War

[Announcer] "On Story," presented by Austin Film Festival.

Welcome to a look behind the scenes of the creative process with some of the film industry's most prolific writers, directors and producers, as well as a showcase of short films from the region's most promising filmmakers.

[film reel clicking] - Do I agree that life is not just war, war is a part of Evolutionism.

But war is not just shooting at each other.

War takes a form of making films, of making a living, of raising children, of being born, of dying.

I really go back to the concept that we have to find a way in ourselves to get peace.

And I think that it is, the aggression in us is there, as Kubrick pointed out very clearly in 2001, and in, "Paths of Glory," and "Clockwork Orange," and so forth, the aggression is definitely there.

It's what you do to tame the beast in yourself that matters.

It's a question of your character.

[typing] [typing] - The war film has really played a tremendous thing.

I mean, look at World War II, how films were used and everything and how we look at many of our perceptions of World War II come from those films.

And those are the perceptions people wanted us to have.

Because it's funny, the war films that are just so-so that are patriotic, it don't have anything unusual to say kind of filter by, you know, but, "The Bridges at Toko-Ri."

- Oh yeah, yeah.

That was a shock to a 10-year-old.

- Yeah, absolutely.

- 'Cause why, the heroes died in the end.

And that was just shocking.

- And they seemingly die for nothing.

- Yeah, it's true.

- Because it actually- - William Holden and Mickey Rooney.

- Right.

And they bring up the point that what was this war for?

But it seems that war movies are divided at best when they're good war movies, they're divided into two types.

And one is a type like, "Platoon," where you've got Vietnam, you explain what's going on there.

But the real story is about the struggle between this guy and these two influences.

And that's what you follow.

And you know, so it really approaches everything else in the war obliquely.

And then there are other movies sometimes that can be very effective, like, "The Dam Busters," where it's simply about a mission and how they accomplish this kind of thing.

- Yeah, The Bridge over the river Kwai," do you remember it, many of you?

I mean, it's a classic.

It answers his question is at the end, what Alec Guinness takes the bullet and he falls on the detonator.

You know, in reality, that's not gonna happen.

So, but it did work in the context of that movie.

[typing] Well, the interesting story about Ron Kovic, specifically, is that he wants to be John Wayne, goes to Vietnam as a boy from Massa Peak.

Well, he gets his spine blown out, ends up in a wheelchair for the rest of his life, but keeps fighting back after great despair and comes back as another form of hero.

A hero who questions authority, questions his government, unlike the John Wayne figure who went to Vietnam, - The people in this country, tricked them into going 13,000 miles to fight a war against the poor peasant people who have a proud history of resistance, who have been struggling for their own, for their own independence for 1000 years.

The Vietnamese people.

I can't, I can't find the words to express how the leadership of this government sickens me.

People say, people say, if you don't love America, then get the hell out.

Well, I love America.

- I saw the movie recently 'cause it was shown at the Academy as part of a best Academy Award-winning pictures.

I got an Oscar for it.

It was so, you'll have to see it today, I mean, I'm gonna go again and sit through it because so much of the verbiage, so much of the mentality, the concept of war powers, the concept of a president who doesn't respect the wishes of the Democratic majority, the concept of the pain of war and what it does to people and the fog of war, the madness of it.

Kovic, as you know, it's a classic story.

He always believed that he killed his own men.

He really believed it.

The Marines deny it.

But that our record keeping in Vietnam was horrendous.

So I tend to believe Kovic.

- I actually went to what's the, General Haig, Al Haig was on the board of MGM.

We were making it.

And they said, "You know, we have General Haig?"

I said, "Oh, you gotta send me to Washington immediately."

So he was the head of a think tank.

So I spent two days with him smoking Cuban cigars, and I said, "General Haig, how can you smoke Cuban cigars if you hate Castro so much?"

He says, "John, we're burning his crops to the ground."

[audience laughs] [audience applauds] And he and I discussed all the possible scenarios of how a third World War would start and what it would be, and the idea of, and we went back to the old German idea of getting the Mexicans to help.

And that's how we sort of came up with the scenario of that.

