The Big Picture - 7. Ain’t War Hell? | Do We Get to Win This Time?

Episode Date: August 23, 2023

In the late ’80s, a new wave of big-studio hits like ‘Full Metal Jacket’ and ‘Good Morning, Vietnam’ introduces young moviegoers to Vietnam—and helps turn the war into an unlikely pop-culture phenomenon. Other films we talk about in this episode include ‘Hamburger Hill’ (1987) and ‘Casualties of War’ (1989).  Host: Brian Raftery  Producers: Devon Manze, Mike Wargon, Amanda Dobbins, and Vikram Patel Sound Design: Bobby Wagner  Mixing and Mastering: Scott Somerville  Interviews for this series were conducted before the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes in 2023. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey everyone, if you're enjoying our show, you might also like some of the other narrative podcasts here at The Ringer. Want more history in your life? Try 22 Goals, a chronicle of the Men's World Cup told through the lens of 22 of the most iconic goals ever scored in the tournament. Spoiler alert, it's about a lot more than just soccer. Or maybe, like me, you just can't get enough of pop culture history. If that's the case, check out Just Like Us, a deep dive into the tabloid magazine era. Not quite sick of my voice yet? Well, in Gene and

Roger, I dive into the careers and legacies of legendary movie critics Siskel and Ebert. Two thumbs up for shameless self-promotion. Thanks for listening. Get groceries delivered across the GTA from Real Canadian Superstore with PC Express. Shop online for super prices and super savings. Try it today and get up to $75 in PC Optimum Points. Visit superstore.ca to get started. A quick note about this episode. A few of the clips you'll be hearing feature offensive terms used to describe people of color. They're included here to illustrate how certain perspectives and norms

were represented in the films we'll be discussing. As a young kid in the 70s, Anthony Swafford didn't know much about Vietnam. But he did know the war had played a big role in shaping his parents' lives, and his own. Basically, I was a war baby. Swafford's father was in his late 20s when he went to Vietnam. He was about halfway through his first tour when he took some R&R in Hawaii, where Swafford's mother was waiting. They met in Honolulu, and then 40 weeks later, I arrived on scene. Swafford was about four when his father returned from overseas. And during the next

several years, the young Swafford saw the effect the war had on his father. When I was a kid, he was very anxious. He would never sit down. Like, I, you know, practiced judo, and he would show up to my judo practices, and he would just, he would pace, and then, like, leave the room. Later on, Swofford began to understand why his father was so restless. In his mind, like, if you sit still, you're a target. If you're sitting still, someone kills you. Swofford also saw the intense connection his father had with his fellow Vietnam vets. Though as a kid, the reasons for that connection remained a mystery. Once a year, a guy who would serve with them in Vietnam would come for a visit,

and they would have a 12-pack of Budweiser and sit out on the deck and drink beer and talk. And my dad wasn't one who normally sat and drank a 12-pack of beer. And so I didn't know what it was, but I knew that he had some sort of connection with this man. And I knew that it was sort of deep and emotional. By the time he was a teenager, Swofford wanted to know more about the war that had changed his father's life. So he started educating himself about Vietnam by watching Vietnam movies.

He wondered, who were these men who'd gone to war? And what had Vietnam done to them? He wasn't the only one asking those questions. In the 80s, Vietnam became a multi-generational obsession, a war older Americans were confronting for the first time in years and that young Americans were confronting for the first time ever. Some of those seeking answers about Vietnam had personal connections, like Swofford. Others were simply caught up in a decades-old war that had become popular,

almost like a fad. I realize how glib that sounds, but it's true. By the late 80s, kids who were born after America pulled out of Vietnam were starting to become teenagers. And to them, the war was a world-changing, life-shattering event they had just missed, and that they now wanted to understand. And those millions of young Americans would start their Vietnam education at the movies. Between 1987 and 1989, the height of the post-platoon era, Hollywood released more than 50 Vietnam films. They included everything from tough combat dramas to ridiculous Rambo ripoffs to quieter

stories about the war's aftershocks. There were so many Vietnam movies during that period that at one point in the summer of 1987, you could watch two of the most brutal Vietnam films ever made, Hamburger Hill and Full Metal Jacket, back to back at the same theater. While you were there, you might even see a trailer for a new Vietnam comedy about an uncontrollable Saigon DJ with an unforgettable catchphrase. Good morning, Vietnam! Now, when it came to the facts of the war,

these movies took a lot of creative liberties. So did the countless Vietnam-related TV shows, comic books, and even video games that would appear by the end of the decade. But the Vietnam mania of the late 80s had a profound impact on young people, who are now adopting the war as their own. It had been more than 20 years since America became entrenched in Vietnam, a war that killed millions and altered the fates of multiple countries. During that time, Vietnam had become different things to different Americans.

