Art Imitates Life: Natick Resident Sues Over Plot of the Movie “A Few Good Men”by Dan Phelps
Natick Bulletin
February 4, 1993
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When David Cox saw the movie “A Few Good Men” recently, he was so nervous that he had his first cigarette in three years.
It’s not often you watch a major event from your life being acted out on the big screen by famous actors.
That’s how Cox feels about “A Few Good Men.”
The Natick resident and two fellow ex-Marines have filed a lawsuit against Castle Rock Entertainment, the maker of the popular film, claiming the film is based on a real-life event in which Cox and the other two men were involved.
“I was a wreck watching the movie,” Cox said in a recent interview. “I quit smoking about three years ago, but I had my first cigarette during that movie.”
The movie, which carries a disclaimer that the events depicted in it are fictional, is about the trial of two Marines accused of killing a fellow Marine. The Marines, named Harold Dawson and Loudon Downey, are charged with murder, conspiracy to commit murder, and conduct unbecoming an officer.
The movie centers around an incident in which the two Marines, while stationed at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, admittedly bound and gagged another Marine who had written to the Naval Intelligence Service to complain about members of his platoon illegally firing into Cuba.
The lawyer assigned to defend the two Marines uses the defense that the Marines were merely following orders from their commanding officers to “train” the other Marine for disobeying the chain of command and going against the Marines’ code of working out problems within the unit.
In the movie, the Marines are found by a Navy jury to be innocent of murder and conspiracy to commit murder but guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer.
For Cox, Christopher Valdez of Sarasota, Fla., and Dennis Snyder of California, that scenario is a little too real to be fictional.David Cox, a Natick resident, feels the movie ‘A Few Good Men’ hits a little too close to home.Cox, who has lived in Natick for three years, said after he joined the Marines in September 1985, he was sent to Guantanamo Bay as his first duty station.
There, he said, at the age of 19, he was chosen by commanding officers to join a select group of Marines called “The 10.”
“They only let the best Marines in, the most loyal ones, the ones in the best physical condition, the ones who could keep their mouths shut,” said Cox, now 26.
“We worked directly under the base colonel and company captain. We were out there on the fence lines every day, shooting at Cubans, trying to instigate a war. The physical training (for The 10) was totally against the Uniform Code of Military Justice. We’d go out when it was 110 degrees and do five-mile runs along the fence lines with our helmets and flak jackets on.”
Cox said that as part of the initiation into The 10, the Marines had to, among other things, shoot at their “mirror,” the Cuban soldier stationed directly across the lines from them, which was illegal. They also had to hang from their hands from a 60-foot tower for 60 seconds.“It’s not as hard as it sounds,” he said. “You just can’t slip.”
Cox claims a Marine named William Alvarado was caught writing letters to his congressman, telling him of some of the illegal activities of some of his platoon mates.
While one ranking officer decided it would be best to transfer Alvarado to another site so the other Marines wouldn’t seek revenge against him, Cox claims – and another officer, Capt. David Robb, testified in court – that the colonel, Samuel Adams, ordered that Alvarado remain in camp.Cox claims the order came down through the chain of command that Alvarado should be taught a lesson. “Our platoon commander pulled us aside and said, ‘Don’t take him up to the roof and throw him off and kill him, but if he were to fall down the stairs in the middle of the night, oh well,’” Cox said.Cox (right) and his lawyer, Donald Marcari, 1986.At about 1:30 a.m., one Sunday in September 1986, according to Cox, he and the nine other members of The 10 went into Alvarado’s room, tied him up, forced a rolled-up pillowcase into his mouth, and started to cut Alvarado’s hair off.
Cox said that during the attack, in which his job was to cut Alvarado’s hair, he noticed that Alvarado had stopped breathing and his face was turning purple. Alvarado was taken to the medical facility at the base, and the next morning The 10 Marines admitted their involvement and were placed under arrest and put into the brig.A key difference from the movie’s plot is that Alvarado lived, whereas the character of Santiago died.
Cox’s story is supported by Donald Marcari, the Navy lawyer who successfully defended Cox.
