Latest / The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen / 458 - Would You Correct History If You Had A Chance? The Stringer by Bao Nguyen

Transcript

458 - Would You Correct History If You Had A Chance? The Stringer by Bao Nguyen · The Vietnamese with Kenneth Nguyen

• 0:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: Welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 0:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: Today is very special.
• 0:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: I am filming in Vietnam at the Vietnam, at the Vietnam Center of Studio.
• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: And thank you to Tui Ming and Hau Jun for letting us use this studio.
• 0:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: I have a dear friend of mine, Ba Wien.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's a film director from Los Angeles.
• 0:21
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's been on the podcast a few times and he's directed films
• 0:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: Bruce Lee's Bewater.
• 0:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's directed Greatest Night in Pop.
• 0:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's about the we are the world song.
• 0:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: And his latest film is called The Stringer, which releases on Netflix on November 28th, by welcome to the Vietnamese podcast.
• 0:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks for having me Ken.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm looking forward to the conversation.
• 0:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: Projects like this come to you and come to other directors and I wonder how these things actually show up in how they become part of, you know, asking you to be a part of a film like this?
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, different producers, different people from all walks of life approach me with
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm always, as soon as I hear the idea, I instantly try to see how I can make it into, you know, a ballet and film, like, see that reaction right away, and how I feel instinctually of it as a story, and is film the best way to tell the story, is that the best vessel to tell story.
• 1:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, I'm always interrogating whether or not, you know, it's, I'm the right
• 1:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: Storyteller for it if it needs to be a film, and why does it need to be told now?
• 1:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: So with the stringer, I received a random email from someone I didn't know, and as I said, I get a lot of proposals for ideas.
• 2:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I'm skeptical when I get an idea from someone I don't know.
• 2:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the journalist Terry Lickstein approached me and she told me that she had a crazy story about Vietnam that I never heard before and she had gotten my contact through a mutual colleague of mine.
• 2:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that made it a bit easier for me to
• 2:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: to decide whether or not to even take the call with Terry.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: So that's, you know, usually the case that there's a variety of different ways that I get approach with projects.
• 2:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And ultimately, why did you take this one?
• 2:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: So I mean, just to give the listener's context of what this film about, the stringer is a film about,
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: an investigation by a team of journalists and to the authorship of the very famous Naepom girl photograph as it's widely known about a young girl running away from a Naepom attacking in Vietnam.
• 3:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, you know, when I initially heard the story that the authorship was questioned,
• 3:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, I didn't know if I was the right person because, you know, that photograph has a lot of meaning to the Vietnamese communities all around the world.
• 3:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And
• 3:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: this narrative that a certain individual of the Vietnamese American named it took the photograph has been you know, sort of historical fact for the last 50 plus years.
• 3:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so to disrupt that narrative was something that I didn't know I wanted to do.
• 3:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, because it's a big responsibility.
• 3:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's very big.
• 3:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think
• 4:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially with my parent generation, the older generation of Vietnamese, we sort of like want the past to be the past and look forward and to extend the younger generation.
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I think in order to really be in a place of...
• 4:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: sort of moving forward, you do have to examine the past.
• 4:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can't just leave it behind, and there's different ways to confront it, different ways to interrogate it.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: And just knowing that there was a potentially another Vietnamese photographer who could have taken the photograph and who had sort of been denied his perspective for 50 years, I felt,
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I had sort of a duty to tell that story that hasn't been told.
• 4:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm, you know, I've been fortunate where I have a platform as a filmmaker whose work has been seen on Netflix and theatrically.
• 4:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I didn't want this film to be buried in a line of stories and films by Vietnamese about Vietnamese that, you know, it often happens in sort of the
• 5:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: challenges of distribution, and so I, after a few weeks of really being hesitant, I thought that this story deserved to be told, and I hope that I could be a filmmaker that handles it with sensitivity and care because I knew, given that it could cause disruption, I mean,
• 5:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I would approach it in a way that was, again, with a sense of empathy.
• 5:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: You brought up the fact that both photographers are Vietnamese.
• 5:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: If they weren't, if one was not Vietnamese, would you have done it?