A badge of honor or an unwanted scar. A lost cause or a noble one. But by the late 80s, the war became something no one could have predicted. A pop culture phenomenon. From Spotify and the Ringer Podcast Network, I'm Brian Raftery. And this is Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War. In the weeks and months after Platoon swept the Oscars, Oliver Stone watched his low-budget

Vietnam epic spread to theaters across the world. There was not one country, not one country that rejected that film. It was popular everywhere, from Russia, Bulgaria, Poland, to the South American countries. It was all through Africa. It was an unbelievable experience for me. Who ever thought the American experience would be of that interest abroad? By the time Platoon's theatrical run wound down in the summer of 1987, the movie had made nearly $140 million in the U.S.,

a remarkable figure for any late 80s release, but especially a downbeat, R-rated war film. And its success kicked off a new cultural movement that one journalist called the Vietnam Vogue. In the months and years after Platoon's release, bookstore shelves were jammed with brand new Vietnam history books and novels. Record labels churned out compilation albums like Vietnam, Rockin' the Delta, which featured a bunch of 60s hits, plus Ride of the Valkyries, of course. And television executives went all in on Vietnam,

which inspired everything from primetime network dramas... China Beach, where the wounded are healed and everyone else stays sane by getting crazy. ...to splashy, star-packed cable telethons, like HBO's Welcome Home Veterans, a fundraiser that featured 60s icons like John Fogerty, James Brown, and Easy Rider star Peter Fonda. We're all here to say welcome home, but we also want you to remember we're here to say thank you. But movies were at the top of the pop culture pyramid. And in the wake of Platoon's success, studios rushed to either greenlight or spotlight as many war stories as they could. That's John Irvin, the director of the intense combat drama Hamburger Hill.

Though it debuted in the summer of 1987, Irvin's movie had been in the works long before Platoon's box office victory. But expectations for Hamburger Hill spiked once it became clear just how big, and how young, the audience for Vietnam movies had suddenly become. I don't know. I think people felt they'd seen enough, I guess. And then another generation came along and said, we haven't seen enough. Irvin had a personal connection to the war. In 1969, the BBC sent him to Vietnam to work on a documentary. Irvin was disturbed by what he saw there, but he was impressed by the bravery of the men he met, a bravery he wanted to recreate for the big screen.

After Deer Hunter, which I thought was a racist film and also bore no resemblance to the war that I'd witnessed, I became more determined to make a film which I thought was more respectful of the young men who went to fight there and, you know, honoured them in a way which was verifiable. Irvin had made a handful of action dramas, including The Dogs of War and Arnold Schwarzenegger's Raw Deal, before tackling Vietnam. His more respectful movie would recreate one of the war's most controversial battles.

In 1969, American forces spent days trying to overtake a deeply fortified hill near Vietnam's western border. It turned into a violent fiasco, one that ended with multiple fatalities, and all over a patch of land that, according to U.S. military leaders, had, quote, no tactical significance. The loss of life enraged politicians like Senator Edward Kennedy, who'd later described the military's plan as, quote, senseless and irresponsible. Irvin's film would be a gruesome account of what happened on that hill, which is why, not surprisingly, he couldn't find a studio to back it. Instead, Irvin picked up independent financing and kept costs low by

shooting in the Philippines, arriving there not long after Stone and his platoon crew had left. Both movies had taken years to come together. And now, they're going to be shot and released within months of each other. I never felt in competition. I think, certainly, Oliver did. He said, I don't know why you're making the film. Oh, really? He told you that?

Yeah. Yes. I don't know why you're making it. I know Oliver slightly. So. Yes. I don't know why you're making it. I know Oliver slightly. So it didn't bother me. Because, I mean, the two years of Vietnam as a Western, in my opinion, I mean, it's, you know, black hats and white hats. The hand I get held is about love, I think, brotherhood,

in the squalor and the horror of combat. That sense of brotherhood may be why the Department of Defense, which had turned a cold shoulder to filmmakers like Stone and Francis Ford Coppola, actually agreed to cooperate on Hamburger Hill. Irvin was supplied with U.S. troops to use as extras and was even allowed to film some F-14s performing training exercises nearby. But even though Hamburger Hill had the stamp of approval of the U.S. military, it didn't shy away from the barbarity of war.

The screenplay is by James Carabazzos, a Vietnam vet. And the movie captures the horrors of the battlefield, with sequences way bloodier than anything in The Deer Hunter or even Rambo First Blood Part II. In Hamburger Hill, the bullets and bombs hit with shocking speed. It's a tough movie to watch. And the scenes off the battlefield can be just as intense. Much of Hamburger Hill takes place in the moments before and after the fighting, as the American soldiers, some black, some white, and all of them young, try to get along during

their downtime. In one scene, the group's medic, played by newcomer Courtney B. Vance, tries to teach a few soldiers how to take care of themselves in the field. But when they don't take him seriously, the medic erupts. If you want to walk out of this fucking place, you will listen to people who know. You be an individual,

and I'll be tagging your ugly, toothless face straight on its way to a long box with metal handles. Now brush your teeth in a rapid vertical motion! Vance and his 20-something castmates, including such future stars as Don Cheadle and Dylan McDermott, arrived in the Philippines in the fall of 1986. They quickly realized they were in way over their heads. Even though Hamburger Hill had a budget of about $7 million, a little more than Platoon, that extra money didn't make the

shoot any easier. Here's Vance again. It was a nightmare. It was an absolute nightmare. To get to the film set, Vance and his castmates had to walk up hundreds of feet in full gear to a jungle mountain outside of Manila. And the combat scenes in Hamburger Hill were packed with explosions, gunfire, and gore, all filmed with pre-CGI practical effects. Things sometimes went awry. For a scene in which his character is shot in the chest, Vance used what's called a squib, a tiny pouch of fake blood timed to explode.

You stick the squib on your skin, and then the squib shoots out all the smoke or whatever, blood, whatever. A little packet. Somehow, they put it on backwards. And so it squibbed me and went in. Oh, my God. And I probably shouldn't be here now. But thank God. But the squib went off, went into my chest

and took my breath away. And even if the Hamburger Hill actors got through the day unscathed, they'd sometimes hike back to their hotel covered in fake blood and ashes, the result of the numerous fires that were blazing on the set. This is a time when you could

actually use tires to block out the sun. So they burned 10,000 tires and blocked out the sun. Quick note here. According to Irvin, it was actually closer to 30,000 tires. But either way, the point remains.

