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Home , Allan Carr, Barry Spikings, Christopher Walken, Desperate Hours, Gene Siskel, George Dzundza

April 9, 2019 (XXXVIII:10) : (1978, 183 min.) The version of this Goldenrod Handout sent out in our Monday mailing, and the one online, has hot links.

DIRECTOR Michael Cimino WRITING Michael Cimino, Deric Washburn, Louis Garfinkle, and Quinn K. Redeker developed the story, and Deric Washburn wrote the screenplay. PRODUCED BY Michael Cimino, , John Peverall, and CINEMATOGRAPHY MUSIC EDITING

At the 1979 , the film won Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing, Best Actor in a Supporting Role, and Best Sound, and it was nominated for Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading Role, Best Actress in a Supporting Role, Best Writing, and Best Cinematography.

CAST ...Michael ...Stan ...Steven ...Nick was the first of a “spate of pictures. . .articulat[ing] the effect on ...Linda the American psyche of the war” (). George Dzundza...John Cimino won Oscars for Best Picture and Best Directing and was Chuck Aspegren...Axel nominated for Best Writing for The Deer Hunter. The film was Shirley Stoler...Steven's Mother such an artistic and critical accomplishment that he was given Rutanya Alda...Angela carte blanche from to make his next film, the Pierre Segui...Julien Heaven’s Gate* (1980). This decision was a serious Mady Kaplan...Axel's Girl blow to Cimino’s directorial career, and it brought about the Amy Wright... Bridesmaid downfall of United Artists, forcing its sale to MGM in 1981 (The Mary Ann Haenel...Stan's Girl Guardian). Though the film was nominated for the Palm d’Or at Richard Kuss...Linda's Father Cannes and was praised for being undeniably beautiful, as if Joe Grifasi...Bandleader “ decided to make a western,” the film’s producer Christopher Colombi Jr....Wedding Man said, it was largely “savaged by critics” (The Victoria Karnafel...Sad Looking Girl Guardian). After the failure of his follow up to his greatest Jack Scardino...Cold Old Man success, he only made four more films, his final, The Joe Strnad...Bingo Caller ** being made in 1996 and marking his second and final appearance at Cannnes being nominated for the Palm d’Or. MICHAEL CIMINO (b. February 3, 1939 in City, He did find success in France with his first novel Big Jane in New York—d. July 2, 2016 (age 77) in , California), 2001. These are the other films he directed: Thunderbolt and according to some critical assessments, was “one of the Lightfoot* (1974), Year of the Dragon* (1985), ** figureheads of the ambitious and intelligent US cinema of the (1987), and ** (1990). ” while also being “the man blamed for killing it off.” His *Also wrote most significant accomplishment, 1978’s The Deer Hunter* **, **Also produced Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—2

VILMOS ZSIGMOND (b. June 16, 1930 in Szeged, Hungary— both directed by Scorsese. De Niro received additional d. January 1, 2016 (age 85) in Big Sur, California) was an nominations for Michael Cimino's drama The Deer Academy Award-winning . He won the Oscar Hunter (1978), Penny Marshall's drama Awakenings (1990), and for Best Cinematography for ’s Close David O. Russell's romantic comedy-drama Silver Linings Encounters of the Third Kind (1977), and he was nominated for Playbook (2012). These are some of his other films: Three Oscars for Best Cinematography for The Deer Hunter (1978), Rooms in Manhattan (1965), Young Wolves (1968), Greetings The River (1984), and The Black Dahlia (2006). These are some (1968), The Wedding Party (1969), Bloody Mama (1970), Hi, other films he worked on: The Sadist (1963), Living Between Mom! (1970), Jennifer on My Mind (1971), Born to Win (1971), Two Worlds (1963), The Market (TV Movie documentary) The Gang That Couldn't Shoot Straight (1971), Bang the Drum (1965), Futz (1969), McCabe & Mrs. Miller (1971), The Hired Slowly (1973), 1900 (1976), The Last Tycoon (1976), New York, Hand (1971), (1972), The Long Goodbye (1973), New York (1977), True Confessions (1981), The King of Comedy Scarecrow (1973), Cinderella Liberty (1973), The Sugarland (1982), Once Upon a Time in America (1984), Brazil (1985), The Express (1974), Sweet Revenge (1976), Obsession (1976), Winter Mission (1986), (1987), The Untouchables (1987), Kills (1979), The Rose (1979), Heaven's Gate (1980), Midnight Run (1988), Jacknife (1989), We're No Angels (1989), (1981), Jinxed! (1982), Table for Five (1983), No Small Affair Stanley & Iris (1990), (1990), Backdraft (1991), (1984), The Witches of Eastwick (1987), Fat Man and Little Boy Night and the City (1992), Mad Dog and Glory (1993), This (1989), The Two Jakes (1990), The Bonfire of the Vanities Boy's Life (1993), A Bronx Tale* (1993), Mary Shelley's (1990), Sliver (1993), Maverick (1994), The Crossing Guard Frankenstein (1994), One Hundred and One Nights (1995), (1995), Jersey Girl (2004), Melinda and Melinda (2004), Casino (1995), Heat (1995), The Fan (1996), Sleepers (1996), Cassandra's Dream (2007), Compulsion (2013), and Six Dance Marvin's Room (1996), (1997), (1997), Lessons in Six Weeks (2014). Wag the Dog (1997), Ronin (1998), Analyze This (1999), Men of Honor (2000), Meet the Parents (2000), The Score (2001), Showtime (2002), Analyze That (2002), Godsend (2004), Shark Tale (2004), Meet the Fockers (2004), The Bridge of San Luis Rey (2004), The Good Shepherd* (2006), Little Fockers (2010), Killer Elite (2011), Last Vegas (2013), (2013), The Comedian (2016), and Untitled De Niro/Ramirez/Jakubowicz Project (announced). *Also directed

JOHN CAZALE (b. August 12, 1935 in Boston, Massachusetts—d. March 12, 1978 (age 42) in , New York) was an American actor. He appeared in five films over six years, all of which were nominated for the Academy Award for Best Picture: (1972), (1974), The Godfather Part II (1974), (1975), and The Deer Hunter (1978). Cazale, though seriously ill with lung cancer that had metastasized to his bones, continued working while filming The Deer Hunter, dying the year it was released. Before his break into film, he acted on stage and in the 1962 short The American Way and the 1968 TV series N.Y.P.D..

