Captain Dale Dye has been to war. So when he speaks of authenticity and realism in war movies he’s not just referencing some petty idea that he’s morphed into grandiose film philosophy. No, to him authenticity and realism are the culmination of his entire war experience, the embodiment of a career living and breathing combat. The retired Marine Corps captain, who saw plenty of real action in Vietnam, has taken the vast history of warfare and his own combat experience and used them to consult big-time Hollywood directors on war pictures, first with Oliver Stone’s semi-autobiographical Platoon and nearly every war movie filmed since then, from Brian De Palma’s Casualties of War to Steven Spielberg’s Saving Private Ryan and Band of Brothers. And because Captain Dye, with his distinguished silver hair and drill sergeant voice, still lives and breaths the military lifestyle, he’s often cast in the films he consults on — he memorably played Col. Robert F. Sink in HBO’s Band of Brothers and an assassination conspirator in JFK.
After Platoon, Dye formed Warriors Inc., a consulting firm that guides Hollywood productions as they undertake war, combat and military themes. Some of the pictures he’s consulted on haven’t really been war films: Alexander, Forrest Gump, JFK, Starship Troopers and Tropic Thunder, which is now in theaters and is a slight exaggeration, almost spoof, of the Captain's job. The company is mostly known for Dye — or officers below him in the ranks — taking actors like Sean Penn, Michael J. Fox and Tom Hanks to a pre-filming boot camp where they clean machine guns, rumble through pre-dawn runs, undergo daily calisthenics regimens and eat K-rations. Dye’s thoughts are this: An actor can’t be a soldier until he’s lived like a soldier.
Besides consulting on films, Captain Dye is an actor, a military historian and a sharp-witted author, whose prose takes military jargon and adds colorful new versions of swear words that only a Marine could invent. He has a new book about his Vietnam experiences due soon, and he regularly writes on his Warriors Inc. Web site, where he shares stories from films, including one where Tom Hanks hit him where it counts with a dummy hand grenade.
Captain Dye is currently in Australia filming the sister piece to Band of Brothers, The Pacific, for HBO. He corresponded via e-mail with Volume.
— Michael Clawson
Volume: A vast majority of people think of World War II as only the European front — us against the Nazis. Even major films (with a few notable exceptions) tend to focus on the struggle in Europe as opposed to the battle in the Pacific. Will this be a learning experience to viewers who may not understand what went on in the Pacific? Dale Dye: Historic touchstones such as Pearl Harbor and Iwo Jima aside, much of today’s audience does think of World War II in terms of the struggle against Germany and her Axis partners in the European Theater of Operations. Do a little digging into the history of the period and that will be understandable. Not proper or appropriate, but understandable. When America entered the Second World War in 1941, there was a tacit agreement among the Allies that the primary focus would be on defeating Hitler and the Nazis. Imperial Japan would be dealt with in due course, but first the continent from which most American families originated had to be saved. Hence, press coverage and public attention was focused on that theater of war and Pacific operations were a sort of public after-thought. There’s another issue involved in this also: The war in Europe was relatively conventional, confined to familiar areas and waged against an enemy that looked like us and for the most part fought like us. It was an entirely different deal in the Pacific where war was waged in remote areas that most people had never heard of against an entirely unconventional enemy that most definitely did not fight like us. War in the Pacific was hard to understand, generally under-reported and brutal in the extreme. We are dealing with those issues in the new mini-series and I believe The Pacific will be a sobering — perhaps even shocking — look at Marine Corps operations during World War II. It’s as different from Band of Brothers as it can be but just as powerful and insightful.
Volume: With Germany’s Ost battalions (made up of captured Soviet soldiers), pockets of unmotivated fighters and soldiers who were sometimes too young or too old, the war in Europe could have been much deadlier for the Allies. The Japanese were formidable opponents, though, as deadly as we could imagine. Why do you think we won?
DD: We won against Japan because we were flexible and innovative where they were dogmatic and slow to adjust to rapidly changing battlefield realities. We won because we were able to apply the power of American industrial might against their more backward industrial techniques and lack of raw materials. We won because we could maintain and defend our logistical supply lines across vast ocean areas and they could not. We won because we were willing to bypass strong bastions in the Pacific and let the Japanese defenders wither on the vine while they insisted on trying to defend every square inch of conquered territory. We won because we believed that metal is cheaper than meat. We won because we fought smart with an eye to preserving life where they fought stubbornly but stupidly with little regard for preserving their combat power in desperate situations. We won because we fielded combat formations that contained a strong corps of enlisted leaders who could take over and continue the fight when officers became casualties and the Japanese military hierarchy had no such functional middle class.
Volume: For The Pacific did you take your actors through your famous boot camp training? If so, any highlights from the experience?