“I think the movie is clearly based upon the trial,” Marcari said this week from his office in Virginia Beach, Va. “There’s a lot of dramatization – it’s probably 50 percent fact and 50 percent fiction. But it’s based on the trial. I don’t think there’s any doubt that it was based on the trial.”
The 10 Marines were each appointed a lawyer and were told they could either accept an other-than-honorable discharge or go to trial on charges of attempted murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Seven of the Marines chose to take the other-than-honorable discharge. Cox and two others decided to fight it, faced with a possible 40-year jail sentence if convicted. Marcari was assigned to defend Cox.
At a preliminary hearing, the charges against the three were reduced to aggravated battery.
In the trial, Cox, who didn’t want to turn in his commanding officers, said he was nonetheless forced to testify that he and the other Marines were given an implicit order to teach Alvarado a lesson.
“We were so brainwashed and so pro-unit – we didn’t want their asses to burn,” he said. “They were our mentors. But as time went on and it was the third or fourth week in the brig, we started realizing what they’d done. We decided it was time to start singing like canaries.“We were willing to give them a chance to step forward. We waited as long as we could.”
According to Marcari, during the trial, Col. Adams, who is now retired, denied ever giving an order for the Marines to discipline Alvarado, but Capt. Robb said the order was implied.“One of them was lying,” he said.
In the end, Marcari successfully defended the case on the grounds that the Marines were merely following the orders of superior officers.
They were found not guilty of aggravated battery but guilty of simple assault, a misdemeanor. That crime carried a 30-day jail sentence, but since Cox and the other two had already served 38 days in the brig awaiting trial, they were set free and allowed to keep their ranks.
“One of the jurors told me the only reason they found (Cox) guilty of anything was that someone got hurt. But he felt like he just followed implied orders,” said Marcari, now a partner in the law firm of Kershner, Hawkins and Marcari in Virginia Beach, Va.
Cox went on to serve 2-1/2 more years in the Marines, and he said he was involved in the first action of Operation Just Cause, the U.S. military operation in Panama that resulted in the arrest of President Manuel Noriega.
He left the Marines in September 1989 and returned to Massachusetts. Cox, who grew up in Needham, settled in Natick.
“A Few Good Men” is a box-office success and is considered to be a candidate for the Academy Award for best picture. Its director, Rob Reiner, is also considered a candidate for the award for best director.
The movie stars Tom Cruise as Navy lawyer Daniel Kaffee (a role Cox feels is patterned after Marcari), Jack Nicholson as Col. Nathan Jessup (the role of Col. Samuel Adams, according to Cox) and Demi Moore as a Navy lawyer who assists Kaffee.
A spokesman for Castle Rock Entertainment, a Beverly Hills-based film company partly owned by Reiner, said this week the company has no comment on the lawsuit.
A disclaimer at the end of the movie states that the “characters and incidents portrayed and names used herein are fictitious” and that any similarity to real incidents or names “is purely coincidental.”
Another aspect of the story is that Aaron Sorkin, the man who wrote both the play and the movie on which it was based, is, according to Marcari and Cox, the brother of Deborah Sorkin, the lawyer assigned to one of the Marines who opted to take an other-than-honorable discharge rather than go to trial.
They believe Sorkin got the story from his sister and turned it into the script.Attempts to reach Aaron Sorkin and his agent, Creative Artists Agency, were unsuccessful. Both have unlisted phone numbers in New York City.
Indeed, the similarities between the incident depicted in the movie and the 1986 incident that involved Cox are striking. They include:
* Not only were the Marines in the movie based on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, they were based in the same location and in the same division as Cox and his fellow Marines;
* The victim’s name in the movie is William Santiago. In the real-life incident, it was William Alvarado.
* In the movie, one of the Marines says, “We were only going to cut his hair.” Cox said the purpose of disciplining Alvarado was to cut his hair into the shape of a checkerboard to teach him a lesson.