JOHN SAVAGE (August 25, 1949 in Old Bethpage, , New York) is an American actor (233 credits). One of Savage's most notable roles is as Claude Bukowski in Miloš Forman's 1979 film . His first major film role was as Steven Pushkov in the 1978 film The Deer Hunter. In his many roles, he has worked with some of the greatest filmmakers of the past 40 years, including in (1989) and The Summer of Sam (1999), in The Thin Red Line (1998), and in his 2017 series. These are some of his other film appearances: The Master Beater ROBERT DE NIRO (August 17, 1943 in New York City, New (1969), Love Is a Carousel (1971), Bad Company (1972), York) is an American actor (116 credits), producer (35 credits), Steelyard Blues (1973), All the Kind Strangers (TV Movie) and director. He has won Oscars for Best Actor in a Leading (1974), The Sister in Law (1974), The Turning Point of Jim Role twice for The Godfather: Part II (1974) and Malloy (TV Movie) (1975), Eric (TV Movie) (1975), Gibbsville (1980). De Niro's first major film roles were in the sports drama (TV Series) (1976-1977), The Onion Field (1979), Inside Moves Bang the Drum Slowly (1973) and Scorsese's Mean (1980), Cattle Annie and Little Britches (1981), The Amateur Streets (1973). He earned Academy Award nominations for the (1981), Brady's Escape (1983), Maria's Lovers (1984), Salvador psychological thrillers (1976) and Cape Fear (1991), (1986), (1987), The Godfather: Part III Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—3

(1990), Primary Motive (1992), The Crossing Guard (1995), Obama awarded her the 2010 National Medal of Arts, and in Last Cut (1997), Frontline (1999), Ghost Soldier (1999), Kill 2014, the Presidential Medal of Freedom. In 2003, the Your Darlings (2006), Wild About Harry (2009), Buffalo Bushido government of France made her a Commander of the Order of (2009), The Legacy of the Sun (2011), Alien Rising (2013), In Arts and Letters. She was nominated for Oscars for The Deer Dubious Battle (2016), Fake News (2017), Followed (2018), and Hunter (1978), The French Lieutenant's Woman (1981), Sensory Perception (2019). Silkwood (1983), Out of Africa (1985), Ironweed (1987), Evil Angels (1988), for which she won Best Actress at Cannes, Postcards from the Edge (1990), The Bridges of Madison County (1995), One True Thing (1998), Music of the Heart (1999), Adaptation. (2002), The Devil Wears Prada (2006), Doubt (2008), Julie & Julia (2009), August: Osage County (2013), Into the Woods (2014), Florence Foster Jenkins (2016), and The Post (2017). These are some of her other films: Everybody Rides the Carousel (1976), Julia (1977), Manhattan (1979), The Seduction of Joe Tynan (1979), Still of the Night (1982), Falling in Love (1984), Heartburn (1986), Defending Your Life (1991), Death Becomes Her (1992), The House of the Spirits (1993), Before and After (1996), Marvin's Room (1996), Dancing at Lughnasa (1998), A.I. Artificial Intelligence (2001), The Hours (2002), Angels in America (TV Mini-Series) (2003), The Manchurian Candidate (2004), A Series of Unfortunate Events (2004), A Prairie Home Companion (2006), Rendition (2007), Mamma Mia! (2008), and Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again (2018).

GEORGE DZUNDZA (b. July 19, 1945 in Rosenheim, Bavaria, CHRISTOPHER WALKEN (b. March 31, 1943 in Astoria, ) is an American television and film actor (89 credits). Queens, New York City, New York) is an Academy Award- Dzundza was born in Rosenheim, Germany, to a Ukrainian winning and nominated American actor (134 credits). He won an Unterlander father and Polish Galitzianer mother who were Oscar for his supporting role in The Deer Hunter (1978), and he forced into factory labour by the Nazis. He spent the first few was nominated for a supporting role in years of his life in displaced persons camps with his parents and (2002). He has appeared in many iconic films, such as Annie one brother. These are some of the films he has acted in: Hall (1977) and (1994). His status in popular Massage Parlor Murders! (1973), Kung Fu (TV Series) (1974), culture as an eccentric and intense presence has made him sought (TV Series) (1975), The Streets of San Francisco after for comic cameos in films such as Wayne’s World 2 (1993) (TV Series) (1977), The Deer Hunter (1978), Honky Tonk and television comedies like and . Freeway (1981), Best Defense (1984), No Way Out (1987), No These are some of his other film appearances: The Wonderful Man's Land (1987), Impulse (1990), White Hunter Black Heart John Acton (TV Series) (1953), Cleopatra (1970), The Anderson (1990), The Butcher's Wife (1991), Basic Instinct (1992), The Tapes (1971), 1976 Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), The Untouchables (TV Series) (1993), Crimson Tide (1995), Instinct Sentinel (1977), Roseland (1977), Last Embrace (1979), (1999), Above Suspicion (2000), Adam and Eve (2005), and The Heaven's Gate (1980), The Dogs of War (1980), Pennies from Chosen One (2010). Heaven (1981), (1983), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), Biloxi Blues (1988), (1990), : “The Deer Hunter” McBain (1991), Mistress (1992), Returns (1992), Michael Cimino's "The Deer Hunter" is a three-hour : Bad Girl (Video short) (1993), (1993), movie in three major movements. It is a progression from a Things to Do in Denver When You're Dead (1995), Basquiat wedding to a funeral. It is the story of a group of friends. It is the (1996), Last Man Standing (1996), America's Sweethearts record of how the war in Vietnam entered several lives and (2001), The Stepford Wives (2004), Romance & Cigarettes altered them terribly forever. It is not an anti-. It is not a (2005), (2007), (2012), Jersey pro-war film. It is one of the most emotionally shattering films Boys (2014), and The Jungle Book (2016). ever made. It begins with men at work, in the furnace of the steel mills in a town somewhere in . The klaxon sounds, MERYL STREEP (b. June 22, 1949 in Summit, ) is the shift is over, the men go down the road to a saloon for a beer. often described as the best actress (85 credits) of her generation. They sing "I Love You Bay-bee" along with the jukebox. It is Nominated for a record 21 Academy Awards, she has won three: still morning on the last day of their lives that will belong to Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role for Kramer them before Vietnam. vs. Kramer (1979) and for Best Performance by an Actress in a The movie takes its time with these opening scenes, Leading Role for Sophie's Choice (1982) and The Iron Lady with the steel mill and the saloon and especially with the (2011). Streep was awarded the AFI Life Achievement Award in wedding and the party in the American Legion Hall. It's 2004, Gala Tribute from the Film Society of Lincoln Center in important not simply that we come to know the characters, but 2008, and Kennedy Center Honor in 2011 for her contribution to that we feel absorbed into their lives; that the wedding rituals and American culture, through performing arts. President Barack rhythms feel like more than just ethnic details. They do. Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—4

