Pentagon a ‘No Go’ on Viet Movie

James Webb has long dreamed of making a movie based on his 1978 novel, “Fields of Fire,” a gritty portrayal of Marines in combat during the Vietnam War.

But while the former Navy secretary has won support for his film project from the Marine Corps and even the current communist government of Vietnam, the U.S. Defense Department has turned thumbs down.

“I think it’s ironic as hell,” said Webb, a Marine rifle platoon leader in Vietnam who was wounded twice and won the Navy Cross and two Bronze Star medals for heroism.

Webb said Vietnamese officials have given him permission to film in the Quang Nam province west of Da Nang, in an area called the An Hoa basin where half of the Marines died in Vietnam combat.

“We’re going to shoot it right on the same terrain where we fought,” Webb said in a phone interview from Arlington, Va., adding that he hopes filming can start in January.

“I brought them a script translated into Vietnamese,” he recalled. “They reviewed it in Hanoi, in Saigon (now Ho Chi Minh City) and in the district where we will film and they all supported it. It is not a political script.”

Last year, Webb took a three-month trip to Vietnam and came away with a Vietnamese partner assigned to his production. “It’s taken us a year-and-a-half of negotiations to do this,” he noted.

Webb said he is seeking a domestic distributor for “Fields of Fire.” He said the dismal box-office showing of “Heaven and Earth,” Oliver Stone’s latest Vietnam movie, “blew the bottom out of the market for foreign pre-sale deals.”

Webb’s agent, Guy McElwaine of ICM, has been showing the script to a select group of directors in Hollywood hoping to have one in place by September.

“I don’t want to go to a distributor until I have a director,” he said. “What I’m trying to do is put it together with a major filmmaker.”

Webb said he already has lead financing from Greg Carr, the chairman of Boston Technologies, which has allowed him to scout locations and begin casting.

“I’m also talking with two potential financing sources in New York to see if I can get $5 million in equity, which I can then leverage and do an independent production,” he said.

Webb said a key reason he wanted help from the Defense Department was to obtain equipment and trained manpower to make the war scenes look authentic. As an example, he cited the H-46 helicopter, which is unique to the Marine Corps.

“There are only 11 H-46 helicopters in the entire world outside of the Corps,” Webb said. “They are all owned by one company. . . . If the DOD doesn’t give us cooperation, then we’ll figure out a way to do it.”

“Fields of Fire” tells the story of a Marine platoon making its way through Vietnam’s rice paddies and jungles. To bolster its realism, the book includes scenes of fragging, use of illegal drugs, executions of suspected Viet Cong and the burning of a villager’s hut. The Marine Corps has made it recommended reading in the ranks.

Commandant Gen. C. E. Mundy Jr. wrote Webb last year that the Marine Corps had no objections to the screenplay and was ready to “work with you where we can with Marines and equipment.”

“I know this is a labor of love for you--love of your Corps, your country and your fellow Marines,” Mundy wrote.

But in a subsequent letter dated Dec. 15, the Pentagon’s senior liaison to Hollywood told Webb that the Defense Department was rejecting Mundy’s recommendation over concerns that illegal activities depicted in the script “will obscure the acts of bravery and dedication that the Marines displayed throughout the war in Vietnam.”

“In ‘Fields of Fire,’ only the killing of the suspected Viet Cong is investigated, after overcoming the great reluctance of the regimental legal officer,” wrote Phil Strub.

“The script would have to be changed to reflect that the vast majority of military personnel actively and effectively support the Uniform Code of Military Justice,” Strub’s letter continued.

Webb said that he was “flabbergasted” and wrote back, saying he took “deep exception” to Strub’s characterization of the script.

“It appears to me that what you are really saying is that when it comes to Vietnam, (the Defense Department) will support only sterile documentaries, or feature films that amount to nothing more than dishonest propaganda,” Webb wrote.

While the Marines considered Webb’s novel a “faithful depiction of the horrors of war,” Strub said, the Pentagon felt that in a movie “one can’t bring to the viewing experience in a theater the same kind of nuance and context” as in a book.

Before the Pentagon provides military installations and equipment for a film, it requires producers to submit a script. Whichever branch of the service will be needed studies the script and decides if (a) it will promote recruitment and retention in the ranks and (b) whether it educates the public about the military.

Using these criteria, the Pentagon has helped out on such films as “Top Gun” because it portrayed Navy fighter pilots in a positive way, but rejected “Iron Eagle” because it left the impression that an Air Force pilot would steal a plane and conduct a non-sanctioned raid on another country.