This was an intense production. Burning tires, high-grade explosions. There was no shortage of danger on set. One person even died during the production. An electrician who was killed in an accident that took place in front of the cast and crew. And the political situation in the Philippines was still raw. You might remember that in early 1986, the re-election of President Ferdinand Marcos was so suspect it took a full-on

revolution to push him out. All that turmoil had nearly derailed Platoon just a few months earlier. And when the Hamburger Hill team landed in the Philippines, things still felt uneasy. We had armed security around us. You couldn't be there and not be aware. Politically, it was very tense. Adding to that tension was the fact that the cast and crew knew they had competition in Platoon. Both movies had been rejected around Hollywood for years. And now, in 1986, they were being made within just months

of each other and filming in the same country. There were even rumors that Hamburger Hill actors were finding leftover copies of the platoon script while they were filming. Irvin may not have been too worried about Stone's movie, but for others involved with Hamburger Hill, like producer Marsha Nassiter, it was hard to ignore, especially when it became clear the platoon was going to make it to theaters first. I remember Marsha saying, we messed up. You know, we missed it. We missed our window.

Still, Platoon did wind up giving Hamburger Hill a boost, albeit indirectly. As buzz over Platoon began to build, Urban's tough war movie became a hot commodity. I finished the film, and every studio head who turned me down and rejected me, all of a sudden said, can we have Hamburger Hill? His movie was ultimately released in August 1987, nearly half a year after Platoon's Oscar victory lap. Studio executives hoped it would be just enough time to let Irvin's film stand on its own. But Hamburger Hill would soon be overshadowed by another Vietnam film that debuted that same summer. It was a top-secret project, one that had been in the works for

years, and made by a guy who'd long ago abandoned Hollywood. Stanley Kubrick. Stanley Kubrick had already made one of the greatest anti-war films of all time. Honestly, maybe the greatest. In 1957, just a few years into his directing career, Kubrick released Paths of Glory, a searing World War I drama based on Humphrey Cobb's novel. Since the publication of the book 25 years ago, no one dared to make this movie. It was too shocking, too frank.

Kubrick's adaptation of Paths of Glory was just as incendiary. It stars Kirk Douglas as Colonel Dax, a French military man who leads his troops into combat against the Germans. The battle scenes feature Douglas marching through the trenches, explosions blasting all around him. And Kubrick's visuals in those scenes were so dramatic, they're still being ripped off today. The rest of Paths of Glory deals with the aftermath of war. When three of his soldiers are accused of cowardice, Dax defends them in court, only to see them sentenced to

death in a sham trial. When it's all over, Dax is offered a promotion. But after witnessing so much hypocrisy and manipulation, he lashes out at his superior. I apologize, sir, for not telling you sooner that you're a degenerate, sadistic old man. And you can go to hell before I apologize to you now or ever again! Paths of Glory is about as grim and cynical as a war movie can get. Not surprisingly, it's one of Oliver Stone's all-time favorite movies. But it was so confrontational, theater owners in France refused to play it for nearly 20 years.

And Switzerland just banned it altogether. Still, Kubrick's career took off after Paths of Glory. And even though this is the part of the show where I'm supposed to sit here and tell you the names of all the movies Kubrick made in the years ahead, this is episode 7 of a Ringer movie podcast. I'm pretty sure anyone listening to this knows the Fidelio with Kubrick. Strange Love, Clockwork, The Moon Landing, Barry Lyndon, The Shining, all that stuff. Anyway, by the mid-80s, Kubrick, who'd been raised in the Bronx, had been living in England for more than a decade.

A fear of flying had kept him away from America, and from Hollywood. And for years, no one knew what he was up to. So it was kind of a shock when newspaper articles about Kubrick began appearing in early 1984. They claimed he was looking for actors to audition for a Vietnam drama based on a 1979 book called The Short Timers, written by a veteran named Gustav Hasford. The Short Timers was a slim, savage account of a young Marine named Private Joker, following him from basic training to the battlefield. Hasford based The Short Timers on his experience as a combat correspondent, and the book is dark, funny, and unforgiving.

At one point in The Short Timers, Private Joker finds himself enjoying a brief bit of downtime with his fellow grunts. Here's The Ringer's Bobby Wagner reading an excerpt from the book. We go into the movie theater that looks like a warehouse and we watch John Wayne in the Green Berets, a Hollywood soap opera about the love of guns. We sit way down front near some grunts. The audience of Marines roars with laughter. This is the funniest movie we have seen in a long time. At the end of the movie, John Wayne walks off into the sunset with a spunky little orphan. The grunts laugh and whistle and threaten to pee all over themselves.

Kubrick worked on the script for Full Metal Jacket with Hasford, along with Michael Hare, the war journalist who'd written the book Dispatches, as well as the narration for Apocalypse Now. Their movie would begin at the Marine Training Base in Parris Island, South Carolina. That's where two recruits, Private Joker, played by Matthew Modine,

and Private Pyle, played by Vincent D'Onofrio, are subjected to merciless verbal and physical abuse from... this guy. I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on, you will speak only when spoken to. And the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be served. Do you maggots understand that? Sir, yes, sir! Bullshit, I can't hear you. Sound off like you got a pair.