• 5:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not sure, really, if I would have done it, I don't know if I would be going back to my criteria whether or not I take on a film.
• 6:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't know if I would have been the best person to take it on, but I knew because of the complexities of both photographers being Vietnamese that I can understand sort of the cultural,
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: challenges and hurdles that any filmmaker would have to leap over in order to make a film of sort of that valued everyone's dignity and cared for people's well-being.
• 6:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Do you think in the early days of trying to figure out if you were going to take on this project or not, that there was a time when you go, wow, that thing, that point or whatever that came up in the ether for you, was a deciding factor for you to take the project?
• 6:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was there any facts in the story that made you go, okay, I now have to do it?
• 6:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't think it was like a single factor.
• 6:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: It was sort of a build up of many different reasons
• 7:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you walk me through a few of those reasons?
• 7:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, as I mentioned earlier, the possibility of disrupting the community, and, you know, I had questions that I'm sure most viewers will have about this story is like, why did it take 50 years for someone to bring up the secret?
• 7:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's through the process of making the film that I realize, like, why, you know, people hold on to their secrets quietly through their life and don't feel like they have the agency to be able to tell their stories openly.
• 7:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that was, like, one reason, like, why now, again, I mean, I mentioned this early.
• 7:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like, why now am I the best person to tell the story?
• 7:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: And can this be, like, a battle in film?
• 7:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: So those are the factors.
• 7:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: In Greatest Night in Pop, I know that, you know, listening to other interviews and how you've structured that story was like through like a heist, right?
• 8:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's a ticking time bomb kind of device.
• 8:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: Was there a structural device for the stringer for you when you were thinking about all the components?
• 8:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, the film itself is
• 8:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, across between, like, and all the presidents men, political, thriller, or like, journalistic, investigative film, there's also this sort of mystery to the film.
• 8:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And finally, there's a human story.
• 8:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, with my films, I want to think about how sort of the,
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: histories of genre and ways to tell the story can help engage audiences.
• 8:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: So for me, I'm like into process films, especially films about journalism and investigation as someone in Barcelona, a journey and they're talking to people and revealing information then they're certain
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_00]: discoveries that an audience goes through, along with the person who's investigating the story, I think most people love mysteries for the same reason, and at the heart of it, I think the reasons that we sort of are junkie for stories, as they say, we love
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: emotion.
• 9:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: We want to see how something impacts us, like how we feel watching a film or hearing a story less so about the facts to be honest.
• 9:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so for me it was important to integrate all this into a very complex story and I hope we did a good job.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, from going back to the idea of the investigation, that was the only honest wave, I think, for me to tell this story, because that's what actually happened, these team of journalists get a phone call, or sorry, an email from a whistleblower, and they embark on this two-year investigation, and for me, I was
• 10:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Especially, you know, as a documentary filmmaker, in this instance, I wanted to follow and observe that journey and reveal information as it's being revealed to the journalists and how they're uncovering information.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that's why we have Gary Knight, the photojournalist, Terry Lickstein, and Fiona Turner.
• 10:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: being sort of the main conduits of the story.
• 10:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have a Vietnamese journalist, Le Van Hu, is pivotal in finding the stringer.
• 10:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, it would be a different type of film, if it was sort of just like a talking
• 10:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: device.
• 10:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: My thing is important for me again that it was as honest as it was when we were making the film and to be completely frank.
• 11:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: If the stringer went around telling everyone that he shot this photograph without having sort of the credentials that Gary had as, you know, a stein photojournalist founder of the seven foundation, which is a very prominent photo organization, then people would have thought he's
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: kind of crazy, like what evidence does he have?
• 11:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: So working through the team of journalists who have experienced doing this and also have access to power and these institutions that hold these archives in this information that's needed in order to reveal who the stringer is and the secrets of the film in a way was really important.
• 11:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I think about somebody like the stringer, if he was going around banging the drum, saying, I did it, I shot it, I'm the one, we wouldn't listen, there'd be no way.
• 12:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: But because there's these bonnified journalists that are exists in the world that are saying, hey, we have to examine this, he gets a shot at this.