And, you know, I love things in "Red Dawn," like the siege of Denver, [audience laughs] you know, it's like it's supposed to be like, you know, what do you call it, Leningrad, where they're all starving and everything, you know, but I love whenever he says, "The siege of Denver," something about that's good, you know.

- There's half a million scarecrows in Denver would give anything one mouthful of what you got.

They've been overseas for about three months.

They live on rats and sawdust bread and sometimes on each other.

- "Red Dawn" is not a very violent movie compared to any kind of slasher movie or anything like that.

It's just the rating board had it out for me, you know, and they looked at me as this, you know, fanatic, right winger, you know, member of the NRA, you know, a potential threat to Western civilization, [audience laughs] you know, and so they wanted anything I did.

And here was this movie that was clearly anti-communist, anti-Russian.

Which is strange because I am a communist, you know, and there's a side of me that's a Maoist, get me talking about CEOs and, you know, private equity and stuff like that.

I want show trials, executions.

[audience laughs] Get me talking about, you know, movie executives and bring the Maoist right out, or the Writer's Guild strike or something like that, you know.

- Well, I've obviously played with, you take license because the real distances are farther in reality.

The enemy is harder to see.

The violence is sometimes awkward and it's not graphic.

And I think we all, and I speak for myself as well, have taken liberties and licenses to make it, to goose it up.

And I've been criticized for it because war is also oddly beautiful when it's got this fatal beauty.

[soft music] [blades whirring] [soft music] ♪ ♪ [blades whirring] - You know, I think that Terry Malick did a beautiful job, personally, on "Thin Red Line."

And yet it's the most poetic movie because he puts the most poetic voice over, you know, is that serving the purposes?

Yes, in a strange way, it's a fever.

That war is a fever for those guys.

- What's this war in the heart of nature?

Why does nature vow with itself?

The land contend with the sea?

[soft music] Is there an avenging power in nature?

Not one power, but two.

- All I can say is that I've grown up with militarism and violence in every film for years, I mean, this is a staple of life.

And the films I liked the best in film school, all the way through, "A Wild Bunch," "Taxi Driver," were generally prone to violence.

Isn't that interesting?

And then I say this in preface to what's happened because, "Platoon," for me was a big victory.

It went against the grain 'cause I was being told again and again from '76 on, "Don't, you can't make the movie.

It's too realistic.

It's a bummer."

Instead, we had, "Rambo," and then we had, "Top Gun," and, "Top Gun," it's a very well made film, but it's a very devious film.

[laughter] It's a film that at the end of it makes a statement basically saying, "Yeah, bring on World War III."

That's the way I see the it.

- What, you mean the river, the Dolan Bridge.

[Audience Member] Bridge is knocked out and looking for the captain.

He said, "I thought you were the captain."

- Oh yeah.

Some of that comes from, what's his name, the great journalist, yeah, Michael Hare.

Some of it comes from, you know, a little bit of that where he's describing Caseon.

But really it was the idea of everything going up that was supposed to be the last thing that they crossed where everything's insane and they know it's insane and nothing makes any sense.

And to go beyond that is to go into another world.

[dramatic music] [explosions] ♪ ♪ ♪ ♪ I love some of that scene.

I love the scene with the Roach, you know, where he says, "Do you know where he is?"

He says, "Yeah, I'm cool, man."

And he doesn't even take his M7 yet.

Doesn't put the sights up or anything.

He says, listens, you know, and it's painted, you know, and he shoots a thing and kills the guy.

And then he says, "Do you know who's in charge here?"

And he says, "Yeah."

- Hey Soldier.

Do you know who's in command here?

- Yeah.

- My experience on "Apocalypse," if that was the normal experience, I would've never become a director.

"Apocalypse Now" was written in 1969.

It wasn't finished until 1979 or 1980.

I wrote 10 different drafts of "Apocalypse Now."

And it took a long, long time.

It was only because the director was insane that it ever got made.

[audience laughs] [typing] [typing] - Hi, my name is Joe Alvarez and my son Miguel is the director of the short film, "Veterans."

- So when I was a kid, my dad would sit down my brothers and I and tell us stories about my grandfather.

