On member supported k.q.e.d. F.m. San Francisco or on k.q. Ai Af-Am North Highland Sacramento It's 10 o'clock. K.q.e.d. Public Radio in San Francisco I'm Michael Krasny a new documentary is coming to p.b.s. In September taking a panoramic look at one of the most controversial periods in American history I think the Vietnam War drove a stake right into the heart of America. As a country. Has probably never been since before. It ever recovered filmmaker Ken Burns Illinois is known for award winning p.b.s. Films like the Civil War and prohibition will join us in studio to talk about their latest project the Vietnam War and that's all coming up at the distant. Live from n.p.r. News in Washington I'm Lakshmi saying Senate Republicans are making another go of dismantling the current health care law after multiple failed attempts to getting 50 votes in favor of proposals that would repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act Today they're concentrating solely on repeal under consideration is a bare bones version of health care legislation that would overturn a few central provisions of Obamacare including elimination of the mandate that Americans purchase insurance or get fined Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is telling fellow Republicans they have a shot at keeping a 7 year promise like Sen our work well thought out as an opportunity to slip. We've made important progress already we can build on it now the moment before us is one many of us have waited for and talked about very long time McConnell's inability to secure at least 50 votes underscores the political divisions within the g.o.p. And therefore disagreements with how revamped health care system should look today President Trump again put pressure on fellow Republicans to get a bill passed though his opinion has wavered on whether or not Republicans should move forward on repealing Obamacare without having something to replace it the president still has not made up his mind on whether to sign legislation that imposes new sanctions on Russia to pass a g.o.p. Led House overwhelmingly as N.P.R.'s Tamara Keith reports in addition to imposing new sanctions the bill would allow Congress to block President Trump from easing or lifting sanctions on Russia has passed the House on an overwhelming vote of $419.00 to $3.00 White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci called in to cnn's new day and in a wide ranging interview said the president might veto the bill he may sign a sanction exactly the way they are or he may veto the sanctions and negotiating Hoffer deal against the Russians is a town or intuitive counterpunching personality the. Bill still needs to pass the Senate where it has bipartisan support if the president word a veto the bill Congress would easily have the votes to override him Tamara Keith n.p.r. News Kansas a Missouri is recovering today from severe floods Hiers case one urban creek overflowed its banks and inundated several businesses in south Kansas City including a popular bar and grill co owner Brian Darby had returned during the storm to get some papers when he says floodwaters broke through a wall trapping him in another owner in the ceiling rafters and there being some like out. There stupid things that's for sure trying to save property. I'm sorry to my friends or my family that it's been a rough morning authorities are still assessing damage from the flooding multiple creeks set new high water marks so far no major injuries or deaths have been reported for n.p.r. News I'm Kyle Palmer in Kansas City this is n.p.r. . News I'm Brian Watt a top u.s. Military official says the Pentagon has not yet changed its policy on transgender people serving in the armed forces that's despite President Trump's announcement Wednesday that transgender individuals would be barred from serving his tweets on the issue have been met with strong opposition in San Francisco late yesterday a sea of people protested the decision during a March from the city's Castro neighborhood to city hall. They included transgender people veterans and religious leaders for those who are putting themselves on the line and literally putting their skin at risk the least we can do is to help them feel comfortable in their bodies as they fight for us that's Meghan ror a transgender pastor and as for the president's tweets that the military shouldn't be burdened with tremendous medical costs associated with care for transgender service members when I think of people serving in the military I. I think that soldiers are anything but it and I think there are people who are sacrificing their bodies and they're putting themselves on the line Travis Smith is a gay veteran who spent 8 years in the Navy from Saddam or so of those areas where multiple different such radical people I've never seen it brought into the military or how it affected their Hardress oath of service and so I just disappeared and sent the gender of an individual should it matter if there was a search for the phrase that's Bradbury a transgender man from San Francisco I would say there's no difference in trans people than any other individual that's not part I'm I'm Brian Watt k.q.e.d. News. Support for n.p.r. Today comes from the estate of Joan b. Kroc whose bequest serves as an enduring investment in the future of public radio and seeks to help n.p.r. Be the model for high quality journalism in the 21st century and by the listeners of k.q.e.d. Look for a partly cloudy day at the coast today with sunshine England and continued warm temperatures well out highs today that will range from the low seventy's to the century mark along with westerly afternoon winds between 10 and 20 miles per hour San Francisco today will see a high of 71 Oakland can expect a high of 79 Sandra Phelan Mountain View will share a high of 87 Redwood City will get up to 88 today Fremont will have a high of 89 San Jose reaching 92 concord will have a high of 99 and Sacramento look for 100 to welcome to this morning's Forum program a Michael Krasny filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick have made documentaries like the Civil War prohibition and the war about World War 2 chronicling some of the most the war was a name of the film by the way and they've chronicled some of the most iconic periods in u.s. History their latest film takes an in-depth look at one of the toughest conflicts that America has faced the Vietnam War the 10 episode documentary is the culmination of a decade's worth of research and interviews with everyone from Viet Cong fighters and Vietnamese civilians to troops Army disorders and journalists and this is a film or Ken Burns and linoleic said they purposely avoided talking to historians who never set foot in Vietnam or the famous veterans turned politicians who had rehearsed soundbites here to talk about this monumental project our Ken Burns filmmaker and historian so good to have you back with us and it's great to be back and I learned of a producer and documentary filmmaker Welcome thank you and this new documentary The Vietnam War premieres on September 17th on p.b.s. And you know I was waxing pretty enthusiastic in the last hour about the eclipse and