Hailing from Cape Girardeau, Missouri, Dale Dye "heard the sound of
bugles and drums from the earliest age" and knew right away what his chosen
profession was to be. "Aged eight I became a boy soldier and went away to
military school. I had plans of attending the United States Naval Academy to
become a career officer, unfortunately my academics weren't good enough. So I
enlisted in the United States Marine Corps instead. I spent 1965, 1967-1970 in
Vietnam and was wounded three times there in the course of some 31 major combat
operations." (He modestly omits any mention of his many decorations, including
three Purple Hearts and a Bronze Star for valour.) "I rose to the rank of Staff
Sergeant. After the war I was involved in the evacuation of Saigon and then
selected to become a Warrant Officer. As an officer I got my formal education
and so was able to become a Commissioned Officer. I then served in Beirut among
other places, did an exchange tour with the Royal Marines, and finally decided
to retire in 1984. At that point I was really unemployable. There wasn't much
out there: the Mafia wasn't hiring that year, and I'd been shot enough times to
know I didn't want to be a cop."
At that point I was really
unemployable. The mafia wasn't hiring that year, and I'd been shot enough times
to know I didn't want to be a cop
A love of films, and war films in particular, turned the ex-Marine's
thoughts towards Hollywood. "Whenever I came out of war movies I would be
angry. I realised that they weren't at all reflective of my experience, either
in combat or in peace time. I thought, how can Hollywood be that stupid? (At
that time I'd never been to Hollywood so I didn't have a clue--I now know
exactly how they can be that stupid.) I had seen so much of this Military
Advisor on this and that and thought well these advisors must be dense, how
could they allow this sort of thing to happen? When I got out there I
discovered the answer: while Hollywood would hire a former soldier to tell them
how things should look, there was no attempt to train the actors, to try to get
to what the truth of combat really was. The young actors in these movies hadn't
served in the military, and none of them understood, they had no concept. And
so they would do whatever they saw in the last movie. So I came up with a
scheme to fix this, based on what I'd learned in the American Marines: you have
to immerse these people in some semblance of the reality, so that when they are
asked to tell the truth as actors they have some idea of what that truth
is."
Thus Warriors Inc. was born, Dale Dye's unique advisory company that
specialises in "total immersion" training of actors in all aspects of military
life, ensuring complete authenticity not just in weaponry and kit, but also in
the way the actors handle them. But initially Capt. Dye had little success. "It
was not very easy to get Hollywood to listen. They'd done war movies for about
40 years without some clown like me telling them they were doing it wrong. I
had no credentials, other than my combat credentials: I didn't know how movies
were made or anything like that, I just knew there must be a way to get this
right."
Everything changed when Dye learned about an unknown director called
Oliver Stone who was setting out to make "the definitive Vietnam war story,
based on his own experiences as an infantryman for 15 months in Vietnam." Dye
jumped: "I said to myself, here it is, here's the chance. If anybody knows
Vietnam inside out I do; if anybody knows the common soldier's experience
inside out, I do. So after a long series of machinations I happened to obtain
Oliver's home phone number. I just took the bayonet in my teeth and called him
and said, look you don't know me and I don't know you but if what I read in the
papers is true you need to know me."
Stone didn't need much
persuading, and the groundwork for
Platoon
was established. "For
two solid weeks before filming we agreed that we were going to take a cast of
35 not very well known actors into the jungles of the Philippines, put 'em up
in those jungle hills--the same latitude as Vietnam--and make them live an
infantrymen's life. They would be totally isolated, no trailers no food, no
nothing that they didn't carry on their back, just as an American infantryman
did in Vietnam. When they first arrived I had them dig their holes and they
lived in those holes for two weeks. They all had military haircuts: we didn't
want any special guys, any people with good-looking hair. I wanted them all to
be bald peanuts and understand that nothing is special about you and nothing is
special about him. A bit of your ego goes with that haircut. Sleep deprivation
was important, too: sometimes they'd get two hours of sleep a night if I
decided that was OK. They'd only get fed twice a day if they didn't upset me.
