The Day the World Shattered

Pearl Harbor.

This was no drill. They came in high, they came in low. They came in waves, they came in formations, they came in twos and threes past the mist-ringed purple mountains, winging toward their targets, one after the other in rapid succession, swooping through the clouds like vampire bats. They dove, they circled, they hovered. They made run after run, delivering their loads, creating concussions and nerve-jangling cacophonies that sucked life from the air. They attacked, they strafed, pursuing their manifest destiny with fanatical dedication for this apocalypse, this day that will live in infamy.

But enough about the media.

They came to Hawaii from the mainland U.S., Canada and Europe. And thanks to these swarming hordes of shameless junketeers, TV and radio buzz over Disney’s $140-million “Pearl Harbor” movie crescendoed deafeningly this week, just in time for its opening in theaters today.

Memorial Day weekend aside, how bizarre that Pearl Harbor TV specials and documentaries galore--including dueling ones on ABC and NBC on Saturday night--are showing up just now, when the 60th anniversary of the actual attack is more than six months away. It’s as if these TV productions, too, were responding to the heavily advertised launch of a Hollywood movie on hoping to bask in its publicity.

Sound general quarters!

Although this spin had been building for some time, its apex was Monday night’s shrewdly choreographed-for-cameras $5-million extravaganza aboard the USS John C. Stennis, with media the willing color guard. The Navy aircraft carrier was brought to Pearl Harbor from San Diego for media frolics with celebs and to be transformed into an open-air theater on behalf of Disney, with stadium seating for a special premiere of “Pearl Harbor” that was carefully tailored for consumption by a pliant press.

Give Disney credit for knowing what turns on these media suckers and suck-ups, whose snap-tos and crisp salutes to Hollywood made this cosmic stunt possible. Disney made them sob by wrapping “Pearl Harbor” in Old Glory. It brought in Faith Hill to belt out the National Anthem. It had Navy SEALs parachute from a Black Hawk helicopter. It had F-15 fighters fly above the carrier in a “missing man” formation. It paraded before teary media eyes, radio mikes and TV lenses aged survivors of the Dec. 7, 1941, Japanese attack that killed more than 2,400 Americans and drew the U.S. into World War II.

Disney didn’t stop there. It set off 20 minutes of massive fireworks. It displayed a vintage B-25 bomber and a P-40 fighter. It put out white party tents and brought in the Honolulu Symphony Pops Orchestra. It rolled out co-stars Ben Affleck and Kate Beckinsale like red carpets, and delivered them, along with producer Jerry Bruckheimer, director Michael Bay and the invited veterans, for interview after interview before and after this sneak peek at “Pearl Harbor” before 2,000 on the carrier’s 4.5-acre flight deck.

When the black, oily smoke had cleared, TV’s lumps in the throat did what Disney expected them to do, what Disney had invited them there to do. They fell all apart.

“This has been a very moving and patriotic moment for me,” Disney-owned KABC’s entertainment reporter, George Pennacchio, blubbered live on deck after “Pearl Harbor.”

“To those veterans of the war, Hollywood again salutes you,” KCAL’s overcome Cary Berglund proclaimed live.

“Have you ever seen anything like this?” KTTV’s Lisa Joyner gushed live to “Pearl Harbor” actress James King. Earlier Joyner had squealed like a 13-year-old groupie when showing viewers snapshots of herself with Bruckheimer and the handsome Affleck.

ABC’s “Good Morning America,” too, kissed Disney butt by running a lengthy segment on “Pearl Harbor” each day this week. Co-host Diane Sawyer anointed it “the movie event of the summer,” and news correspondent Jack Ford went further, granting it biblical rank as “the biggest summer blockbuster of all time.”

All this before it opened.

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ABC’s “World News Tonight” came through, too, as anchor Peter Jennings slipped in a “Pearl Harbor” mention when introducing a story about a veteran who began composing a letter to his family while below deck of the USS New Orleans as it was under attack that Sunday morning. Was this story, too, designed to promote “Pearl Harbor?” The same question applies to the ABC News Web site using scenes from “Pearl Harbor” to illustrate its big spread on the Japanese attack. Does ABC News do Memorial Day-timed stories only about U.S. wars or military actions featured in Disney movies? Skeptics have reason to wonder about that and about U.S. sailors in whites somehow being at the front of the audience cheering outdoors for Thursday’s “Good Morning America.”

Cross-promotion--the chauvinistic practice of creating stories that favor one’s own--was hardly invented by ABC News. If “CBS This Morning” or that network’s stations had been faced with reporting the 1941 Pearl Harbor attack, for example, they’d have gotten to it only after covering “Survivor.”

Disney’s ducks weren’t the only quackers on the John C. Stennis this week, either. The media jetted in from all points and companies. In addition to Joyner and Berglund, L.A.’s non-Disney TV contingent included KNBC’s Gordon Tokumatsu and KTLA’s Sam Rubin, whose live “Pearl Harbor” duty ended with tape of him learning the hula.

Earlier Rubin had come up with the question of the event when asking Hill if the movie’s “over-the-top hoopla” was “a little too much.” Which was like wondering if L.A. freeways had excessive traffic.

It’s hardly news when TV reporters on the entertainment beat behave like fans or adoring members of the industry’s extended family instead of as detached observers. That certainly was the case this week when they moored themselves to “Pearl Harbor,” implying that it was motivated much less by profit than high ideals, and that all associated with the movie pitched in as a matter of honor.

Director Bay took part “primarily out of a sense of duty,” Berglund reported, adding that cast member Tom Sizemore (featured also in “Saving Private Ryan”), is “again proud to honor the men and women of World War II.” ABC’s Ford found Affleck “moved by the message of this story,” reporting also that Bay and Bruckheimer were “touched by their conversations with the veterans.” Touched most, surely, will be Disney if it succeeds in convincing Americans that passing up “Pearl Harbor” would be bordering on unpatriotic.

“We’re getting 10 times the cost of this thing in publicity,” Bruckheimer told the trade paper, Variety.

There were mentions from time to time this week of the movie’s alleged historical flaws and fears expressed by the Japanese Americans Citizens League that it would reawaken anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. But who did shipboard media turn to most often for expert testimony on the history behind the attack, including long-standing rumors that President Roosevelt had expected it? None other than an actor in “Pearl Harbor.”

Tokumatsu to Dan Aykroyd: “How much did Roosevelt know?” A better question: How much does Aykroyd know?

After all of this, before shipping home from the carrier, Rubin gave “Pearl Harbor” a “B-,” a much higher grade than he and his colleagues earned by being there.

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Howard Rosenberg’s column appears Mondays and Fridays. He can be contacted at howard.rosenberg@latimes.com.