getting people excited about it this of course is is a film that. Put me through all kinds of emotions as I can't begin to tell you but it's also an extraordinary piece of documentary film Thank You I mean congratulations it's amazing piece of work because you get these stories firsthand and that's really the difference here and as I said a minor duction you're not going to the usual sources not even going to McCain You just saw corruptly with breast cancer up on the Senate floor and not going to John Kerry and not going to Jane Fonda we're getting she's in the film a little bit but we felt you know one of the 1st. Meetings we had on this project was with McCain and with our heads or excuse me again. With McCain and Kerry and we just said to them you know we're going to do this we need your help and they were incredibly helpful but we're not going to interview you and the same with Kissinger the same with Jane Fonda there there are people who are around her in the public sphere what we wanted is unmediated commentary and that means going to folks that are just for the 1st time telling their story or folks that were not aware of McCain and Kerry and Kissinger and found exist in the film as archival stories but we didn't need to have them. Adding or subtracting from what the record shows in this film and same with historians we pretty soon unfortunately there won't be veterans around and we need to have you know at least access to as I said unmediated commentary about it and I should say Lynn this is we I mean you know Ken Burns is the icon and Ken Burns His name is on everything but I was reading an article just about. About you and the focus on you and you have been so much a part of these extraordinary documentaries and the production of them. And he still gets top billing he still has final say I realize but there is a real but cooperative effort here let me let me she's going to answer this but let me just say and echo you it is we have topped up. Soup to nuts you know this is you know it's been the most complicated and most satisfying collaboration's of our lives and and it wouldn't happen and if you want to be in a foxhole with somebody trying to get something done she's the one already using those metaphors for the documentary So yeah you know. We've been thinking a lot and trying to explain about collaboration and how we actually make these films and part of it is that we have extraordinary team of other people besides ourselves so we will be each credited as the directors and producers of this film and take some bows hopefully but we have some very talented people who have been working that for a long time editors our writer Jeff Ford our producer Sarah Botstein and many other people contribute to the valley talk about Jeff Ward for a moment where that selection as a writer is well he I mean he's been with me he's since the early eighty's and been with us since you know the early ninety's and almost as long as color codes but exactly Well we the 1st time we used coyote was in our history of the west and then we've now sort of come back to him almost exclusively since 2010 or 9 or somewhere around there so yeah he's are great we love Peter we love working with him or supporting loyal about who you hire I mean my cinematographer buddy Squires I've been working with for 43 years Jeff Ford It's been 35 land it's been a lot of you and I've been doing really well almost as long so there's a certain while in fact I sort of felt as I was walking into your studio today the film is done over here and we're here on the other side of the country with Michael and that means we finish the film and really you know I just I mean collaboration is so hard to explain and people often ask us Kaye who does what how do you hide stuff up and that's the least of it dividing up is not collaborating that's just assigning sections to differences divisions of labor right that's not collaborating collaborating is actually this extraordinarily profound experience that we have had over many years of sort of giving yourself over to something that's not about you right and it's this film and serving in this case the testimony of the people who gave us their stories and trying to get it right for them and for our country to understand this extraordinarily painful and traumatic event so we were feeling very small and. Trying to just be open to what the story was that we could discover and when you're in that place something really special happens and so we sort of jump out about every day eager to get to work to try to figure out how to solve the many many many problems that a story like this presents and the give and take and the back and forth between us and with our other collaborators it's so hard to describe and we really been working on how to do that but what happens is one person has an idea our reaction to something and then someone else says I agree with that but let's try another thing maybe it's this picture with this other piece of music and then maybe this interview by and maybe we should add a sound a fact and you end up with this kind of escalating process of creativity and you end up with something that has everybody's fingerprints on it and we the thing that I think is special is that when it works we know and that's where we know we're in good shape in sort of look at each other and go that works. Certainly works well this is 0 I mean civil and it has to do with trust right just so hard between human beings and listening and so there's the Lynn is absolutely right everybody's fingerprints are on it of a nobody saying I write it's always we well there was a whole sense of collective identity during that period in so many ways I mean there are those who identify very strongly with the war going to stop Communism stop it from spreading domino theory and all the rest of it and there are those who are on the other side like yours truly who say this is a war that doesn't make sense we have to protest it and those divisions and those wounds are still there that's Ravenhill them and what you're offering really the public with this film is a way to at least talk of Vaso what we did is we try to create a space in which those 2 disparate sets of collective certainty could co-exist and that's not what we do anymore we're sort of in a binary system in which everything is we think simply black and white but particularly in war you're reminded that that there's no one truth that as witnesses. In jazz that a thing in the opposite of a thing could be true at the same time is only one truth war is hell wars are hell is what William Tecumseh Sherman said and those are some givens but you can within the context not make the other wrong so instantaneously that you can have what Keith said Shakespeare had which was negative capability the ability to sort of draw out the ultimate moment of decision that your heroes had deep flaws that your villains had complications that made them interesting and I think we've all felt that we were beyond villains and whatever we were into what happened the fact that we wanted to be umpires calling balls and strikes here without a without a thumb on the scale without a kind of political agenda in any way and just to say this happened and so you run up against arguments you know there's there's academic arguments there's political arguments there are military arguments or personal arguments and these are arguments not just between peoples and groups and collections of people but within people and you can see on the faces of a lot of our witnesses in this that these conflicts within themselves are playing out and all we wanted to do was to be present and kind of hopefully lovingly sort of embrace them and say that the look on a gold star mothers face or a soldier recalling this or a Vietcong extending to an American a humanity that he knew Vietnamese had but he wasn't quite sure that Americans had and it's these are wonderful disconcerting they don't give you the familiar place to retreat to those binary arguments or to the safety of hiding behind not wanting to know there's just been too much scholarship there's been too much water under the bridge and what we hope at the end is that those divisions that we feel were planted in Vietnam that we experience today we might be able to have the kind of courageous conversations perhaps nationally on on a stage like this or regionally but also in families you know Grandpa what did you do grandma what what. Happened then what was your experience like and this is the excitement that we hope can happen that maybe out of all of this rancor and disagreement you could have some kind of civil conversation or maybe even healing you know every year I do an event for plaster sorts of plowshares which is mostly Vietnam veterans Yeah like a black It was a Vietnam veteran founded many years ago and it's still so many wounds internally going on and so much healing I'll tell you the one thing in the film that just really threw me for a major loop was and I knew it was going to happen I mean I knew where it was going you got these this young man who went in and was sending recordings home and you got those recordings of whole family listen to that yeah. And I knew you know that he wasn't going to last but the way it was presented just struck me with. The memory of all those who didn't come home and so there's that in the film too I mean it evokes some deep and profound emotion I mean especially for a working class kid who grew up with guys who were sent off and didn't come back or came back with you know arms missing or some other appendages of I mean the film has that kind of impact yet at the same time you got the historical sweep in the film I mean actually I'm going to review here forgive me but I'm you know I really am. Just about just the way that it had a personal effect on me and impact on me and got me to analyze again what I needed to have a life of on the period go back it's not comfortable to go back by any no answers and I think you know it was sort of really Job one for us was to do something our country hasn't really fully down which was to honor the people who served and the experiences of soldiers and to recognize the tragedy for every family's name you know someone on that wall and the wall place at all of the world as part of the film and we were there on our producer Chuck cameras there every time a day and every season of the year and it's a character and you know anyone who's been there recognizes what it is Mylan said when she designed it that you know it was going to be a journey that would make you experienced death and that. It was going to take us close as you can get to the dad and nothing was going to make it Ok not going to say it's Ok it's over because it's not over and it's not Ok and to sort of acknowledge that and understand that is painful but not acknowledging it and not not saying no not going there is worse that's what we felt well I thought we'd hear a clip this is a former soldier reflecting the wars death toll. That number to call my mother. Said You probably never see me because everybody in my unit. Probably back around the city going you're coming. She said I talk to God every day in your special. And I said Ma everybody's mother thinks that this special. You know I'm putting pieces especially people in bags. It is I'd like to actually get comments from both of you on that but let me actually have our listeners hear just another clip from the film this is a clip which we really think styrene a good I think shows the polarization in this clip you can hear the voice of an anti-war activist named Bill Zimmerman who is followed by an Army advisor named James will of banks. I never considered the Vietnamese already. He had never done anything to threaten the security of the United States they were off 10000 miles away minding their own business and we went there to their country told them what kind of government we wanted them to have. Us I see the war protestors. React on a couple levels intellectually I certainly understand their right to freedom of speech but I will tell you that when I see them waving n.l.f. Flags and the enemy that I and my friends had fight and some of my friends have to die fighting. That I was upset very well. When Ken some comments from you there was the polarization and that 1st clip you know of just the sense of special people going back and bags you know I think that what we try to do in all our films and maybe most realized here is a kind of combination as you were saying before of a top down sense of what the policy decisions are with the larger geo political circumstances are but those are just tough to to to know for the task next Tuesday . That it's the bottom up stories that given so here you have Roger here a Marine African-American Marine from Roxbury in Massachusetts and. His story which we follow throughout the film is it's compelling and that's the intimacy of it and then you go back and realize the kind of polarities that we've been talking about that the Vietnam promoted and here in Bill's own Zimmerman and feel joy and seemingly both and I mean and James will banks the sort of the twin things and what we were trying to do was as I said before create a vessel in which these could co-exist and you could understand the way in which Bill Zimmerman is absolutely true and you could also understand what Jim Will banks and others who populate the film are absolutely right about and that was hugely important for us to make sure because we've spent way too many decades since Vietnam and particularly today in the circumstances that we find ourselves in in this sort of simplistic polarized stuff in which if someone disagrees with you and they're off your as a myth a couple of degrees they're the enemy instead of the kind of shared sense of what we can do in Vietnam is I think as one of our people said is the beginning of this kind of disunion I'm not going to ask you how you were able to keep your own feelings out of this but I can tell you when I had to interview many years ago Robert McNamara and as I said I was opposed to the war and he was one of the using villains to mark it to his extraordinary self effort to not know what it was for us and Lynn has to answer this but I think with regard to what you're saying is that we came in I came in and having grown up through the sixty's having had I a draft number sort of feeling like I knew everything about Vietnam finally there's a project I knew something about the thing that mitigated you know we were always trying to be mindful of what baggage we carry into it that maybe unintentionally imposed and try to free ourselves of that so that we could liberate her hoodie and sort of having you know wade through that but the daily humiliation for the last 10 years of realizing how little I didn't know was one of the great medicines to sort of. Sure us all of what we brought going into it regardless of where our politics were we were just simply not going to take that bait and just as you talk you your professional honor requires you to listen to Robert McNamara and to perhaps understand how easy it is to vilify him and forget a lot of very complicated dynamics that contribute to the to the larger story so we just as I said we're trying to call balls and strikes but when you have so. Yeah I mean you know I don't think we let anybody off the hook who is in the national ends of power of the higher reaches in Hanoi Saigon or Washington and there's plenty of culpability and lack of accountability to go around and was reveled Torrie to hear the tapes particularly of Johnson and Nixon ministrations when you hear McNamara and Johnson and Nixon and Kissinger and their close associates talking about the war you get to understand a little bit more by the tone of voice and I kind of tenor of the conversation the questions they're asking the questions they're not asking and what they seem to be preoccupied with how heavily that. Human cost of their decisions weighs on them or doesn't effect as one moment we're Johnson is on a telephone call he got that footage and you know he sounds very dark about Vietnam and yet many people feel you know there are signs hey hey l.b.j. How many kids that you killed today in the other thing you come away with is just how many of these soldiers were kids I mean you know there are kids I always think about Tim O'Brien you know and particularly probably one of the greatest fiction works that came out of Vietnam but. Let's hear another cut actually in this one we've got a Marine named Carl my Lantus later became a best selling author he's reflecting on whether people are innately inclined toward war. One of the things that I learned in the war is that we're not the top species on the planet because we're nice. We are a very aggressive species it is in us and people talk a lot about how well the military turns c.e.o. Kids into the you know killing machines and stuff. And I always argue that is just finishing school. And what we do with civilization is that we learn to inhibit the rope in these aggressive tendencies and we have to recognize that. I worry about a whole country that doesn't recognize because you think of how many times we get ourselves in scrapes as a nation because we're always the good guys. Sometimes I think if we thought that we weren't always the good guys we might actually get in last for. Some or wisdom in that and maybe we're talking camera Vietnamese soldier was talking about the fact that we don't talk about who won or lost the war if you were in the war you know. They have their own perspective right they they don't they know what it's like I should mention by the way when I said Tim O'Brien I should mention the things they carry but you want to avoid these regular tropes whether they were fiction or movies right you. Didn't want to go into like coming home or most of that stuff is you know Americans when they are are willing to even to consider to talk about Vietnam or to put it in our art talk about ourselves and this is a much more complicated story that had involves 3 countries one of which disappeared at the end and we wanted to make sure that we could triangulate and fix our perspective on it that much more clearly by engaging all of those other stories as well and that's hugely important a lot of what this was about Michael for us in big ways and small was subtraction you think of creation as a kind of additive process and it is but but for a lot of us it's of course winnowing down the $40.00 to $1.00 shooting ratio but it's also taking our hands off the thumbs of the scale many times you know we found ourselves at the end of editing removing agita you know just by the bushel and add verbs because they didn't need to color to the material itself could speak for itself and we were trying not to be invisible we're hope our art is there in every cut in every frame but we do we knew that in some ways there were some easy lay ups that we just didn't have to make that it was you know we'd much rather try for a 3 pointer from the mid-court Well this war was affected by images I mean the young girl fleeing from napalm and the execution of Vietnamese soldier Vikki and all of those things really had an enormous effect and you've got images here some of them that will be familiar perhaps and many of them that aren't you got some amazing footage here and let me say something about the music too because we're coming up on the break I mean for Yo-Yo Ma You would literally associate with a film about Vietnam and the Beatles they managed to get at sort of the regular price from what I understand which is very unusual is no regular price for the Beatles How do you think they did with it was there some amazing soundtrack here and and. Trent Reznor Natica us what are the primary composers that and that really gave us that sort of feel the tenor of it and then Yo-Yo and the Silk Road ensemble added something that we have $120.00 pieces of music from the pier and you're hearing music which means we're coming up on a break but we are talking to filmmakers Ken Burns and the another new 10 episode I committed to Vietnam war premieres September 17th on p.b.s. Let me give you a number and you can join us if you have thoughts about Vietnam War If you have some reflections if you have some feelings we'd like to hear from you if you have questions for these 2 brilliant filmmakers we'd like to hear from you as well are toll free number 866-733-6786 you can join us now at that number again 866733676 or e-mail us forum I k.q.e.d. Dot org Or go to our website k.q.e.d. Dot org slash forum and click on the segment or tweet us or Twitter handle is at k.q.e.d. Form a please feel free to be a part of the program what your memories your stories your thoughts on Michael Krasny. Is coming up tomorrow on form with Mina Kim in our 2nd hour we'll talk with long time very abased union organizer Jane Mackle Levy about the state of the labor movement Her latest book is no shortcuts organizing for power in the new gilded age to listen to passion those and join the discussion visit k.q.e.d. Dot org slash form and stay tuned for more of my discussion with filmmakers Ken Burns and Lynn Novick. The. Support for k.q.e.d. Today comes from Comcast business with the Internet that's built from the ground up to be reliable Comcast business is built for business learn more about business great internet voice and t.v. At Comcast Business dot com. I'm Jeremy Hobson wildfires in the West seem to be more frequent and they've been burning hotter and longer than in the past one big reason climate change well there have always been the occasional you know big fires they had gotten much much more common sense roughly 2000 that's next time on here and now. Stay with us for the here and now program it comes your way right after forum today beginning at 11 pm on k.q.e.d. This is form Michael Krasny we're talking to filmmakers can burns in Illinois their new 10 episode documentary the Vietnam War premieres on p.b.s. September 17th and what Lynn 10 years in the making Yes we have been talking about tackling Vietnam for as long as we've known each other which has been quite a long time since the late eighty's but she really like I originally asked in fact in some ways. And we've been sort of keeping an arm's length for a while because it was too recent but as Vietnam receded and we went through the scares of making the film in the 2nd world war with dealing with people who still remembered it are alive or getting very very old the urgency of dealing with Vietnam veterans and people lived through it were in their sixty's and seventy's and just felt sort of an extra way that we had to tackle that so we decided in 2006 we didn't start really filming for a few years we had to organize ourselves raise some money come up with a game. Man And really it's been a 10 year process of trying to understand this enormously complicated event getting out the people and trying to figure out how to handle representing. As many Vietnamese perspectives as possible and I go to our callers and also e-mails and lot of people wanting to have their say here but what do you think of can you not shy about your. Political positions from time to time you do post them and what not but the president United States having said the Vietnam War that avoiding s t D's was his Vietnam. You know. There are a lot of things in this film that resonate with the moment that we couldn't have possibly anticipated in 2006 mass demonstrations against an administration around the country a White House in disarray obsessed with leaks a president reeling as as both Johnson and Nixon did about our press making things about asymmetrical warfare and the inability of the United States military to sort of deal with it with huge document drops of classified material into the public sphere that sort of up in the conventional wisdom or the party line about accusations that a political campaign reached out to a foreign power at the time of a national election these are all Vietnam stories They're not stories we're not covering today's stuff and so while the analogies may take away from the distinct Well we still have non But there's a lot of always a very you know the past is sort of resonant with the present and vice versa and we're mindful of that but we're super mindful that not our business to set up a big neon sign an arrow pointing flashing on and off isn't this like this or Afghanistan or Iraq or like Nixon or now or whatever and so to me the kind of superficial ality of that statement doesn't matter we talk about the ways in which people avoided the war in the film and the fortunate who could find shelter in an educational deferment for a time or those privileged to ended up in some sort of reserve that would certainly not be called up that was part of the story well other people young men did the fighting and dying I can't even dignify the s.t.d. Thing with a comment that's a good comment let me go to our callers are going to begin with a caller from Durango Colorado rather you're on the air Good morning. For some of your guests for their great work and their education Americans in so many different ways thank you. Here we're talking about the Vietnam War And I think it's important we call it the Vietnam War but in Southeast Asia it's known as the American war. The so-called Vietnam War And at least 3 different countries in Southeast Asia most Americans are familiar with the bombing of Cambodia very few people know about the war that was fought in Laos 9 years now if you did a whole hour on it raly it's it's it's in our archives and it's throughout our film whether I was in the 1st episode on we have in gauge the idea that that the greater Indo China we're focusing on Vietnam and sort of the mulga nation of previous states there that Laos and Cambodia figure prominently in our story from the 1st episode to the very last we thank you for that call really let me bring another caller right on her that's you Jonathan you're on the air welcome Hi My name is Jonathan I'm a 2nd generation of enemies American my parents lent to America in 1975 as refugee 'd and I appreciate the work that you're doing. Been a means documentary I was wondering if there is anything in the documentary that discusses the American authors who helped my parents set lives in America as I've gotten older I've come to appreciate what they've actually done for my family and me to give me a chance as an American can you comment on that you know that is so wonderful expression of American generosity and we do we do explain the end of the war in our film does not end in 175 when the last helicopter takes off the roof of the u.s. Embassy but we continue up until today and we follow what happened to so many Vietnamese who came here and have been incredibly. Productive and resilient and important Dozens of our public and so that. Many aspects of that experience are in the film this brings up another question in my mind and like your thoughts on this over the weekend I was asked to lead a discussion for the Jewish Film Festival about a film on refugees and. There's been a lot of attempts to get people more responsive to taking in refugees and helping refugees and so forth you wonder and I'm sure you muse on this in your films are educational and have had extraordinary effect it's difficult sometimes to measure that impact or to you know quantitatively little qualitatively. Though they are high quality by anybody's standards highest quality but the impact of documentary films period I mean this is a big question in many documentary filmmakers minds was in the filmmakers I was talking to over the weekend so in September of 1901 I entered Hampshire College in Amherst Massachusetts and I took a course and film in photography and on the very 1st day we had this debate whether the film actually made people do something or it preach to the converted therefore the people who seemingly acted from the film were disposed in advance to act and that it had no effect and I rather as I was told by my classmates naively argued in the former positive effect of it that's why I had wanted to be a filmmaker since I was 12 that's what I was doing here was continuing that drive to be a filmmaker and I was in a distinct minority but our films over and over again have proved the extent to which they have important ways to drive people into action I take something unrelated to this they are naive young idealist and it's come to fruition interviewer's I'm turning $64.00 and I'm still that naive young idealist idealist so the attendance at National Parks was sort of beginning to dip and flatten and in 2009 in our series aired and the following summer 2010 there was this huge spike millions and millions of