While some senior military officials have spoken openly about the possibility of a war between the US and China, the entertainment liaison offices appear to be working to ensure that doesn't happen. Perhaps surprisingly, they have refused to support films, TV shows and video games where China is the adversary ...
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The latest release from the US Army's entertainment liaison office provokes many questions. Why did they refuse to support the movie Rampage? Why are the military pitching ideas to studio executives? Who is in charge of the Pentagon's operations in Hollywood? And why does the US Army have a collection ...
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The US Army's entertainment liaison office has worked on as wide a variety of TV entertainment as you can imagine, from Oprah to Top Chef, from The Price is Right to Man of Steel.  But they do sometimes reject requests for support, as was the case with Wife Swap which ...
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The latest reports from the US Army's entertainment liaison office show surprisingly few examples of them providing production assistance to films and TV shows. Instead, they appear to be spending the majority of their time arranging PR events, cosying up to studio executives and monitoring how the military is portrayed ...
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12 Strong a.k.a. Horse Soldiers is based on a book about a US Army Special Forces group sent to Afghanistan during the early days of the post-9/11 War on Terror.  Recently released emails from the Army show that they made changes to the script in exchange for their support, including ...
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Hollywood doesn’t make war films any more. This isn’t entirely true, but compared to the post-WW2 period there are a lot less war films being made today. In this in-depth episode I offer a brief history of war movies and anti-war movies, and how the Pentagon’s policy on supporting films ...
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The Vietnam war had a huge impact.  3 million dead Vietnamese, tens of thousands of dead Americans, and millions more on both sides suffering from trauma, depression and drug and alcohol addiction.  It also had a major influence on the US public's willingness to engage in full-scale wars (at least ...
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12 Strong, based on the book Horse Soldiers by Doug Stanton, is set in the early days of the US war in Afghanistan. Emails released by the US Army detail the support they and the Air Force provided to the production as well as their communications with the producers. During ...
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Wings (1927) was one of the first Hollywood films to benefit from full military support, was the first film to include sound effects on a film reel alongside the in-theater orchestra, and was the first film to win the Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also the first film ...
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To unsuspecting movie audiences Pitch Perfect 3 is a piece of lighthearted family-friendly entertainment to be enjoyed and then forgotten almost immediately. Lurking beneath this neutrally-toned surface lies a work of military recruitment propaganda, intelligently crafted to appeal to demographics that the DOD usually has trouble reaching. In this episode ...
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Most government agencies sign contracts with Hollywood producers when they agree to provide support on a film or TV show. These are called Production Assistance Agreements, and set out the legal terms of the partnership between the government and the production company. In this episode I explore these contracts, how ...
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Going back through some documents released by the Army on the Transformers films I noticed that some of the notes weren't script notes from pre-production, but were production notes from while Transformers: Dark of the Moon was filming. They show that sometimes the Pentagon continues to rewrite the script while ...
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