some of the post-movie boost in recruiting has been debunked, it is undeniable that the movie brought positive attention to the Navy life and mission. Other movies you may have heard about also had Defense Department influence in them – Iron Man, Black Hawk Down, Red Dawn and even some James Bond movies, according to Freedom of Information Act records released over the years.

Robert Downey Jr. 

They say the best weapon is when you never have to fire, I respectfully disagree. I prefer the weapon you only have to fire once. That's how dad did it. That's how America does it. And it's worked out pretty well so far.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s the formal relationship, one that has been criticized as being part of the Pentagon’s messaging to make itself look good.   But anyone who’s served knows that it isn’t always good – it’s not always bad either. There’s an argument to be made that service members, officers, grunts, everyday veterans have brought portrayals of their past lives to light so audiences can get a taste of what it was really like.  Today, veterans are still making their way into those roles – important to showing the public their experiences in war and in the military. Sometimes as advisors.  I'm wondering if you could tell me just generally, what is the most important, or some of the most important aspects of a military technical adviser and what they bring to movies.

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

First of all, I would, I would caution you against using the term military technical advisor. That's wrong. He's a military adviser. If you stick technical in there, what it means is they're going to put you in a cubby hole, and only ask you a question. And if it has to do with how you fit the magazine and the weapon or something like that. That's a technical thing. In Hollywood terms. You don't want to be that, you want to be a guy, you want to be a coach.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Dye got his start advising – and acting in – the 1986 movie Platoon where he took the principal actors, like Charlie Sheen and Willem Defoe, to a jungle in Manila, Philippines for three weeks to teach them soldiering skills.   He recounted a conversation he had with Oliver Stone, the director of the film and a Vietnam veteran as well. 

Capt. (ret.) Dale Dye 

How about if I give you 33 actors, and you take them to the jungle mountains of the Philippines for three weeks. And when you bring them back out, down out of there, they better be you and me when we were 19 years old in Vietnam. If you can do that, you're fine. You're hired.   So that's what I did. He gave me a plane ticket and a bunch of these actors and I took them into the jungle mountains south of Manila. And they lived in holes that they dug, and they ate rations that I provided – no outside contact whatsoever. And three weeks later, once I had worked, what became the Captain Dye magic, I brought them out. And they were who we were when we were 19: mentally, physically, and emotionally. They had an understanding of who we were.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That magic is movie magic, a lot of which is hard work. Dye went on to play other characters and create a business being the guy who could make your actors look like soldiers or Marines or other flavors of service member.   He said he’s worked with a lot of veterans getting out of the service and coming into the movie or TV scene. It’s with those characters, writers and artists that portrayals become real. Salutes become more genuine, smoke-pit talk a little more accurate and less Hollywood Extra. But it’s also the atmosphere, the posture, the genuine experience that bleeds into the voice and writing that gives it that legitimacy. 

Jim LaPorta 

And one of the questions that they asked me, particularly with Dan Fogelman, who created the show, asked me was: ‘What do you hate about Hollywood depictions of veterans?’

Drew F. Lawrence 

Jim LaPorta, a producer for CBS News, is a great example of that. Yes, he’s a journalist, but he also has portrayed extras on TV – to include Navy SEALS --

Jim LaPorta 

-- I had a buddy of mine who was a Navy corpsman over at Marine Special Operations Command and I was like ‘hey, do you want to be on a TV show?’ And they got him in the gear and he got really pissed off because the TV show had nicer gear than what MARSOC had at that time --

Drew F. Lawrence 

-- and wrote for the NBC show This Is Us. He’s also a Marine veteran of the War in Afghanistan. 

Jim LaPorta 

And what I told him was that I hate that veterans tend to fall into caricatures… and it's usually two of them. It's a guy who's like, incredibly broken and can't function. Or it's this, someone who's incredibly heroic, you know, your Rambo's and things like that. And, and through that you get this idea that every veteran has crippling PTSD. No, most of the time, veterans are living with these traumatic experiences, but they also have bills to pay, they have families to take care of, and they have to find a way to function in spite of having it.

Drew F. Lawrence 

As a writer, LaPorta helped create the character Cassidy Sharp, named after a friend of his who died in combat in 2009, Lance Corporal Charles Sharp. Cassidy is a staff sergeant and she does deal with post traumatic stress. But not in the way often portrayed in media depictions of veterans. 

