No actress of her generation was as willing to stand before the barricades during the political and social upheaval of the late 1960s and early 70s as Jane Fonda, and she paid a price for her activism, dropping out of public favor and being treated like box-office poison until she began embracing aerobic dancing and light comedies in the late 70s. Fonda would later nod to her activist past with projects like The China Syndrome and Coming Home, but they addressed their issues in a far less confrontational manner than Fonda did when she was working with the likes of Jean-Luc Godard. In 1971, Fonda and a group of activist performers created a "political vaudeville" show called F.T.A. which was intended as a countercultural response to Bob Hope's annual shows for the troops in Vietnam; performed at G.I. coffeehouses and venues near military bases, the F.T.A. show (the name coming from a bit of G.I. slang, an acronym for "F--k the Army") was a demonstration of support for the growing anti-war movement among America's enlisted men (a phenomena chronicled in David Zeiger's superb documentary Sir! No Sir!). When Fonda took the F.T.A. show overseas for a tour, playing to thousands of servicemen in Hawaii, Japan, Okinawa and the Philippines, a camera crew tagged along and Francine Parker's film F.T.A offers glimpses of the show as well as the media circus that followed Fonda and her fellow performers, along with interviews with some of the soldiers they met along the way. For decades, F.T.A. was something of a phantom in Fonda's filmography; American International Pictures opened the film on July 14, 1972, and a day later news broke that Fonda had made an ill-advised visit to Hanoi during a trip to Vietnam and spoke on North Vietnamese radio. Suddenly F.T.A. became a political hot potato, and after only a week in theaters AIP pulled it from release. The film became all but impossible to see after that; many have speculated that AIP knuckled under to political pressure to bury the film, and that Fonda (who produced the picture) was responsible for keeping it under wraps as she tried to distance herself from her reputation as "Hanoi Jane" in the 80s and 90s. (In 2001, when the Film Society of Lincoln Center presented a lengthy retrospective of Fonda's work, F.T.A. was conspicuous in its absence.) When clips from F.T.A. popped up in Sir! No Sir!, it marked the first time in years that Fonda was willing to acknowledge the film (and the show) existed, and in early 2009 she appeared at a screening of a restored print of F.T.A. in anticipation of its release on DVD. Seen thirty-six years after its scuttled theatrical release and a hazy second life on crummy-looking bootleg videos, what's most surprising about F.T.A. is that the show itself almost seems beside the point. Fonda is a bundle of crackling enthusiasm on stage and a real team player, but her chops as a sketch comic in F.T.A. probably wouldn't have gotten her a callback for MAD TV, and Michael Alaimo's broad, eye-rolling shtick fares even worse, especially given how painfully obvious some of his material reads all these years later. Donald Sutherland seems far looser and more comfortable before an audience than most of his cast mates; his bit doing football-style play-by-play commentary on a battle in progress is easily the funniest thing in the movie, while his closing reading from Dalton Trumbo's Johnny Got His Gun is genuinely powerful stuff. And while Rita Martinson and Len Chandler's musical performances are strong, their songs are less impressive, even if they do go over with their intended audiences. It's what happens between shows that really resonates in F.T.A.; Fonda, Sutherland and the rest of the cast are often seen talking with soldiers who came out to see the show, a few of whom also appear on stage, and what they have to say about their experiences is the real meat of this film. From African-Americans complaining about racial inequality in the military and WAF's discussing sexual double standards in the Air Force to ordinary foot soldiers talking about how what they've seen and what they've been ordered to do has altered their views about the war, F.T.A. is at its best when Fonda and Parker let the soldiers fighting the war take center stage. Their words possess a blunt eloquence that the well-intentioned songs and skits lack, and while the stage show has dated, many of the interviews with G.I.'s seem painfully timely as America struggles with wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many still accuse Fonda of being a traitor who betrayed America's fighting men and women during Vietnam, but ultimately F.T.A. is a real and heartfelt message of support to the troops who were left to fight a war they could not believe in, and this film makes the point that she and her cohorts had plenty of love for the soldiers who fought the battles, even as they voiced their contempt for their commanders and the war itself. After seeing F.T.A., it's hard to imagine why Fonda would keep it from being shown, as it says far more positive things about her days as an anti-war activist than offering support to her critics.
