Interview with Screenwriter
DANIEL GIAT
(Daniel Giat wrote the screenplay for the film, Path to War. He spoke with HBO from his home in Massachusetts.)
HBO: Welcome Daniel Giat. To begin with, tell us about the genesis of the project for you as screenwriter.
DANIEL GIAT: Well, it was only eleven years ago. [LAUGHS] It began when I read a series of articles in The New Yorker, which were excerpted from Clark Clifford's memoir called "Council to the President," which is about his entire career. And by the way he wrote that with Richard Holbrook, our former ambassador to the United Nations, and now an ambassador-at-large, who actually had worked in the Pentagon and knew Clifford somewhat.
Clifford was Secretary of Defense after Robert McNamara left the Pentagon in late 1967, he actually stayed through February '68, but Clifford was pretty much appointed at the end of '67. And a very interesting portion of that book had to do with the escalation of the Vietnam War in the summer of 1965. And there had been some very strong choices in favor of escalation, strongest of which was Robert McNamara's own.
But it was a very little known fact that there was opposition against the escalation within the White House, from the lone voice of the Under-Secretary of State George Ball, who worked under Dean Rusk. Now Dean Rusk was something of a hawk, like McNamara on this subject. But Ball was very eloquent, and very knowledgeable, he was actually more expert in European affairs than Southeast Asian. But he had some very, very strong, passionate ideas about the war. And President Johnson respected him enormously. And he listened to every word he said and he liked having him there in that Cabinet room. So Ball was arguing against escalation for a long time.
At some point in the spring of '65, Johnson asked Clark Clifford who did some legal work for him and was sort of an outside advisor - not in government at that time - asked him to start to think about this subject because he was extremely troubled, and he knew he'd be facing this decision fairly soon. So, Clifford read up on Vietnam, read all he could, he was aware of Ball's opposition. And he was asked to come in and attend a series of Cabinet meetings in July '65, on the eve of the decision to escalate. And he became an ally of George Ball's.
And so he and Ball were really the voices arguing against escalation, which, as we know, President Johnson went ahead and did anyway, with so many other voices in favor of it. So, it was those articles I had read, that discussed this little-known fact of the opposition to the escalation that spurred me and made me see just what a great dramatic story this was.
HBO: So, once you found a way into the story, how did you then proceed?
DANIEL GIAT: Well, the aspect I just discussed, about the debate over escalation, is a very important part of the story, but it's not the whole story. But delving into that was something of a jumping-off point for me to begin to learn about President Johnson and Robert McNamara, who were the two key figures here, and they are in the movie. And, as I read more and more about President Johnson and conducted interviews and did some primary research at the LBJ Library in Austin, I saw that this was a very, very troubled man, a man who had great plans for this country, who succeeded in much of that in his domestic legislation, his so-called Great Society...who was not an expert in foreign affairs, not adept at foreign affairs the way Kennedy had been. It was said that Kennedy was his own Secretary of State. And on numerous occasions, you know, it looked like Rusk might be fired for something like that. Well, Johnson needed Rusk desperately because he had no facility with foreign affairs, he had done some traveling but didn't do much policy-making.
And so, I saw that Johnson was sort of at a loss in deciding what to do about Vietnam. He did a lot of talking about it with confidantes, including Senator Richard Russell, who had been his mentor in the Senate, was sort of an older gentleman, a Senator from Georgia. He was his confidante and there are telephone recordings of Johnson which have been released, you know, in which you hear Johnson agonizing over this decision and Russell telling him, don't do it, it's a mess, you'll be sorry. And Johnson saying, I know it, I know it, but I have to do it. I have to, if I don't go in, you know, the right wing will accuse me of being soft on Communism.
And there were elements of the left wing that might also take advantage of that, including Bobby Kennedy, which is kind of an ironic twist. Because even though Bobby Kennedy thought that his own brother probably would've eventually disengaged from Vietnam, he was a contender for the Presidency, whether he announced it or not, it was pretty much certain, everyone expected that at some point he would run for President. And he was very cunning. And Johnson expected that if he disengaged from Vietnam, Kennedy would jump all over him and say that he wasn't living up to the promise his own brother had made in his commitment to our allies in Southeast Asia.
So he was very frightened of attack from both sides, and equally strong, he felt it equally from both sides, he was genuinely very, very fearful of Bobby Kennedy and the whole Kennedy wing.
HBO: You balance the public and private sides of Johnson very adeptly, maintaining a great deal of intimacy within such a large canvas. Was that a challenge for you?
DANIEL GIAT: It wasn't just a challenge, it was an absolute goal in telling this story. I do not believe in conspiracies, I do not believe in cabals, I believe in human beings, I believe in flaws. I believe in a bunch of men sitting around the table making the very best decision they think they can make, based on a variety of factors, none the least of which is their own ambition, and their own lust for power.
Robert McNamara for instance, harbored personal doubts about our policy in Vietnam as early as January of '66, and yet, he didn't begin to advise the President to begin to change course in Vietnam until many months later. And you could ask why? And I came to the conclusion that, well, it's hard to admit defeat when you've been advocating as forcefully as he had for a few years, to make this commitment in Vietnam. And I have to believe that his own ambition and his ego, his inability to admit defeat, played into that, had something to do with that.
And I think after all, these are the kinds of people who seek high position in government - men, and now, more women - who are ambitious, highly, highly intelligent people, but, who have very strong egos, who even lust for power. I don't know how anyone could seek the Presidency without being an egomaniac. That's one of the paradoxes of our system.
HBO: Mm-hmm.
