APPENDIX SIX

Full-Length Documentary
Treatment

“GOODBYE SOLDIER,
GOODBYE SAILOR”

By John Hewitt

Log line: Military base closings have widened a gap between military and civilians in Northern California’s Bay Area.

Prologue.   A tight formation of Navy fighter jets screams low over the water. Dwarfing nearby sailboats, ponderous, gray military ships glide silently under the Golden Gate Bridge and into San Francisco Bay. Chattering helicopters circle overhead. Spectators crowd the shoreline, sitting in folding chairs, hats decorated with American flags. In the Bay Area, this is Fleet Week, an annual event when the Navy reminds San Francisco that it once was a Navy town.

Navy Commander Jack Hanslick: “We need this. Since the military closed the bases, this is our way of attracting people to our volunteer military.”

ACT 1.   The American flag is lowered at Ft. Baker in Sausalito. A Marine in dress uniform folds it carefully and hands it to another soldier, who salutes, turns, and backs away. It is a ceremony turning over the last San Francisco Bay Area U.S. Army base to civilians.

Archival shots show San Francisco in the Civil War, Spanish American War, WW1, WWII, and sailors walking the streets, USO dances. Narrator: Pervasive military presence for years.

A helicopter is touring closed military bases in the Bay Area, the Presidio, Treasure Island, Hunters Point, Alameda Naval Air Station, Mare Island, FT. Ord. On the ground, we see former bases that employed thousands of personnel. Now the signs say “closed.” Narrator: The Bay Area is among the hardest hit, almost 90 percent of its bases shuttered.

ACT II.   A Hollywood crew is busy filming a dramatic scene in an old Navy hangar on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. SF Film Coordinator Lydia Sprocket: “These old hangars make great studios. They’ve been a godsend. Moviemaking brings in millions for the local economy.”

Local Mayor Plotkin: “Once we solve the environmental mess, it will work out.”

Professor Pauline Kaurin: “It’s true it helps the economy, but base closings have a very serious effect on a region. On one hand, it is very useful because the land is prime real estate. On the other hand, it promotes something called the civilian-military gap.”

ACT III.   Shots of a stack of reports. Military swarm around offices in Washington, D.C. Narrator: Since the federal government began closing bases in 1986, they have ignored the political effects that isolate the Bay Area from military decision-making, and the social effects that lessen the respect of local citizens for the military.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein: “We are cut off from much of the political process.”

Mil. recruiters at an office in Oakland. Sgt. Kurtz: “We hardly get any traffic in here.”

Zoom to local high school. Series of interviews with students. They have never seen anyone in uniform, aren’t planning on military as a career.

ACT IV.   The Marines Memorial Club on Stockton in San Francisco. Old, retired Marines sip drinks, mixing with new arrivals. Some are wearing uniforms.

Marine Gunnery Sgt. Malik Pierce: “People see me in my uniform. They don’t know what to make of it. There isn’t any animosity. They just don’t have any recognition.”

Retired Army Colonel Jack Stone: “The military used to be a common sight here. You lived near them. You talked to uniforms on a daily basis. Now, that’s all gone.”

Professor Franz Zelky: “The political sensibilities are skewed and that’s changed forever. The United States is just going to have to live with these changes.”