• 12:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you think that there's a world where we, as people who are, you know, people who are making films like you would actually listen to somebody who like what in what world would you listen to somebody who was saying I shot this, you know, would you make something like that would it be something if he said here's all the evidence.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you make this?
• 12:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is really I did this and then would you go out and I think what I'm asking really is diversity or the sort of the position of power is brought to you versus somebody at the very at the bottom, you know, would you think that you would make it if Junge brought it to you?
• 13:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, it's completely hypothetical because Junge didn't have
• 13:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: any evidence like card evidence.
• 13:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm saying if he did, would you, how would we, I mean, like what would the heart of it and speak?
• 13:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, just to speak, sort of hypothetically.
• 13:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's hard for me to imagine, you know, because I've gone on this way through your journey.
• 13:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: So,
• 13:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I think what I'm saying is just really it's a game of power almost sometimes when I think about how these things are brought to the reality, to the world, right?
• 13:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's just if you have nothing but the fate that you did something like this versus, you know, institutions like AP, the Royator's BBC, I mean, it's really your voice against everybody else.
• 13:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: And even then it's questionable when big institutions bring it to the light.
• 13:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, certainly journalists are, you know,
• 13:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: One of the most privileged professions in the world, journalists can come into any spaces where they don't necessarily belong, ask questions, write a story, and they're, you know, for the most part, given an access, but as a man who hasn't,
• 14:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, lived that profession necessarily, since he went to America, just sort of living a quiet life in California.
• 14:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: He never felt that he has the agency.
• 14:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, journalist, I think they, you know, to their, it's the blessing and a curse.
• 14:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: They feel like they have the agency to ask questions and speak truth of power.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: When you are putting together these films,
• 14:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Because I know you're very, you manage your emotions and you manage the way your work flow goes.
• 14:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: But do you ever get moved emotionally when you meet somebody like Dung A at the end of the story or during the story do you, do you ever get moved and do you ever, does it ever affect the way you go about your work?
• 15:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thanks for finding a roundabout way to say I'm a very cold person, but I'm just kidding.
• 15:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, of course, I get moved, especially when I first met Junge and her story, I often say, like, when something moves me, you really know it, and there's a reason I get moved by it.
• 15:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, especially as a storyteller, it's like, how do I,
• 15:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: transfer that feeling that I got on the day and do the process on to a film and it's a tricky proposition but I think for me personally film is the greatest vessel to create empathy.
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean Roger Ebert, the famed film critic says that
• 15:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: film is an empathy machine, and I think it's better than any other art form as a whole to help people understand other people's perspectives and other people's experiences.
• 16:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, music, there's a very visceral feeling when you hear a song, you know, a three or four minute song, and it connects to you deeply, but it's still quite liminal and what it can do, a piece of art like on the wall can also give you a very immediate experience.
• 16:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what's film, especially as someone who makes film, the idea of crafting something that can travel through space and time and talk about time in a way that I don't think any like many other art forms can do is really powerful and so I'm I'm
• 16:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: very privileged again to like work in this medium, where I can hopefully move people in ways that I never expected.
• 16:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that's the best reaction when I'm watching a film with an audience where they're laughing at scenes that were intended to be funny and they're moved by scenes that were intended to, you know, be emotional.
• 17:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so that relationship
• 17:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to push back on that joke you made about you being cold.
• 17:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I push back on this joke may be it's a better turn.
• 17:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, I think you're one of the warmest people I know.
• 17:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And obviously I am a recipient of the warmth.
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it's very managed.
• 17:33
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I don't think it's cold, I think it's very warm.
• 17:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the reason I bring this up is you experience my coldness before those.
• 17:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I think the range of it, right?
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: The range of coldness, I would say I'm more cold than warm, but thank you for the compliment.
• 17:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the reason I bring it up is because when you are moved and that warmth overtakes you and you're at this for two years, you're going to archival, you're going to all the research.
• 17:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you know
• 18:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: what's true or not?
• 18:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: How do you know what the truth is when you're like, you have a troll of this information?
• 18:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how do you judge what you're looking at to be true?
• 18:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I mean, truth is such a sort of broad word, like by true, you mean factual, factual, I mean actual truth, how do you know?
