Files on government involvement in popular culture, from the CIA in Hollywood to the Pentagon and reality TV. I obtained these documents via FOIA requests and from various archives.
Good Morning, Vietnam is perhaps the most popular Vietnam war film ever made. Loosely based on the real life experiences…
In March 2016 I put in a FOIA request with the US Coast Guard. Several appeals, a lot of ignored…
In March 1991 the producers of Hot Shots! An Important Movie contacted the US Marine Corps looking to film one…
A 1940s MI5 file shows that British intelligence suspected that the Odeon chain of cinemas was a front organisation providing…
There aren’t very many films about the first Gulf War, which is ironic because if ever there was a war…
Former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove has criticised spy author John Le Carré for his ‘nihilistic’ and ‘corrosive’ view of…
For weeks the internet has been awash with claims, rumours, scuttlebutt and hearsay about some kind of shooting at the…
The epic war drama The Deer Hunter won five Oscars, despite the central conceit and metaphor of the film being…
One of the most common conspiracy theories you hear in this line of research is that the Pentagon and CIA…
The role of the technical advisor is crucial to understanding the military-Hollywood relationship, but very few people know who these…
Captain Phillips tells the story of the 2009 hijacking of the Maersk Alabama – a US container ship – off…
2012’s Act of Valor is widely recognised as the terrible, dull, depressing, futile piece of cinema that it surely is,…
