Published: Tuesday, June 12, 1990 Section: Living Page: 1C
He looks like a teacher. He moves like a teacher. And he interacts easily -- in mock-tough manner -- like a teacher. Who would peg De Anza College English Professor John K. Swensson as one of the Pentagon's secret weapons -- a one-man recruiting station whose overriding philosophy is taken from those hard-sell "Be all that you can be" TV spots for the Army? A West Point grad who did two tours of duty in Vietnam, Swensson (Lt. Col. Ret.) is making his mark as a filmmaker. He co-produced the high-tech air-war adventure "Fire Birds," starring Nicolas Cage and Sean Young as elite helicopter pilots.
By his own admission, Swensson, 47, says he's better suited for a career in sales and marketing. ''I'm a packager," he says after a morning class on the Cupertino campus. "I bring people together. I try to broker between the creative community and the military." Translation: Swensson sees himself as middle man between Uncle Sam and this week's hotshot auteur. He smooths over those longstanding rifts between the military establishment and the studios.
The Vietnam movies of the '70s and '80s -- "The Deer Hunter," "Go Tell the Spartans," among them -- were highly critical, and harmful to recruitment. The Army, to put it bluntly, began to see Hollywood as "the enemy." Swensson, the Army's chief recruitment officer in Los Angeles for two years, vowed to change all this. With the blessing of his lawyer wife, Barbara, he went to a campus library, pulled the texts on Hollywood deal-making and put together a proposal he felt the chiefs of staff would applaud for its pro-Army stance and producers would embrace as cost- effective. ''I hadn't seen any serious Army film since 'The Green Berets' (directed by and starring John Wayne in 1968), which is essentially a World War II propaganda film," says Swensson, who also teaches a night course on films about the Vietnam conflict. "So 3 1/2 years ago, I set out with Step Tyner (a West Point buddy) to come up with a good film that would depict the U.S. Army in a way that the Army could support."
To this end, Swensson co-produced, with actor and fellow Vietnam vet Dale Dye, this summer's "Top Gun" clone. "Fire Birds" refers to the Army's laser-armed Apache helicopter, billed as "the air-to-air combat fighting machine of the future." Swensson, Dale and a small army of screenwriters cast the "$10-million-a-copy" gunship opposite Cage as a hotshot pilot, Young as his girlfriend/reconnaissance pilot and Tommy Lee Jones as his gung-ho flight instructor. Choppers and cast go up against the scourge of the '90s: a South American drug cartel operating out of a secret base in the Catamarca Desert. Swensson's previous film experience? "When I was still a recruiter, I was executive producer on a 25-minute film called 'Stay in School.' It was set around a huge conference table, where students and teachers talked about why kids should stay in school." Budget: $55.10, or the price of a McDonald's lunch for participants and crew.
Gunning for success ''Fire Birds," budgeted at $23 million and released by Disney's Touchstone division, hasn't done the business of a "Top Gun," but has been in the weekly top 10 at the box office. In its first 10 days in release, the slickly produced whirlybird adventure earned more than $10 million, easily out- grossing some more heavily promoted films, including Robin Williams' "Cadillac Man," while taking a back seat to "Back to the Future, Part III" and Arnold Schwarzenegger's "Total Recall."
Swensson, seated in his cramped, memento-strewed office, is pleased that his three-year labor of love finally is on neighborhood screens and finding an appreciative audience. It's not, he's quick to acknowledge, the film he and Tyner set out to make. That was called "The Angel," then "Wings of the Apache." The original setting: Nicaragua, then the Middle East. Originally sought marquee clout: Charlie Sheen, then Rob Lowe. The title was changed because, according to Disney's marketing strategists, "Wings of the Apache" sounded like a Western. The setting was revised in keeping with the Soviet Union's withdrawal from Afghanistan, glasnost and President Bush's newly declared war on drugs. ("Fire Birds" opens with a prologue taken from a recent interventionist speech by Bush.)
The film's training-exercise finale also had to go when a marketing survey revealed the public wanted the heroes to engage the enemy -- any enemy. So it was swapped for what Swensson calls "a real-bullets ending." ''I always wanted Sheen for the lead," Swensson says, pulling on a cigarette. "But then there was the writers' strike and he went on to make 'Young Guns' and 'Wall Street' and became a big star. But it wasn't so much the money; he wanted points (a percentage of the profits)." Swensson says he resisted the casting of Cage initially, but has since revised his opinion.
