Men of Honor (2000)

Realizing that the Navy's support was critical, the filmmakers submitted the MEN OF HONOR script to the Department of Defense early in pre-production. Lieutenant Commander Darren Morton, Director of the Navy Office of Information-West, immediately recognized the story's value.

"I thought a film about Carl Brashear would be fascinating," says LCDR Morton. "It's a very inspirational story, one that transcends race. The script has a lot of sensitive scenes, but I was never offended either as a Naval officer or as an African- American. In the end, an ethnic member of the Navy achieved his dream at a time when society at large often failed its minorities."

LCDR Morton endorsed the film to his admiral at the Pentagon, the chief information officer for the Navy. With the latter's support, then went to the Secretary of Defense for his approval. During this process, the filmmakers, along with Carl Brashear, visited the Pentagon to meet with senior navy leadership.

With the cooperation of the Navy secured, the filmmakers began scouting locations. It was not an easy task. "We combed the country for a naval base we could use," explains producer Bill Badalato, who also executive produced the naval-themed "Top Gun." "Military period films are getting harder to make because, in addition to downsizing the number of installations, there's just not a lot of preservation of landmarks in this country. Since computer-generated imagery really wasn't the answer, we were intent on using a working camp."

The production required a small site on a river in an industrial setting, circa 1952 (but built prior to World War IL) to stand in for the actual Navy Diver school in Bayonne, New Jersey. The filmmakers scouted rivers on the east and west coasts, as well as Florida, the Great Lakes and Mississippi. Eventually, the production found some industrial sites on the Columbia River in Washington state that were unobstructed by modern technology.

The MEN OF HONOR crew also used a stretch of land on the Oregon side, where they built a naval base from scratch, and utilized the industrial background. This area proved ideal. "With nearby Portland available for filming interiors in a variety of older buildings, plus a talent pool for extras and additional crew through the Oregon Film Commission, we settled into the Pacific Northwest with almost everything we needed," says producer Robert Teitel.

Production designer Leslie Dilley ("Deep Impact," "The Peacemaker") researched and built several structures on the three-acre campus that became the Bayonne Dive School. "We needed several barracks, a classroom building, a mess hall, the guard gate, parade grounds, officer's residence and a 30-foot tower for the eccentric commanding officer's apartment," says Dilley. "The most challenging construction was installing diving piers at the river's edge, because they had to be built rather quickly to abide by environmental safeguards for the seasonal movement of the salmon."

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