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Isles once again
a favorite set
for Hollywood
MGM's 'Windtalkers,'
By Tim Ryan
with Nicolas Cage, will be
shot on Oahu this summer
Star-BulletinYear 2000 will be a blockbuster for Hawaii's film industry.
MGM's "Windtalkers," starring Nicolas Cage, is headed to Hawaii this summer with 100 of 110 filming days on Oahu and possibly a neighbor island, MGM officials said.
Added to "Pearl Harbor," the $135 million epic that plans to film on Oahu for five weeks this spring, that translates to some 19 weeks of motion picture filming this year, not including production preparation time.
(And if "Baywatch Hawaii" is renewed for its 11th season on the Fox Network as producers and owners believe it will, the show will begin filming on Oahu as early as June for six months, spending some $22 million.)
John Woo will direct "Windtalkers," which has an August start date. Woo, finishing work on "Mission Impossible 2," starring Tom Cruise, will scout Hawaii locations as early as next month, according to sources in Los Angeles. There has been at least one preliminary location scout here by a "Windtalkers" executive.
MGM President Michael Nathanson has declined comment on casting, but confirmed the deal with Woo.
According to the entertainment trade publication Variety, "Windtalkers" has one short scene set at Chicago's Wrigley Field, and one scene in Arizona that is supposed to be a Navajo reservation. Hawaii will double for Saipan, and one major battle scene will use heavy artillery and armory and require as many as 10,000 extras.
The story -- scripted by John Rice and Joe Batteer, who last worked together on "Blown Away" -- focuses on the unlikely friendship between two soldiers at a time when the Japanese were deciphering U.S. codes during World War II. The Marines come up with the idea of using the Navajo language, which is so complicated that, other than full-blooded Navajo, only 12 people could speak it.
The American Indians were given battle-hardened bodyguards to protect them. However, if the Navajos were under threat of capture, the bodyguards' job was to kill them to protect the code. The story also deals with crossing racial boundaries and the friendships that develop.
Cage's character is a bodyguard for one of the Navajo Code Talkers.
Today there is a Navajo Code Talkers Association, headed by Sam Billison, 74, who in November publicly criticized the proposed film and sent a letter to Cage saying the story line perpetuates stereotypes and makes the Navajos secondary characters to the Caucasian star.
"Windtalkers" will be produced by Woo and partners Terence Chang, Alison Rosenzweig and Tracie Graham.
Production will likely eclipse the $35 million spent in Hawaii by Universal Studio's "Waterworld," the most ever spent by a production in state history.
