Dale Dye came to Hollywood as a retired Marine Corps captain, wanting to turn his experience as a Vietnam combat veteran into show biz work. He had no idea how to get started, so he did what the Marines trained him to do:
“I just charged.”
Dye barnstormed movie lots, pitching himself as a military adviser who could help make combat in movies look as realistic as possible. He eventually got a gig with director Oliver Stone, who was making a Vietnam War movie called “Platoon.” Dye gave actors their military training and the movie went on to win the Academy Award for best picture. And Dye’s career took off.
Since then, Dye and his company, North Hills-based Warriors Inc., have consulted on some of the biggest war films in the past 20 years, including “Saving Private Ryan,” “Born on the Fourth of July” and “The Thin Red Line.” Warriors’ most recent project, a World War II miniseries called “The Pacific,” will debut this month on HBO.
In recent years, Dye – his official title is chief executive of Warriors, but he calls himself the company’s “commanding officer” – has also branched into other businesses. He’s started giving motivational speeches and leading team building exercises for companies such as Royal Dutch Shell and McDonald’s Corp. Two years ago, he launched a book publishing venture focused on military-themed fiction and nonfiction. He said he is weighing whether to get into other fields, such as television production.
Although his consulting isn’t limited to modern war films – he’s done historical and science-fiction movie work as well – he feels it’s time to diversify.
“Show biz is so spotty, if you just rely on one thing you’ll just fold up,” said the 65-year-old Dye, who has a Midwestern drawl, weather-worn hands and sparkling blue eyes.
Warriors is one of a handful of companies in Los Angeles that sends military veterans to movie sets to provide advice and technical assistance on how to make film combat more realistic. They help stage battles, teach actors basic skills such as how to hold a gun, and coach them in thinking and acting like real soldiers.
Such companies have blossomed in recent years as audiences become more familiar with military operations through media, and producers demand more authenticity as a result, said Matt Sigloch, president and chief executive of Santa Clarita-based Sigloch Military/Tactical, a company that advises mostly police-themed dramas such as “NCIS” and “Criminal Minds.”
The industry tends to be cyclical: When film production is up, business booms. When it’s down, as it is now, it tends to lag. Dye declined to disclose Warriors’ revenue, but said it is usually in the six figures.
Sigloch said Dye is regarded as an industry trailblazer.
“When anybody talks about the group of people down here who do this, his name always comes up toward the top,” Sigloch said.
The seeds for Warriors were sown in Vietnam. A Cape Girardeau, Mo., native who enlisted in the Marines looking for adventure, Dye did several tours of duty there from 1965 to 1970. He was awarded three Purple Hearts for being wounded in action, and the Bronze Star for when he charged into a minefield to rescue fellow Marines.
He retired as a captain in 1984 and did a brief stint in South America training anti-Sandinista soldiers before he moved back to the States.
That’s when Dye, frustrated by the way Hollywood portrayed the military, determined to do something about it.
“Military movies pissed me off,” he said. “They were full of stereotypes and nonsense, and they didn’t do combat right. I sincerely believe that our American men and women in uniform deserve an even break in the media, and they weren’t getting it.”
Dye launched Warriors in 1985 as its sole employee, starting on “Platoon” soon after, the first of several collaborations on Oliver Stone projects, including “Heaven and Earth” and “Alexander.” Since then, he’s expanded to five permanent employees and 10 part-timers who he brings on as needed to handle projects. He runs the company with his wife, Julia, out of their home, a sprawling green house on a quiet corner with a Marine Corps flag flying out front.
Inside, the shelves are covered with military memorabilia, including two old mortar shells and a piece of a Soviet tank. The walls are plastered with film set photos of actors Dye helped train. They range from a group of ancient Greek troops from “Alexander” to British redcoats from “The Last of the Mohicans” to futuristic foot soldiers from the science-fiction film “Starship Troopers.”
“We always say, from the Peloponnesian War to ‘Star Wars,’ we’ll do it,” Dye said.
Band of brothers
Dye said he spends a lot of time with actors, instructing them on what it feels like to march, perform patrols and respond under fire. Tony To, a co-executive producer of “The Pacific,” said the production hired Dye instead of another adviser because of that attention to detail.
“Dale understands the filmmaking process and he understands the acting process,” said To, who also worked with Dye on another HBO World War II miniseries, “Band of Brothers.” “We aren’t just using him for the technical stuff.”
As he pushes his company into new areas, Dye has started to try his hand at acting and, more recently, directing. He’s currently signed up to direct and produce a World War II film titled “No Better Place to Die.” Dye said he may push Warriors into other areas of business in the near future.
“I will fire on targets of opportunity,” he said.
Movie-making isn’t as dangerous as combat, of course, but it does have its hazards.
On the set of “Forrest Gump,” Dye dared actor Tom Hanks to try to hit him with a prop grenade.
“I’ve had a lot of grenades thrown at me and usually you can’t hit me,” Dye said. “But I should have had more faith in Hanks because he threw one and smacked me right in the nuts.”
