He’s in the show business army now

The last line of retired Command Sgt. Maj. Eric L. Haney’s 2002 memoir describes how he can spot a fellow counterterrorism soldier on the evening news: “It’s always in a bad place, and the Delta Force member is the man who looks like he’s at home.”

It’s also indicative of how a 53-year-old soldier with a pedigree that includes stints as an Army infantryman, Ranger and founding member of the secret counterterrorist arm Delta Force has come to feel right at home on an unlikely battlefield. The centurion has gone Hollywood.

Haney’s bestselling “Inside Delta Force: The Story of America’s Elite Counterterrorist Unit” is the foundation for a new CBS drama, “The Unit,” which premieres tonight at 9. It’s as if all of his life’s work -- raiding Iran in 1980 in an attempt to free the American hostages, leading the detail that returned President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to Haiti, protecting princes and presidents -- had prepared him for the world of pitch meetings, pilots and location scouting.

And, as in a war zone, Haney has learned, the secret to getting things accomplished in Hollywood is in the company you keep. In his $5.5-million deal with 20th Century Fox Television, Haney partnered with Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and screenwriter David Mamet, who created the series -- his first -- based on Haney’s war stories. The two then persuaded Shawn Ryan, creator of FX’s “The Shield,” to run the show.

“I’m sure that the things that made Eric a great soldier are also contributing to his success in a different field,” said Mamet, who hired Haney to be the technical advisor on his 2004 film “Spartan” after reading his book.

Mamet said Haney puts him in mind of something Napoleon was credited with once saying: “Give me a man who is lucky.” “What Napoleon meant,” Mamet said, “is someone who is capable of foreseeing the least glimmer of an opportunity and exploiting it. That’s where success comes from in battle. And I think that’s where success comes from in show business.”

More than an advisor

With a physique that still commands, even though he now walks with a cane, Haney didn’t just serve as a technical advisor on “The Unit.” He co-wrote two of the show’s 13 episodes, worked in the writers’ room on other stories, trained the actors in special operations tactics, advised directors and helped to produce every episode.

“I was driving home late one night,” Haney said, “and I came to the conscious realization that this was the most enjoyable thing I’d ever done.”

Of course, true success in television is measured in ratings, and Nielsen’s verdict won’t come down until Wednesday. But “The Unit,” an action drama with plenty of heroes, certainly fits a network made up of good-guy-versus-bad-guy shows, including the “CSI” franchise, “Without a Trace,” “Criminal Minds” and Numb3rs.” “The Unit” also is a family show that devotes time to the wives and personal relationships of the soldiers.

“What impressed me about Eric,” Ryan said, “was how intelligent he is, the different languages he spoke, his encyclopedic knowledge of history. And being able to swim through any nation you’re in, blending with the crowd, where you’re half spy, half soldier. These are things I realized I had not seen portrayed on television or film.”

Starring Dennis Haysbert in a role loosely based on Haney, “The Unit” also features Scott Foley, Robert Patrick and Regina Taylor. There is plenty of action, along with marital intrigue, infidelity and some questionable business dealings.

“When I watch action movies, I always wonder, ‘Who is that third guy from the left?’ ” Ryan said. “ ‘Who cares if he comes home?’ Because they are not indestructible, and Eric essentially opened up a world that answers those questions. It’s an area that Eric doesn’t talk a lot about in his book but he talked a lot about with us. And I think it’s an area that really intrigued CBS.”

CBS bought the show in 2004 after a pitch session with Ryan, Mamet and Haney in which the two show business veterans let the soldier -- who had no script “but I had this book” -- do his thing. Maybe it was Haney’s Southern gentleman charm, or his gift of storytelling, which he says was passed down from his ancestors in the mountains of Georgia, or his philosophical approach to warfare and the human condition that persuaded CBS Chief Executive Leslie Moonves to buy “The Unit.” But Ryan has another theory.

“Somebody joked that the reason CBS bought the show is that Les Moonves actually met a guy more macho than he was.”

How macho? Once when his backyard deck went up in flames, Haney calmly walked barefoot through the fire to put it out, according to his astonished wife of nearly 10 years, Dianna Edwards. And sometimes while beating out stories in the writers’ room, Haney sharpened knives underneath the table. “I’d make sure that whatever the next thing he said was, I’d say, ‘Great idea, Eric,’ ” Ryan said.

No cliche character

An expert marksman, adept at espionage and taking on terrorists and enemy armies, Haney co-founded and spent eight years -- from ages 26 to 34 -- in Delta Force. Indeed, Haney, who is fluent in English, Spanish, Arabic and Portuguese, has lived an engrossing life that usually isn’t depicted in Hollywood portrayals of special ops forces.

“As done by Sylvester Stallone or the governor of California, [it] is always this one-dimensional cartoonish character: He’s a monosyllabic Neanderthal who slaughters everything that inhabits the Earth and there’s no payoff,” Haney said. “And it’s so far from the truth. This great technologically enabled culture ... helps whoever is in the Oval Office decide that we’re going to democratize places for whatever our reasons are and to [do that] means that me and a handful of other people are going to go kill some other human beings. And we do it at [close] range, not from 40,000 feet in an air-conditioned aircraft.

“I wanted to write about humanity, inhumanity and the cost of warfare.... “ Haney said. “And what we wanted to do on the show is tell that story of humanity, where you can’t tell where one begins and another ends.”

After his run as president of the United States on Fox’s “24” ended, Haysbert was looking for an action role. But when he met Haney, “The Unit” became about a lot more than playing a warrior.

“When I met Eric, there was an immediate connection and I just had to ... say thank you for everything he has done for this country,” Haysbert said. “He’s very bright and he’s not this rah-rah soldier type. I hate to use this word, but he wasn’t a killer.”

Before the pilot was shot, Haney spent a week training the actors in special operations tactics: shooting a gun, entering a room, engaging in close-quarter battles. Over and over, the actors tore through “The Shield’s” administrative building at Prospect Studios in Los Feliz, which served as headquarters for “The Unit” during the pilot shooting.

“He said the one thing you have to do is move like warm honey,” said Haysbert, who noticed that sometimes Haney would leave the set during filming. One such scene had Haysbert’s character, Jonas Blane, guarding the life of a wounded soldier by holding his femoral artery in one hand and a gun in another. That happened long ago to Haney in Afghanistan.

“It’s fantasy, it’s television, it’s not for real. But it can put you back in the moment,” Haney said. “I did have some moments where I had to turn around and walk away.”

It’s about training

Haney’s wife, a writer who met him while he was on vacation in Atlanta from his job protecting a Saudi prince in 1991, said she finds it liberating to be with a man like Haney. “Eric takes the fear out of anything and not just because he can protect you,” Edwards said. “But because his world is so expansive and so inclusive. And not just the civilized, pretty parts. He can find beauty everywhere.”

As a graduation exercise from their five-day boot camp, the actors were instructed to unexpectedly storm the writers’ room of “The Shield” in its production offices next door.

So, what was it like?

“To see people in the hallway seeing Dennis Haysbert and Scott Foley going by fully armed and loaded, it was pretty hysterical,” said Ryan, the only one privy to the assault beforehand.

“We actually could have taken out the entire building,” Haysbert said. “By the time they reacted, it was over. It was so intense, the way you enter the room and you have to make sure to hit the right people, miss the right people and above everything else, miss each other. We were moving like warm honey.”