Sir, yes, sir! Hartman is played by R. Lee Ermey, who joined the Marines in 1961 and later served as a drill instructor, eventually making his way to Vietnam. After he was injured by a rocket, Ermey wound up in Manila and soon found his way to showbiz. Here he is in a 1987 interview talking about his early post-military career. If you've never heard his off-screen voice before, you might find this a bit jarring. It wasn't long before one of them approached me and asked me if I couldn't do commercials,

if I would consider doing blue-jean commercials for him, as a matter of fact, is what it was. And I, of course, asked him, well, how much does it pay? I'll stop there, before things get too ASMR. Anyway, after his modeling career, Ermey served as a technical advisor for Apocalypse Now, and began taking acting gigs. He eventually got the attention of Kubrick, who took advantage of Ermey's military experience while shaping the Full Metal Jacket script. The director asked Ermey to meet with British military men and improvise scenes in

which he played a drill instructor. The result of all those sessions? Nearly 150 pages of dialogue, some of which, according to Kubrick, was so, quote, off the wall that it couldn't even be used in the film, which is really something when you think about what did make it into Full Metal Jacket. Like this scene, in which Hartman dresses down D'Onofrio's private pile. What's your name, fat body? Sir Leonard Lawrence, sir. Lawrence, Lawrence what, of Arabia? Sir, no, sir. That name sounds like royalty. Are you royalty? Do you suck dicks? Bullshit! I'll bet you could suck a golf ball through a garden hose. Ermey's character would be spoofed and ripped off for years afterward,

despite the fact that he only appears on screen in Full Metal Jacket for less than 45 minutes. The film is split into two sections. The first takes place entirely on Parris Island, where Private Pyle spends weeks being abused by both his instructor and his fellow Marines. It culminates in Private Pyle shooting Hartman before turning the gun on himself. It's some of the chilliest, most unnerving movie making of Kubrick's career, which is really saying something. I mean, this is the guy who'd later make Eyes Wide Shut. The second section of Full Metal Jacket takes place during the TED offensive in 1968.

Modine's character, Private Joker, journeys to the embattled city of Hue, covering the action for the military newspaper Stars and Stripes. During his travels, he sees horrific, sometimes random acts of violence. At one point, he watches a giddy Marine lay down machine gun fire from a helicopter without a care as to who's being killed below. Things only get darker from there, and as Private Joker spends more time in the field, his cynicism grows. During Arrest from Combat, he and several other grunts are interviewed by a camera crew about their time in Vietnam. I wanted to see exotic Vietnam, the jewel of Southeast Asia. I wanted to meet interesting and stimulating people of an ancient culture and kill them.

Most Vietnam films from this era were filmed in tropical locales, like Thailand or the Philippines, but not Full Metal Jacket. Instead, Kubrick chose to shoot in cloudy England so he could stay close to home. His team found an empty gasworks in East London and spent a month blowing up and knocking down buildings. They also imported thousands of plants, including 200 palm trees. For viewers who want their war films to be as realistic as possible, Full Metal Jacket can be kind of irritating. The skies are constantly overcast, and the fake trees look kind of fake. But for those willing to buy into Kubrick's version of Vietnam, the

feeling that something's just a little off gives the movie a dreamlike effect. Which is kind of fitting, given that Kubrick had himself become an almost phantom-like figure by the film's release. He spent five years researching and making Full Metal Jacket, all the while staying out of the public eye in England. During that time, Full Metal Jacket remained a tightly kept secret. The release date changed constantly, and cast members declined to talk about the film, and Kubrick himself gave only a handful of interviews to promote it. According to John Irvin, though, Kubrick did make his presence known, and his power felt when he needed to. The directors used the same film processing lab in England, and Irvin says an employee

there urged Kubrick to sneak an early look at Hamburger Hill. Whereupon, and this's probably a criminal offense, he sent the film to Stanley's house, and Stanley, in his screening room, watched Hamburger Hill. As Irvin tells the story, Kubrick then called up Warner Brothers and told an executive there that Full Metal Jacket's release date needed to be moved up, that it had to hit theaters before Hamburger Hill. Kubrick died in 1999, right before the release of Eyes Wide Shut, so there's no way to verify this story with him. And even if he were alive, I'm pretty sure he wouldn't return my

emails about it. But Full Metal Jacket did beat Hamburger Hill to theaters that summer by two months. Kubrick's film became a must-see event, thanks in no small part to Ermey's hilarious and terrifying performance as gunnery Sergeant Hartman. You could view him as a bully, pushing his men toward their physical and emotional limits. Or you could see him as a much-needed reformer, taking these insecure kids and preparing them for the harsh realities of war. Either way, he got in moviegoers' heads. Moviegoers like Anthony Swofford. It was like the last R-rated movie that I snuck into.

Swofford saw Full Metal Jacket with a group of friends in a theater in suburban Sacramento. This was back in the summer of 1987, when Swofford was a teenager thinking about joining the Marines. I thought like, maybe I'll take the SATs. Maybe I'll go to community college. But I wasn't, you know, I was definitely like 50-50 on whether I'd go to the Marine Corps or not. Some of the friends who came along with Swofford were also thinking about enlisting. One had even given Swofford a copy of The Short Timers.

So when they showed up at the theater that day to watch Kubrick's film, they were pumped. As Swofford says now, they were hoping for what he calls an adrenaline-filled masculine fantasy. And Full Metal Jacket delivered. You know, for me, whatever was happening on the screen seemed magical, sexy, enticing, you know, incredibly dangerous. It seemed like a challenge. I got the humor then. And again, I'm not sure why I understood that humor at 17, but I did. Perhaps like the

psychological dust or the fumes from my father's experience of Vietnam, but I just, I got it. Swofford had been disturbed by the grim realities of Platoon, but as shocking as Full Metal Jacket could be, there were moments from the basic training scenes that spoke to him. This thing gave me this conduit to a totally different identity and a sense of meaning,

whatever its flaws were, as a 16, 17-year-old kid from the Sacramento suburbs, this idea of what masculinity could be. A little more than a year after seeing Full Metal Jacket, Swofford joined the Marines. Kubrick's film wasn't the only reason he enlisted, but it did help push him along. My romance with Full Metal Jacket, you know, definitely propelled.