* In the movie, Santiago writes a letter to the Naval Investigative Service to complain of some of the members of his platoon firing illegally into enemy territory. In the real-life incident, Alvarado wrote a letter to his congressman to tell him of illegal activities within his platoon, including illegally firing rifles into enemy territory.* In the movie, the cloth used to gag Santiago is believed to have been dipped in poison, thus causing him to hemorrhage. In the real-life incident, the possibility that poison was on the rag was introduced in the trial but was dismissed.
But despite the similarities, two major differences between the movie and the real-life incident bother Cox even more. Ironically, it’s those two differences that may hinder the success of his current lawsuit against Castle Rock.
The first difference is that, in the movie, Santiago died, while in the real-life incident, Alvarado lived.
The other major difference is that the two Marines in the movie, while found not guilty of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, were found guilty of conduct unbecoming an officer and were dishonorably discharged.
In real life, Cox and the other two Marines that went to trial were found guilty only of simple assault and remained in the Marines, even keeping their ranks.
David Cox on Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, 1986Cox and Valdez, one of the Marines who took an other-than-honorable discharge instead of going to trial, feel that since the movie is obviously based on the incident that involved them, the movie unfairly portrays them as murderers who were dishonorably discharged.
But Marcari, Cox’s lawyer then but not in the current lawsuit against the film company, feels those differences between the script and what really happened, as well as other fictionalized dramatizations in the movie, may be enough to protect Castle Rock if the case goes to court.
“It’ll be a tough case,” Marcari said. “Any trial is a matter of public record. They changed it sufficiently to protect (themselves). But it’s definitely based on what happened.
“I don’t think (the lawsuit) will be successful, but that’s just my opinion, and I don’t practice in that area of the law,” he added.
Another aspect of the movie that Cox is angry with is the portrayal of the Marines on trial.
“We were typically portrayed as dumb 19-year-old robots in the movie,” he said. “But we knew exactly what we were doing. We knew what we were up against.
“I don’t regret what I did. I regret the fluke results that came about,” he added. “If I had to do it all over again, I would. I’d just use a different gag.”
Valdez, the former Marine who is a co-plaintiff with Cox in the lawsuit against Castle Rock, reached this week at his home in Sarasota, Fla., said he has no doubt the movie’s script was drawn from the real-life incident in which he was involved.
“But the way they portrayed us is disturbing,” he added. “They left out some of the facts. They said we actually killed this guy, when we didn’t. Obviously, the reason I’m disturbed is that they did portray us in a false light. We have enough proof.”
Calls to Cox’s lawyer in Brighton and Valdez’s lawyer in Florida were not returned.
Cox received his honorable discharge from the Marines in August 1989 after serving out his four-year stint.
With a paralegal degree, he may go on to law school in the future. He still keeps in touch with Marcari. In fact, he and Valdez are meeting with Marcari this weekend to start discussing the possibility of writing a book about the incident.
Marcari said he feels bad about what happened to Cox and the other Marines and that the only thing they were guilty of was being good Marines.
“They were all good officers. That’s the sad thing,” he said. “If they said, ‘Take that hill,’ they’d take that hill. They were clearly the 10 best Marines down there.
“The Marine Corps teaches them to take care of their own,” he added. “If there are any problems, handle them within the platoon.”
And he said Cox was a victim just as much as Alvarado, a victim of commanders who gave an order that shouldn’t have been given.“He’s a great guy,” he said of Cox. “He’s loyal. He’s a good Marine, and he probably would have made a great Marine if he stayed with it. He felt like he was following orders. He loved the Marine Corps, and he wanted to stay in. And I think he would have stayed in if this didn’t happen. I think it kind of soured it for him.”
Cox said he and the other two Marines are pursuing the lawsuit because they feel they’ve been unfairly portrayed.
He said he and Valdez even contacted Sorkin when they heard the movie was in the works and offered to help out, but Sorkin never called them back.
“All they had to do was call us,” Cox said. “I would have been glad to take a leave of absence to go out there and tell the real story.”
But how does he feel about the movie?
“If I hadn’t known the truth, it probably would’ve been the best movie I’ve ever seen in my life.”