Pentagon rewrites Windtalkers.
In the original screenplay for the new MGM movie "Windtalkers," a Marine nicknamed "The Dentist" creeps across a battlefield strewn with the bodies of Japanese soldiers. "The Dentist bent over a dead Japanese soldier, doing what he does, relieving the dead of the gold in their mouth," the original script reads. "The Dentist twists his bayonet, struggles to get the gold nugget out of the corpse's teeth."
"Come to Poppa," says The Dentist.
It's a grisly scene, one of several that you won't see in the World War II-era movie -- directed by John Woo and starring Nicolas Cage, Christian Slater and Adam Beach -- which opened yesterday. The scene was written out of the script after the Marine Corps and the Department of Defense -- which lent production assistance to the movie -- complained about it.
When filmmakers ask the Defense Department for help, they have to submit their screenplays to Phil Strub, the head of the department's film and TV liaison office in Washington. He reviews them for accuracy and to determine whether they will help the military's recruiting efforts. Hollywood's top producers regularly trek to Strub's office, pleading for assistance. Strub has clout. If he likes a script, he can recommend that the Pentagon give the movie's producers access to billions of dollars' worth of military hardware -- ships, airplanes and tanks. But if he doesn't like a script, the producers will have to make the changes he recommends if they want the military's assistance.
That's what happened to "Windtalkers," which tells the story of Marines assigned to guard the Navajo "code talkers" who used their unique language to confound Japanese code breakers.