I can't say I went to the recruiter the next day and signed the papers, but within three months, I convinced my parents to sign the papers for me. Swofford wound up serving in the Persian Gulf War, an experience he chronicled in his best-selling 2003 memoir Jarhead. Much like the short-timers, Swofford's book is dark, fast, and funny. And it's also unflinching when it comes to addressing the emotional and physical toll of combat. After Swofford left the Marines, he struggled to readjust, something he's written about extensively.

I mean, did you ever feel at all sort of, I don't want to say duped, but like maybe misled by what you saw in Full Metal Jacket in terms of how it portrays the Marines? Or did you ever feel like the pop cultural version of war was misleading in any way? I definitely, I felt duped by Full Metal Jacket, no doubt. Oh, really?

Yeah. I mean, I take responsibility for setting myself up to be duped, but the culture around it, the imagery, the noise, this kind of like the sexiness of it dup Paris Island or San Diego, you know, is, is radically different than that, that filmic experience you have. If you're, you know, the Madison square for theaters, like I was. Do you ever regret joining the Marines at that point in your life? Do you ever wish you'd waited a little bit or, or do you, can you look back now and you're, you're glad you made that decision? I don't regret having joined the Marines. Um, I don't regret having gone to war. If I could cancel that 17 year old now i'd say go to college become an officer like better pay better food prettier girls also autonomy and

leadership like i was just yeah i wasn't i was a grunt i was a bullet sponge essentially but i don't i don't regret it because I have no idea who I'd be if I hadn't had that experience from 18 to 22. Swofford still loves Full Metal Jacket. I'll just watch the first 15 or 20 minutes of Full Metal Jacket if I'm sitting around doing nothing sometimes. And my wife will walk into the room and I'll be laughing. And she'll be like, why are you laughing?

This is like this dark, crazy, warm, you know, young men are going to war to die. And I don't know. I find it funny. I find that opening scene, their heads are being shaved. And it's like, goodbye, my sweetheart. Hello, Vietnam. Like, that's the tune, right? Goodbye, my sweetheart.

Hello, Vietnam. I want to be there. right? I want to be there. I want some grizzled guy smoking a cigarette, shaving my head and shoving me off into this new thing that I know nothing about. The success of Full Metal Jacket is still kind of surprising.

In a summer dominated by sci-fi and action blockbusters, Kubrick's dark Vietnam war tale made almost $50 million in the U.S. And the script earned Kubrick his last Oscar nomination. All that acclaim for Full Metal Jacket wasn't great for the Hamburger Hill team. Their movie now had to follow not one, but two must-see Vietnam films. And it had to do so without the cultural urgency that boosted Platoon, nor the air of mystery that surrounded Full Metal Jacket. As a result, Hamburger Hill struggled at the box office that August,

a blow for many of those involved with the film, including Vance. After it was released, people really go, wow, that was the best one. Yeah, thanks. Thanks a lot. Yep. Didn't help us then. But Hamburger Hill would get a second life, thanks in part to young moviegoers who'd found a way to watch these R-rated Vietnam movies without their parents' permission.

My father got a VCR I think as early as they were generally available about 1982 or so. That's author Viet Thanh Nguyen, who we last heard from a few episodes ago. He and his family were Vietnamese refugees living in San Jose, California. When Nguyen started watching movies, he probably shouldn't have been allowed to see. You know, my parents, they were very protective parents, but they didn't really understand what was going on with videos, you know.

They were like, oh, well, just check out whatever you want. Whatever you want to watch, you know? They weren't aware of ratings or anything like that. That's how Wynn caught Apocalypse Now for the first time. And I can tell you from personal experience, he was not the only 80s kid taking advantage of his unsuspecting parents. By the late 80s, kids didn't have to sneak into the theater to see an R-rated Vietnam movie. They just had to sneak into their friends' basements.

Looking for Full Metal Jacket or Apocalypse Now? Well, back then, HBO had them both. And what you couldn't get on cable, you could easily grab from Blockbuster, or in my case, from Berwyn Video in Berwyn, Pennsylvania, RIP. At video stores, films that struggled at theaters could find a new audience. A few months after it failed at the box office, Hamburger Hill was one of the most rented movies in the country, right after Platoon. And a good number of those renters were teens,

and some crafty pre-teens, who'd been swept up in the Vietnam Vogue. I realize that sounds weird. An entire generation of kids treating a violent, years-old war as kind of trendy. But it wasn't entirely our choice. The baby boomers came into full power during the Reagan years, especially in the media. And young people were inundated, or rather indoctrinated, with nostalgia for the 60s. I mean, I was there, and I can tell you that during the 80s,

we were constantly being told how much cooler things used to be. Rolling Stone kicked off that decade by putting Jim Morrison of The Doors on its cover, next to the words, he's hot, he's sexy, and he's dead. And in the years after that, Nike used a Beatles song in a shoe ad, Richard Nixon mounted a comeback campaign, and these two fake hippie goofs became a cult TV sensation. Hey man, is that Freedom Rock? Yeah man, well turn it up man! That's a commercial for Freedom Rock, a 60s music compilation that was advertised on TV like every five minutes when I was a kid. It even featured photos from anti-Vietnam protests as part of its sales pitch, which

was pretty gross actually, and a few years earlier it would have been totally unthinkable. But by the late 80s, Vietnam was a fixture of mainstream pop culture, and a lot of that culture was aimed at young people. Back then, you could fire up the Rambo video game on your Nintendo, or you could head to the newsstand to grab the latest issue of The Nom, a Marvel Comics series about the war, written by Yvette. Vietnam even found its way to primetime TV. One of the biggest dramas of the decade was Magnum P.I.,

about a private investigator who sometimes flashes back to his time as a POW in Vietnam. Magnum aired early enough in the evening for millions of young viewers to watch. So did another hit 80s series, this one about a group of frustrated Vietnam vets who go rogue in Los Angeles. Their story went like this.

