From: drk@cs.uiuc.edu (David Kohr)
Subject: Re: Oliver Stone's Latest Vietnam Film
Organization: University of Illinois, Dept of Comp Sci, Urbana, IL
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 23:40:13 GMT

In article <1992Dec15.110958.12794@waikato.ac.nz>
hist1261@waikato.ac.nz writes:
>Apologies if this request is somewhat misplaced, but does anyone out there
>have any information concerning Oliver Stone's latest Vietnam film which
>apparently is being shot as I write in Thailand.
>
>thanks in advance.
>
>Richard.

I think this old posting has something to do with that film:

Article: 13637 of soc.culture.vietnamese
From: inxs@phoenix.austin.ibm.com
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: Heaven on Earth
Date: 17 Jul 92 22:33:35 GMT
Organization: IBM, Austin

It is a slow day on S.C.V, so I gonna throw in my impression of the
book 'Heaven' by Le Ly Hayslip which will be made into a Stone movie.
Have a good weekend! 



It will be hard for Mr. Oliver Stone to pick a better story for his
next movie about the Vietnam war.  We had seen many movies about  
that war from the American point of view, but this will be the first 
if not the last time we'll get to see it from a Vietnamese perspective. 
The story of Ms. Le Ly Hayslip is the story of the people who really
bore the brunt of the Vietnam war's destruction.  It is a story about 
millions of poor, innocent peasants in the small hamlets of VN who became
entangled in a fight for ideologies they knew nothing about or really
cared to.  In the battle for the hearts and minds of these people, both 
sides of the war ended up destroying their lives so completely.

The VC used these people and their hamlets strategically as supply depots  
and hiding places through terrorizing and propaganda.  The So. VNese 
and US troops destroyed these people's villages before they could get 
to the VC. ('we had to destroy it in order to save it').  The VC beated
up on them at night, the government troops beated up on them in the daytime.  
A double whammy!  These people kept getting uprooted and their homes kept
getting burnt down times and again; and as soon as the gov't troops  
moved out from the new places, the VC moved right in and the cycles repeated. 

I used to watch images of pain and suffering from these people and
wonder to myself how many more times can they rebuild their lives?  They 
must have been the ones who suffered the most from the war, and I am glad 
that finally someone will tell their stories.  It was a lot worse than I
could have imagined.  The war did not only destroy their lives and
properties, it totally broke down all human decency as recounted in the 
story by Ms. Le Ly.
 
If Mr. Stone could make this movie anywhere close to 'Platoon', we will
have a 'hell' of a movie.  It will be heart-wrenching and painful for 
most of us to watch, but the brutal truth of war's ruthless path on 
humanity never was pretty.  If you expect 'Gone with the Wind' then forget 
it, it'll be more like 'Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Hell 
But Was Afraid to Watch'.

The end, however, will be uplifting because despite all the unimaginable  
suffering by Ms. Le Ly, she found new hope and held her life together
in her adopted land.  She managed to help the US vets, at one time her
enemies, to heal their pain and in the process probably heal herself. 
Her story is a story of extraordinary courage and human resiliency, 
and it really gives us hope for the future.  Especially for those of  
us who were there during the darkest of days, any problems we face now
probably seem trivial.  We know that hopeless days will end.  It will bring 
back memories best left behind, but it can be healing for some.

For a little girl from a small hamlet in Vietnam, she has come a long way.
And for Mr. Stone, more power to him for again blazing a new path in telling
a story that should be told about the Vietnam war. 

Don

----
Dave
-- 
Dave Kohr     CS Graduate Student     Univ. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Work: 3244 DCL, (217)333-6561  Home: (217)359-9350  E-mail: drk@cs.uiuc.edu
                   "One either has none or not enough."
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese