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Interview with Filmmaker John Hulme
HBO
What compelled you to make this movie?
JOHN HULME
Well, I come from a writing background, and had always in the back of my mind wanted to make a movie. I
got some equipment, and had actually started shooting a sort of half- real, half-fictional documentary movie about
pick up basketball. It was going to be kind of like "Endless Summer" meets basketball. And I was going to drive
around the country with some of my rivals from this local playground, and we were gonna go to all the places
around the country and look for the best game.
Around that time I had been dating the woman who's now my wife, and we were just still kind of getting to
know each other. And one night she started asking me about my father, you know what was he like, how did he die,
was it weird that she was Jewish and my dad was Catholic? And I started to get kind of annoyed at her, feeling
like I was being picked or prodded at. And I said, why don't you just ask my mother? I got kind of nasty because
I didn't know any of the answers. And it was really the first sort of bad moment we'd had in our relationship.
And after it was over I was like, wow, that was weird. I don't know why I was acting that way, because
most people don't really ask you those questions. I'd say, my father died in Vietnam, and I kind of made it
clear, right in the same sentence that it wasn't a big deal, that it wasn't like I lost a father, I just never had
one.
And so-in retrospect, as I was trying to analyze the moment, I remember thinking to myself that the whole
thing stemmed from this kind of weird embarrassment I felt that she was going to think that I hadn't come to terms
with my father's death, and I had father issues. It was a slap in the face moment of, holy shit, I've got father
issues and haven't come to terms with his death.
And so I had this equipment, and just as something to encourage me to do it, I decided to record a couple
of phone calls and just float the idea past some of my father's soldier buddies that I had phone numbers for, but
had never contacted.
I was very nervous to talk to Vietnam veterans because of the experiences they must've had over there. And
the movie opens with the very first phone call I made which was to a guy named Dennis Headapohl, and I said to
him, hey this is John Hulme, Jack Hulme's son, and it was the first time he'd ever talked to me. He was like, my
God I've been prayin' thirty years for you to call me.
And it was like I just stumbled on the right path. It was just that simple. In the interim, I floated the idea
past a couple people. Like, hey, whadda you think about me doing a documentary about trying to find out who my
father was? And everybody reacted so strongly and supportively. It was other people's enthusiasm that galvanized
me.
Because there's a family wide fear that maybe something terrible had happened to him over there, that maybe he'd
been killed by his own men or some horrible stuff like that. And that had prevented me, over the years, from ever
really delving into it.
So, I made that call. And then the next two or three people I called all burst into tears when they heard my
voice. I was like, this is something I gotta do.
HBO
It sounds like you were trying to resolve something, internally, for yourself. You kind of tossed yourself
into the deep end of exploration.
JOHN HULME
There were always two things-sometimes they were together and sometimes they were at odds with each other:
I had this internal thing that was my need to take this on, the need to find out who he was. It just seemed so
obvious suddenly, in a way that it never had before. It was a huge mystery in my life that I had just avoided
over the years.
And at the same time it was like I had a lifelong dream of making a movie, and was feeling really
creatively frustrated by my inability to get the screenplays I was writing in order. And, strangely enough, the
father issues manifested itself all over projects that I was writing. And autobiographical memories of being a
child without a dad always seemed to work their way into the story, but I never put two and two together, and so.
It was just a perfect confluence of really wanting to make a movie, and the need to get into my father, and one
sort of fed the other.
My personal expectations were that I knew it was going to be an intense experience, but I was prepared to
do it. I was not afraid to deal with what was going to happen. I think I was more afraid of to fail as a
filmmaker than I was as a son.
HBO
What was the most difficult challenge that presented itself to you as you began?
JOHN HULME
I think the most difficult challenge was feeling like I was walking on eggshells in particular around the
vets. Because growing up at my age, born in 1969, I was heavily influenced by the Vietnam myth spread by
Hollywood, and the traumatic stories. And I had kind of avoided reading any of the key Vietnam literature for just
not wanting to know. So I was always terrified that I was going to say something that offended somebody. And
knew that there was a tremendous amount of emotion around the whole thing, for everybody, in particular my Mother.
And so I was real hesitant over that.
The nice thing about all these guys was that you could tell that none of them had talked about it with
their wives or kids, at all. And, that they all felt kind of duty bound to my Father to talk to me.
And so at every stage of the journey talking to these guys, they always made it clear that I was not
trespassing, and that it was okay. And even when I asked a question that they maybe didn't want to answer, they
were more than happy to tell me.
HBO
What surprised you most in the making of the film?
JOHN HULME
So few people had anything negative to say about him. The thing that had been told to me over the years
was what a great man your father was, and somehow, it didn't seem believable. I mean, he was only twenty-two when
he died, so there's not much one can say except he drank too much occasionally and he had a bad temper sometimes.
But, my Mother was willing to really speak of the negative sides of his personality and really-I think,
knew him better than anybody, and I think that was a testament to their love that he was able to do that. And,
you know, reveal those things to her. And she was certainly willing to talk about that.