DANIEL GIAT: So, you've got many people like this in high position, and President Johnson was one. Robert McNamara certainly another. And there were others too. But I think these are human traits, these are traits we all embody to one degree or another. They did to an extreme degree. But it's a very human thing, and I wanted to tell the story about human beings, not machines.
The thing about conspiracy theories is they, they're sort of based on the idea that people operate as machines, as automatons, and are not free-thinking and are not ambivalent. But these are men who were extremely ambivalent, but wouldn't express that ambivalence in an official way, only privately for a long, long time, until it became quite evident that our policy was going to fail, and they were forced to change course. Which is ultimately what happened, after tens and tens of thousands of Americans were dead and a couple of million Vietnamese.
HBO: We've seen many, many Vietnam movies. Why is this one different?
DANIEL GIAT: Well, the Vietnam movies I've seen and the ones we've mostly seen are combat movies, movies which take place on the battlefield. I mean look at Platoon, look at the recent, We Were Soldiers. Those are movies mostly about heroism, also about the plight of our GI's there, and the failure of that policy on the battlefield. Well, I haven't written combat movies, but I've written about Vietnam, sort of on other fronts, on the anti-war front, for instance.
And delving into this subject I came to see very clearly that the first front of this war was the threshold of the Cabinet room, across which a small group of men debated our policy and made decisions. The most important decisions were made over the course of just a handful of meetings and just a handful of men. That was the first front of the war, and that's the one that has not really been explored dramatically. And as I said, the little-known story here, which is going to be a great revelation to many people, will be that there was actually opposition within the administration to the escalation. But that those voices do not prevail.
HBO: Tell us a little about the research process for the picture, and how that evolved for you and fed what you were trying to put on the page.
DANIEL GIAT: The first consultantant on this project was Robert Dallek, who is the preeminent biographer of Lyndon Johnson. He wrote two volumes, the first was called "Lone Star Rising", the second called "Flawed Giant". Dallek had taught at UCLA before moving to Washington. And it was ten out of those eleven years ago that I approached him. So actually Robert Dallek has been on this project as a consultant longer than anybody else. The first person I went to, and you might say we approached each other because we had both read those New Yorker articles was Howard Dratch.
Howard is an award-winning documentary filmmaker, and he was a fellow student at the American Film Institute when I was there. And we became friendly there and stayed in touch. And because he had had a background in political affairs, and had made movies about the CIA for instance, and had taught history, at Berkeley, I approached him, and I wanted his perspective on this story. And at that point and that was in 1991, we decided to hook up together.
And so it was Howard and I, for the longest time, until we found a production company to back us. But as far as consultants to the project go, Robert Dallek was really first aboard, then Deborah Shapley, who wrote the definitive biography of Robert McNamara called "Promise and Power." Those were the two main consultants on the project. Then of course I did numerous interviews. Michael Beschloss is a great historian, and has been a presidential scholar for years, who also got involved once we were in pre-production.
HBO: Tell us about John Frankenheimer. How does he then come into the picture, and what was that collaboration like?
DANIEL GIAT: Frankenheimer was approached by HBO once Barry Levinson was cut loose, and he jumped right on. And, I was just- I can't describe my elation, because John Frankenheimer of course is a legend. He's probably sick of being characterized that way. But, he's directed some of my favorite movies. And I've told him that - although he's best known for say The Manchurian Candidate and The Birdman of Alcatraz and a couple of others - if I hadn't seen Seven Days in May when I was fourteen years old, I don't think I could've written this script. And there is a direct relationship between my experience with Seven Days in May, what I learned with that movie, to my writing of Path to War. So there was- there was no one better for this movie as far as I was concerned.
HBO: How involved did you remain in the production process, because often screenwriters fade completely out of the picture once the cameras start rolling. I get the impression with this movie that this was not the case.
DANIEL GIAT: Well, this is the dream experience that writers talk about having once in their careers. The irony is that this is my first credit, after almost twenty years of writing, this is my first produced credit. And to have John Frankenheimer directing the movie, and to keep me as completely involved as he did- I'm not just talking about through the writing process because HBO had been committed to me all along and never put another writer on this project. That John Frankenheimer wanted to work closely with me, not only through revisions and polishing the script and pre-production, but in production as well, he wanted me there on the set. And it was an enormously valuable experience for me to be on the set. So it was a collaboration in the truest sense and the experience that every writer seeks.
HBO: What parallels do you see in our current situation today, as compared to the period covered in Path to War?
DANIEL GIAT: I think some of the lessons that we've learned from Vietnam have been institutionalized, and I think we're very lucky for that. So, if anything good came out of that war, I think that it's a few lessons: one is, know your enemy. Know what they're fighting for, why they're fighting. Know what your objective is, because there- we did not have a clear objective in Vietnam. Even as late as 1968, they were debating what we were there to do, the leaders, military leaders were saying that we were not there to even win a military victory, but to fight this to a stalemate. And there was still debate over that objective, three years after going in. So, we did not have a clear objective.
Robert McNamara wrote a book called "Argument Without End", a great title for a book about the continuing debate over Vietnam in which he explores with North Vietnam's former leaders, the signals that we missed. We were not sensitive to each other's signals, we only harbored these prejudices and ideas about each other and our societies, that were somewhat true but not entirely true. So know your enemy is a very, very important lesson here. And also, I would say admit when you're wrong, and don't wait. Don't wait to change course. I think those are important lessons.
And the last thing I would say about the parallels is- we have people in government now, who went through that war, who know the mistakes we made, and thank God they're there.
HBO: Daniel Giat, thank you very much for your time.
DANIEL GIAT: Thank you.
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DIRECTOR:
John Frankenheimer
WRITER:
Daniel Giat
CONSULTANT:
Michael Beschloss
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