He passed away when we were really young.

And so we didn't really get to know him.

And so growing up, you know, I heard these stories over and over and over again about my grandfather.

And it occurred to me that, you know, that I wanted to do something.

I wanted to tell something.

I wanted to make something about him.

And so then that's when I came, you know, I came to my dad and you know, I said, well, you know, "Can you tell me again about him?

You know, 'cause I wanna make this movie."

And the idea of, you know, a father talking to his son about his own father was something really nice.

There was just sort of narrative loop in there that I thought was really interesting.

And so what happened was, I ended up focusing the film primarily on my dad and my grandfather and sort of their relationship and pretty much primarily, you know, through the war.

- I really didn't think the movie was gonna be like that.

I really thought that you were just gonna interview everybody in the family and then just get a general idea of what grandfather's life was about in general.

But I was really surprised and I was really honored about what, you know, what he had done, you know, to preserve, you know, my dad's memories.

Coming up with our short film, "Veterans."

- Thanks for watching.

[clock ticking] - Last night at home, I had a dream.

I woke up screaming and middle of the night, mama came out to me and says, "What's going on?"

And I told mama, says, "I don't wanna go to Vietnam" and she says, "Why, what's going on?

I said, "I just saw what was gonna happen to me."

I said, "I had a dream that I got hit with a bomb and that I'm flying through the air.

And then I woke up."

And mama tells me, "Son, there's nothing we can do about it anymore, it's just, you know, you have to go."

I says, "We don't have a choice, you have to go."

And every week until it actually happened, I had kept on, had the same old dream, same old nightmare, what it was, over and over again.

I was 17 years old.

Yeah, I remember my dad telling me the story about World War II.

He made himself a little, you know, just a little bitty box out of pieces of wood.

Everywhere he went, he got a piece of wood, with his knife he would carve it into some kind of shape and all that.

And this box, you know, we always cherish his box because I mean, that's something that he made outta his own hands.

Not only at one time, just a small piece at a time.

But he kept all his war souvenirs in there.

World War II, the army came in and they gave him the option of either joining the army or going back to Mexico.

And my grandfather, my step-grandfather, his stepdad told him, "You know, son," he said, "You have no business in this war."

He says, "It's not your war."

And my dad, as patriotic as he was and everything else, he said, dad, he says, "As far as I'm concerned," says, "This country gave me everything I've got."

He says, "And I'll get my life for this country."

And immediately they shipped him overseas.

He was one of the soldiers that actually invaded Normandy.

And he told horror stories about that, you know, about every other person just dropping down as they were storming the beaches and everything else.

He was in the Belt of the Bulge.

And I remember telling us and how they were being shot at with artillery, and he got hit with a shrapnel from either a mortar or artillery, hit him in the back and knocked him out.

And he was buried in the snow.

He remembers waking up 18, 19 days later in the hospital in England.

His whole back was just, it looked like he had pepper all over his back.

And what it was, was just pieces of the shrapnel.

And my whole life, I just remember going in there and popping them out, like little blackheads.

But up until that day he died, he always had a lot of shrapnel on his back.

Dad always kept a lot to himself.

You know, he talked, you know, he talked about the war and all that, that, and I think a lot of times just trying to get, you know, release his anger a little bit, you know, from what had happened to him in the war and all of that, you know, so dad was always fighting.

Dad always liked to fight.

And he never liked to be pushed around.

And whenever he got drunk, you know, people pushed him, whatever, and he never tolerated that, you know, and back then I didn't understand it, you know, but, you know, having gone through the same thing as dad and, you know, understand about, you know, trying to get your frustrations out and all of that, you know.

The one question that he never wanted to be asked was, how many people did he kill?

Because it was a very private question.

But he would sit there, you know, we'd ask him questions about the war and all that, and he would tell us, you know, little stories and he'd take out the box and, you know, show us, you know, little things that he had in the box.

But dad had a lot of little hidden secrets in this little box.

At one point, he just take out a collar to get that he had from a German officer.

He had to crawl to a foxhole and overtake this foxhole where the Germans were and with his bayonet, he was able to kill the other German.