DD: No project of this scope and scale could be done without building a solid, functional military unit that can — and will — do anything required over a long, grueling shooting schedule. Well, I suppose you could do it, but not to our exacting and demanding standards. When we got word that HBO had agreed to do this series early in 2008, we immediately began to construct a training schedule that would turn our actors and special ability extras into a credible, capable reflection of World War II combat Marines. Along with the technical stuff about period weapons and tactics, we always include a heavy dose of physical training and that includes long distance runs during which we sing and chant some fairly bawdy lyrics. These runs usually happen early in the morning when sane people are still sleeping. During our two-week training period in the rain forests of Far North Queensland, Australia, we usually ran along a county road that passed near several pastures in which cattle were grazing. Apparently Australian cows get a little skittish when a unit of ninety or so Marines in training come tromping by screaming at the top of their heaving lungs. As a result, I was forced to spend many long nights in the field writing “bovine trauma reports” for the lawyers before I could carry on with night activities. I just may be getting a little old and cranky for that sort of stuff.
Volume: Going broader now, onto movies and projects in general: Have you seen all the major war movies? Now, I’m not asking you to bash other filmmakers’ works, but have you seen any movies, old or new, that could have greatly benefited from your work as a military consultant? I imagine that The Sands of Iwo Jima would have been a much better film under your consultation.
DD: I certainly haven’t seen them all but I’ve seen a fair portion of what’s been made. I make it my business to do that and I have always been a fan of war movies anyway, for obvious reasons given my background. Given what I know now, I think all of them that I’ve seen could have been improved — and not just with better movie-making technology or computer-generated imagery. There are so many that play fast and loose with reality, mainly because audiences didn’t demand a heightened level of realism and filmmakers didn’t believe anyone would know the difference anyway. That wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. In the end it’s all a matter of supply and demand. What audiences demand is what Hollywood delivers. That changes with time and technology. And it has certainly changed since they began to listen to my advice.
Volume: Because you’ve served in Vietnam, a Vietnam film that is not authentic is probably borderline offensive. From your point of view, why is authenticity in war movies so important?
DD: Worldwide we have become a media-saturated society. The advent of constant news cycles in TV, live coverage of breaking events and dramatic advances in photography has made us much more aware of what things look like. We can’t expect people to watch a pitched battle live from Fallujah or Baghdad on the network news or CNN and then pay to enjoy a film about that fighting that doesn’t look like what they just saw on TV before they left home for the theater. Extend that concept to cable outlets such as The History Channel, or reflections of wars people have seen in magazines or books and you’ve compounded the problem. The short answer is that we know much more now about the reality of war than we ever have in the past. If what we see in films doesn’t reflect what we know from other media, there’s a disconnect that interferes with our enjoyment of the story.
Volume: As someone who’s been to war, you don’t seem opposed to working on films that may be viewed as anti-war, like Platoon or Saving Private Ryan, both of which show us the absurdity of war. How do you feel about films being used as a platform to speak out against war?
DD: I’m a firm believer in the adage that no one hates war worse than the people who have fought one. And I certainly don’t believe that I allow myself to be “used” as a conduit for generic anti-war messages. I understand, as do most rational and moderately well informed people, that wars are blight and a horrible waste of human lives. They are also the nature of our human beast and unlikely to ever disappear completely as long as societies differ politically and culturally with one side or another refusing to live and let live. Given that reality, a strong and capable military is a necessity for survival. I focus on the selfless people who fight wars when such events become necessary or advisable in the view of national leadership. When a film I help make or a story I’m involved in telling exposes political chicanery, failed diplomacy or just plain dumb-ass worldview, so be it. I believe in celebrating soldiers, not war. Volume: Many of the movies that have come out about our current war in Iraq have been largely dramas that focus on the human element as opposed to the military element. When do you think we’ll see movies about the fighting itself? When is it appropriate to begin making those movies?
DD: With some notable recent exceptions that are primarily anti-administration political screeds, no recently made film has dealt on a battlefield level with the campaigns in Iraq or Afghanistan. That’s not going to hold for long but it will likely hold at least until there is some view of how those situations will resolve for better or worse. Studio money managers are conflicted about these conflicts. They don’t know whether or not to believe people will pay to see a story about a misunderstood or unpopular war. Are the guys and gals doing the fighting heroes? Or villains? It depends on your political point of view and that doesn’t provide much reassurance that an expensive movie project will draw big box office. Before too long, someone will be brave enough to fund a story that stays with a fighting unit, examines their life and times and doesn’t cross into political areas. There are some good scripts out there right now and I hope we can work on one of them in the near future. The modern military deserves such a spotlight and I hope we can help shine it on them.
Volume: When you begin working with actors, what is usually the first thing they must be broken of? I’m sure they don’t get to carry a cell phone during your boot camp, right?
DD: No cell phones and no contact with the world outside our training area whatsoever. It’s full immersion and that the only way it works. We put these people in an alternate reality and press it home — all the way and all the time — from the time we first meet them to the final scenes of the film. That’s our method. It ain’t broke so I’m not about to fix it. The first and most difficult chore working with actors is to get them to understand that in a military outfit they are not the center of the universe; the sun does not rise and set on them. This is tough because most actors are so understandably self-centered and concerned with themselves — it’s just the nature of their beast. We work to get them to see another reality. We teach them that they are simply a small cog in a very large military machine and that the performance of the unit is much more important than the performance of any individual.