My staff would attack them like the North Vietnamese Army every
night.
They all had military haircuts. They'd only get fed twice a
day if they didn't upset me. My staff would attack them like the North
Vietnamese Army every night
"The first few days for the actors were simply about can I survive?
Can I find a way to dig a hole and go to the loo? Can I find a way to eat, to
keep these ants off me, to stay awake, to put one foot in front of the other
with 70 pounds on my back? But once they discovered--and I knew they
would--that they can go a lot further physically and psychologically than they
ever thought they could then they began to learn, to pick up emotional and
psychological cues. By the time we got through a week they were surviving, but
they were really beginning to understand what an infantryman's life is like in
the field. It was this full immersion theory that brought about those sterling,
outstanding, gritty, truthful performances that you see on screen. In many
cases after that period and a few weeks of filming I think I would have taken
them to war.
"Since then I've trained over the course of about 40 films now Tom
Cruise, Tommy Lee Jones, Tom Hanks and many other major actors, and it's always
the same. They are warned: no trailers, no hairdressers, no nothing. And the
interesting thing is most really good actors crave the experience. They've
never had that kind of experience and they want to know: can they hack it, can
they do it? So they accept it quite readily. I've never had one quit, and I've
never killed one."
Most really good actors crave the experience.
I've never had one quit, and I've never killed one
The unprecedented realism of Platoon
had far-reaching
effects on American society, and in particular on the veteran community.
"Because of its verisimilitude Platoon
brought the American
veterans out of the woodwork, those people who had hidden, who had not talked
about their service because of the very great negative reaction in societies
around the world. It made them willing to say: look at that, that's what it's
about. It made them willing to talk. I was on every one of the chat shows in
America with groups of veterans who were talking about the war among themselves
and with their families for the first time in 20 years. So it had a profound
effect on society and on America's veteran population much beyond its success
at the box office, and it was a privilege to be involved in something that had
that sort of far-reaching effect."
After
Platoon
,
Dale Dye's career both behind the scenes and on-screen flourished (he plays
Capt. Harris in
Platoon
and has since essayed many similar
roles). Warriors Inc. has now become the guarantee for authenticity in films,
notably
Saving Private
Ryan among many others, something that Dye believes in
strongly:
"In all humility I think I managed to show Hollywood that it's
important. But a larger factor is something I realised a long time ago: because
we are such a media-saturated society we all know almost instantaneously what
things really look like on a battlefield and how soldiers really operate--you
can see it every night from Northern Ireland to Bosnia. Now if you show
moviegoers something that doesn't look like what they just saw on the six
o'clock news, you get what the shrinks call a cognitive disconnect: I'm trying
to tell you that white is black when you know better. Therefore you won't
suspend your disbelief and you won't stay with me in the story. That's what
Hollywood is coming to realise.
Furthermore, Dye argues, there's
a "moral imperative" to get the story right, too, since films are now the
medium through which many people are learning about their own history. "It has
not failed to register with me that there is an educational element to a lot of
what I do. We're finding that with films like
Platoon,
Saving Private
Ryan and the
Band of
Brothers series, and even debacles like
U-571, that
young people are asking what really happened. Even if they don't go out and
read a history book afterwards, they might go and see three or four more movies
and at least get better acquainted with the subject. I wish that educating
people was as simple as writing a good textbook and getting little Sally and
little Derek to sit down and read it, but that's becoming increasingly
difficult, so what do we do? Well, we look at what little Sally and little
Derek are consuming, what they are absorbing, and they're absorbing the mass
media and movies. So there's an element of education and there's an obligation
for the media and moviemakers to educate. I think education is so important
that if we have to do it through the mass media then by God let's get on it
with it."
Read more of this interview:
·Dale Dye on Oliver
Stone
·Dale Dye on other war
films
·Dale Dye on Warriors
Inc.
Amazon Home
A
highly decorated Vietnam veteran, Captain Dale Dye (US Marine Corps, Retd.)
provided authentic combat training for the actors in Oliver Stone's
