Posted on: Thursday, June 13, 2002

Pair embrace Navajo hero roles

By Bill Muller
Arizona Republic

Everyone feels pressure in a big Hollywood movie, from the director and the stars down to the best boy and the key grip.

In "Windtalkers," Adam Beach and Roger Willie carried an even heavier burden. In the film, they play Navajo code talkers. Both actors are Native American.

"It comes with tremendous responsibility," says Willie, 38, a first-time actor who was discovered at an open casting call for Navajos in Durango, Colo. "It's almost not a choice for me. I think it's an obligation for me to represent these guys, my nation, and Indian nations, in the most positive way that I can."

Beach, a Saulteaux from Manitoba, Canada, says that although roles for ethnic actors are limited, he refuses to think of himself as a stereotype.

"It just so happens being my ethnicity, I've gotten to work and to express and find out a lot more about who I am," he says. "And now I'm finding myself being a spokesperson, role model, and have a responsibility now to voice who I am."

The characters Beach and Willie play use the Navajo language to create an unbreakable code that foiled Japanese cryptographers during World War II.

They join the Marines and are sent to Saipan in the Pacific, where they meet their bodyguards, played by Nicolas Cage and Christian Slater. Unbeknownst to the Navajos, their companions have secret orders to kill them if necessary to prevent their capture by the Japanese.

That plot point is more Hollywood than history, which contains no record of such an order. But it gives director John Woo ("Broken Arrow," "Face/Off") a chance to explore the friendships that blossom between the code talkers and their guards.

Before being cast, Willie, who's from Continental Divide, N.M., was dubious that MGM wanted real Native Americans in the film. He thought maybe the whole exercise was a cover story.

"It was so unheard of that someone would take the interest to make a film and actually come out to Navajo country (for) a casting call," he says. "Because it takes money. It's an investment. I thought they were going to use that to justify using non-Navajos or non-Indians for these roles.

"When someone says, 'Well, these are not Navajos' or 'These are not Indians,' someone would be there to say, 'Well, we tried looking, here's the evidence.'"

Willie, an Army veteran, says he has been soaking up the experience.

"To a lot of people it may be such a minor thing, but to me, to be able to see my name on a movie poster is more valuable to me than what I could gain financially," he says.

Willie says he was honored to meet some of the surviving code talkers, including those who helped with the film.

"I think they are heroes," he says. "I think these men are living legends."