In 1972, a crack commando unit was sent to prison by a military court for a crime they didn't commit. These men promptly escaped from a maximum security stockade to the Los Angeles underground. Today, still wanted by the government, they survive as soldiers of fortune. If you have a problem, if no one else can help, and if you can find them, maybe you can hire the A-Team. The A-Team brought up the war whenever it could. The vets are court-martialed for the crime of killing their commanding officer. And one A-Team member up the war whenever it could. The vets are court-martialed for the crime of killing their commanding officer. And one A-Team member experiences hallucinations and strange flights of fancy.

Aftershocks, it seems, of what he experienced in Vietnam. But the A-Team was mostly a dopey, live-action cartoon. One that spawned lunchboxes and board games. It was a Vietnam show for kids. And as a decade went on, and those kids got a little older, they began gravitating toward the kind of tougher war stories that, back then, could only be told through the movies. War stories that were more mature. Or at least kind of mature.

Good morning, Vietnam! Okay, so quick disclaimer about Good Morning, Vietnam. Nowadays, I find Robin Williams' performance in this movie unbelievably exhausting. Time to rocket from the Delta to the DMZ. Is that me or does that sound like an Elvis Presley movie? Viva Da Nang. Oh, Viva Da Nang. But when I was in sixth grade, I had this entire spiel memorized.

Hey, is this a little too early for being that loud? Hey, too late. It's 0600. What's the O stand for? Oh my God, it's early. Speaking of early, how about that chromatic... And even to this day, I still find the oh my God bit kind of funny. But I'm guessing anyone under 30 watching Good Morning Vietnam now

would be baffled as to why it was so popular. And trust me, this movie was huge. Here's a quick synopsis. Set in 1965, the movie follows real life military DJ Adrian Kronauer as he takes a hosting job in Saigon. While there, he spends half his time doing Elvis and Ethel Merman impressions on the radio, and the other half pursuing a young Vietnamese woman who clearly wants to be left alone. In between, there's a subplot about a young friend of Kronauer who turns out to be a terrorist,

as well as scenes of Vietnamese villages being destroyed to the tune of Louis Armstrong's What a Wonderful World. So yeah, that's Good Morning Vietnam. Not exactly family-friendly stuff. And in fact, the movie was rated R. But it was sold by Disney as an upbeat romp, full of Beach Boys tunes and plenty of riffing by Williams. This wasn't a tough reckoning with Vietnam, like Coming Home or Platoon. This was Mork Gone Wild, the kind of

film that nostalgic boomers and their kids could watch together. As a result, in early 1988, Good Morning Vietnam wound up at number one for more than two months straight. You don't get that kind of box office longevity without attracting lots of young viewers. The teens and early 20-somethings that Hollywood was desperately chasing by the late 80s. That chase helps explain how so many Vietnam films got made in those years, including some that were as audacious as they were disturbing. This is nuts. We ain't supposed to be doing this. Everybody else is up for this. Michael J. Fox. Sean Penn. Casualties of War. Based on a 1969 New Yorker story, and directed by Brian De Palma,

Casualties of War starred Penn as a sergeant who abducts a young Vietnamese woman. She's subjected to horrific sexual abuse, and later murdered by Penn and his fellow soldiers. Fox plays the movie's hero, an idealistic young private who refuses to go along with them. Even by Vietnam movie standards, Casualties of War is bleak. No studio wanted it, except for Columbia Pictures, who agreed to make the movie on one condition. It had to star Michael J. Fox. The actor had spent years as a sitcom heartthrob on Family Ties, and had starred in a bunch of recent high school flicks like Back to the Future and Teen Wolf.

Fox was the choice of a new generation, a guy who made these fun, high-energy Pepsi commercials, and who'd recently been on the cover of Tiger Beat magazine, twice. Fox was an unlikely choice to play Erickson, the good guy soldier who tries to help the kidnapped woman, only to realize that some in the military want to cover up her death. Maybe if you had been there, sir, maybe if you had heard her screaming, you'd feel- You don't tell me shit about screaming, boy! I've heard a lot of fucking screaming in this country! Most of it's come from wounded American boys. By the way, if the guy chewing out Fox in that scene sounds familiar,

it's because it's Dale Dye, whose voice you've heard in a couple other episodes by now. By this point in his career, De Palma had made some ruthless films. Sisters, Scarface, Body Double, but Casualties of War might be his most brutal. The young woman, played by Vietnamese actor Thuy Thu Le, endures unimaginable suffering before Penn's sergeant and his allies cut her down in a storm of bullets, causing her to tumble off a bridge to her death. It's an agonizing moment in a film that clearly had a profound impact on its director.

Here's De Palma during a Q&A in France in 2018, his voice breaking as he discusses Casualties of War. It's a very sad movie. I can't listen to that score.

