Will ‘Red October’ Prove Itself a ‘Top Gun’ For Navy Recruiting?

The wait is over and now, as the ad says, “The Hunt Is On. 3-2-90.�

The movie “The Hunt for Red October� is set for national release Friday. You can’t tell it, but parts of “Red October� were shot at North Island and at the submarine base at Ballast Point.

This is the film the Navy hopes will do for the “silent� service what “Top Gun,� filmed at Miramar, did for naval aviation. That’s why the Pentagon allowed unprecedented access to the super-secret world of nuclear-powered submarines in San Diego and Groton, Conn.

Three questions: Is it accurate? Is it going to be big box-office? Is it going to mean a boom in submarine enlistment?

Three answers based on a preview showing Monday night near San Diego State University.

First, accuracy.

“It’s pretty damn close,� said Don Butts, a senior chief sonar technician at San Diego’s anti-submarine warfare base, one of a dozen submariners at the preview. “Best submarine movie I ever saw.�

Second, box office.

A funny thing happened on the way to “Red October� the movie: the Berlin Wall crumbled and the Cold War melted. The filmmakers are worried; a disclaimer at the beginning says the “events� in the movie occurred in the Bad Old Days before Gorbachev.

Even “Top Gun� never explicitly named the Soviets as the enemy. In “Red October,� that’s inescapable.

To find a market of unreconstructed Cold Warriors, the makers of “Red October� are apparently looking to the post-Vietnam young, marinated in rock ‘n’ roll music and conservative politics.

The movie’s advertising director told the New York Times that he hopes to tap into “the MTV generation, (which) takes in information in an abbreviated, symbolic way.�

In San Diego, the preview was sponsored by radio station 91X. Now there’s a modern image: a rock station sponsoring a movie with a pro-military theme.

What ever happened to “Give peace a chance!� and Woodstock?

Kevin Stapleford, 26, program director at 91X, said my views of the politics of rock music are hopelessly outdated. The “Red October� promotion, he said, fit nicely into the recent “defection� of two disc jockeys to 91X from rival station KGB.

“The movie is about the defection of a Russian submarine,� he explained. “We’ve had our own defection to help liberate people from boring radio shows.�

Applause was tepid at the preview. The audience seemed to recoil when the story turned from a computerized cat-and-mouse game to a bloody confrontation.

Myself, I enjoyed “Red October,� particularly Sean Connery and Scott Glenn as the opposing skippers, but I doubt that it’s headed for mega-hit or classic status.

Which brings us to the third point, about a possible recruiting bonanza.

Methinks not. Sorry guys, a submarine is not an F-14. And there is no counterpart to Kelly McGillis, the sexy instructor in “Top Gun.�

Everybody remembers the Wright Brothers. But can anyone recall Cornelius Drebbel?

He was the Dutchman who built the first submarine in 1620.

Hostilized, Attitude-Wise

Items to go.

* A memo from the general manager of the San Diego County Water Authority to the Board of Directors about a “public attitudes� survey:

“Dr. Hirshberg will be agendized to personally present survey findings to the Public Information Committee.�

I have a bad attitude about agendized.

* Lambda Delta Lambda, a sorority begun two years ago by lesbians at UCLA, has formed a chapter at San Diego State University.

The SDSU chapter is recognized by the administration but has not sought membership in the campus association of fraternities and sororities.

* Last year Raymond Chandler, this year Erle Stanley Gardner.

A Gardner write-alike contest will be part of this summer’s La Jolla Festival 1990 sponsored by the Friends of the La Jolla Library. The creator of “Perry Mason� died in 1970 at his home in Temecula at age 80.