Love and War 'Pearl' focuses on romance in story about infamous attack

Santa Monica -- A magazine article with the glaring headline "Is Michael Bay the Devil?" hangs framed in the hallway of the director's office suite. Bay keeps it there because the story's supposition -- that his testosterone-filled movies like "The Rock" and "Armageddon" are sending Hollywood straight to hell -- amuses him.

Bay's softer side will be on exhibit May 25 when "Pearl Harbor" officially kicks off the summer season. Sure, his movie has mind-numbing explosions, including 450 dynamite bombs that go off at once. It would be hard to re- create the infamous Japanese attack on an American military base on Dec. 7, 1941, that got the United States into World War II without some serious pyrotechnics and computer-generated effects.

But here's the surprise: A good portion of screen time is lavished on Kate Beckinsale's romances with first Ben Affleck and then Josh Harnett.

"Basically, Ben's character falls in love with Kate, who plays a nurse who helps him pass his eye exam so he can get his wings," said Bay, seated at the controls of a computer screen where the early scenes of the film are unspooling. Suddenly Affleck's voice is heard assuring Beckinsale about passing him "because I really do think you did the country a service, you know, because I'm a great flier."

"We lull you into the good life at Pearl," Bay said. "The thing you get from survivors was that it was the plush place to be. We talked to nurses who said there were like 4,000 guys to every woman and that they had four dates a day."

While casting, he and uber-producer Jerry Bruckheimer sought out actors who had a '40s look, including the British-born Beckinsale. "I told Michael at the very beginning, 'We are going to hire an English girl to play the lead because American girls have evolved so much, while the English still have an old- fashioned, homey look,' " Bruckheimer said.

Aside from some literary license -- the main characters are composites of people interviewed by the filmmakers -- the facts are all there onscreen. But "Pearl Harbor" wasn't conceptualized as a history lesson. "I know people are going to say, 'Why didn't you talk about the conspiracy theories? Why didn't you give us more history?' But we wanted to tell it through the eyes of the people who were there," Bay said.

With its PG-13 rating, "Pearl Harbor" does not show anywhere near the kind of carnage featured in the R-rated "Saving Private Ryan." This, too, was a deliberate decision.

"I loved 'Saving Private Ryan.' I loved the violence in it. It really was scary," Bay said. "But I decided to go a different way. For one thing, the Pearl Harbor bombing happened so fast. It wasn't landing on the beach with hand-to-hand combat where you see your enemy. At Pearl Harbor, you're dealing with bombs and planes."

From audience comments after "Saving Private Ryan" came out, it was apparent that a lot of women couldn't handle the graphic battle scenes. "You could shut out a big audience showing that. We think women will relate to our strong love story."

Bruckheimer, who discovered Bay back when he was doing ads for Miller Lite and Nike, said he never had any doubt his protege was up to telling a love story. But Bruckheimer did worry whether the war story could be told on the budget of $135 million, give or take a million, finally agreed upon.

Originally, $200 million was requested. "But that was a dumb budget," Bay acknowledged. "We threw everything into the pile. Like the transport guy said he needed $20 million for trucks and shipping, so we put in for $20 million." Neither he nor Bruckheimer wanted to risk making a "Waterworld," where costs swerved out of control. So they cut all the fat out of the budget, including slashing their own salaries.

It saved a bundle to find the bases in Hawaii not only still standing but looking pretty much the way they did in the '40s. However, it took a year to get approval from the Pentagon to shoot on location. "We met with everybody and showed them the script," Bruckheimer said. "It was a tall order because we wanted to shoot right in their backyard, where they have nuclear subs."

Another way of economizing was to shoot fewer big shots. "Titanic" had 550 of them; "Pearl Harbor" a mere 150. It also helped that special effects, like the shot of the bombs dropping, were conceived first as a cartoon. "I started designing the special effects two years ago and got some animators in here," Bay said. "We knew exactly what we were going to do before we did it."

A group of survivors from San Diego were brought to Baja, where the bombing scene was shot, to watch. It was really emotional for them, particularly when they saw dummies lying around to simulate dead bodies. "The old planes were there, but they said the most real thing to them was those bodies. They couldn't take their eyes off of them," Bay recalled.

Before filming even started, World War II veterans protested using the battleship Texas to substitute for a Japanese vessel. Bay, who is expecting to hear a lot more complaints when "Pearl Harbor" is released, met with the protesters and said that the choice was either to not make the film or to go with available resources. "I told them, 'Unfortunately, you guys sank all the Japanese carriers.' "

Bruckheimer is quite aware that other movies have been made about Pearl Harbor, most notably "Tora! Tora! Tora!," which was told from both the American and Japanese points of view. "When you see it again it seems basically like a documentary. There is no romance. There is nothing to keep an audience in its seats. It just relates what happened," Bruckheimer said, adding that, of course, the makers of that film didn't have the special effects available now to show the actual attack.

He has given a lot of thought to why the fascination with Pearl Harbor continues. "I think it's because, until then, America had seemed invincible. And then suddenly it wasn't."