more people went to and the secretary of the. Earlier Than called me up and said we think and the anecdotal evidence at the gates is proving that all of these people supposedly tied wedded now joined to their couches actually got off and took their families seeking the kind of transforming experience that the film suggested they might have out in nature and that's the best review that we ever have when my Brooklyn Bridge my very 1st film. You know aired the New York Times when the bridge turned 100 had a couple from Idaho on the front page and when you went into section d. Whatever it was they said that they'd seen a documentary on public television about the Brooklyn Bridge decided to take their vacation there we hope that this has you know less sort of leisure Lee Yeah I mean I think that over you know for this film we've seen it happen already and we know it's going to happen and even just the 2 college that we've had so far it's going to promote a kind of conversation that we have never had about this war because of the way we've told the story and we've seen how people who see the film are just kind of opened up to hear other people talk and to express themselves in a different way about a very painful subject and it's going to be intergenerational it's going to be across the military and civilian divides ethnic divides in every other way the Vietnamese American caller who was just speaking you know we've been talking about the film in the Vietnamese American community quite a lot and hearing from one and a half or 2nd generation that they want to talk to their parents about what the war was like for them and what Vietnam was like before they came here and in many cases there's a tremendous reluctance to speak about that because it's so painful and. Over and over again at screenings we've had people come to us and say thank you because we want to watch this film with our parents and our grandparents and our children and I want to have this conversation but especially hard to have both sides and I again I mean you know you hear the Vietnamese talking about I mean we certainly heard a lot about it and it was talking about you know Americans manipulating things politically of journalism not. Doing to the standards and trying to promote the war all the rest but you hear the Viet Cong people talking about the same kind of things going on and that yeah right assassinations was about a woman who thought that the Americans were part horse and part were really of the vehicle for that and so it was a Vietnam itself it means women see a conger that So this is what we always do you know it's necessary in war as one of our Marines tells us to sort of demonize and make subhuman the enemy and many of those Vietnamese who got out and were established the very productive lives here have been sort of in their own hardened silos their children are not and they're beginning to understand that you know those beliefs can become a little bit more pliable and valuable you begin to extend to the enemy a humanness it is not just black and white and that's a wonderful possibility and it does take is when suggest a few decades to get away from it to to permit new questions to be asked and new ideas to be sort of added to the old ones that are getting a little bit kind of to rock hard yeah I mean what we've learned I think over the course of not just the somebody other projects is people are complicated and we all have humanity and humanity and ourselves and certain other people and so that's been I think that will help this conversation that's not just echoing what you've been saying here let me just read a comment from Helen who tweeted us and said My older my oldest brother died in Vietnam in 1969 my husband left a huge part of himself there and still has psychological issues. Then writes I had the distinct experience of receiving an honorable discharges a conscientious objector while serving in Vietnam and I've tried to find out how many others also went through that experience did you meet any such veterans while conducting your research for the film that we did not come across I think that's quite unusual to get an a c s status while serving it was difficult I don't want to try to failed in fact very hard to get to see as not to start with and while you're in the military already I think I'm not sure what your that was but it would have been difficult Karen writes in the late 1970 s. e L a Times published my letter to the editor providing a social psychological perspective on the soldier who had then quote cooperated with the enemy he was attacked as a traitor by fellow soldiers my letter argued for empathy I received a vicious sexually violent attacking phone call from a veteran threatening my life and left me with nightmares and still makes me shake to think about Robert's was like here more about working with Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and creating the soundtrack that they affect the overall film and all oh my goodness yeah that's the easy one it was one of the most satisfying collaboration's we've ever had and we learn from them in their mysterious and still secret process of how they create their extraordinary music which is sort of angst producing it's metallic it's dissonant and yet it resolves with such beautiful melodic ways that you just don't know it's sort of what I said before that when Marcel is it said a thing in the opposite of thing and so it coexist in the same moment so it's the perfect people to do the main soundtrack for this film but I think what unites all of the personal comments is that you begin to realize how deeply painful this war was and still is that the wounds are still there that the divisions are still there that the psychological pain the loss of someone but also what was left in country the 1st person you read talks about in her own husband that that the sort of for ah city of the opposition all of these things have to be seen and understood and we. I have to try to figure out how to have a new kind of conversation a new narrative about it that that doesn't sort of you know put us back into those hard silos but actually lets us relax there's lots of arguments about Vietnam and think about what arguments are there the suggestion that if this happened this could have happened but it didn't happen that way so they become in a way both literally and figuratively academic you you can't say well what if the South had won the civil war or if they had gotten rid of Westmoreland earlier and put an Abrams everything would be different maybe but we don't know that it did not happen that way so people like our history fiction and so we found a good deal of our sort of just presupposed anger and I mean I had an opportunity someone said oh you're working on Vietnam this will be your most controversial film and I said yes but only among those who don't watch it and he cracked up and said remember that I said I will because we live in a culture which has feels no compunction about you know. Reviewing books they've never read and films they've never seen and so it then immediately shifts from what is to the argument that if this condition had happened and you know if this had