The opening movement is lingered over; it's like the is about any of those things that you choose, if you choose, but wedding celebration in "The Godfather," but celebrated by hard- more than anything else, it is a heartbreakingly effective fictional working people who have come to eat, dance and drink a lot and machine that evokes the agony of the Vietnam time. wish luck to the newlyweds and to say good-by to the three If it is not overtly "anti-war," why should it be? Hell, young men who have enlisted in the Army. The party goes on we're all against the war . . . now. What "The Deer Hunter" long enough for everyone to get drunk who is ever going to, and insists is that we not forget the war. It ends on a curious note: then the newlyweds drive off and the rest of the friends go up The singing of '.' I won't tell you how it into the mountains to shoot some deer. There is some arrives at that particular moment (the unfolding of the final Hemingwayesque talk about what it means to shoot deer: We are passages should occur to you as events in life) but I do want to still at a point where shooting something is supposed to mean observe that the lyrics of "God Bless America" have never before something. seemed to me to contain such an infinity of possible meanings, Then Vietnam occupies the screen, suddenly, with a some tragic, some unspeakably sad, some few still defiantly wall of noise, and the second movement of the film is about the hopeful. experiences that three of the friends (Robert De Niro, John Savage and Christopher Walken) have there. At the film's center comes one of the most horrifying sequences ever created in fiction, as the three are taken prisoner and forced to play Russian roulette while their captors gamble on who will, or will not, blow out his brains. The game of Russian roulette becomes the organizing symbol of the film: Anything you can believe about the game, about its deliberately random violence, about how it touches the sanity of men forced to play it, will apply to the war as a whole. It is a brilliant symbol because, in the context of this story, it makes any ideological statement about the war superfluous. The De Niro character is the one who somehow finds the strength to keep going and to keep Savage and Walken going. He survives the prison camp and helps the others. Then, finally home from Vietnam, he is surrounded by a silence we can never Steven Biel: “The Deer Hunter Debate: Artistic License and quite penetrate. He is touched vaguely by desire for the girl that Vietnam War Remembrance” (Bright Lights Film Journal) more than one of them left behind, but does not act decisively. The response to The Deer Hunter amounted to a serious He is a "hero," greeted shyly, awkwardly by the hometown public debate over the Vietnam War that extended beyond film people. critics to engage a wide range of viewers. It wasn’t a debate that He delays for a long time going to the VA hospital to simply mirrored prior pro- and antiwar positions. It was a debate visit Savage, who has lost his legs. While he is there he learns that the makers and marketers of The Deer Hunter made every that Walken is still in Vietnam. He had promised Walken -- on a effort to avoid by describing the film as apolitical, as a character drunken moonlit night under a basketball hoop on a playlot, the study of the war’s effects. It was a debate that gained its focus night of the wedding -- that he would never leave him in and force by the terms in which it was primarily conducted: Vietnam. They were both thinking, romantically and naively, of metaphor, realism, authenticity, artistic license, literalism, irony, the deaths of heroes, but now De Niro goes back in an altogether point of view. In other words, it was a debate that, six years after different context to retrieve the living Walken. The promise was the last U.S. combat troops left Vietnam and four years after adolescent stuff, but there is no adolescence left when De Niro Saigon fell to the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, finds Walken still in Saigon, playing Russian roulette addressed the morality of the American war in Vietnam through professionally. arguments about the aesthetics and ethics of making cultural At about this point in a review it is customary to praise memory. or criticize those parts of a film that seem deserving: the actors, * * * the photography, the director's handling of the material. It should I saw Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter on a date in be said, I suppose, that "The Deer Hunter" is far from flawless, April 1979 – my first high school date, actually, and the fact that that there are moments when its characters do not behave I asked a girl to see The Deer Hunter (on a Friday the 13th) convincingly, implausible details involving Walken's stay and might give some indication of why my first date didn’t happen fate in Vietnam, unnecessary ambiguities in the De Niro until close to the end of my senior year. She sobbed through most character. It can also be said that the film contains greatly of the second half of the movie, and even if I’d had the courage moving performances, and that it is the most impressive blending to put my arm around her, I was too preoccupied with trying to of "box office" and "art" in American movies since "Bonnie and conceal my own snuffling to make such a bold move. Maybe I Clyde," "The Godfather" and "Nashville." All of those kinds of mumbled “It’s ok” a couple of times. We agreed afterward that observations will become irrelevant as you experience the film. It The Deer Hunter was a great movie, a great antiwar movie. As gathers you up, it takes you along, it doesn't let up. suburban Clevelanders, we were taken with its local connections. "The Deer Hunter" is said to be about many subjects: The wedding scene was filmed at St. Theodosius Russian About male bonding, about mindless patriotism, about the Orthodox Cathedral on the near West Side, and Meryl Streep’s dehumanizing effects of war, about Nixon's "silent majority." It Linda worked at the Eagle market next door. Not only that, but Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—5 during the wedding reception at the VFW hall, when Linda and alive and returns to rescue him. In a climactic game of Russian Robert De Niro’s Michael slip away for a drink at the bar, there roulette, arranged by Michael to try to bring his friend out of his is Scott Phillips, from my high school, class of ’76, sipping a amnesiac state, Nick has a flash of recognition before shooting drink and chatting silently right between them. himself. The film concludes with Nick’s funeral and the friends It didn’t occur to me to think about what kind of antiwar reassembled to remember him. movie this was, let alone to question whether it really was an ’s long-standing consensus that Vietnam antiwar movie. Somehow I completely missed the controversy War films were box office poison prompted the filmmakers to that it provoked – a controversy that had culminated four days speak cautiously about The Deer Hunter before its release. before we saw The Deer Hunter when it won the Academy “Vietnam is awkward,” journalist Michael Herr had written in Award for Best Picture. The response to The Deer Hunter 