And it's difficult for me to watch. Still, Columbia had confidence that this very sad movie could be a summer hit. Casualties of War would be released in August 1989, when it would be competing against crowd pleasers like Uncle Buck and Parenthood. And the studio tried to attract at least some of Fox's young fan base. The actor promoted Casualties of War on MTV and even wound up on the cover of Us magazine.

But none of it worked. Even critics who liked Casualties of War emphasized how unsettling it was, and the movie quickly vanished from theaters. But as with Hamburger Hill, De Palma's film became a staple on cable TV, right alongside Full Metal Jacket and Platoon. And Casualties of War wound up being a major hit on home video, which is how Anthony Swafford caught it for the first time. The film disturbed him so much, Swafford says, that had he'd seen Casualties of War when it first came out, it might have changed his life. I didn't see Casualties of War until I

was out of the Marine Corps and I'm not sure I would have joined had I seen it. Swafford was encouraged to enlist by one Vietnam movie, and repulsed by another. It's impossible to know how many others were drawn to combat because of a film like Full Metal Jacket, or turned off by the brutality of a movie like Casualties of War. But Swofford wasn't the only young viewer in the 80s whose perception of Vietnam was shaped by the big screen.

These movies would resonate and reverberate for years to come, sometimes uncomfortably so. Do you want to do the intro real quick? Okay, here comes the imposter syndrome. Hi, I'm Toh Puin. I am a journalist and screenwriter. Puin was born in Vietnam, where she had little exposure to movies. I was so young that I never saw anything.

I never had access to the technology to see it or, you know, never went to a theater. You know, never had a modern life that fit the times until we made it to America. She and her family headed to the U.S. in 1980, just a few of the hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese refugees who left the country after the fall of Saigon in 1975. Nguyen's family eventually wound up in North Carolina, where she became immersed in American pop culture, especially American films.

I remember being taken to see E.T., Amblin stuff, that's totally my era. And it kind of all relates because, you know, when you talk to a lot of immigrants and refugees, they feel like aliens, like, you know, we've just come to another planet. Growing up in the 80s, Nguyen was aware of Hollywood's interest in Vietnam.

Because you came of age during this 86, 87, 88, this time when, you know, there was almost a dozen Vietnam films being released almost every year. How aware were you of it? Were other kids bringing these up to you? I'm just kind of curious how sensitive your classmates may have been about all this. People still did not distinguish Asians. It was still monolithic.

I've had my locker slammed in seventh grade and they call it a Chinese bitch. And I didn't go, excuse me, I'm not Chinese, I'm Vietnamese. I would just not want to be punched in the face or lose my teeth again. So I would just have to absorb it. And it's very harmful. So, you know, more than once. And also because our family is refugees, like we're very much taught to keep our heads down, not cause trouble because we need to earn a living. And I don't want to get suspended or whatever. For a long time, Nguyen didn't watch the big Vietnam movies of the 70s and 80s. And when she finally did see Apocalypse Now, Full Metal Jacket, and Platoon,

she watched them all back to back to back in a single day, blurring them into one long movie. It was a disheartening experience. I made it through. I had to stop, you know, and try to digest for a while. But of course, being of Vietnamese heritage on both sides, I was very taken aback. A scene where soldiers just shot a boat full of Vietnamese people, you know, like they weren't humans. You know, they were living sentient beings. And then, of course, you know, there was a scene where a Vietnamese, a Viet Cong woman was killed brutally, or another one where the soldiers would talk about Vietnamese women.

So, yeah, it was very demonizing. Nguyen may not have seen these movies before, but there was a particular moment from Full Metal Jacket and a few particular lines of dialogue that she'd known about for years. In the second half of the film, Matthew Modine's character, Private Joker, is sitting at a cafe in Da Nang. That's where he's approached by a Vietnamese sex worker, played by Papillon Su Su. I'm going to play a clip from that scene now. For those of you who know what lines I'm

talking about here, and would maybe prefer not to hear them ever again, you may want to hit that skip ahead button now. Hey, baby! You got girlfriend, Vietnam? Not just this minute. Well, baby,

me so horny. me so horny. Me so horny. You keep lying. Me love you a long time. The exchange itself is brief. But after Full Metal Jacket's release in 1987, those last few lines would become a culture-wide catchphrase. 2 Live Crew even sampled them for the chorus of its 1989 Breakthrough single.

And the lines would pop up for years afterward, in TV shows like South Park and movies like The 40-Year-Old Virgin. But to this day, those words are also heard off-screen, as a taunt, one that's intended to degrade and dehumanize Asian women. Nguyen has had those words directed at her numerous times. So much so, she included them in a screenplay she was writing a few years ago about Vietnamese refugees. But when Nguyen brought the script to a prospective producer, who was white, she was told she was overreacting. She said, I don't think this happens to you. Let's go ask my Vietnamese woman friend down at our tennis club. I bet it doesn't happen to her.

And that's pretty much verbatim, and it's never left my mind. Nguyen responded by writing a story in 2021 for Esquire, in which she spoke to several women who'd been subjected to that phrase over the years. I put that case of a woman where she applied for a job, you know, and the managers wrote on her job application or resume or whatever, me love you long time as like her name. So that's how they view people in a professional setting. And so you can only imagine in a personal setting or I talked to men who outed their own friends, not by name, but said,

oh, my friend's hooked up with an Asian woman and high-fived each other after their fact and mentioned their phrase. Some of the young men Nguyen spoke to didn't even realize where the line came from. It's just always been there. People don't think of how it affects women of a certain kind because it totally paints us a certain way and what people think of us, if they think we're disposable, inhuman, subhuman, can be treated a certain way and what people think of us if they think we're disposable, inhuman, subhuman, can be treated a certain way.