Jim LaPorta 

I tell them it's never the thing you think it's going to be, you know, people mostly assume well, you know, it's fireworks or it's like a car backfiring. And I said, some of the worst ones are things that you would not connect to a war experience or to a traumatic event. And for Cassidy, it was the hot water heater broke in their house, and it was going to cost $1,200 to repair. And the trigger was that it was $1,200, which she remembered because when she was in country in Afghanistan, there was a botched drone strike where they accidentally killed civilians to atone for that the military paid out It's never the thing you think it's gonna be. People mostly assume, you know, it's fireworks or it's like a car backfiring. And I said, some of the worst ones are things that you would not connect to a war experience or to a traumatic event. And for Cassidy, it was the hot water heater broke in their house, and it was going to cost $1,200 to repair. And the trigger was that it was $1,200, which she remembered, because when she was in country, in Afghanistan, there was a botched drone strike where they accidentally killed civilians. And to atone for that the military paid out $1,200 to each one of the Afghan victims from that botched drone strike.   Well, that actually happened. In reality what it was was that came out of a documentary, where the Marines were in a firefight with the Taliban. And a rocket had hit the backside of a building. And unfortunately, a family was taking shelter there and a woman and her three kids were killed. And so the next day to try to atone, Marines gave them each $1,200…what we used in This Is Us comes is born out of a real story.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Some influence on the show was also born out of Jim’s own experience as an infantryman in Afghanistan. 

Jim LaPorta 

When my son was about three years old, three or four years old, he was in the kitchen, when he was dancing to this song by the Lumineers called Ho-Hey, and I'm just watching him dance in the kitchen. I had a memory come back to me that I had largely suppressed. And what it was is in 2013, I had watched a five year old step on an IED who was around the age of my son. And what triggered me was the way my son was jumping. And what had happened in Afghanistan in 2013 was there was this video that emerged where this five year old Afghan boy runs into frame and then he runs out of frame. And he realizes that when he ran across the frame the first time he had stepped on something, but he wasn't quite sure when he stepped on. So he wanders back into frame from right to left. He starts stomping on this thing that's in the dirt, which I know is an IED, but he is unaware of. So in the video, it almost becomes a game to him where he keeps stomping on it, keep stomping on it. And it's not going off. And at some point, I realized that the reason the idea is not going off is he's too malnourished. But eventually he throws his whole weight on it, and it does blow up and he dies. So that was from my own personal experiences that I relayed to the writers room.

Drew F. Lawrence 

It’s the little things too. Well, they may seem little, but as LaPorta explains, they’re important for the story – and to the audience.

Jim LaPorta 

Look, if we get one thing wrong, or if we come off as fake, the veteran community, the military veteran community is gonna see it, and they'll tear us to shreds. Because I've seen it before. There's other TV shows that I won't mention, but because they got it wrong, the rest of it was dismissed. There are these little things that might not mean much to you or me. But we have to get these things right. And if we get these things right, they'll stick around for the story.  An obvious one is the ribbons. Look, ribbons are a story within a story. Ribbons tell others where you've been, and what you've done. And it tells the audience something. And while…they'll see the ribbons for like, maybe five to 10 seconds on film, and they'll quickly dismiss it. The ones who are really paying attention will be like, well, we'll appreciate it.

Caitlin Bassett 

I take so much of my military service in my TV career, I mean, even you know, even down to like, having to get up in front of people and do stuff and not fall apart, you know. A lot of the military is performing under pressure. And that's all acting is.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That’s Caitlin Bassett, star in the show Quantum Leap, a modern-day revamp of the ‘80’s cult classic of the same name. It used time-travel to show a cast of lives and stories that touch on various topics, to include military and veteran ones. Bassett played an ex-Army intelligence officer, Addison Augustine, not a far throw from her real life.  She joined the military at 18 determined not to end up stuck in her hometown, wanting to be something more, like a lot of service members who put on the uniform. Her dad, a Vietnam veteran, was happy she joined…her mother, not so much.   But she went on to serve for seven years. And with multiple combat tours under her belt, attaining the rank of staff sergeant, she felt it was time to do something else. At the time, she thought that was law school.