1977, “everybody knows how awkward, and if people don’t even amounted to a serious public debate over the Vietnam War that want to hear about it, you know they’re not going to pay money extended beyond film critics to engage a wide range of viewers. to sit there in the dark and have it brought up.” Aside from John It wasn’t a debate that simply Wayne’s critically reviled The mirrored prior pro- and Green Berets (1968), the war had antiwar positions. It was a appeared almost exclusively in debate that the makers and movies about unstable vigilante marketers of The Deer veterans: Billy Jack (1971), Taxi Hunter made every effort to Driver (1976 – with De Niro as avoid by describing the film Travis Bickle), Rolling Thunder as apolitical, as a character (1977), among others. (“The Green study of the war’s effects. It Berets doesn’t count. That wasn’t was a debate that gained its really about Vietnam,” Herr focus and force by the terms quipped, “it was about Santa in which it was primarily Monica.”) ’s conducted: metaphor, , originally realism, authenticity, artistic scheduled to come out before The license, literalism, irony, Deer Hunter, had initially made point of view. In other studio executives less wary of words, it was a debate that, Vietnam-themed films. The Boys in six years after the last U.S. Company C, ’s Coming combat troops left Vietnam and four years after Saigon fell to the Home, , and Who’ll Stop the Rain all North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong, addressed the morality of preceded The Deer Hunter to screens in 1978, but they were the American war in Vietnam through arguments about the more modest films, and only Coming Home did well at the box aesthetics and ethics of making cultural memory. office. With its epic scale and big budget ($15 million, as The Deer Hunter follows three steelworker friends, opposed to Coming Home’s $3 million), The Deer Hunter tended Michael (Robert De Niro), Nick (Christopher Walken), and to draw comparisons with the apparently jinxed Apocalypse Now, Steven (John Savage), from their hometown of Clairton, with its well-publicized production delays and cost overruns, Pennsylvania, to Vietnam and back. It begins on the morning of driven by Coppola’s monomania. A United Artists executive Steven’s wedding, two days before their departure for basic involved with both Coming Home and The Deer Hunter could training. The first sixty-eight minutes of the three-hour film muster only faint optimism about the lot of the 1978-79 Vietnam establish their friendships within Clairton’s traditional, patriotic films: “I hope people will see these movies if they are good Russian Orthodox community. (The characters’ ethnicity isn’t movies. I don’t think the subject of Vietnam is a turn-on or a actually specified in the screenplay. Viewers have variously turn-off. But it’s still a question mark.” According to an industry identified them as Russian, Slovak, Carpatho-Russian, Ukrainian, observer, cautious “movie folks” remained unsold on the subject Rusyn, Polish, and Belarusian. native Andy Warhol, to the extent that it needed “to be veiled behind softer words – who saw a preview of the film in New York in late November words like ‘love story’ . . . ‘epic adventure’. . . and 1978, wrote in his diary that the movie’s setting was “where all ‘camaderie.’”2 my cousins are from” and “was really Czechoslovakian.”1) After In his first public comments about The Deer Hunter, Michael and Nick, along with some other buddies, take a deer Michael Cimino denied that he was making a Vietnam War hunting trip to the mountains, the film cuts abruptly to its only movie at all. “The war is really incidental to the development of combat scene, where the three friends are reunited only to be the characters and their story,” he told a New York Times captured by the Viet Cong. In The Deer Hunter’s most notorious interviewer. “It’s a part of their lives and just that, nothing sequence, they are forced by their captors to play Russian more.” Cimino’s evasiveness – his anticipatory defensiveness – roulette, until Michael engineers their escape. The three are set the tone for his responses to the controversy that attended the variously traumatized by the experience: Michael returns feeling film on its release. He insisted that The Deer Hunter was “neutral estranged from the community; Steven has lost his legs and as hell”: refuses to come home to his wife from a VA hospital; Nick I have no interest in making a “Vietnam” film, no disappears into a shady Saigon underworld of Russian roulette interest in making a direct political statement. I really wanted to gambling games. When Michael learns that Steven has been make a film about these kinds of people . . . . Like most ordinary receiving packages of cash from Vietnam, he realizes that Nick is people, they can be quite extraordinary in the face of crises. So Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—6 the war is simply a means of testing their courage and willpower. “attached to a Green Beret medical unit” turned out to be false; But it could just as easily have been the Civil War, or any war.3 he had served in the Army, mainly in the reserves, from 1962 to If the movie wasn’t really “about” the Vietnam War, if 1964. Liz Smith’s syndicated gossip column speculated that the war was an arbitrary incident in a character study of “Perhaps Cimino’s romanticizing the facts of his life is somehow “,” then maybe The Deer Hunter could be safely related to his romanticizing the Viet Nam War in his film.” Tom cordoned off from the divisive politics that had scared Buckley, a former war correspondent who elaborated on Hollywood away from the subject until now. But by trying to Cimino’s autobiographical falsehoods, similarly connected them play it safe, by couching its epic pretensions in supposedly to the movie’s deceptions and lies: “If it were not for the way apolitical characters and incidents, the film invited the backlash it they are mirrored in The Deer Hunter, Cimino’s impostures had sought to avoid. would scarcely be worth noticing,” but “[t]o invent forms of Ambition and caution cruelty – the Russian roulette similarly combined in game – where so much suffering Universal Studio’s marketing actually occurred” was strategy for the movie. “perverse.”5 Universal brought in a Did Cimino and the studio Hollywood operator named believe his pronouncements that Allan Carr, best known for the film was apolitical and producing and, should have been according to the Los Angeles uncontroversial? How else to Times, for his “flamboyant” account for the decision to invite personality, “opulent journalists who had covered the entertaining, custom tailored Vietnam War and had been dashikis, and . . . flair for among its most prominent critics hype.” Carr was skeptical to one of the previews in New about the movie before he saw York? , recipient of a it. “I knew I wouldn’t like it,” he said later. “It’s about two things for his Vietnam reporting, recounted the I don’t care about: Vietnam and poor people.” But he found experience in a critique of The Deer Hunter published on the eve himself “emotionally undone” by the screening and set about of