Film veteran

Screenwriter Patrick Duncan—whose films include Courage Under Fire and Mr. Holland’s Opus—is also a Vietnam War veteran. He wrote and directed 84 Charlie MoPic, (1989) shot in the style of “found footage,” a la The Blair Witch Project, to tell the story of soldiers in combat in Vietnam from an inside point of view. Duncan, who lives in Los Angeles, will appear at a screening of the film on March 23 at the Eldorado Hotel and Casino, 345 N. Virginia Street. A reception begins at 5 p.m., and the screening is at 6:20. Admission is free, and the VA Sierra Nevada Health Care System will provide free counseling for veterans during the event.

“MoPic” is short for motion picture operator, which is an actual job in the Army. Did you have a job as a mopic?

No, I was an infantryman. I was looking for a way to tell my Vietnam story, and I was watching the news one day, and a cameraman had caught a traffic accident. … It was all uncut, just raw footage, of them going upon the accident and helping the people and all, and I remembered the cameraman in Vietnam when I was there, and it just came together. … I thought, “Oh, if you don’t cut, it becomes more real.”

How did you go about making the film? Did you have access to that original footage to refer to?

Nope. I wrote the script, and I did storyboards, and had a great cameraman, and we just figured out how to move the camera within the scenes. Some of the scenes were pretty long. We had to figure the choreography out and everything. … My cameraman, he was really, really, really up for the task. You had to get the actors to a certain point where they were just talking instead of saying lines, and then you had to get the camera to look like it wasn’t anticipating what the shot was. At one point, we were running through the bush out in Newhall [part of Santa Clarita, California], and it was a little too smooth, and so I tripped the cameraman. And, to the credit of Alan Caso, the cameraman, he jumped up, and he said, “That was great! Thanks! That’s what I needed.” … We shot up just north of LA here, up by Magic Mountain. We dammed a little stream, not very environmentally friendly. … We sprayed the bushes green with paint. They were all drying out by the time we shot. I used sets that I’d had built for an HBO series that I was doing, and we just literally shot out in the brush out there, with trucks going by, the highway and everything.

Do you often show the film in situations like this one, where you expect the audience to be largely made up of veterans?

Yes, I’ve done quite a few veterans functions with the film. I believe that part of the problem of a good many vets is they never talk to anybody about what happened to them, and this prompts conversation. Usually, the guy says, “My unit, we did this,” or “When I was there, this is what happened,” because the war changed all the time, and every soldier’s experience is different. So, the differences pop up, and then we start talking about the commonalities. … I encourage them to do journals of their year, or their tour or whatever. I just think venting is part of the process. Even if you are just yelling at a piece of paper, that’s a start.

Are you formally involved in veteran’s writing groups?

Not much. I used to do a lot more here in LA and down in Orange County, but now it’s a different group of veterans, and they have their own war stories to tell—and to work out.