And, of course, the film couldn't be more timely, what with the administration's announced commitment to fight drug trafficking in Panama and Columbia. "The switch to the drug scenario came at the perfect time. It's nice not to have a communist adversary. It's sort of refreshing. But still, we confront a real issue -- a real war." A platoon of writers Truth be known, very little of what Swensson and Tyner wrote -- and pitched to "Platoon" producer Arnold Kopelson -- made it to the screen. At last count eight writers, including Dye, had a hand in the script. Co-star Jones even took a crack at it. He penned the "full-tilt . . . for freedom and justice" speech delivered by his character moments before the climactic air battle. The inevitable -- and never pleasant -- Writers Guild arbitration ensued, with Tyner, Dye and Swensson being awarded "story by" credit.
Swensson's biggest contribution was as liaison between the military and the movie makers, says Dye, a retired Marine captain who has appeared in and served as technical adviser on such films as "Platoon" and "Casualties of War." "John, in my view, is a consummate staff officer. The guy knows how to work the bullet and pull the trigger. He knows how to -- in Hollywood parlance -- schmooze people. He gets things done when he promises. He delivers. He pulls those disparate elements in the defense industry and the military complex together. ''And take it from me, these people don't speak film, they speak industry."
Without Swensson's involvement, McDonnell Douglas Corp. (which makes the Apache) and the Army probably wouldn't have committed to "Fire Birds." Because they did, the film was made for half of what it could have cost. Whenever formations of Apaches (based at Ft. Hood, Texas) took to the air, director David Green was there with his second-unit crew. The spectacular shots of rotors against a blazing sunset were obtained for the price of the film. The aerial acrobatics and dogfights cost more -- $126,000, according to the Army Times. In peacetime as in war, the "Know thy enemy" dictum applies. Swensson prepared for his first meeting with Kopelson in September '87 by researching film marketing and Kopelson (also an Army vet) at West Valley College, where he then taught part time.
''The reason (executive producer) Kopelson and Touchstone gave us the green light is that they believed it (the story) was an economical, viable idea. They were impressed by our presentation." As for the Army, it had to be assured of three things: the movie would be technically accurate; its pilots wouldn't be depicted as reckless hell-raisers; no women would be placed in combat situations. The Army's Public Affairs office vetoed a scene with a drunken NCO and winced at a sequence in which Cage overcomes an eye-dominance problem by driving a Jeep with pantyhose over his eyes. (The latter remains in the film.) It also had problems with Young's Billie Lee character being involved in the final fire fight. In an early draft, Billie Lee succumbed to an illness during training. ''We originally didn't place our heroine 'down range.' There was a big discussion on this," recalls Swensson. Thinking better of this, the beefy producer-instructor adds, "There were some concerns, mostly about safety, but they're (the Army) not in the censorship business."
Swensson says he likes the completed film, even if it does contradict what he teaches about the myths of battle. Jones' super-patriot takes the opposite stance taken by Cruise as Vietnam-vet-turned-activist Ron Kovic in "Born on the Fourth of July." ''I don't want to make excuses because I like the film. It accomplishes what we set out to accomplish. But I did not write those (Jones's) lines. . . . As a teacher, I want to separate the mythology of war and the reality of war, so we don't get back to where we were in Vietnam. But I don't have a lot of politics. I believe in disagreement, fanning debate. That's what I do in my classes here."
And what about his fellow faculty members at De Anza? There was a time, in the '60s, when a teacher would have been tarred and feathered for delivering such a reactionary entertainment as "Fire Birds." His fellow teachers "joked about me fomenting intervention. The faculty here has been very supportive. Two weeks ago they even gave me a surprise party (to celebrate the Washington, D.C., premiere)." Yes, Swensson agrees, movies are the perfect "Join Now!" recruitment tool. "Top Gun" and "An Officer and a Gentleman" resulted in increased enlistments. The upcoming "Flight of the Intruder" and "Navy S.E.A.L." also could whip up renewed interest in the military. "Historically, if you do a good film, it will help. Hell, even the bad ones help -- Wayne's 'Greet Berets' really got people up and going."
But again, "Fire Birds" was meant as Hollywood hokum, over-the-top entertainment, not as Army documentary. "This is not the Army's movie," stresses Swensson, who next wants to produce a film on Congressional Medal of Honor winner Roy Benavidez. ''The Army did not write this movie. We just happen to reflect the country's position on drugs and intervention. I feel very positive about the military. But I'm not here to recruit. I just set out to show that there are some opportunities in the military . . . to show young people in exciting careers doing their best."
Never one to take the defensive, he adds: "I think an occasional patriotic movie is a good thing. I think Americans feel good about themselves watching 'Fire Birds.' " By way of illustration, a young fan on his way to the parking lot hails Swensson. "Hey, Mr. Swensson, caught your movie. Rad!" The student then gives the teacher-recruiter-producer a big thumbs-up. Copyright 1990, The San Jose Mercury News. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited. The San Jose Mercury News archives are stored on a SAVE (tm) newspaper library system from MediaStream, Inc., a Knight-Ridder Inc. company.