the Academy Awards. The Deer Hunter had “troubled” devising a strategy to make The Deer Hunter “an event movie” Arnett, but it had “stunned” him by its imagistic force “into mute by creating industry buzz and getting it nominated for as many acceptance of the divine right of the Hollywood dream-machine Oscars as possible. He arranged for short engagements in operators to drench us in fictional nightmares if they wish.” A December 1978 at single theaters in Los Angeles (where even colleague – not named by Arnett in his op-ed but subsequently Rudolf Nureyev and Lauren Bacall begged in vain for seats) and identified as Seymour Hersh – wasn’t stunned into muteness and New York (where Warhol had seen it at an even more exclusive walked out during the Russian roulette scenes “muttering ‘fascist VIP screening a few weeks earlier). “I knew it would be the trash.’” Arnett now felt compelled to write about the film Christmas cocktail party subject in New York,” Carr recalled. because audiences, rather than “viewing ‘The Deer Hunter’ as “Everybody would be asking if you saw it, were you one of the the spectacularly fevered product of an ambitious film director,” 500 people who saw one of the eight shows. They said I were “interpreting his film as a deep historical truth.” shouldn’t give a film to New York and take it away. I said that’s I have found that enthusiasts are genuinely surprised how you treat New Yorkers.” Carr and the studio withheld the and hurt when I tell them that while Vietnam had all manners of movie from national audiences until February 1979.4 violence, including self-immolating Buddhist monks, fire * * * bombings, rapes, deception and massacres like My Lai in its 20 The Deer Hunter pivots on the Russian roulette years of war, there was not a single recorded case of Russian sequence, which immediately became the focal point of the roulette, not in the voluminous files of the debate and has served ever since as a synecdoche for the film. anyway, nor in my experience either. The central metaphor of the (Its migration into comedy – a gauge of its resonance – started on movie is simply a bloody lie.6 SCTV with the Canadian brothers Bob and Doug Mackenzie I’ll return to Arnett’s characterization of Russian [Rick Moranis and Dave Thomas], who played a drinking game roulette as a metaphor, but first I want to elaborate on why he called “beer hunter” that involved shaking up one can in a six and others found the sequence so objectionable – that is, why it pack and opening the cans next to their heads. It has also made crossed the line, in their view, from “fictional nightmare” into its way into two episodes of The Simpsons.) Word about the “bloody lie.” To get at this, we have to see the sequence in sequence got out from previews, so that long before the general relation to what immediately precedes it: the film’s only release, many viewers were aware that Russian roulette was a depiction of combat. The Deer Hunter’s combat sequence, as fiction, that there were no reported cases of it being used as a numerous critics pointed out, is an inversion of the common form of torture by the Viet Cong or North Vietnamese. Cimino operations in which U.S. soldiers sought to “pacify” villages by exacerbated the implication of dishonesty by lying about his burning them down, and more specifically of the March 1968 My service record in a New York Times interview, published on the Lai massacre in which U.S. soldiers slaughtered between four eve of the limited release. His claim that The Deer Hunter was “a and five hundred Vietnamese civilians, mainly women and very personal film” because he had enlisted “about the time of children. (Seymour Hersh had published the first newspaper the Tet offensive in 1968 – when things got bad” and had been reports of the My Lai massacre in November 1969.) Here it is the Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—7

Viet Cong who are destroying the village and killing the oral historian and radio interviewer, saw the movie two days inhabitants, while the heroic American avenges their deaths. before it won the Oscar and, “appalled by its shameless Michael stands “alone with his flamethrower,” in the dishonesty,” immediately “dashed off a critique” for screenplay’s description of the scene, “like the angel with the magazine. “Of course, the Vietcong were, on occasion, cruel in flaming sword, surrounded by clouds of billowing black smoke”; their behavior,” he conceded. “Cimino’s dishonesty was to in front of him, “the V.C. soldiers lie in charred heaps, project a sadistic psyche not only onto ‘Charlie’ but onto all the motionless now, like roasted stones.” Just below this description Vietnamese portrayed. There is not one who bears any in his marked-up version of the resemblance to a human being script, De Niro quoted Philip who feels.” Terkel charged that Caputo’s 1977 memoir A the film’s racism not only made Rumor of War: “& men who do it “the perfect vehicle to assuage not expect mercy don’t have any feelings of guilt we may still the inclination to grant it.” The suffer” for the war, but it “may quotation suggests that De Niro actually justify to some understood Michael’s audiences, especially the young, mercilessness as a double act of our adventure in Indochina. They vengeance – a response on may wonder, If these gooks and behalf of the innocents he has slopes are such bastards, why seen murdered by the Viet didn’t we bomb the bastards Cong and a pre-emptive attack back to the Stone Age?” (This on his soon-to-be torturers.7 had been the infamous threat of Had they read the General Curtis LeMay, architect screenplay, critics like Arnett of the massive bombing would only have seen it as campaign against North Vietnam further confirmation that The Deer Hunter was fundamentally a starting in 1965.) Arnett, too, feared for those who weren’t old racist film. called Russian roulette “a metaphor for enough to have actual memories of the war: “It is unnerving to sit the General Westmoreland theory that Asians don’t value human in a movie theater in the in the last year of the life the way we do.” (William Westmoreland, the U.S. military 1970s and hear young audiences, for whom the war is an all but commander in Vietnam from 1964 to 1968, had notoriously said forgotten memory, roar their approval as De Niro kills his this in an interview in Peter Davis’ Oscar-winning documentary Vietnamese tormentors.” But the film, Arnett insisted, made this Hearts and Minds.) The novelist and former war correspondent reaction inevitable. By presenting “every single Vietnamese as a Ward Just characterized Russian roulette in the movie as “an cardboard caricature,” Cimino invited viewers to cheer at their Oriental inspiration taken up by a drug-crazed American who deaths. For the British war correspondent John Pilger, “The was forced to ‘play’ it in a VC prison camp and now does it Gook Hunter,” as he called it, was a cynical attempt by before Vietnamese audiences who wager on the results.” For Hollywood to make money “with a movie that appealed directly Just, this was “a crisp update” of Kipling: “Here lies a fool who to those racist instincts that cause wars and that allowed the