happened we'd had this general or that thing we could have won the war or we should all of that stuff is beside the point what we just do is you know Shelby Foote said to me God is the greatest Dramatis of this film is and then and then and then losing Shelby Foote survey because I remember father saying he's a great stage manager we can either color on John that's you welcome Good morning and I like to add my thanks to your guests because we still have not learned the lessons of the Vietnam War I'm not remorseful Vietnam that I even went so long after the fact to the Vietnamese consulate here in San Francisco and apologize for. My contribution to our war. I think in retrospect Coachy man should be considered Vietnam's George Washington even though he made the back choice to be a communist My question is is this. Yes States made a choice to go into Vietnam after the French and Vietnamese had agreed that it would be an election in Vietnam and then the American reneged on that agreement and that is a part of the lesson I think that we haven't learned we interfere where we have no right to do so and I was wondering if this part of the story is covered in the film there's a lot of history about in this film you go back to golf of Tonkin you go back u.s.s. Maddux all of that we go back if you go back into the last century to century before the Vietnam War was fought. You got the threads there and I think I would encourage listeners who want to know more about the history of the war and its origins and you know we talk about 5 presidents really in many ways this is a fresh Yeah Gerald Ford you didn't think you could start this when American troops start fighting on the ground in the nominee $165.00 that would be sort of decontextualized in how we got there and why it was so hard to get out so we go way back to the beginning and you know one of the mistakes our policymakers made was not understanding Vietnam or Vietnamese and also not understanding colonialism because indeed the stakes that level to let me get a deal on next deal thanks for waiting join us here on the air yeah 2 questions 1st have you paid any attention in your documentary to the very real crimes that were at times committed by the North Vietnamese army and of the Congo it's a subject that nobody has ever helped nobody else I know of as every even one that did go on your 2nd question is did you see a Vietnam a television history the p.b.s. Series that ran a long time ago I was wondering if you thought yeah also this is of this is you know very clear the answer to the 1st question is yes most definitely we are equal opportunity critics and when those things occur we delve into them from episode one through Episode 10 and it's not a pretty picture we tend to focus on more often on our own crimes and things like that. But it's very much a part of us and when you know brutal land reforms are imposed that kill thousands and thousands of people we talk about it when they there are atrocities committed we even have you know soldiers corroborating that it's it's there. Take this really want to say some of the you have all I think. The binary conversation that Kemas talking about that happened during the war and it kind of. Play I love in the clip that we play from Zimmerman and will banks that it was we sort of glorified our enemy the people who fought the war against the war here to some degree glorified and idealized romanticized the enemy that we were fighting and vice versa and demonized ourselves and both of those were very reductive and overly simplified and our film is going to add a lot of nuance and complexity and gray to everybody's behavior and humanity and humanity on all sides and you know. We learned a lot about all of this in the process of making the film and after last year a book came out by Viet Tang when he wrote the sympathiser wonderful novel about the Vietnam War He wrote an essay in which he said all wars are fought twice on the battlefield and in our memory we're still fighting the Vietnam War and how we remember it and this sort of goes to the heart of this issue and he really said we have to move beyond this kind of binary dialectical approach and acknowledge and understand war is an inherently obscene and inhumane activity and once you start it has a momentum of its own as Robert McNamara sad and people do things that are unspeakable and that that market is not cornered by any side and that is what our film showed South Vietnamese North Vietnamese the economy and people to terrible things but they also do incredibly brave and compassionate things and more so to read a comment by David who writes Having received a Purple Heart and saving a fellow soldiers life I thought people back home would be proud instead I was told we never should have gone to Iraq in the 1st place within 6 months of coming home my car with a Purple Heart license plate had f.-u. Scrawled into the hood it makes me so sad how cruel my fellow Americans could be well you know those who came back from Iraq or came back from Afghanistan are still pretty much thank for their service but many of the Vietnam soldiers who came back there's a lot of mythology about everybody getting spit upon resume law and everything with you actually have people were spit on and that did happen it did happen but I think it's you know just as the. The fish gets bigger the farther away from the lake you get it's been enlarged very early on the entire war movement understood that to demonize the soldiers was a big mistake a politically stupid mistake and took pains to do it it didn't mean that you were coming home to Clark Air Force Base and there was pickets outside the base and you had to go run a gauntlet of that and that that didn't happen. I'm disappointed and surprised by the Iraqi veterans because I think when people ask us what the lessons are of Vietnam I think one of the most durable ones is that we're not going to blame the Warriors and clearly there are still patches of us that are inclined to do that and that may be a product of Abu Ghraib or other things that were revealed it was so crazy to risk conscription you know if you really are a working class kid if you're a black kid any background even Bush was he your chances of getting drafted were much greater and his view and you were a kid being sent out to fight a war the in many cases nothing about it had no stake in it you know in some ways if you try to think which I think back that the people on both sides were teenagers so the people who were protesting the war also feeling very impassioned and you know resolute and sure about themselves and what was right and wrong but also you you know. The people who came home in their uniforms were the closest you could get to whoever had been involved in the war you couldn't really go talk to Lyndon Johnson which are next and explain to them what they were doing that was wrong and not in our country's best interest so a lot of missed displaced frustration anger got directed at the soldiers and that clearly was very wrong and that's partly why this is such a traumatic event for a country so soldiers experienced child magic and you know extremely difficult things in the war and