The Way Of The Scout
Seeing The World In Single Imprint
By Christopher Caile
Editor’s Note: FightingArts.com was invited
to interview Tom Brown, Jr. as part of Paramount Picture’s promotion
of the film, “The Hunted.” Brown helped inspire the film
and worked as a technical on it. A second related article is a review
of “The Hunted.”
 The
meeting for the interview was in a small room in the Essex Hotel in New
York City. My first impression of Tom Brown, Jr.: a handsome man with
short gray speckled hair, trimmed mustache and well spoken. He has the
air of an urban sophisticate. He also moves with confidence and agility.
This suggests an athletic past.
Few who meet him casually would guess how unique this man is. Brown
is a modern American with Ninjitsu camouflage and survivalist skills.
He may just be a prototype for a new generation of action hero.
Just as the world’s greatest detective, Sherlock Holmes, was inspired
in the 1880’s by the phenomenal powers of observation of the real-life
physician Dr. Bell, Brown’s skills served as the inspiration for
new Paramount Studios film “The Hunted.”
Sitting there, talking with me in a hotel room, I could see a vague
disquiet. He is not at home in the city. His fingers play across his
knees. He is much more at home in the wilderness with trees and sky as
company.
Brown is the protégé of an old Indian scout and tracker.
He can sense the wilderness, see and hear the imprint of life and movement
all around him. There is an old adage that says, “The real secret
of life is seeing what you see.” When Brown first introduces someone
to the outdoors he asks them to look closely at the ground because after
his training they will never see the ground the same again.
This total perception reminds me of Valentine Michael Smith in the science
fiction tale “Stranger In A Strange Land.” An orphaned prodigy
of the first manned expedition to Mars, Smith is raised by Martians before
being returned to earth. The way he experienced things was by “Groking” – that
is, becoming one with them. No less can be said of Brown’s understanding
of the wilderness. He has learned to be one with the nature he understands.
It was Brown who served as the first inspiration for “The Hunted.” When
William Friedkin, director of such films as “The Exorcist”, “To
Live And Die In LA” and “The French Connection,” first
met Brown, he was fascinated by the man and his skills. He wanted to
make a film about them, but couldn’t figure out a way to portray
Brown within a story context. Then Friedkin read a script about a Delta
Force style guy who becomes a serial killer. This provided a story line,
and Friedkin used Brown as the prototype for Tommy Lee Jones, who portrays
L.T. Bonham in the movie.
Part of the plot line is borrowed right out of Brown’s life: the
hero Bonham, like Brown, was a former trainer of Navy Seals and Delta
Force personnel -- someone who had never killed, but who taught his students
how to make their way almost invisibly through enemy territory, how to
survive, to track and to return safely. When Friedkin decided to make
the movie, he recruited Brown as a consultant. Brown in turn helped create
the reality that both Tommy Lee Jones and Benicio Del Toro portray.
In “The Hunted” Bonham is recruited by the FBI to track
and help find a gruesome murderer in the wilds of Oregon – a former
military student (Aaron Hallam played by Benicio Del Toro) who has gone
off the deep end.
In one of the first scenes, Bonham tracks a wounded wolf across the
snowy wilds to remove a snare, and he uses a poultice of a local plant
to heal the wound. “Of course, in reality it would have taken two
to three weeks to gain the wolf’s confidence,” admitted Brown.
In the movie the reality was truncated and used to introduce Bonham both
as a protector of wildlife as well as a man with unique tracking skills.
Brown’s skills were developed over decades. His teaching started
early. He was brought up in southern New Jersey and loved the woods and
outdoors. At the age of seven, Brown was befriended by an 83 year old
Apache man named Stalking Wolf, who he called Grandfather. It was someone
who would change his life – a real life shaman guide like don Juan
Matus, the Mexican Indian teacher who figured in Carlos Castaneda’s
book series.
Over the next eleven years Grandfather taught Brown tracking, survival,
awareness and other ancient Apache skills. He learned to survive without
bringing anything for survival; how to live in harmony with nature; and
how to blend in so as not to be seen. He also learned to read various
animal trails, runs, beds and feeding areas and how to track and trap
them. Grandfather taught that the earth was like an open book that could
be read.
