Hollywood Recruited, by the Book

Maj. Ben Frazier wanted to get the Army on “Baywatch.” He’d seen what the buff-body lifeguard show had done for the Coast Guard over the years--showing those cutters racing to the scene--so he had that service’s “entertainment liaison” introduce him to the executive producer, Greg Bonann.

But what could the Army offer “Baywatch”?

“The Golden Knights,” Frazier said, “our world championship parachute team.”

Bingo. The talks began.

Bonann’s writers worked up a script in which the team’s leader is an old pal of Mitch, the David Hasselhoff character, and has his chutists land by “Baywatch” headquarters to say hello.

No good, said Frazier. The Golden Knights would never do a jump like that for such a trivial reason. How about a full-scale rescue?

Bingo again. Better, in fact, for both. For “Baywatch,” more drama, a rescue in a remote cove. And in an episode that aired five times last year, the Army looked . . . heroic.

When it comes to cooperation between the entertainment industry and government, one genre tops the list: military.

“It’s a relationship of mutual exploitation,” says Lawrence Suid, the author of “Guts and Glory: Great American War Movies.”

The symbiosis began at the birth of cinema. The Navy assisted silent movies after the turn of the century. The Army helped D.W. Griffith make “The Birth of a Nation.”

Today, all the services have liaison offices in Los Angeles, staffed by media-savvy officers like Frazier. They offer everything from basic technical advice to big-time equipment. But the latter carries a price, spelled out in print. Scripts must be approved and footage screened. The production must “depict a feasible interpretation of military life . . . help Armed Forces recruiting and retention . . . [and] not appear to condone or endorse activities contrary to U.S. Government policies.”

Translation: Don’t ask to film on a base if your script is about a renegade hero who saves the day despite bozo superiors. The bad guys can be bad but must pay in the end.

“We easily receive over 300 requests [a year],” says Phil Strub, the Pentagon’s chief entertainment liaison official, “and of the very concrete requests, filming on a military installation or filming with military equipment, we probably don’t provide it in more than 20%.”

Yet films have helped rehabilitate the military’s image since Vietnam. While 1982’s “An Officer and a Gentleman” is credited with starting that trend, the Navy refused to support the film because of its sex, language and the suicide of a recruit.

Four years later, glamorous “Top Gun” did get technical help from the Navy and became the highest grossing film of 1986. Steven Spielberg became a hero in the military for “Saving Private Ryan.”

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This story has been edited to reflect a correction to the original published text. The Navy helped with the movie “Top Gun,” not the Air Force.

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