I had amazing conversations with almost everybody involved, but the key one was with my mother, because,
obviously, she and I were very close, but this was a huge thing that she'd wanted to talk about with me, that I
had pretty much made clear I never wanted to talk about at all.
And so, that was the one conversation I dreaded most, because I knew that to go there with her I was going
to have to deal with what she'd lost and really empathize with it for the first time.
HBO
One of the things that really stuck out in the movie was your Grandfather and Mother's conflicting points
of view about the war.
JOHN HULME
That's totally true. They were sort of diametrically opposed forces on him. My grandfather comes from a
completely different world than my mother, in terms of being a World War Two veteran and being extremely patriotic
and pro anything that America does and, in terms of military action, and not really questioning his own
patriotism.
My Mother was raised in a Jewish family, and had a brother who was a protestor. When she met my father she
was twenty-one, and was enjoying life-it was just before innocence was lost, you know? It was still the mid to
late sixties when they met, and the opposition to Vietnam hadn't fully started yet. There were protests, but in
'67, it was just starting to go sour.
I think my Mother loved my grandfather, but back then she had a tremendous amount of resentment towards
him because he wouldn't come to the wedding, he made her do this whole sort of Catholic ritual for him to even
acknowledge her. And then she blamed him for making my Father go to war.
They are definitely the two heroes of the movie outside of my father himself. And I think the great thing
was that both of them came at me with utter honesty, in particular my Grandfather, who I'd never talked to that
way before. He was always just kind of stern, authoritarian figure when I was a child, and then as I got older he
became kind of this benevolent, loving-lovable old man, but I had never talked to him about anything real.
You can see him kind of reconciling with these decisions that he made, that he was so sure were right
thirty years ago, and, knowing-you know, kind of regretting. And, I felt like I really admired the fact that he
really was honest, and I walked into that conversation like shaking with nerves, and I never held back anything,
any question from him. And that was so amazing to talk to a ninety two year old man like that.
HBO
Do you think your Grandfather had doubts about that war?
JOHN HULME
I don't think he had any doubts at all. I think he thought the protestors were immature, insolent kids,
and completely wrong.
And I think that he thought that my father was a hero for going to Vietnam and for doing what was right,
and what he should be doing.
As the years have gone by, I think, it's made it a little bit harder to deal with since the truth has come
out about what Vietnam was all about, and how it went down.
HBO
He does have that unflinching belief in the Service.
JOHN HULME
He does. And I think there's something so compelling about him, and I remember-it was really like I was
meeting him for the first time myself. And his patriotism is ultimately kind of psychotic and seductive at the
same time. You know? It's like, wow, what a beautiful vision of what America is, and could be that you want to
believe in it, and yet, the lack of questioning or even looking at it, what it really is is what got us there in
the first place.
At the same time there's also his faith in God-it's like, when you hear Mamere, my grandmother and Pa
talkin' about God it's like somebody that was next door to them. You know, it's not an issue [LAUGHS] like most
of us who believe in God, or try to believe in God, or don't believe in God.
He really believed that that faith and that personal relationship was going to carry his beloved son home,
and it didn't.
There's a great story that didn't make it in the movie that my Aunt Mary told me, where after he learned
that my father had died, my grandpa disappeared into the woods for hours, and the whole family was gathered, they
didn't know where he was. And then he came back hours later, and he was crying and no one knew what to say. And
he was like, I thank God that he gave me twenty two years with that boy.
And somehow he was able to accept that. And I don't remember it, but my cousins told me that when I would show up
at family events, every now and then he would get caught up with emotion and have to leave the room because of how
much I looked like him.
When you lose the person you love so deeply, your whole world view is shattered, or at least, threatened. It
certainly destroyed my Mom for a long time.
HBO
It seems like the experience of allowing you to interview her for the film was extremely cathartic for
your mother.
JOHN HULME
Absolutely. Like I said, we were extremely close, especially over the last ten years, but this was the
one area that was just a barrier between us, and that sort of fell away. This was really the first time I'd cried
for her, with her, ever.
To hear her tell the story of the moment when she found out he was dead was like being physically injured,
to be in her presence-for me. But through that I felt I understood my mother for the first time. We understood
each other for the first time, really.
And for me after hearing that, I was like, we've got to go to Vietnam. I need the story not to have ended
in 1969. I need it to continue now and have a happier ending. And I think it becomes clear how all this worked
out for her, physically and spiritually, thirty years after the fact.
HBO
What have the reactions to the film been like?
JOHN HULME
The reactions have been awesome. It really has been great. What makes me happiest is that everybody
seems to take something different away from it. I've shown it at my mother-in-law's retirement community. And
they lived through that time, and sort of really experienced it through the eyes of my mother and father.
I showed it to college kids at Rutgers University in the Vietnam class and they experienced it as people
who are the same age as those who are now at war in Iraq. You know-how would I have faced those same challenges
in 1969?
I'm also excited about the fact that politics isn't really what this movie is about. We didn't really deal with any of the politics of Vietnam. This is more about a son trying to get to know his Dad.
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