This article appears in this month's U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings.
Due to copyright constraints, I am not publishing the entire article,
but enough so that you can get a good read. Pay particular attention
to what Mr. Webb says about the military technical advice given to
the movie.

If some of you out there are also members of the ListBot service, you
will get this article twice.

The entire article can be read at
http://www.proceedings.org/Proceedings/Aritcles00/webb.htm .

Interview: James Webb

On the eve of the premiere of the new Paramount Pictures movie, Rules
of Engagement, the film€  '²s creator, executive producer, and
co-writer
talked recently at his office overlooking the Iwo Jima Memorial in
northern Virginia with Naval Institute editor Fred L. Schultz. The
self-described iconoclast discusses the machinations of Hollywood and
its prevailing attitudes toward the military, his service as
Assistant Secretary of Defense and Secretary of the Navy, the gap
between civilian and military cultures, and his opinions about the
current condition of military leadership.

Proceedings : Obviously, the subject of rules of engagement plays
heavily on the readers of this magazine. How did the new film, Rules
of Engagement, come about?

Webb: I conceived the idea in 1989, when Scott Rudin began producing
after having been president of production at 20th-Century Fox. He had
read Bob Timberg€  '²s article in Esquire, which was the seminal
article
for his book, The Nightingale€  '²s Song. We had a discussion that
boiled
down to the notion of military loyalty. Timberg€  '²s article had
struck
him, when it mentioned that, although I did not particularly like
Oliver North, if I€  '²d been working in the White House at the time
of
the Iran-Contra activities, I would not have let him do what he did.
This led to a discussion of Marine Corps loyalty, as opposed to what
you see in the civilian world. I made a comment that basically
was: "In the Marine Corps, loyalty means you will die for somebody
even if you don€  '²t like them." He said, "You know, there€  '²s a
movie in
that."

Proceedings Why do you think the public is so ignorant about what a
combat commander has to go through?

Webb: The level of ignorance is extremely high. A big part of that is
because Hollywood has become, in many ways, the articulator of our
culture€  '·-to ourselves and to the world. Right now, 60 percent of
the
money Hollywood makes is in international sales. If you look at the
films that have been done about the U.S. military-€  '·anything after
World War II-€  '·they are simplistic on these issues, and they are
not
positive. You see a repetitive theme, either about the corruption of
U.S. military leaders or the depiction that Americans just shoot
things up, without restrictions. Proceedings Based on what we€  '²ve
heard, that is extraordinary in the movie business. Maybe they did
realize that they were going to alienate the Marine Corps, a major
portion of the potential audience.

Webb: Probably the most unfortunate occurrence in the shooting of the
film was that Dale Dye was technical adviser. In my view, he should
have been more loyal to the Marine Corps and backed me on what I said.

Proceedings You€  '²ve been a vocal critic of military leadership,
and you
were especially tough in your 1996 speech at the Naval
Institute€  '²s
Annual Meeting. I€  '²m sure you remember that. Has anything changed
since then?

Webb: Yes, I remember. Let€  '²s back up to that speech. The biggest
problem at the time was the cascading effect of the Navy€  '²s
leadership€  '²s failure to defend its culture after the Tailhook
incident. In 1992, I wrote a piece for the New York Times, basically
saying that the problem wasn€  '²t the Navy€  '²s culture. The
problem was
the admirals who were standing there saying we have a flaw in the
culture, or who were allowing the civilian process to say that we had
a corrupt culture. If that were true, if the Navy€  '²s culture was
permanently flawed and that was what caused Tailhook, then every one
of those guys should have resigned. And if the culture wasn€  '²t
structurally flawed, if this was an isolated incident that happened
on one part of a hotel, where some people got out of hand, then they
should have spoken up, and the whole thing might have taken a
different turn. You tell me that what happened in a mosh pit at a
Woodstock celebration last summer was less notorious than what
happened at Tailhook? That was much more notorious. There were actual
rapes in the mosh pit at Woodstock €  '²99. But where were the media?
Proceedings What would you say your biggest accomplishment was in your
public service?

Webb: It€  '²s hard to say. I was a committee counsel for four years
in
the Congress, and that was a time when veterans€  '² issues were
extremely
visible. I think probably the most important thing that I did was to
create the legislation that countered the Carter discharge
program.Proceedings Why did you decide to leave public service and go
into literature and filmmaking?

Webb: From the time I left the Marine Corps, I€  '²ve done both. I
have an
unwitting career. Actually, I wrote my first book after my first year
in law school. It was a small book on Micronesia and American
strategic interests in the Pacific. So I just became fascinated with
writing and started Fields of Fire.

Proceedings Do you have the same type of relationship with the
filming of Fields of Fire as you had with Rules of Engagement?

Webb: Having learned how Hollywood operates and feeling how important
the Vietnam story is, especially because it€  '²s never been done
right,
I decided to do Fields of Fire outside the studio system. It€  '²s
harder. But if you sell a story or a novel into the studio system,
into what they call "development," they own it; they own it
creatively, they own every one of those characters, and they can do
anything they want. All they have to do is pay you out.

Proceedings What advice would you give to young people who are
contemplating a military career?

Webb: First of all, I think you€  '²ve got to make that decision for
yourself. My son just turned 18 and is very interested in going into
the Marine Corps. I€  '²m really proud of him for that. But, at the
same
time, if he were doing it purely because somebody else wanted him to,
then he would be in the wrong place. And the question always has
been whether they are inspired, whether the leadership and the nation
will convince them that what they€  '²re doing is important. Napoleon
said that there are no bad regiments; there are only bad colonels.

John Lovett
Chief Consultant
The Hollywood Military Advisor
http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/Set/7906/
714-222-2460