“We (Brown and his friend Rick) would be out in the woods collecting
wood and suddenly he (Grandfather) would appear out of nowhere and ask
us ‘where is the nearest hawk? Where the nearest fox?’ and
he expected us to know. He was a town crier in defining things to be
aware of – everything.”
Most people have a pinpoint focus, explained Brown. What Grandfather
taught him was to have a wide-angle, expanded vision, to develop sound
awareness and not to let his senses follow his eyes. “People are
great filtering devices,” Brown explains. “They go into a
room and if they think green, they will see green. It’s the same
with any color. In the wilderness, awareness is focus on things that
are warning devices – birds, fluttering of wings, visual signs
of disturbances and a host of other almost imperceptible signs.”
Brown eventually founded his own Tracking School near his hometown in
southern New Jersey. Brown is also the author of twelve books on wilderness
survival and tracking including “The Way Of The Scout”, “The
Science And Art Of Tracking” and “The Tracker.” That’s
how he makes his living now. He also provides tracking services for military
and law enforcement, “but we do that for free.”.
The school offers a variety of wilderness courses attended by people
from all over the world. “We have 30 different levels in our school.
After the first week you will be able to survive anyplace,” he
said. A big part of this training is awareness. “In one of our
scout classes we train students by suspending them on a log over water.
They are blind folded against an opponent.” In this position students
learn to sense where the next blow will come from.
Brown’s skills are phenomenal. He can see footprint in the forest,
and from the imprint read the person who made it – if it is man
or women, how heavy, if he or she is tired, wounded, or hungry – all
signaled by minute and almost imperceptible signs. He can do the same
thing indoors. In a room, notes Friedkin, Brown can get down and look
at the carpet, and tell you how many people were there, how long ago
and other things about them.
These tracking skills are demonstrated in one of the first scenes in
the movie, as Bonham (Jones) tracks his former student Hallam (Del Toro)
through the wilderness. Here the movie plot bears a loose connection
with Brown’s own experience. “It happened years ago,” said
Brown, “and I can’t give you a date or where. It was when
the government ended its by taking away a bad guy in another country
in a desert environment -- in a place neither me nor the government should
have been. I got shot in the back, but this was my own fault.”
“There are two worst case tracking scenarios,” Brown noted. “The
first is a sniper. As a tracker your attention is on the ground, you
move slowly listening to sounds, listening and looking. At the same time
the sniper can drop you from a distance.” The second type scenario
was depicted in the movie. “You are tracking someone who you trained,
who knows your secrets, can counter-track and set traps. We were hoping
to get that kind of tension in the movie. In the woods this could have
been played to a sinister degree of tension.”
“As a student, Tommy Lee Jones was a great,” noted Brown. “He
lives on a ranch and knows the outdoors. Benicio didn’t know much
about the outdoors but he was a fast learner. In the scene where he builds
a fire (out of what he finds in the woods), he learned this in one hour.” As
for his ability to move invisibly through the woods, “he would
watch me and then follow that – how to move like a shadow.”
 “Moving
this way (imperceptibly) is like walking on damp rice paper, so there
are not any foot prints. You disturb nothing. Like a fox walks, everything
is quieted down. Light feet.” Brown explains that he steps by making
contact with the ground lightly, with the outside of the foot and then
rolling the foot inward. “Never hit with your heels and roll forward.
Instead touch down with the side of the foot, and then roll toward the
inside and compress. Then shift your weight.”
“You also move with the terrain,” Brown says, “into
the shadows and how they play across the ground. You move with the wind
and leaves as part of the symphony of sound and motion – not faster
or slower.” This is what is known as moving like a shadow.
Brown’s expertise was also used in the camouflage that Hallam
(Del Toro) uses to disguise himself in the wilderness. “All covered
in mud, charcoal and ash, his body became a canvas that reflected his
surroundings,” said Brown. “This disguise was so good that
in the first shoot the camera couldn’t find Hallam (Del Toro),
so they had to reduce the camouflage so his character could be seen on
film.”