• 18:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: that's you know the film is is following a team of journalists so it's up to their standard and their rigor to determine what's factually true for me as a filmmaker and this might sound as like a cop out but i'm looking for the emotional truth i'm not journalists like there's many documentary filmmakers who are journalists because they've studied
• 18:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: you know, they continue to university for journalism and filmmaking and again, they studied under a certain standard and rigor.
• 18:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: I haven't and I am very appreciative and an admiration of journalists and that's one of the reasons I made this film.
• 18:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's sort of a love letter to journalism in many ways to see where a question, where something that's not necessarily
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, I sort of left the factual truth up to the journalist in this film.
• 19:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've seen the film four times.
• 19:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe what the journalist that you've interviewed took me on this journey.
• 19:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I believe in certain things about what you've shown.
• 19:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: I've always wanted to ask you, do you really believe that Nick Oot did not shoot the picture?
• 19:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, you know, I don't speak in certainties.
• 19:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: I believe Wintungate took the photograph.
• 19:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want audiences though to watch the film with an open heart and an open mind and, you know, decide on their own.
• 19:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm not the arbitrator of,
• 19:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: who took the photograph, it's my belief that Ngay took it.
• 20:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: And when you went into making this film, did you think that way?
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you go on the video?
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, Ngay, it's you, Ngay, it all, how could I have?
• 20:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, the idea that Ngay couldn't shoot it.
• 20:13
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you go in saying, I'm going to let everybody else figure this out and I'll just document the journey?
• 20:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: For sure, yeah, I mean, I mean, I had skepticism, again, like I mentioned earlier, it's like, why is the story coming out?
• 20:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's the proof?
• 20:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: Like how can you prove something that happened 50th or years ago?
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so it took for me it wasn't until we met indexed the forensic team and in Paris and understanding how they how they recruited that day that I you know why I'm the belief changed of it To bring that part up that French team and you index right I
• 20:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I saw that in the film, it really solidified what was going on in a very technical way.
• 20:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: When did that happen through your journey of putting the film together?
• 21:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: Well, it was something that, you know, Gary, Fiona and Terry, they knew that they had all these people who were going to give perspectives and stories of that day, but that
• 21:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: So they knew that they needed something that was more concrete that, you know, more scientific, more, yeah, and they had heard about sort of the scientific approach to, you know, index has a lot of,
• 21:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: police shootings and looking at human rights abuses.
• 21:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so they decided, like, why don't we take this approach to the material we have of that day?
• 21:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, that day is well documented from different perspectives, different video footage, different photographs, and also interestingly enough, you know,
• 22:01
  [SPEAKER_00]: index utilizes a satellite photo, which was one of the very first satellite photos ever taken in the world, and this is November 1972, so a few months after that day, but a lot of those things were intact.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: And today, you know, Vietnam is very different from where there was back 50 years ago.
• 22:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: But having that satellite image was key to the forensic recreation.
• 22:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's funny, you know, the satellite would drop a piece of film on a little mini parachute, and a plane would catch that parachute, and that's how they got the film from satellites back then.
• 22:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: We're an incredible fact.
• 22:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: You and I have talked about this before.
• 22:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have a mutual friend that has called me out, like at events.
• 22:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we've talked about this idea.
• 22:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's his name?
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay.
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: Okay, but if you want, I've talked to you about this person.
• 23:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's a valid thing to talk about.
• 23:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: This idea of millions of dollars is put into a film like this.
• 23:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: This is his argument.
• 23:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: He didn't know how much money
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: He was saying millions of dollars is put into a project like this.
• 23:17
  [SPEAKER_02]: And he really went after the idea that that money could have been used for other Vietnamese stories to uplift the Vietnamese community.
• 23:30
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why do we have to strip down?
• 23:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: the Pulitzer winner of the Napalm Girls photo.
• 23:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why do we have to take that story down and reduce him?
• 23:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: And really, he really had a problem with the destruction of Vietnamese excellence.
• 23:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: Why can't we use the millions of dollars to make a movie that uplifts?
• 23:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I want to hear what your idea is.
• 23:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you have something that challenged that thought that he has?