Caitlin Bassett 

The first year getting out of the Army, the first year of law school, and the first year in New York City all in the same year…it was rough.

Drew F. Lawrence 

She started taking acting classes as she was wrestling with a new identity outside of Army life.

Caitlin Bassett 

I had to admit to myself that I wanted to be an actor, which is insane. That's a bad idea. And I was older, I was 27 At that point, which is basically geriatric in actress years…but I just had to try it, I guess for me, because I just didn't want to get to the end of my life and be like, there was all these things I really wanted to do. But I didn't, because I was too scared to give it a try. So I took a swing.

Drew F. Lawrence 

That swing, along with the help of some friends, she said, took her to Quantum Leap. She starred – alongside Raymond Lee, who played the quantum leaping protagonist Dr. Ben Song. Song inhabits the identity of people in the past. In one case, he goes back in time to the post-Vietnam era, where he meets a Vietnam veteran who experiences post-traumatic stress.  Before talking to Caitlin, I hadn’t seen the show. But I watched it and was fascinated at some of the military and veterans stories it told.  There are also big topics that the show talks about. One of the earlier episodes, which was called Somebody Up There Likes Ben, was when Ben goes back to a post Vietnam era as a boxer. And one of the characters was a Vietnam veteran named Daryl who is having what is clearly a post traumatic stress response, he’s talking about his partner in this scene. But through your character, Ben – and the audience – are able to better understand what Daryl is experiencing.

Caitlin Bassett 

My father was in Vietnam, he struggled with PTSD his entire life, he was infantry, so he did not he did not escape Vietnam, like I escaped Afghanistan. I watched him struggle with that his whole life. I mean, he's still struggling with it. To watch an actor bring that alive in front of me in the 70s clothes, which is what my dad would have been wearing…it was quite overwhelming

Drew F. Lawrence 

I wanted to say oftentimes in TV and media in general when we're talking about a veteran who's experiencing post traumatic stress a lot of times it's not a happy ending and in this episode you had Daryl experienced post traumatic stress, but go on and get help for it. And not only that, but help other veterans dealing with the same thing.

Caitlin Bassett 

I mean, I can clearly think about times in my life where I could have gone or was going down a very bad path. I was in a very dark place. And a combination of me myself and the people that were around me and the people that I put myself near kind of just guided me back on to something better…Obviously this show is about very specific moments, I think that's what it really got right is just kind of highlighting that like look, even if even if Ben did all the right things and the kid won the fight the Daryl character still could have gone down a bad path but he chose to get help.

Drew F. Lawrence 

While that portrayal focused on trauma, Caitlin said that she was able to mold her character in a way that was genuine to her. Addison Augustine, her character is a veteran, it’s part of her character, but as Caitlin put it, it’s not the only thing about her.

Caitlin Bassett 

My favorite part about playing Addison and playing a veteran is that it hasn't really been defining her entire life. They had a life before they had a family, they have an identity, they have a place they have a life after hopefully. And it's one part of your life. It's not all of who you are.   Part of playing Addison is that it's a huge part of her life. Of course it is – it shaped so many things about where she is, who she is, why she's there, how she operates. But primarily, she's operating from who she is, she's a loving person that wanted to make the world better, and found this project and thought that was the way to do that. That's her overarching motivation. The military is just one step along that path. And that's been really nice, because sometimes you do only see the PTSD version of the veteran, which is not true. And even if you do have PTSD, that's not the only thing about you. You're also a teacher or dad…there's so many other things that you are.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Veterans and service members are likely going to be depicted by Hollywood forever, and veterans are going to cheer or groan at depictions of their experience. The accurate ones seem to have one thing in common - those who’ve lived the life working in front or behind the camera to get the little things right, which makes portraying the big things possible.

Caitlin Bassett 

I think we need to put more veterans in front of the camera that are portraying people that are doing really well and have moved on. America and the world needs to see more of that and we have 20 years of veterans who are now out in the world transitioning to a different life and we have to kind of get away from the narrative that all of them are just messed up.

Drew F. Lawrence 

Thank you for listening to this episode of Firewatch. Thank you to our guests, as well as executive producers Zack fryer Biggs and Jared Keller. If you enjoyed this episode, and want to let us know, give us a rating wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening.