New Film Is Making Waves
Navy Distances Itself From 'Annapolis,' Which Opens Tomorrow

By Ray Rivera
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, January 26, 2006

In the movie version of Annapolis, the streets are gritty, the shipbuilding industry is bustling, and brooding blue-collar workers look with envy and resentment toward the midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.

If none of this sounds exactly like Maryland's colonial capital -- or even remotely close, for that matter -- no wonder: Disney's Buena Vista Pictures moved production to Philadelphia two years ago after failing to win script approval from the Navy and after securing better tax benefits in the City of Brotherly Love.

Now, as "Annapolis" opens nationwide tomorrow, denizens of its namesake city -- still fuming at losing the film -- won't see much they recognize. Neither will students and graduates of the Naval Academy, which the film purports to be about.

The State House dome never makes an appearance, nor do the academy's white marble buildings and its iconic copper-domed chapel, which attract more than 1 million visitors a year. The chief industries in the real Annapolis are politics and tourism, not shipbuilding.

"We're a capital city that is known nationally, and I would have thought because of our popularity they would have used the themes from the city," Mayor Ellen O. Moyer (D) said. "Otherwise they could have used any city. It could have been Annapolis, Iowa, if there is such a place."

Mike Miron, the city's economic development director, says he won't see the film. "Everyone kind of blamed the academy for wanting to have editorial review of the script, but in hindsight, I think they were right," he said.

The Navy, too, has been doing all it can to distance itself. A service-wide e-mail from its Office of Information in the Pentagon cautioned: "Navy personnel should avoid the appearance of support to the film as members of the Department of the Navy.

"Anyone attending a screening or promotional activity for the film should not attend in uniform."

Academy faculty, staff and students received similar instructions. Midshipmen, whose lean figures and crisp uniforms add as much to the city's ambiance as its historic buildings, can wear their uniforms if they go, said Cmdr. Rod Gibbons, academy spokesman.

"Midshipmen who want to see the movie are certainly able to do so," Gibbons said. "They just can't take part in any promotional events."

The movie follows the tribulations of Jake Huard, played by James Franco, an undisciplined ship welder and would-be boxer who dreams of wearing Naval Academy whites despite middling grades.

Allowed in by a sympathetic admissions officer, he is quickly thrown into a world of discipline and hazing and, of course, falls for a beautiful upperclassman who happens to be his superior officer -- something forbidden at the real and fictional academy.

The film climaxes with Huard taking on his company commander in the spring boxing championships. The Brigade Boxing Championships are one of the biggest events at the academy each year and include bouts that remain campus legends, including the 1968 championship between Oliver North, later of Iran-Contra fame, and James Webb, who would become a secretary of the Navy and novelist. North won.

Producers approached the Navy in 2004 and were given broad access to the academy for research and filming -- on the condition that the footage could be used only if the Navy approved of the final script. Gibbons and other academy officials, meanwhile, reviewed draft after draft, offering extensive suggestions.

"You've got to keep in perspective that we did not object to particular scenes in the script," Gibbons said. "But the versions of the script we saw in 2004 did not realistically portray the Naval Academy and what we do here."

The script -- and the final product -- included hazing, racial slurs and fraternization.

"The problem wasn't that the script had things we don't tolerate at the academy," said Cmdr. Bob Anderson, the Navy's liaison to the film industry. "The problem was there was no accountability. The offenders weren't held responsible for their misconduct."

The filmmakers switched locations and dropped footage shot on campus, Gibbons said. Buena Vista officials declined to comment.

With the movie went the promise of rented hotel rooms, a production office and work for hundreds of extras -- an estimated $10 million in activity.

But city officials say the movie producers ended up losing as well.

The fictional Annapolis looks nondescript and industrial. And though Founder's Hall at Philadelphia's Girard College, which substitutes for the academy in the film, offers majesty with its Greek columns, it bears little resemblance to the grand structures occupied by generations of midshipmen.

Such is life in the sometimes cozy, sometimes caustic relationship between Hollywood and the military. The armed forces have cooperated with filmmakers since the days of silent movies. Films that receive the military's approval can get help with advisers and equipment -- including tanks, carriers and uniforms -- and get active-duty troops to work as extras.

In return, the military gets a chance to sell itself. "Recruiting is not a requirement for our approval, but if it [a movie] can increase recruiting, that's a good idea," Anderson said.

After "Top Gun" was released in 1986, the number of people waiting to take naval aviation officer training jumped by 300 percent, according to reports at the time.

Navy officials say they haven't studied the relationship between movies and recruiting, and they aren't holding their breath with the release of "Annapolis."

"We can speculate all we want that the movie may generate interest," said Navy Capt. Karen Frye, academy admissions director. "Then again, it may not. I think the true thing that inspires our applicants is a desire to serve, and I don't think a movie or anything else would change that."