And at the time, he took his collar off and put in this little souvenir box.

I believe, yeah, he told me that he had cut his throat.

When I was 17 years old, I decided I wanted to join the service one day, and I asked my dad if he would sign for me.

And he says, "Well, son, if that's what you want, you know?"

He says, "Sure, you know, I don't want you to join, but you know," he says, "We'll, go ahead and sign the paperwork for you."

So he let me go in the Marine Corps and signed up for four years.

And unfortunately, you know, I guess destiny has, you know, had something else for me.

And almost the same thing happened to me that happened to my dad.

You know, I got hit with a bomb in Vietnam and came back, you know, spent about a year in the hospital myself, just like my dad.

First time my dad came over to the hospital, you know, he was very upset, very upset to what had happened to me.

And he got me and picked me up and hugged me, and he says, "You know what, mijo?"

He says, "Nobody does this to my son.

I don't care which one my sons it is, but nobody does this to any one of my sons and gets away with it."

He says, "I'm going to Vietnam, I'm gonna kick some ass."

And I said, because I'm so pissed off with those people, says, he said, "I can't see straight, I just need to go up there and feel like I need to go up there and take revenge for what they did to you."

And I didn't think much of it, you know?

And I figured, well, you know, dad just angry and happy to see me and all that, but low and behold, you know, he found a company that would take him overseas.

And so he went up to Vietnam and signed up for a year and a half.

He was 51 years old.

He met a captain.

He was a helicopter pilot, and they got to be real close buddies and all that.

And one night, you know, the captain just, you know, told my dad, you know, he says "El," he says, "Listen, I'm gonna go pick up some wounded soldiers."

He said, "Would you like to go with me as my machine gunner?"

And you know, being with my dad was off of work already, it was after hours, so he could do everything he wanted to.

So he says, "Yeah, I'll tag along with you."

So it kind of became a kind of a routine thing for him.

Every time the captain went out, you know, he decided that the only one he's gonna take out with him was my dad.

You know, if it was after hours, and this went along for, I guess for about a year.

One time, they just happened to stay in the club a little bit too long, you know, they stayed there till closing time.

And about an hour later, the captain comes up to my dad's barracks and says, "El," says, "Man, we gotta go."

He said, "We got some soldiers in real bad shape and we need to go pick them up."

And my dad said, "Man, I'll tell you."

He says, "I'm still drunk, man, I can't see straight right now.

So I'm afraid if I go with you."

He says, "You know, something's gonna happen, you know," he says, "I'm not gonna be able to respond."

So the captain says, "Okay, I'll get somebody else."

Captain never came back.

He got killed, the machine gunner got killed, and they never managed to pick up the wounded people.

So my dad took it real hard, you know.

I dunno whether he blamed himself or not, but he took it real hard after that.

And he just didn't go out anymore.

Dad started drinking a lot when he came back.

So dad used to go out there just, you know, just sit there and just drink, you know, most of the time.

He'd sit there with a quart of beer and, you know, and of course mama didn't want him there at the time because, you know, he was always drinking and all that.

Then he changed a lot when he came back.

Of course, you know, you expect that anybody goes over there.

Then one day, get a call from Mama and she tells me that dad is real sick.

I said, "What's wrong with him?"

She said, "He's got a tumor in his lung."

And I said, "Well, how bad is it?"

And mama told us that, uh... that he had six months to live, three to six months to live.

And this happened around, I guess it was April when she told us that.

And he passed away in August, August 12th, he had passed away.

So, I found out that partly from cancer and partly from Agent Orange.

I guess one time dad and I got drunk and, you know, we started talking and he told me about the whole thing, what, you know, what he had done and all that.

And he told me, he says, "I got everyone inside of a picture that hurt you, son."

At that point, you know, I realized how much he really cared for me.

You know, I never thought that dad, I always thought myself as the outcast of the family and that, you know, nobody really loved me and all of that.

And at that point, I, you know, I realized that dad had a lot more love for me than I ever thought, you know, he had.

You know, the way the way I look at it is my dad gave his life for me.

That's the way I look at it.

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