• 23:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: This is before you saw the film right yeah before you saw the film I haven't had a chance to talk to me yet but for anybody who has that question how do you respond to that I mean this is a film about uplifting of Vietnamese perspective I don't see it as you know disenfranchising a perspective that's already been out in the world for 53 years so who do we look to in terms of like
• 24:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: who we decide, who's reputation is more important, a photographer who has been celebrated for 50 plus years, or a man who's been living in quiet isolation for 53 years with this story.
• 24:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And like, I mean, it might be easy for me to say that I'm not the arbitrator of what stories matter.
• 24:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I,
• 24:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: anyone can kind of sort of decide which stories they want to tell.
• 24:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: By denying me that agency to tell the story that I want to tell is that for thinking for us as a community, as a creative community, and you know, I think it's a very, it's very much a scarcity model, is, you know,
• 25:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It feels weird talking about this person without him having to be able to defend, so I don't want to get too deep into this, but just based on what you said, I hope that individuals like him can continue to fund and finance all different types of projects and not try to censor like, oh, this story deserves to be told, this story doesn't deserve to be told, I think, uh,
• 25:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: we should all welcome as Viet Tanne Winza's narrative plentitude.
• 25:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: Absolutely.
• 25:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I would also add that we approach Vietnamese investors for this film, and we didn't get any.
• 25:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: We had around 15 individual executive producers on this film.
• 25:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: This film was made very independently.
• 25:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can tell you
• 26:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: we did not make money making this film, that definitely didn't cost millions of dollars to make this film, and we were fortunate where Netflix decided to acquire it.
• 26:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think for me, I believe, you know, a rising tide lift all boats instead of, again, the scarcity model of like, oh, because,
• 26:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: You know, there's plenty of capital out there in the world to think that because this film got made, another film didn't get made, I think that's sort of like kind of a little backwards in a way.
• 26:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah, I agree with you.
• 26:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: I almost went to blows with the guy at the gallo that night.
• 26:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: If I were on the shelf and maybe, yeah, if I was drinking, like I didn't want to.
• 26:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: We would have, he was yelling at me, basically, why Balwyn would spend that kind of money on a film like this to bring the community down.
• 26:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I thought back, I said, like what you said, Vitton Wind said, we are not a monolith.
• 27:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have multitude, we should have a plentitude of room to really say and speak and make good films and make films of different perspectives.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, would you ever say that to a Western filmmaker?
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Exactly.
• 27:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Totally.
• 27:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why are you making this film?
• 27:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: You should have not made this film, so someone else had a chance.
• 27:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: Again, that model thinking I think is quite archaic.
• 27:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I appreciate you bringing that up because I think that that opens up for younger filmmakers, a path to say, hey, I'm going to, I can pick up skewer topics and still make a movie that really can move the world.
• 27:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: And we don't know how these things affect the world.
• 27:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, filmmakers are just, any Vietnamese, non Vietnamese, we should all be given the creative license to tell any story we want it.
• 27:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah.
• 27:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Speaking of telling stories we want,
• 27:56
  [SPEAKER_02]: You have a lot of really cool projects coming up in the next year.
• 28:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know you can't talk about them, but what kind of projects are you taking for the future?
• 28:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: What are you doing for the next year?
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you talk about that?
• 28:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I can't tell you about as you much, I mean, they're all different sort of variety of projects.
• 28:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't like to talk about my projects until they come out to be honest, because I'm a bit superstitious that way, so I'm, you know, this film comes out now and I think I'm very proud of this film and what it says and what it says about journalism about sort of the Vietnamese
• 28:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: people can see by other films once I finished them.
• 28:49
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 28:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: When I think about the two families that are affected by Jungei and Nick Oots, I think about the decision that you had to have made that affects the legacy of these two men for the rest of their lives.
• 29:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Did you put much thought into it or was it really sort of like you're going to just go and find the best story possible?
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, of course you wrestle with these decisions as you make it, especially in documentary film, you're dealing with real people in their lives and their reputations and their legacies.
• 29:32
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think we do a fair job of
• 29:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: very clearly declaring that it wasn't Nick's fault, you know, he was handed this to him.
• 29:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: He didn't take it.
• 29:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: And, you know, again, I want audiences to watch it and understand that perspective that, you know, this is a tragedy for everyone involved.
