The new Tom Cruise film American Made bears all the hallmarks of being CIA-Hollywood propaganda. This short video explores Cruise and director Doug Liman's connections with the CIA and how the marketing for the film suggests it'll be nothing more than a remake of Blow, but with Barry Seal's name in it.(Read more...)
In recent years the Pentagon have not only expanded their operations in the entertainment industry, they have aggressively and pro-actively tried to expand their influence on Hollywood. This week we take a look at how they are trying to cozy up to studio moguls, make friends and influence people, and get involved at the earliest stages of production. (Read more...)
I recently obtained a copy of the notorious 2004 CIA recruitment video featuring Alias star Jennifer Garner. This is not available anywhere else online, and the CIA did not release it in response to my FOIA request (they claimed to be unable to find a copy). Basically, after a lot of screwing around I managed to download a version from an archive of the page on the CIA's web site.(Read more...)
The 1996 action thriller The Long Kiss Goodnight was only a modest commercial and critical success, but is a cult classic in the 9/11 ‘truth movement’ because it appears to predict the attacks. This week we analyse the film, its apparent predictive qualities, its commentary on the 1993 WTC bombing and its similarity to several CIA-assisted productions.
In our latest film review Aaron, Uncle and I dissect the blockbuster Kong: Skull Island (in typically anarchic fashion). We talk about different kinds of monster movies, the film's anti-war message and what to expect from the MonsterVerse going forward. We also touch on the Vietnamese government support for Kong, and wonder whether this had much influence on the content of the film.(Read more...)
What connects Al Qaeda to the Pentagon’s Entertainment Liaison Offices? Perhaps unsurprisingly, the answer is Ali Mohamed – the triple agent who was Al Qaeda’s main terrorist trainer. This week we look at two films and a documentary to illustrate these connections and examine how they were influenced by the Pentagon’s propaganda machine.(Read more...)
After numerous requests I have uploaded (most of) the documents we used to write National Security Cinema in one handy zip file so that people don't have to search around all over this site to find them.
Kevin Gosztola interviewed me for Unauthorized Disclosure about National Security Cinema.
In this month's subscriber-only podcast we explore the censorship of the one of the world's biggest film franchises - James Bond. The Bond movies have been subject to both moral/cultural censorship by the British Board of Film Classification, and political censorship by the Pentagon's entertainment liaison offices. This is a highly informative episode that fills in many of the blanks when trying to understand how these different institutions influence what we see on the big screen.
A few weeks ago Matt and I were invited to Portsmouth University to give a presentation on our research and analysis for National Security Cinema. We opted to do an interactive multi-media workshop that explains how the relationship between government and Hollywood works, and how this influences what we end up watching on screen.
