THE U.S. COAST CUARD MOTION PICTURE & TELEVISION OFFICE, Producing pictures worth thousands of words

By J.R. WILSON

The first references to the U.S. Coast Guard in film and entertainment date back to 1914; the need for a liaison officer to work with Hollywood to accurately depict the service was recognized during World War II.

However, nothing official became part of the record until the 1977 federal budget, which declared such an office should be established. It was another 11 years before the Coast Guard Motion Picture & Television Office (MOPIC) was written into the U.S. Code.

Originally part of Coast Guard District 11, based out of Long Beach, California, it was elevated to a branch of Coast Guard Headquarters in the 1990s, reflecting the growth and influence of the Hollywood-based entertainment world.

“I don’t think our mission has changed much – to enhance awareness of the Coast Guard through cooperative efforts with the entertainment industry at no cost to the taxpayers. The Coast Guard will be portrayed in TV and film whether we participate or not, so to advance the goals of our service, it is best to support that and make sure our story is told accurately,” MOPIC Director Cmdr. Steven Youde said. “We also are tasked with protecting the Coast Guard and making sure we can continue doing our jobs and protect our limited resources; entertainment is a low priority.

“We’re essentially Hollywood’s agent for the Coast Guard. We look for opportunities to be involved, but also try to protect the service from projects we don’t have time to support or that don’t align with our goals and missions. We rarely interface with foreign productions, other than looking at U.S. distribution. There have been projects in the past that have risen to a level of support, but, generally, no.”

MOPIC also works with book authors and documentary productions, but the rapidly changing face of entertainment has meant the small unit (currently – and typically – three Coast Guardsmen) has had to expand its knowledge and activities into new media, from e-books to YouTube, Amazon, and the video giant, Netflix.

“It has increased the workload,” Youde acknowledged. “It’s not just Hollywood that can create an impactful production. People have more access to media outlets than just Hollywood production offices. You have to filter whether it is a good idea to support one of the alternative media. We’ve worked with some YouTube channels that have more viewers than the Discovery Channel.”

Social media also has added to that workload, bringing both new challenges and new tools to present a positive Coast Guard image to the world. “We are still working on how to navigate the new media, but we are trying hard to leverage it and connect with the influencers who are using those media,” he said.

“They don’t know the process as well as Warner Brothers or MGM or Disney. By law, this is the only office that can authorize anything entertainment related, so no matter who they reach out to, ideally they eventually get referred back to this office. We will then vet that project and determine whether it is something we should support without interfering with Coast Guard missions. We have to be the single point of contact between the production and our USCG units. We help keep them out of trouble, but also help them share their story.”

A good example was The Finest Hours, a 2016 Disney film starring Star Trek’s Christopher Pine, about a 1952 Coast Guard small-boat rescue of more than 30 sailors trapped inside a rapidly sinking oil tanker that broke in half during a massive winter storm off the coast of Cape Cod. The four-man rescue team and their 12-seat boat battled freezing cold, 60-foot waves, and hurricaneforce winds to complete their mission.

“Finest Hours involved four years of pre-production, which would have been a lot of time for the unit that would have taken away from their operations. Once we actually started filming, it was only a twomonth project for the unit. We don’t have extra boats or aircraft available for entertainment projects, so it takes a lot of coordination to ensure we can accomplish the goal for the project without interfering with the unit’s daily missions – and entertainment is not one of them.”

All of the uniformed services have MOPIC equivalents in California, but production companies dealing with the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines have to go to the Pentagon for approvals. MOPIC, as a headquarters unit based in Hollywood, handles everything locally, making the process speedier and less complicated. That also has helped the Coast Guard establish a strong working relationship and mutual respect with an industry often hostile to the military.

Despite the large – and growing – number of requests MOPIC receives, Youde said, they probably reject fewer than 5 percent.

“We try our hardest to accommodate everything we can and make it as easy as we can on these productions, because the relationships we build lead to other projects. We might just be a boat in the background on a project today, but six months down the road [we] may have a bigger role,” he explained. “We look at the situation, talk to the unit involved, determine what assets are available, and work out what can be done.”

