The Other Camps

Tens of thousands of Vietnamese refugees reached the same turning point in their lives in 1975: Where would they call home?

The question and answer filled some with dread and others with optimism as they fled Vietnam after the war and crowded into refugee camps throughout the United States. Most were brought to Camp Pendleton Marine Base, north of San Diego.

Timed with the 27th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the film “Green Dragon” opens today and encapsulates the initial Vietnamese experience in America during the refugees’ weeks- and sometimes months-long stays in makeshift military camps.

Director Timothy Linh Bui, who teamed with his brother, Tony Bui, to co-write the screenplay, regards those months at camp as being in “purgatory,” a transitional place where souls suffered, awaiting liberation. News of either a safe return to their homeland or a sponsor to help them permanently resettle in the states were the choices. Most chose the latter.

The brothers are best known for “Three Seasons,” a triple award winner at the 1999 Sundance Film Festival (grand jury award, audience award and best cinematography), that Tony directed and Timothy produced.

“The camp is like a bridge, and once you go to the other side, you step off that bridge into the unknown. It was hard to imagine a future without Vietnam,” said Timothy Bui, 32, speaking of his directorial debut from his home in West Hollywood. “There were so many stories of hardship, despair, anger, loss, love and hope that came out of this experience, and the characters in the film provide Polaroid snapshots of some of these different stories. I made Camp Pendleton the backdrop because it was the largest of the camps, and I culminated all the camp experiences in this one.”

Characters include war-torn lovers, a husband and his two wives, and a general and his disillusioned soldiers.

When Bui pitched the script to actor Forest Whitaker, who had appeared in other films about Vietnam, including “Good Morning Vietnam” and “Platoon,” the actor took a personal interest. He agreed to play Addie, a volunteer cook at the camp.

“It’s a beautiful script,” said Whitaker, who also is executive producer of the movie. “The piece to me is about displacement and families trying to stay together and find their place.”

The drama centers on a young boy, Minh Pham (played by Trung Nguyen) and his uncle, Tai Tran (Don Duong). Minh awakens and realizes he’s in a crowded barracks where a sea of other refugees are asleep, some on cots and some on the floor. He and his sister were separated from their parents during the escape from Vietnam. Minh develops a friendship with Addie and a penchant for lime-green beverages, Mighty Mouse comics and drawing and painting.

“Green Dragon” is a personal project for Timothy Bui, who came to the U.S. at age 5. His insights into the refugee experience are based on stories told by his mother, extensive interviews with other Vietnamese refugees and research at the Marine base’s archives. These stories provided the emotion and the desperation that set the tone and texture of the screenplay, which was filmed in Vietnamese, with some spoken English, and has English subtitles.

Bui and his immediate family were uprooted days before the fall. They escaped Vietnam and were brought to the refugee camp at Fort Chaffey, Ark. Some of his recollections are filtered through young Minh.

“I didn’t remember a lot of the hardships my parents and the adults had to go through at the time. I mostly recalled the fun stuff, playing with other kids in the camp. I didn’t even know there was a war happening, that our lives were endangered and that we had to escape from Vietnam, said Bui, who avidly watched nightly outdoor screenings of American movies, entertainment that the military arranged for them.

The brothers pored through hours of documentary footage of life in the camps from the Camp Pendleton archives.

“When I went to pitch this story to the studios and for funding, I began to realize that not many in the American public knew that the Vietnamese had to stay in camps to legally enter America,” said Timothy Bui. “It’s an eye-opener into a part of American history that many people didn’t know about.”

Patrick Swayze (“Dirty Dancing” [1987], “Ghost” [1990]) plays Sgt. Jim Lance. He and Tai Tran, Minh’s uncle, and a former translator for the U.S. military in Vietnam, go through a process of dealing with the aftermath of the war. They work through feelings of guilt, heal emotional wounds and become friends.

The film spans about four months--the length of time the camps existed. The brothers spent a year writing the story, beginning in 1998. Timothy Bui visited Camp Pendleton. “I walked on the grounds and tried to put myself there and walked into the barracks and did a lot of research at the military archives at the camp.” The film was shot at Camp Pendleton in 26 days in 2000 with 100 Vietnamese American extras, some who lived the camp experience. Its budget was less than $4 million.

The brothers wanted to tell these stories in order to understand what their parents went through and to better understand their own culture and present it to American audiences. Their parents owned five video stores and Timothy Bui said he grew up watching films such as “Rambo” (1985), “Platoon” (1986) and “Missing in Action” (1984). He wanted to set the record straight.

“It was such a negative portrayal that I was ashamed to admit to people I was Vietnamese because we were portrayed as ‘gooks’ to be shot dead in the jungle.”

The Buis wanted to change the image of “faceless, voiceless” Vietnamese.

“‘Green Dragon’ is our immigrant story,” said Tony Bui, 29. “The Vietnamese experience has been largely defined through the point of view of Western and American filmmakers, which often has a one-sided portrayal of the Vietnamese as the ‘invisible people’ with interchangeable faces of other Asian actors.

“The movies I’ve seen in the past that involve Vietnam are not really shot in Vietnam and didn’t use Vietnamese actors. We wanted real people. We didn’t want people to think that all Asians looked alike. With ‘Green Dragon’ and ‘Three Seasons,’ the Vietnamese cast are distinct. The question for us was how do we bring this powerful humanity of the Vietnamese people [to the screen] and to change the way people see us.”

The Buis said the film isn’t just for Vietnamese audiences or for those who want to know more about the Vietnamese experience. At its heart, it’s about the immigrant experience, regardless of culture.

“I’ve seen other films about immigrants struggling like ‘El Norte’ and ‘The Killing Fields,’ and what I found universal about these movies is the themes of living with dignity, the struggle for freedom, the fear of that struggle and walking that road,” said Timothy Bui. “Those who are born here never think about those struggles that everyone in the world should think about. People die to come to America, to have a better life at any cost, even death. And people who are already here take that for granted.”