I had the opportunity to sign off on a movie about the 1979 Gulf Shores incident and I asked my managing editor at The Bee, Frank McCulloch, his thoughts. I have never met a more sound and skilled newspaperman than Frank McCulloch. Of all the people I have sought for opinions in my life, Frank is at the top of the newspaper food chain.

I'll tell you a story, Frank said, and then you decide.

In the 60s Frank was the Saigon bureau chief for TIME magazine during the Vietnam War. He wrote a story for LIFE magazine on this renegade ex-U.S. Army officer living far up a delta, neither U.S. or VC. Had his own army.

About a week or so after the piece ran in LIFE, a bearded dude walked into the Saigon office and asked for Frank. His name was Francis Ford Coppola and he wanted to do a movie based on the article. Frank would get full editorial control.

The movie - "Apocalypse Now" - bore scant resemblance to the piece Frank wrote.

I knew I might be made the same promise and suffer the same result. And when I heard John Belushi was going to play me, all I thought was this: This was going to be a Saturday Night Live skit set in southern Alabama. Not to mention Belushi had his own substance-abuse problems. So whatever integrity I thought the movie might have was dispelled. Hollywood, as we all know, somehow could turn a funeral into stand-up comedy.