tried to hustle the East.” The film as a whole, he said, was Vietnam war to endure for so long.” Commonweal’s reviewer “simply a racist muddle.” Despite decades of “movies with Nazi found the cheering at Michael’s vengeance “sickening” and saw devils, Japanese devils and then communist devils,” the novelist it as an ominous sign of catastrophic military adventures to and journalist Hans Koning couldn’t recall any “in which ‘the come: “If we have to see the Viet Cong riddled with bullets in enemy’ is shown as quite so devilish” as in this one. Koning order to salve our own wounds, we’re probably capable of argued that while the movie didn’t quite “exult in the war,” opening them again in reality some place else in the world.”9 neither did it “question the war’s good guys/bad guys These revenge fantasies, this recapitulation of the racism that had purposefulness.” Vietnam veteran Brian Riffert observed that fueled U.S. strategy and tactics in Vietnam, amounted to a “All Vietnamese are treated in the same ‘yellow peril’ manner, as dangerous revisionism, in these critics’ view, at a malleable cruel and sadistic creatures” and argued that there was “another moment when the war was passing from current event into facet to the racism of The Deer Hunter”: its focus on “white” memory and history. soldiers to the exclusion of African Americans and Latinos. The stakes were enormous for those who were outraged “[B]lack folks are noticeably absent,” the Baltimore Afro- by the film. They perceived that the nation had failed to come to American pointed out, “contrary to what it was like in real life in a moral reckoning with the war – that the U.S. defeat had been the Nam.” The Deer Hunter undoubtedly participated in the met with an impulse to dodge rather than to grapple with vexing white ethnic revival of the post-Civil Rights era and its questions of culpability. When Harold Visotsky, a Northwestern celebration of those hardworking, patriotic people of Eastern and University psychologist, called Coming Home and The Deer Southern European heritage who would soon come to be Hunter “Hollywood’s version of our Nuremberg trials,” he was identified as “Reagan Democrats” and whose image as articulating the hope that the reckoning had now arrived; popular quintessential Americans would be deployed in opposition to the culture was performing the responsibility that politicians and welfare state, affirmative action, and social liberalism.8 military officials had shirked. Koning and others scoffed at Reports of audiences applauding when Michael and Visotsky’s claim. The Deer Hunter either bracketed the crucial Nick kill their captors suggested that the film’s racism was moral questions by asserting its neutrality as a character study or producing a corrupted “memory” of the war. , the it deflected culpability onto the barbaric enemy. The outrage was Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—8 an attempt to force the genuine reckoning that The Deer Hunter film,” Russian roulette “is not attempting to be an example of the sought to evade.10 Vietnamese people but an example of the senseless suicide of Accusations of racism reached a crescendo at the war on both sides.” A Post editorial explained that Academy Awards ceremony, where protestors calling themselves Russian roulette stood for the illusion “that control is in one’s the “Hell No We Won’t Go Away Committee” handed out hands when it is really in fate’s” and, by conveying the excerpts of negative reviews of The Deer Hunter to Oscar-goers purposeless destruction of lives, served “as a bloody and and held up signs saying “No Oscars for Racism” and (borrowing relentless indictment of the Vietnam War.” Yet the Post’s editors from Arnett’s op-ed) “Deer Hunter a Bloody Lie.” A Vietnamese also agreed that the film was apolitical: “It depoliticizes the war UCLA graduate student told a reporter that the movie “depicts us almost entirely, exchanging considerations of historical rightness as barbarians and savages” and “endangers the understanding for for strictly human concerns.” Other viewers and reviewers Americans of our people.” The film sent the message, another described Russian roulette as a “metaphor for [the] cruel and protestor charged, “that war is hell for American white boys but random chance by which war picks it victims,” of “haphazard not for yellow Asian boys.” Jane destiny.” Or it “communicate[d] Fonda, who won the Best with incredible force what Actress award for Coming America did to its youth in that Home, hadn’t seen The Deer war,” as another letter to the Hunter but agreed with the editor put it. Or it generally protestors that it “delivers a represented “the horror of Pentagon view of the Vietnam.”14 Vietnamese.” A journalist inside These admirers of the the ceremony said that the metaphor and of the film agreed audience, buffeted by criticism that they bore an antiwar of The Deer Hunter in recent message. They joined Cimino in weeks into rethinking their confronting critics for being initial enthusiasm for the film, literal-minded to the point of responded with palpable philistinism. “Ever since Plato discomfort when the Best expelled them from his Picture award was announced: Republic, creators of fictions “When the picture’s name was have had to deal with the kind read, it was as if you had proposed to a girl and were horrified of criticisms made by Peter Arnett,” complained an irritated she had accepted.” Police arrested thirteen protesters, among reader of Arnett’s op-ed. In response to Hans Koning’s them members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, for assault objections to the combat and Russian roulette scenes, the chair of and inciting to riot.11 the English Department at Long Island University accused him * * * of censuring The Deer Hunter and other fictional works about the Like it or not, Cimino’s could-have-been-about-any-war war “for what is probably the unique quality of art” – “[t]he film became a Vietnam War movie, and he had to explain and artist’s freedom to abstract, to rearrange and revision the world’s defend it as such. The Deer Hunter’s detractors, he said, were past” in the service of “a truth that does not need to be bound (or holding it to a standard of naïve literalism. He insisted that the tied) to historical reference.” Kenneth Turan reminded those film wasn’t meant to be “realistic”; it was “surrealistic” in that, whose “hackles” were raised by the film’s xenophobia that the for example, Clairton is a composite of several different real movie “is primarily an artist’s and not a historian’s or a Marxist towns and “time is compressed” in the movie (which, according theoretician’s vision of the hell of Vietnam.” The president of to the script, begins in 1968 and ends in 1975), with My Lai and Universal responded to the Academy Awards protests with an the operating “as reference points rather than as exasperated defense of the Russian roulette sequence and the fact.” Cimino defended what he called the film’s “non-literal” movie’s fictionality. “Of course, that specific incident didn’t approach on the grounds that the war itself had produced all sorts happen. It’s a film, and films use