It's a sentiment that goes beyond just that one full metal jacket scene. The Vietnam movies of the 80s were made almost exclusively by Western directors and screenwriters, nearly all of them men. Their films often sideline or silence Vietnamese characters, especially female characters, while mostly ignoring the country's complex politics and culture. That could make things difficult for the Vietnamese actors who starred in these films. Actors like Kieu Chin, whom we met a few episodes ago. Her decades-long acting career includes such hits as The Joy Luck Club and ER.

But in the 80s, she was sometimes disappointed by how the films of the era depicted women like her, women who'd actually lived through the Vietnam War. And most of these books and movies, if they mention about the women of Vietnam, most of their women characters, either they are bar girl or prostitute. I don't see any dignity character. I haven't seen that. What can I say? This is the point of view from the outsider. I hope that there is a story from the different point of view. Let's back up a bit, because Chin's own story is pretty remarkable. In the 60s and early 70s, she was one of the biggest stars in Southeast Asia.

Chin appeared in high-profile regional films, as well as U.S.-produced movies like Operation CIA, that fluffy Burt Reynolds undercover flick. Chin was so well-known, she had her own hit talk show where she'd occasionally interview visiting American stars. Chin was in Saigon in April 1975, right as North Vietnam forces were making their way into South Vietnam. Americans were fleeing, and the war would soon come to a catastrophic end. I see Saigon was in panic. From the airport to streets, so crowded.

Everybody was on the street. Everybody looking for a way to get out. And every morning, the news bringing with companies getting closer and closer. You know, everybody was so panicked. Though Chin still had family in Vietnam, it was clear she had to leave. Chin packed up seven suitcases with all of her possessions and managed to get a seat on a flight bound for the Philippines. One hour before the departure time, the airport had been attacked.

The mortar attacked the airport. Everything was chaos. No plane can come in or take off. She was forced off the plane. The whole scene was chaos, and Chin eventually wound up on a flight to Singapore, her luggage already long gone. In the days that followed, she'd journey from one airport to the next,

trying to find a country that would accept her passport. After a long spell in Canada, Chin reached out to Tippi Hedren, the star of The Birds, and a former guest on Chin's talk show. It was Hedren who would help bring Chin to her new home, Los Angeles. And this is just the condensed version of Chin's talk show. It was Hedren who would help bring Chin to her new home, Los Angeles. And this is just the condensed version of Chin's journey. To get the whole story,

you really should read her excellent memoir, An Artist in Exile. Chin wound up landing small roles in TV shows like MASH and Fantasy Island before getting into movies in the mid-80s, just as the Vietnam Vogue was starting up. She was a technical advisor on Hamburger Hill and played a small role as the owner of a broth starting up. She was a technical advisor on Hamburger Hill and played a small role as the owner of a brothel. Then she starred in Welcome Home, a 1989 drama about a missing and long-presumed dead Vietnam vet played by Chris Christopherson, who's been living in Cambodia with his family.

Early on in the film, Christopherson's character is forcefully separated from his children and from his wife, who's played by Chin. She's screaming, Please, my husband, please help me. For Chin, it was a heartbreaking moment to put on film. Of course it's very emotional, you know,

just like you relive of what you have seen or what you have went through. And I remember that scene that I was really crying out that that is my husband, I have to go. Her character disappears from the movie immediately afterward. Instead, the film focuses on Christofferson's vet readjusting to America. Chin is still waiting for a movie that tells the other part of that story, the part that follows the countless Southeast Asian people

whose lives were permanently transformed by the war. And that's why I say that many movies, they don't go deeper to that area. What happened to the civilian life during the war and after the war? What happened to them? And we need to see more of the real story. Chan is quick to note how grateful she is to be in America, and in Hollywood. But her point is well taken.

The big studio Vietnam films that swept through theaters and video stores in the 80s could be thrilling and moving and sometimes even life-changing. But they were no match for the realities of the war, or its aftermath. They ignored crucial aspects of the country and its people. And when these movies did include Vietnamese characters, they sometimes treated them with disdain, neglect, or both. As one of the millions of young Americans quote-unquote learning about Vietnam through Hollywood,

I gotta say, it was an incomplete education. As the 80s wound down, the Vietnam movie, once a barely existent genre, was at its cultural and commercial peak. But the films were about to undergo a major shift, and so was the country. A new president was in power, one who'd soon be plunging the U.S. into a whole new war. And after spending the last decade revisiting the heartache and mistakes of Vietnam, millions of Americans were determined not to repeat the past. In our country, I know that there are fears about another Vietnam.

Let me assure you, should military action be required, this will not be another Vietnam. Next, on the final installment of Do We Get to Win This Time. When they see the American get killed or wounded and put in a body bag and put it on airplane, they look at me and say, shame on you, shame on you people. I was very involved in radical politics. Our entire purpose, I think, was to try and stop that war. The anti-war stuff, look, I came home in the middle of that crap. I had no time for those sort of people. This is Do We Get to Win This Time? How Hollywood Made the Vietnam War.

Written and reported by me, Brian Rafferty. The executive producers are Bill Simmons, Juliet Littman, and Sean Fennessy. Our story editor is Amanda Dobbins. Produced by Devin Manzi, Mike Wargon, and Vikram Patel. Fact-checking by Dan Comer. Copy editing by Craig Gaines. Talent booking by Kat Spillane. Sound design by Bobby Wagner.

Mixing and mastering by Scott Somerville. The music in this series comes from Epidemic Sound and Blue Dot Sessions. Art direction and illustration by Davis Shoemaker. Thanks for listening.