Volume: I think when people say Platoon or Band of Brothers or Saving Private Ryan are masterpieces, yes they’re commenting on the scripts and the acting and the directing and everything else. But because they’re war movies, they’re also commenting on the authenticity, which is paramount to everything else. Don’t be modest: How important is what you do for films?
DD: I think what we do is crucial and our success seems to indicate that smart filmmakers also understand this. A good story and exciting film techniques are critical to success, but you can’t expect to tell that story or justify those techniques through people who don’t understand what they are portraying. Most directors we work with also understand the relationship between a sense of reality and dramatic storytelling and that makes us partners in synergy. If a producer or director doesn’t understand that or doesn’t care about it, they are unlikely to ask for our help.
Volume: You’ve done a number of films that weren’t necessarily war pictures. Is it nice to break away from the battlefield every now and again?
DD: I’m always anxious for a little break from a constant diet of military films. As an actor I’m always on the lookout for roles that will get me out of a uniform but they are few and far between. If there’s a firmly typecast actor in Hollywood, it’s got to be me. I also welcome films such as Roughriders, Starship Troopers or Alexander that let us get into history or science-fiction a bit and experiment with things we don’t normally do. Interestingly, we have also worked as advisers in video games, themed entertainment and music videos so we’re not very often bored.
Volume: Maybe you can settle a fun disagreement I’ve had with another movie critic here in Phoenix: I think the way Tom Hanks wore his helmet in Private Ryan, with his officer’s bars in front, is correct. A colleague of mine disagrees, saying that officers wore their helmets backward to hide the bars from German snipers. Who is correct?
DD: You both are. There is no definitive correct answer. We researched this heavily during the production and talked with a great number of D-Day veterans. The truth is that it depended entirely on the unit you belonged to during the landings and the subsequent fighting inland from the beaches. Some COs ordered their officers to wear rank conspicuously so that troops could find and rally on their leaders in the confusion. Some commanders wanted their leadership preserved, so they ordered officers to hide the rank. We made a decision to have Tom wear his rank insignia on his helmet because it was not wrong according to our research and because it helped to identify our star performer in the fog of battle. Volume: I’ve always liked the story of the Bridge at Remagen and how the United States entered Germany. Are there any great untold stories from World War II; maybe you have a favorite.
DD: In my view there are about as many great-untold stories from WWII as there are veterans of that conflict. We’ll never hear them all much less be able to make films about them. I’m just happy to have been involved in a few that are representative and popular with audiences who don’t know much about that aspect of our history. I’d love to see a film made about the epic battle for Tarawa in the Pacific or about the capture of the Remagen Bridge over the Rhine in the ETO. Clint Eastwood’s recent efforts aside, I’m also convinced we should make a film about the capture of Iwo Jima that focuses on the battle and the Marines who fought it from the landings to the end or organized resistance.
Volume: Focusing in on Warriors Inc.: when the company gets a script or a project, what’s the first things that’s done? Do you right away read through the script and look for ways to increase realism without sacrificing the story?
DD: We approach each project carefully and cautiously because there are typically a lot of delicate egos involved. If it’s trash and can’t be saved or the producers and director don’t care about any sense of reality, we’ll simply pass and move on to something else. That’s not to say we won’t work on science fiction or comedy. We love that stuff, but if the script purports to be about real people or real events, we start making notes to see what we might change, add or subtract, to make it better entertainment without turning it into a documentary. Given our track record to date, we can usually make points with the right people and get things changed or modified.
Volume: What kinds of things do directors usually fight you on when it comes to showing military elements on film? Is there anything you’ve fought hard to preserve in a picture?
DD: What I’ve fought hardest to preserve on film is a fair and unflinching look at soldiers and the reality of combat. That’s been our stated goal since we began this thing some twenty-odd years ago. Directors fight me on all sorts of things such as not wanting their stars to get military haircuts and not wanting people in combat to maintain a proper interval so they can get more of them into a frame. It’s a constant surge of give and take for us. We pick our battles and fight them when appropriate. We always understand that we are not making documentaries and the director needs to have the latitude to take certain creative licenses. If we didn’t understand that we’d never be employed.
Volume: What is the future of war movies on film?
DD: Filmmakers will always return to the well and make war movies. Hemingway was right when he said war is man’s greatest adventure. It’s also a genre that can — and most often does — involve the entire range of human emotions, strengths and frailties. That makes for good drama, pathos, comedy and even romance. What’s the downside?
Volume: Do you enjoy what you do?
DD: At my age I certainly wouldn’t keep doing it if I didn’t enjoy it. I love the aspect of my work that provides me with an opportunity to celebrate the life and times of people who have gone in harm’s way and selflessly faced danger or death simply because they believe it’s the right thing to do. I understand that spirit from personal experience and I think it’s a bright, shining truth of the human drama. That’s worth contemplating and exposing to the world through popular media. As long as I can do it, I will. And when I’m gone, I hope the successors I’ve trained and coached in Warriors Inc. will carry it on for all of us.
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