metaphors.” At the post-Oscars of unlikely occurrences – that the surrealism of the real war gave press conference, Cimino professed to being “puzzled” by the him license for the inversion of My Lai: “I don’t dispute the protests against what he now said was “an antiwar film.” The accounts of My Lai 4, but I think that anyone who is a student of Academy Awards ceremony, of all occasions, should have the war, or anyone who was there, would agree that anything you reminded literalist critics that “we’re movie makers and not could imagine happening probably happened.” From surrealism, trying to re-create newsreels.”15 Cimino slipped into relativism, arguing that every war has its Defending the film on these grounds of imaginative share of atrocities, and then into sentimentalism: “The specific freedom against philistinism took a populist turn when it came to details of the war are unimportant. Because this is not a film of challenging the notion that audiences were somehow being the intellect, it’s a film of the heart – I hope.”12 duped or corrupted. , still a few years from joining The idea that Russian roulette was a metaphor didn’t Roger Ebert on television, rejected the claim that “because the originate with Cimino – I haven’t found any indication that he Viet Cong are portrayed as bloodthirsty . . . and De Niro and his ever invoked it13 – but admirers of the film latched onto it. The buddies are able to outwit them, ‘The Deer Hunter’ is a typically Deer Hunter, wrote one viewer in a letter to the editor that gung-ho Hollywood war movie.” He couldn’t imagine “how echoed Cimino, “is a film with no political intentions and thus anyone can walk away from the film thinking that war is should not be treated politically.” As “the central metaphor of the anything but hell and that the Viet Nam War was particularly Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—9 hellish”; those who saw the film as pro-war were Morris remembered The Deer Hunter as “[a] movie that I related “underestimating the intelligence of the American public,” which to enormously.” Even though he found it “very confusing” – “so his “gut instinct” told him was “now reconciled to the fact that much imagery and so much metaphor going on,” as he put it – the Viet Nam War was morally wrong and stupidly fought.” “the scenes of Vietnam were chillingly realistic.” Veterans who Answering Koning’s charge that a putative viewer of the Russian described the film as “a joke,” as “stupid,” “absolutely roulette sequence might “be justified in feeling he is being stirred ridiculous,” “really screwy,” or “wacky” thought that it had up once more to go hunt for Reds,” an actual viewer suggested failed the test of realism, either on narrow grounds of that she and Koning must have seen different movies. Not only inaccurately representing combat or more broadly for was her “emotional response” to the film “the exact opposite” of perpetuating stereotypes. Tim O’Brien, awarded the 1979 Koning’s, but he had gotten the for his combat scenes completely wrong first novel Going After Cacciato on “the bare facts.” From her (itself a work that brilliantly perspective, the sequence clearly straddled realism and showed South Vietnamese troops surrealism), challenged The Deer murdering innocent civilians in Hunter and other recent their efforts to ferret out Viet Hollywood versions of the war Cong sympathizers; this, she said, for adding only a dash of subtlety was “[t]he only possible to the “sorry stereotype” of the interpretation.” De Niro’s Michael “shell-shocked, frazzle-brained, is so outraged by this “barbaric doped-out ” Vietnam vet. act” that he roasts the perpetrators “In The Deer Hunter,” O’Brien in an act of humanitarian wrote, “John Savage weeps and vengeance. Another viewer trembles in his wheelchair, explained that Arnett, confusing Robert De Niro quietly seethes, “art” with “history,” had it wrong and Christopher Walken blows when he read the cheering of audiences at the prison guards’ his brains out in a dingy Saigon gaming hall.” Despite its deaths as evidence of “racist hatred”; the applause signified aspirations to greater “psychological insight and understanding” “incredible emotional release” – catharsis – an aesthetic rather than the earlier crazed veteran movies, Cimino’s film still than a political response.16 conveyed the message that “[v]ictim or villain, the Vietnam vet The defense against literalism didn’t preclude praise for is a basket case.”18 the film’s authenticity, which was most often framed in reference The success rather than the failure of realism troubled to the characters and the Clairton setting but also on occasion to critics who saw the film’s first hour as an attempt to buy the Vietnam episodes. James Webb, the Vietnam veteran-turned- credibility for the combat and Russian roulette sequences. Loren novelist who would go on to become Reagan’s Secretary of the Shumway of the Anti-Imperialist Cultural Union argued that “the Navy and a Democratic Senator from Virginia, attested that painstaking ‘realism’ of the hometown scenes is supposed to “[t]he combat scenes are realistic,” “[t]he emotional traumas are make us sympathize with the three working class heroes and representative,” and the depiction of “[t]he enemy” – accept as ‘real’ what later happens to them in Vietnam.” The mischaracterized by the antiwar movement “either as nonexistent Scottish writer Gilbert Adair wrote that “it would be churlish not or as 3 million helpless kittens” – “is credible in its harshness and to admit that Cimino has recreated the textures of a small, tightly brutality.” The “numbing authenticity” of the combat sequence, knit industrial community with an almost novelistic wealth of as the ’ reviewer described it, somehow detail,” but the effect was to heighten the impact of the Vietnam rendered its inversion of My Lai moot. By giving viewers “a scenes and manipulate viewers into suspending their “critical brief but horrifying taste of the merciless and indiscriminate faculties.” This was an insidious realism, realism in the service of village warfare,” the sequence actually made “My Lai lies. Peter Arnett saw it operating at the end of the movie, where comprehensible and therefore all the more dismaying.” An Cimino interspersed actual news footage of the Fall of Saigon to Esquire editor whose brother had lost both of his legs in Vietnam provide “a gloss of historical accuracy to the entire film.” Taken had despaired of all of the novels and movies about the war he to task by Cimino and others for wanting The Deer Hunter to be had read and seen: “I became convinced that nobody understood. a news report rather than a work of fiction, Arnett charged that Nobody was ever going to get it right. And then I saw The Deer Cimino was “bending aesthetic license to its limit” in his Hunter. Michael Cimino got it right.” The film’s honesty, he manipulative appropriation of the documentary record.19 said, had finally allowed him – and would allow the nation – to * * * “grieve.” For Webb, The Deer Hunter came the closest of the De Niro believed that by the end of the film his 1970s’ Vietnam movies to triggering the kind of “catharsis” and character has undergone a significant transformation. Michael is “artistic resolution” that could then be “allegorized into societal traumatized, of course, but he has also come to some sort of new resolution” precisely because of its realism; the other films, awareness about his relationship to violence. “Note about horror especially Apocalypse Now with its “depiction of the Vietnam of war, & what I’m capable of doing, scares me & turns me War as crazed fantasy,” felt to him like “bludgeons to the around,” De Niro wrote on the script, apparently imagining a spirit.”17 series of acts that Michael could have committed in Vietnam Nobody bought into Cimino’s claim that he’d made a even though they weren’t shown in the film. What we do see is surrealistic movie. A Vietnam vet from Queens named Michael that on a hunting trip after his return he is so enraged by friend Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—10