In real life this elusive, Ninja-type skill is what Brown taught to
the Delta Forces and Navy Seals – “to move so that an adversary
doesn’t even know you are there.” When he “found that
they were also becoming much better killers,” a moral dilemma developed
for Brown, and he stopped teaching the military. “But after 9/11,
I went back,” said Brown.
In the movie Friedkin depicts a similar dilemma for Bonham but portrays
it differently. “I think Friedkin found part of him to put into
the movie here,” said Brown. “Personally, I try to avoid
close combat. I teach getting in and out without being seen. I wanted
to contribute to the movie to make it authentic,” said Brown. “As
to the level of violence depicted, this did make me wince a bit.”
In the movie, what Brown calls the “Apache-Wolverine fights” were
fast and brutal - the brutality shown with blood knives that have tubes
running though them so when an actor makes a cut it leaves a blood trail.
For his own kids, Brown admitted that he had an edited version of the
movie with the Kosovo and the final fight scenes cut out.
An important element in these knife action scenes, that took the proportion
of almost an extra, was a very distinctive knife – something that
Brown himself had designed as an all around wilderness tool. It is heavy
on one end, almost like a mini-axe, that can be thrown, and has a serrated
edge that can be used as a saw. There is also a second blade that can
be used to pull along a surface to peel. “I wanted to make them
available to my friends,” said Brown, “so I contacted friends
at TOPS Knife Manufacturing who produced an inexpensive version people
could buy. It’s called “Tracker.” We also have a smaller
version called the “Scout” and the two lock together. They
are worn in a variety of ways.”
In the movie this knife was used by Hallam in the first scene to kill
the Serbian commander who ordered the atrocities in Kosovo, to kill hi-tech
hunters in Oregon, and is seen again as the weapon fashioned out of rusting
steel at the end of the movie. In the final scene Hallam is pitted against
Bonham, who has fashioned his own weapon, a crude knife chipped out of
flint. “In my Tracking School we teach our students to build this
same flint-type knife,” said Brown. “We teach them to survive
with nothing.”
Reflecting on the knife used by Harlem in the movie, Brown suggests
that it served as a metaphor in the movie. “Hallam (Benicio) hadn’t
mastered the self-sufficiency of Bonham (Jones), who could make a knife
out of stone. In the end, the simpler and more basic overcame the bigger,
stronger and more technical. Tommy Lee’s weapon was also smaller
and faster.”
Was he happy with the film? “Well, I will put it this way,” Brown
said. “I created the colors of choice for Billy Friedkin (the director),
who then designed and painted the picture.”
About the Author:
Christopher Caile is the Founder and Editor-In-Chief of FightingArts.com.
He has been a student of the martial arts for over 43 years. He first
started in judo. Then he added karate as a student of Phil Koeppel in
1959. Caile introduced karate to Finland in 1960 and then hitch-hiked
eastward. In Japan (1961) he studied under Mas Oyama and later in the
US became a Kyokushinkai Branch Chief. In 1976 he followed Kaicho Tadashi
Nakamura when he formed Seido karate and is now a 6th degree black belt
in that organization's honbu dojo. Other experience includes judo, aikido,
diato-ryu, kenjutsu, kobudo, Shinto Muso-ryu jodo, boxing and several
Chinese fighting arts including Praying mantis, Pak Mei (White Eyebrow)
and shuai chiao. He is also a student of Zen. A long-term student of
one branch of Traditional Chinese Medicine, Qigong, he is a personal
disciple of the qi gong master and teacher of acupuncture Dr. Zaiwen
Shen (M.D., Ph.D.) and is Vice-President of the DS International Chi
Medicine Association. He holds an M.A. in International Relations from
American University in Washington D.C. and has traveled extensively through
South and Southeast Asia. He frequently returns to Japan and Okinawa
to continue his studies in the martial arts, their history and tradition.
In his professional life he has been a businessman, newspaper journalist,
inventor and entrepreneur. |