• 29:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not necessarily trying for anyone.
• 29:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I was very focused, you know, the film is called The Stranger.
• 30:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's not about Nick.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's about
• 30:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: and that sort of like North Star helped in how I made the film.
• 30:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I understand you guys actually put effort into finding Nicko or Kim Fook to interview them and I don't think they're part of the film.
• 30:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: Can you tell me a little bit about that journey and you know why they're not in the film?
• 30:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, I mean, when I first started the film, the first person I wanted to talk to who is Nick, I, you know, spoken to him before through mutual friends, we're not necessarily close, but I've always looked up to Nick as someone who,
• 30:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: As far as to be a photo journalist when I was younger, because yeah, I met a lot that of Vietnamese photographer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the world press photo award, and that was a beacon to our community for a long time.
• 31:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: So, of course, I want to hear his perspective and understand like, um,
• 31:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: where this is all coming from, and so I reached out through mutual friends and never heard back, and Gary, who also knows Nick, reached out to Nick, I think like 15 times, through different people, through different sort of methods, and we know Nick had seen the messages but didn't reply, and I mean I can completely understand why Nick wouldn't reply
• 31:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: would hope that his voice is in the film and it is through archival interviews and things that he said in the past.
• 31:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: So it's not like he's totally his perspective is not absent from the film.
• 31:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And Kim Fulke, I have the utmost respect for, you know,
• 31:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: what she endured that day and what she's endured since then and becoming an ambassador for peace and a staunch anti-war advocates since then is very meaningful and I never want to sort of diminish that legacy in any way of what they both had done sort of in the advocacy against war.
• 32:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, you know, we reached out to Kim Folk, and she didn't want to participate, and I completely understand.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yeah.
• 32:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: And at any point, did you have to reach into the community in Orange County or, you know, in the United States, the Vietnamese American diaspora?
• 32:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: Any elders or any people that were somebody that you would think that their opinion mattered due to sensitivity, the topic or feelings that the community might have had, did you ever consult with anybody?
• 32:52
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, we definitely consulted and talked to people in the community and it's shown their sort of opinion in the cut of the film.
• 33:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: And how much weight do you have to give to that?
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: The voice of the community?
• 33:17
  [SPEAKER_00]: They're part of the community, so their voice and their perspective is what the most heavy on me and their family's perspective.
• 33:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: and so that's what the film is about, you know, as a filmmaker by like carving something from what seems like it's monumental from something that's very intimate, you create something that's universal and so by telling these very intimate stories they become representatives for
• 33:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: the community that you're talking about, like, are they not part of that community?
• 33:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: Yes and no, I would think that as participants of a documentary, maybe I wouldn't consider them part of any, you know, like Issa or Vala or any of the bodies that are sort of like running these cultural networks,
• 34:10
  [SPEAKER_02]: they're not part of that.
• 34:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's I think more the people that I'm asking about.
• 34:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But the film itself is about the stringer, again, the title of the film is the stringer.
• 34:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: So why pull yourself away from the intimacy and the proximity to the story of the people that you're making.
• 34:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: When I try to make a film, I made a film about Bruce Lee.
• 34:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I've seen a lot of Bruce Lee documentaries in the past.
• 34:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: They might get Kobe Bryant to talk about Bruce Lee.
• 34:39
  [SPEAKER_00]: I love Kobe Bryant, and someone who wants to know the story of a person and the individual on a micro level, why does Bruce Lee's opinion, I mean, why does Kobe Bryant's opinion matter than my own opinion?
• 34:55
  [SPEAKER_00]: I don't want to hear myself speak.
• 34:57
  [SPEAKER_00]: I want to talk to the people who are intimately involved.
• 34:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: That's a great question.
• 35:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: I would think that there's sensitivities within the community within the diaspora.
• 35:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: that would maybe hold you back or make you go forward even more like lean into it even more.
• 35:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't make a film by committee.
• 35:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: I'm a filmmaker who has a vision.
• 35:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think after the film is made, once it is, you know, becomes a film that I have authorship and
• 35:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: that I believe is my film, you know, Ocean Wolf looks about this a bit as an artist, as a writer, he makes his books, he writes his books, like any artist, and it's like building a raft, right?
