When I began this journey, I had a basic and singular objective: to know my father. Finding Peter Upton's article on the Internet was the catalyst. Almost immediately, I knew the discovery would change my life. The details of the ambush and my father's death were specific and real for the first time. And now that I knew how he died, I was overwhelmed by the need to know how he lived.
Now, two and half years later, I have an even greater sense of why I needed to do this - and the story the film tells. Sure, it's about who my father was — that he had a blond spot on an otherwise brown head of hair, several cavities even though he brushed with Crest after every meal and a nickname that meant "crazy." But it's also about the grief that kept me from learning those simple details until now.
I was surprised how many people were still so bitterly divided over the politics of the Vietnam War. There was an intense mistrust, which was a huge obstacle in learning about my father. People are quick to talk politics, not so quick to share the personal, human stories.
I was also surprised how raw the emotion was – that it wasn’t just my mother and me who had been silent about our pain, so many veterans and other children kept a similar silence.
It was important to have such supportive collaborators who gave me the room to make the film I wanted to make, and also had the sensitivity and compassion to encourage me to step back when I needed it.
It was an emotional, physical and logistical challenge to be both my father’s daughter — in the moment, learning the details of his death, talking to the men who rescued his body, hearing the stories of his life — and a filmmaker — thinking about the shot, making sure we had ample batteries and tapes, turning a camera on my mother and myself, despite our intense grief.
I am definitely still figuring it out. At times, I have to forget about the emotional aspects of this and just be the calculating filmmaker, thinking about story and members of my family as “characters.” At times, I have to tell the filmmaker to take a hike and not think about the intense business and work of filmmaking. In these snatches of downtime, I simply let myself take in the impact of all that has happened over the past two and a half years, to think about my father, how much it means now to know him, and how deeply I still mourn his loss.
One thing is certain, both the filmmaker and the daughter share one thing: an overwhelming sense that our story needs to be told.
Before March of 2001, my mother and I had not talked that much about my father. We'd never read his letters. We'd never looked through his trunk. But now we have. And those conversations have led to others — about how deeply the loss of my father hurt our family, and what we need to do now, thirty-three years later, in some small measure, to heal.
I have discovered that in the telling of stories, and in the learning of mine, there is relief. Just as finding the article on the Internet was the catalyst for my journey, I hope the finished film will serve as a catalyst for other journeys. If this film can help even a handful of others, in my eyes, it will be a success.
To see an independent film through, I think you need to be willing to go broke, to work 18 hour days, even when you don’t know how you’re going to pay the rent or your next minimum payment on your credit card, to think big and take risks, to pick yourself up and bounce back from criticism and rejection, to push past skepticism from family and friends – even those closest to you. You have to have a “fire in the belly” that cannot be put out by anyone.
Greenlight yourself.
Be honest. Life is too short to lie.
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