That has led to regular depictions of the service and its Coast Guard Investigative Services (CGIS) on the popular NCIS franchise, especially NCIS New Orleans.

“We still have a long ways to go. We don’t currently have that blockbuster or recurring [Coast Guard-based] TV series that gets into what the Coast Guard really does. Most of the requests we get are things like rescue and not most of the 11 missions we have,” Youde said.

“But every chance we get when we meet with a production company we already have a relationship with, we plant seeds that may not show results for years down the road.

“And the inquiries coming in are enough to keep us pretty busy. We’re restricted to participating in productions that essentially already have been bought with U.S. distribution. If we participated in pilots that have no guarantee of being purchased or seen in the U.S., it would be a waste of taxpayer money.”

In addition to assisting with Coast Guard equipment and ensuring an accurate depiction of Coast Guard operations, procedures, equipment, and personnel, MOPIC deals with the entertainment world much as the State Department deals with other nations: by building relationships, with both production companies and individuals at all levels.

“This office doesn’t come up with story ideas and pitch them to productions; we build on existing projects. A lot of what we do is reactive, because we can’t do the pitching,” Youde explained. “However, we can be somewhat proactive in ways such as being on set talking to a producer and saying if they like what they’re doing at that time, maybe they would like something else. So, we plant ideas to advocate for our service; it’s really a matter of networking. There are a lot of great stories out there the Coast Guard can tell.”

MOPIC also maintains a constant watch on new and evolving ways in which those stories can be told. While they don’t see much change in the near term in how they relate to Hollywood studios, they will be working more and more with niche cable and internet channels.

“You also have the video game industry, which has bigger numbers than Hollywood,” Youde added. “We provided some support to an upcoming game release. And comic books – each year, we try to attend ComiCon, where creative people can see us and we can try to spark ideas.

“The current demands for scripted series have been law enforcement heavy – NCIS, for example. On the documentary side, it can be anything from ice breaking to disasters at sea, so they get a little more into our other missions. I can’t think of any of the 11 missions we haven’t at least touched upon in the past year. But the most visible are still major network and movie productions looking at special ops, law enforcement, search and rescue – things that tie into large action.”

Despite its small size, MOPIC has to be on site during the shooting of Coast Guard-related elements of every production. That requires exceptionally close control over schedules and costs, the latter yet another obstacle to be addressed.

“Travel isn’t covered by the government; it is covered by the production. We don’t make any money and often don’t charge anything other than travel and incidentals,” he said, adding cost also is a factor in Coast Guard equipment made available to a production. “A helicopter doing a fly-by may be worked into the unit’s regular operations, for example.”

One of the most difficult – and delicate – roles MOPIC plays is ensuring the Coast Guard is accurately portrayed without interfering with the normal processes of the writers, actors, and directors.

“If it is outside what the Coast Guard really does, then it is not supportable. We’re not going to participate in a story that has us doing something we would not normally do. We review scripts for accuracy, keeping it at least within the realm of the possible, without taking away creative license.”

Youde and his MOPIC colleagues – Chief Warrant Officers Paul Roszkowski and Mike Lutz, both liaison officers – believe their efforts, while rarely noticed or acknowledged outside of Hollywood, are vital to the public’s knowledge and awareness of what the Coast Guard is and does, from boating safety, aids to navigation, and ice breaking to law enforcement, counter smuggling (drugs, weapons, people), military operations (such as anti-piracy missions off the coast of Africa), and marine environmental protection.

“If this office didn’t exist, we wouldn’t be represented in the entertainment world and we would have no influence on the stories that would be told by Hollywood,” Youde said, adding that does not mean MOPIC has influence in every media or production. “We can’t support commercials, for example, because we can’t do anything that comes across as an endorsement. That also goes for music videos with obscene lyrics.”

Even with their successes with movies such as The Finest Hours and TV shows such as NCIS, the three Coast Guardsmen are still looking – and laying the groundwork – for something that has eluded the Coast Guard throughout MOPIC’s 30-year history.

“We are definitely hopeful that one day there will be a [TV] show based on the Coast Guard,” Youde concluded. “That’s a goal.”