• 35:44
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you build that raft to your standard, to your belief,
• 35:48
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then you set that raft off down the river and that's when it doesn't belong to you or belong to the rest of the world And so for me once I've made the film that I wanted to make then it belongs to everyone else, and you know I can talk to every which person about I don't I don't understand like what I would ask them about
• 36:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: Because do they know June A, do they know what happened that day?
• 36:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: So you have to have a clear vision of what the film and the story is.
• 36:18
  [SPEAKER_00]: This story is not about, I mean, you know, again, when you touch upon things that are intimate, then it speaks naturally to the universal.
• 36:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you try to please everyone, then what type of film are you going to end up making?
• 36:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: No, and I really appreciate that answer because I think a lot of us are influenced by community leaders in the diaspora and it inhibits our vision and our versions of what we want to put out.
• 36:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think when young people hear you say that, it's really empowering to say, you know what?
• 36:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm going to really put my vision out there regardless of what.
• 36:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: the community thinks and I think that's very important.
• 36:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I don't want to say like I don't want to be dismissive of what the community thinks necessarily but you're making art like you're there's a difference between if you're making art and something
• 37:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's hard for me to imagine making anything but film and art.
• 37:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: And you have to trust your instincts as an artist.
• 37:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: The sensitivity part, for sure, like we have amazing producers as part of our internal team, like Jenny Chenle, you saw cuts.
• 37:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, it's not like,
• 37:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I made this in sort of isolation and then showed it to the world.
• 37:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think we've been very sensitive and different people have seen it.
• 37:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: But if you show it to everyone, who does it belong to and sort of the authorship of it?
• 37:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Certainly when you show it to the world, then it belongs to the world.
• 37:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think cinema itself is, again, relationship between the viewer and the audience, but the crafting of that cinema has to be your own.
• 38:00
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming that every project that you make changes you in some way.
• 38:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm assuming that.
• 38:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think, if that's true, how has the stringer changed you?
• 38:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, I think it would be, yeah, it would be a lie to say that film's so unchanged.
• 38:23
  [SPEAKER_00]: I mean, you change just in time thinking about
• 38:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: When you make a film, it takes time, you know, usually two years or so, maybe a little less.
• 38:33
  [SPEAKER_00]: But as a person, over time, hopefully we all change.
• 38:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so, I like to learn from each experience and bring that experience on to my next project.
• 38:46
  [SPEAKER_00]: And certainly this one has changed me.
• 38:50
  [SPEAKER_00]: Just, you know, I think,
• 38:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: We, you know, when we first started this project, we came in thinking, this is a noble pursuit of the truth, of finding a person who, again, whose story has been denied.
• 39:10
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I still think that's true, but now I'm open to hearing all these different perspectives of like, what will it do to someone's reputation and
• 39:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: Um, and I, I also knew this coming into it, but, um, you know, again, having an open perspective of like,
• 39:29
  [SPEAKER_00]: someone sees it and they don't necessarily have to agree with my own decision of who took the photograph and that's completely okay and I you know it's a slight difference of like films I made in the past which are sort of like celebrations and and and exercise and joy in many ways and this is a complex film that's going to leave some controversy and understandably I know why it's controversial because it
• 39:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: It leaves reputations and tatters in some ways.
• 40:04
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I'm more open and understanding that that noble pursuit might not be viewed as noble from some people who have relationships with different individuals.
• 40:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: About thank you so much for sitting with me in conversation today about the Schringer.
• 40:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: I want to remind audiences that it releases on Netflix November 28th here in 2025.
• 40:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you once again, Bial.
• 40:37
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I also want to thank David Settler, team, to me and how John for letting us use our studio.
• 40:44
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks again, Bial.
• 40:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thank you.
• 40:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Thank you for listening to the Vietnamese with Kenneth Wynne.
• 40:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: Special thanks to Brittany Tran, to Jane Wynne, Catherine Wynne, Tina Fam, Sydney Jamie, and Crystal Tran.
• 40:57
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please find us on Instagram, Facebook and TikTok at the Vietnamese podcast.