Taking Flak

Talk about negative reviews. First Air America, the Mel Gibson-goes-gonzo- in- Indochina summer spectacular, was generally panned by the critics. Then last week it was even more savagely attacked by journalists and authors in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. At issue was the real Air America, the CIA-run airline that ferried arms and supplies to anti-communist forces in Indochina during the Vietnam War. As flippantly depicted in the movie, the airline serves as a front for heroin smuggling condoned by the CIA in order to fund the U.S.'s secret war in Laos. This version, the articles point out, does violence not only to the many props that are blown up, but also to the real- life pilots of Air America and to the historical record.

The Times piece, written by Christopher Robbins, author of the book on which the movie was based, noted that "the CIA did not lack funds for its war in Laos, and the U.S. embassy in Vientiane went to considerable lengths to control and curtail the ((drug)) trade." In the Journal, publisher Peter Kann, who was a reporter in Vietnam, and Phillip Jennings, a former Air America pilot, called the movie a "political obscenity" that smears Air America pilots as buffoons. "This drivel is scripted with all the subtlety of an Animal House cast reciting passages from Jane Fonda's Hanoi diaries."

Air America screenwriter John Eskow counters that Robbins is "morally despicable," having lost a bid to be credited as co-author of the screenplay. Says Eskow: "The book wasn't interesting enough to serve as the movie's sole springboard. I had to do other research. I spoke to Air America pilots here and went to Thailand." Besides, he argues, a screenplay "is a creative act. It is not a documentary, and it doesn't advertise itself that way."

For better or worse, however, movies help shape our view of history; those that distort sensitive issues, as this one does, do a disservice that cannot be justified by calling it creative. There is a difference between artistic license and simply license.