then came home and didn't get recognition of Israel you know the old serving the opening line of our having a vet if I may say was yeah so this is dovetails. I'm a post 911 Marine who served 2 tours in Afghanistan when I come in contact with Vietnam veterans you always hear that they felt isolated when they came back home after you know I can only imagine what they went through hope this film will help with the healing process the opening English words that you hear in this film are coming home from Vietnam was nearly as dramatic as the war itself and that's I think conscious and intentional on our part to begin to understand these layers of complexity for people and what we hope in some ways more than anything else is to lift some of those barriers there were reasons in recruitment and coming home that everybody seemed to come home seem to go over there alone and seem to come home alone and so the parades that had attended the victories from the revolution through the war of 812 through the Mexican War and Civil Wars cetera all had a sense of collective Fanks and that just did not occur not only because the country was torn on the bias by by this war but because it was just not the way you came home and that was also me live you know maybe a lie was was children a whole village wiped out and so for them the baby killers and all of that followed were talking by the way to filmmakers Ken Burns in the novel their new 10 episode the Vietnam war. Premieres September 17th on p.b.s. And let me read some more comments actually Linda wants to know she says Please quote of the great Richard Ellison's 13 part series on Vietnam for which he suffered the rest of his career you know that was an influence at all Ok. A tweet from Helen I was a junior in northern Ohio high school when the can't State Shootings happen lots of our graduates went to Kent State on forgettable David writes Having received me Ted writes Congratulations on your life's work have you thought of teaching students of all ages how to create their own films if you have already done so where can we go to learn more well you know we every film from the very beginning to now and no more so now we have created some very robust educational outreach programs in which it's not just us bestowing things on teachers but we working with teachers for a long time and curriculum designers to figure out what they need at what time and what age what part of the year and what would be most helpful and we've done that since the beginning and there's an exercise called National History Day in which young students from around the country compete with films and presentations that we intersect with and it's just pretty wonderful stuff to see what we're doing we tend to focus in our media culture on the sort of the hand-wringing in the abysmal test scores in the sense that people aren't taught history but there is a sort of it may be a minority but there's an incredibly active and inspired group of kids that are moving through the system today that are very animated by history and the sense that it is the greatest teacher that you can understand and perhaps even begin to solve some of contemporary problems by having a fluency in history particularly American history and so we're we're sort of thrilled to be able to add the lesson plans and the scenes to it and it's if you go to p.b.s. Dad or a backslash the Vietnam War You can begin to see the kind of materials that are available if you're a teacher you already. I know this stuff and you're using it but the general public is welcome to sample and to taste what we're doing and we bring another caller in from our general public Dave you're on the air welcome. Thank you Mr gradually Mr Burns Miss know that for your astonishing work I was a conscientious objector in the Vietnam era and I have so many people really conflicted feelings about it to this big I was just telling a friend yesterday I want you hadn't even thought of this until then that who went who who went in my place and what happened to him or her and all I can think now is it's just sadness and pain and that's all there is at this point I don't know what else to say no thank you thank you for coming over Yeah I think we hope that you will be able to watch our film with your family and people that you're close to and I think it would give a deeper understanding of the extraordinarily painful choices that every young man had to face and you've exemplified it perfectly in your comment and we have people in the film who wrestle with that exact same moral dilemma and people make different choices on our different acts and Geezer affecting their decisions and the living with it is one of the most painful parts of this whole experience because. Any sentient person understands exactly what the collar sat back I think there's a room for all of us to forgive ourselves for that well personal comment I was fortunate enough to have what was called the National Defense Education Act fellowship which meant I didn't get drafted but so many friends did and there always be the way that you know they had had that fellowship thanks to l.b.j. He and I would have been fighting his war probably general or I would have gone to Canada to this because I didn't never believed in the war but that out of the record the redemption comes in the individual stories the reconciliation comes in the bitterness or is amazing stories thank you both so much for your work thank you for being here again it premieres on September 17th and congratulations on this monumental work for was produced by renegotiating a large brick Susan Britain and Judy Campbell our gauge minuter is Amanda stupid I was on line help from Amanda foreign engineers Katie McCurry and our interns around to Sterling Patrick Fitzgerald managing editor Ethan Lindsay executive editor Holly Kernan and for all of us a k.q.e.d. Michael Press. Funds for the production of forum are provided by the members of k.q.e.d. Public Radio and the Germanicus Foundation and the generosity foundation Yeah the minute before 11 o'clock we invite you to stay with us for the program here and now it'll be along in just a moment 1st another look at Bay Area traffic as we're joined again by Joel McConnell and that's a tough traffic in San Jose on how we went to one northbound because of a crash after trouble for cars there are injuries looks like it's just being moved to the shoulder of a 2 lanes had been blocked and it's backed up at least a 13th Street 6 headed north of voltage or can it had a crash a major one over the last hour and a half it has been cleared finally but there is still ripples of slow traffic some of which extended on a $580.00 westbound which explains some of the slowdown from Santa Rita robot at Santa Rita have reports of a bunch of debris tire tread stuff in the middle of the freeway Joe McConnell for k.q.e.d. Thank you Joe Here's a report brought to you by Positive Coaching Alliance and support for k.q.e.d. Comes from digital foundry software consulting helping global businesses design build and run innovative software since 1992 more online a digital foundry dot com This is k.q.e.d. F.m. San Francisco k.q.e.d. North Island it's now 11.