Episode 3: “What a Strange Country”
‘Do We Get to Win This Time?’ is a podcast about how Vietnam movies have shaped the way we think about the Vietnam War. In Episode 3, host Brian Raftery compares the production and reception of two very different films about Vietnam vets returning from war that premiered within weeks of each other in 1978: ‘The Deer Hunter’ and ‘Coming Home.’
Do We Get to Win This Time? is a podcast about how Hollywood has depicted and defined the Vietnam War. You can listen on the Big Picture feed. The following is an excerpt from Episode 3: “What a Strange Country.”
Thom Mount was in his 20s when he began working at Universal Pictures in 1973. It was a transitional period for Hollywood: New blood was coming into the studio system. But an older generation of moguls—one that included Mount’s boss, the legendary Universal head Lew Wasserman—was still in power.
“I felt that I was very, very lucky to have a job at Universal at all,” Mount says. “And ridiculously lucky that they let me make pictures. I felt like I was on a 30-second option all the time, and the minute Mr. Wasserman was unhappy enough, I’d be gone.”
Mount had been involved with the protest movement before getting into the film business. He’d been a member of two leading anti-war groups: the Students for a Democratic Society and the Indochina Peace Campaign, where he worked alongside Jane Fonda. Mount was part of a group of Hollywood newcomers with backgrounds in politics or activism. They were determined to make movies that reflected the values of their generation.
But not long after walking onto the Universal lot, Mount discovered that the legendary studio—and some of the people running it—were still living in the past.
As mythic as the late ’60s and early ’70s have become for film lovers—and it was an amazing period for smart, vibrant movies—the big studios were still behind the times, logistically and culturally.
Sure, there were movies like Easy Rider, the daring 1969 biker flick about a group of young outsiders who journey across a broken America. But there were also countless drab dramas and dopey “Who asked for this?” kinds of comedies.
By then, the film industry was more than a half century old, and some studio execs had been in power for decades. Their resistance to change showed in the movies they championed and the ones they fought against.
Case in point: After Mount became president of production, he green-lit a low-budget 1976 comedy called Car Wash. It had a multiracial cast, including Richard Pryor and the Pointer Sisters. Not everyone at the studio was thrilled. But a revolution was coming, whether the old guard liked it or not.
One project that got Mount’s attention at Universal was The Deer Hunter. The movie’s origin story is tangled—even by the standards of big-studio Hollywood, where movies can take years to come together.
But here’s the compressed version: In the mid-1970s, a British company called EMI Films bought the rights to The Man Who Came to Play, a script about two hustlers who set up rigged Russian roulette games in Vietnam.
The Man Who Came to Play soon found its way to Michael Cimino, a commercial director turned filmmaker who’d recently directed the Oscar-nominated action-comedy Thunderbolt and Lightfoot. Cimino wanted to take the Russian roulette scene and spin it into an entirely new movie about Vietnam.
That’s where Deric Washburn came in. He was a playwright who’d met Cimino in the early ’70s, when they worked on the script for the sci-fi cult film Silent Running. As Washburn remembers, Cimino was prone to bold statements and gestures. Even then, there was an air of mystery around the director.
“He had a Rolls-Royce,” Washburn says. “I didn’t know anyone who had a Rolls-Royce.”
In addition to money, Cimino had momentum, thanks to the success of Thunderbolt. That meant EMI had to commit to the Russian roulette script quickly or risk losing the rights. After several phone calls discussing the plot, Washburn found himself in a hotel just off the Sunset Strip. He and Cimino spent three days there, jamming on an outline.
By all accounts, the original script for The Man Who Came to Play was stripped away of every element, except for the Russian roulette scene. That moment would wind up halfway into The Deer Hunter, after the three buddies—played by Robert De Niro, Christopher Walken, and John Savage—are imprisoned.
Soon, De Niro and Walken are forced at gunpoint to play Russian roulette for their captors. If you saw The Deer Hunter in the theater—or if you caught it on cable or in a history class—this scene would stay with you long afterward. It still rattles me now, decades after I first watched it.
That sequence—nauseating, drawn out, and unbelievably bleak—would fuel the rest of The Deer Hunter. All three men survive the ordeal, but Walken’s character becomes so addicted to the thrill of Russian roulette that he stays behind in Vietnam, seeking out underground games for money.
The Russian roulette scene was controversial from the get-go. To some, it dehumanized the Vietnamese, portraying them as nameless, blood-thirsty brutes. Others point out there was no Russian roulette in Vietnam.
It all shows how a real-life event can be rewritten when sensation trumps actual information. I mean, because of The Deer Hunter, I thought Russian roulette in Vietnam was a real thing for years. And I’m sure I’m not alone.
