By Tim Sohn
May 16, 2012 8:16 PM EDT
(Feb.27–Note: “Act of Valor,” which opened in theaters on Feb.
24, led the box office this past weekend with $24.7 million in
ticket sales in the U.S. and Canada. Bloomberg Businessweek
provides an exclusive behind-the-scenes look at the making of
the film in this story, published on Feb. 2.)
On Nov. 5, 2009, just after 9 p.m., seven Navy SEALs were seated in the
belly of a C-130 cargo plane, M4 rifles cradled by their sides. Decorated
veterans of multiple deployments—they had among them a Silver Star, two
Purple Hearts, and multiple Bronze Stars—the SEALs were fully
“jocked up,” prepped to parachute into a hostage rescue. A soft red
light suffused the bare interior, the menʼs painted faces obscured but for
the whites of their eyes and the occasional flash of teeth. They looked
terrifying.
“Is this a bad time to go to the bathroom?” asked one of the SEALs,
directing the question toward a man in a white button-down at the rear
of the plane standing behind a movie camera. The plane, parked on the
edge of the tarmac at Naval Air Station North Island, in Coronado, Calif.,
had been turned into a film set for the night, abuzz with lights, cameras,
production assistants, caterers, and makeup artists. The active-duty
SEALs—whose names are being withheld by the U.S. Navy for operational
reasons—were part of an unprecedented collaboration between the Navy
and Hollywood. They were prospective action stars.
Act of Valor, in which most of the main roles are played by active-duty
SEALs, is slated for a 2,500- screen release on Feb. 24. It was acquired
by Relativity Media in June, amid the post-Abbottabad swoon of SEAL
coverage, for $13 million. The company is putting more than twice that
into marketing, recognizing in the film a potential hit at the nexus of action,
patriotism, authenticity, and current events. (Late last month, members of
SEAL Team 6 mounted a rescue of two aid workers in Somalia, putting
the SEALs back in the headlines just as Relativity is cranking up the filmʼs
marketing push.)
The outlook wasnʼt always so rosy for the men who spent almost four
years making the movie, the producing/directing duo of Scott Waugh and
Mike “Mouse” McCoy, whose Bandito Brothers production company self-
financed much of the initial shooting. Throughout the process, Waugh and
McCoy, former stuntmen who had produced mostly commercials, struggled
to find Hollywood backing for their unconventional project. “When we were
pitching it, we told people we wanted to do this narrative film but we want
to put the real SEALs in it,” Waugh says, “and theyʼd say, ʻOh, so itʼs a
documentary.ʼ ” He and McCoy pieced together their shooting budget,
largely from non-Hollywood sources, and kept working.
Spring of 2011 found the Bandito team sitting on a nearly finished film,
strategizing about how to get distribution. “Then on May 1, 2011, the
SEALs get Osama bin Laden, which changed Hollywoodʼs perception
of who the SEALs are,” Waugh says. Others wasted no time promoting
SEAL-centric projects, including a film about the hunt for bin Laden by
Kathryn Bigelow (director of The Hurt Locker) and an adaptation of Lone
Survivor, a book about SEAL Team 10, directed by Peter Berg (Friday
Night Lights). But Waugh and McCoy hung back, knowing they had
something none of the bandwagoneers did: a finished film, and one with
a level of SEAL access unlikely to be offered to anyone else. Eventually,
they screened their film for four suitors, and Relativity, Ryan Kavanaughʼs
nimble studio, came out on top.
“The uniqueness spoke to us immediately,” says Relativityʼs co-president,
Tucker Tooley. “That said, we do have a process we go through on any
film to make sure that it makes financial sense for us to negotiate a deal.”
The Navyʼs decision to sign on was driven by its own set of numbers.
When they initiated the project in 2008, Naval Special Warfare (NSW) was
trying to improve the way it recruited SEAL candidates as part of an effort
to meet a 2006 mandate to increase the 2,500-man force by 500 over five
years—a challenge given that less than a quarter of recruits tend to make
it through basic SEAL training.
“Our question from the start was, how do we find more of the right guys for
our training pipeline?” said Captain Duncan Smith, a SEAL and the director
of NSW recruiting, over sushi in a San Diego mall two days before the C-
130 shoot. The film began as an attempt to communicate the reality of
SEAL life to a wider audience: the action, yes, but also the camaraderie,
the values. It was also meant to wrest back the SEAL brand from its pop-
cultural fetishization, adding just a little Hollywood polish for good measure.
To minimize the movieʼs impact on Naval readiness, action sequences
had to be tacked onto pre-existing training exercises, many of which were
live-ammunition drills. That meant coordinating the SEALsʼ schedules with
training operations all over the country and with the movements of planes,
ships, and nuclear submarines. All footage had to be “scrubbed” to make
sure no sensitive information slipped through.
Though they worked off a script by Kurt Johnstad (300), the directors and
the SEALs rewrote nearly every scene. “You canʼt argue what they would
say,” Waugh says, “because theyʼre going to tell you: I wouldnʼt say it that
way.” (That didnʼt prevent some clunkers: “Lieutenant, prepare your men
for a bigger fight than what you had imagined.”) The acting isnʼt going
to win any Oscars, but thatʼs missing the point. Waugh says: “If youʼre
coming to see this movie, and youʼre expecting Daniel Day-Lewis, then
youʼve entered the wrong theater. But I think these guys do an absolutely
incredible job portraying themselves.”
Much of the film was shot on custom-rigged Canon Digital SLR cameras.
This occasionally gives Act of Valor the look of a first-person-shooter
video game, as the viewer is right there with the SEALs through firefights,
explosions, car chases, sniper shootouts, helicopter combat, and high-
speed amphibious assaults. “We would say, hereʼs your target, how are
you going to take it down?” Waugh says. And a few minutes later, the
SEALs would come back with an answer. “It was like a ballet: something
that, as a stuntman, it would have taken six hours to coordinate.”
For all the realism it brought to the film, teaming up with SEALs poses a
challenge to marketers. “We donʼt have a traditional arsenal of stars,” says
Terry Curtin, Relativityʼs president of theatrical marketing, “so we canʼt do
what we usually do and trot people out on talk shows and do a full publicity
campaign.” The always-reticent NSW community has become even more
so in the wake of the bin Laden operation. The Navy also needs the film
less now: Over the course of the projectʼs long gestation period, their
recruiting efforts have largely succeeded. While Relativity might not have
picked up the film pre-Abbottabad, the Navy likely would not have come
aboard afterward.
Nonetheless, the Navy remains supportive of the movie, says Captain
William Fenick, the NSWʼs public affairs officer. “Thereʼs a constant,
steady state of affairs for NSW to ensure that weʼre attracting the right
folks, recruiting the right folks, and sustaining the force, and this movie
should help in that regard,” he says. “But it is not the Navyʼs responsibility
to promote or market the film.” The pulse-pounding trailer and pre-release
screenings have been generating online buzz for months. Keith Urban is
writing a song for the end credits. And Relativity has struck partnership
deals with author Tom Clancy for a novelization of the film and with video-
game maker Electronic Arts, creator of Battlefield 3. Between the two
platforms, Curtin says, “we have the corridor from ages 17 to 60 pretty
well covered.” Most recently, Relativity bought ad time for the film before,
during, and after the Super Bowl.
Responses from SEALs whoʼve seen Act of Valor have been positive.
Some SEALs will have to wait a little while longer to deliver their verdict:
Four of the total eight SEAL actors, all uncredited, are currently deployed
overseas.
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