Stanley’s flippant wielding of a pistol that he almost kills him in nothing. A University of Wisconsin political scientist noted the a re-enactment of Russian roulette, and that he won’t kill a deer similarity between The Green Berets and The Deer Hunter, even this time when he has it in his rifle sight. “When I came back I though they were “[s]upposedly poles apart in outlook”; both realized I (we) didn’t know what we were doing there,” De Niro films, he wrote, “told many of us what we wanted to hear: that observed of Michael. “I strongly realize this.” He also has a the war wasn’t our fault.” The former war correspondent Gloria realization about his masculinity: “I Emerson observed that in all of the find out after going there that recent films, but especially in The Deer doesn’t make me a man. That isn’t Hunter, “Vietnam is becoming the label the answer.”20 for an American zone of suffering and The sense that Michael is innocence and redemption.”22 not just traumatized but Understood as a reaffirmation of transformed by the war struck American exceptionalism, the singing several critics as a key component of “God Bless America” signified a of The Deer Hunter’s antiwar renewed patriotic righteousness that message. Maryl Jo Fox, a teacher would lead the United States into more and aspiring novelist, argued that catastrophic international interventions. the film calls into question “our Emerson confessed that she laughed at archetypal expectations of heroism the last scene of the film but imagined and manhood.” Michael’s “reason audiences leaving theaters with the and self-control” enable the escape conviction that “our intentions were from the Viet Cong prison, but “the murderous canvas of fine, our motives right, the only problem being that too many Vietnam is too large, too random in its violence for such heroics Vietnamese did not agree.” Jimmy Carter’s failed attempt to to control its course.” When Michael spares the deer’s life, Fox rescue the American hostages in Iran was, for Emerson, the latest declared, “[a] new vision of manhood flashes on the screen.” His in a series of delusions “that a military exercise would bring a decision not to kill “signifies his membership in the living world, happy ending,” and the reinstatement of draft registration in his entry into the world of human bonds.” Joy Gould Boyum, the response to the hostage crisis was an ominous sign that Vietnam Wall Street Journal’s movie critic, located Michael in a tradition War revisionism had taken hold. Time magazine’s Lance of frontier manhood extending from Cooper (she was hardly Morrow agreed, though he welcomed the revisionism. Morrow alone in noting the connection between The Deerslayer and The called the singing of “God Bless America” a kind of “absolution, Deer Hunter) to Hemingway, and claimed that The Deer Hunter a subtle exoneration of the American role in Vietnam”; recent rendered this tradition “dangerous and irrelevant.” “Cimino’s events in Southeast Asia – the fleeing of Vietnamese “boat film,” she wrote, “seems to be saying that even America’s people,” re-education camps, the Khmer Rouge’s genocide, greatest proponent of ritualized violence – the deerslayer, the Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia – had, in Morrow’s view, the Hemingway hero – must now lay down his arms.” Boyum felt salutary effect of lifting “a lot of the moral burden” from “an overwhelming sense of despair” in this painful but necessary America’s war by making it “less tenable to hold that the U.S. realization about what she called “our toleration of – no! – our was guilty of the uniquely satanic imperialism that anti-war attraction to violence.” Fox placed the film in the context of critics often saw – and still frequently see – behind American troubling recent events – the mass suicide at Jonestown in policy.”23 Guyana, the disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor near Almost everyone who weighed in on the “God Bless Harrisburg – and found in the last scene of The Deer Hunter a America” scene, whatever their position on the film, raised the reawakening of “almost moribund expectations of human possibility that it was meant to be ironic, only to conclude that it decency and honor.” The mourning friends, gathering around a wasn’t. In reply to an interviewer who had suggested to him that breakfast table after Nick’s funeral, sing “God Bless America,” the scene might be “a satire,” a veteran and military historian quietly and self-consciously at first, but with growing force and named Keith Nolan said, “I don’t think it’s a satire, I think it’s conviction.21 very serious. . . . I think it shows that most veterans are not For critics like Arnett and Koning, this was the film’s ashamed of what they, that they’re proud of what they did for final abomination. What made Russian roulette a “bloody lie” this country, even though politically it got messed up, they’re was that the association of the war with a game of chance (if a proud of what they did.” An early booster of the film, in what game forced by the Viet Cong on American prisoners could even would become a typical formulation, described the singing of be called a game of chance) evaded any sense of responsibility. “God Bless America” as “rousing and wholly unironic.” Tom “God Bless America,” which had become a pro-war anthem of Buckley, one of The Deer Hunter’s sharpest critics, was equally sorts during the Nixon administration, brought this evasion to a emphatic: “It would be a remarkable conclusion if there were sentimental crescendo. Koning saw nothing to suggest that ironic intent, but there isn’t.” Gilbert Adair proposed that “[t]he Michael or any of the other surviving characters has come to any naïve patriotism of the hymn’s lyrics would seem to rule out the genuine understanding about the war. The three friends “go off to possibility of its being used without irony,” yet the scene do their duty to God and country,” and Michael and Steven compelled even skeptical viewers to “yield to” the song’s “return without any cynicism or disillusionment, let alone any “dubious but affecting sentiments.” The characters, according to feelings of guilt.” They are victims of the savage Vietnamese this consensus, may be reticent at first, but they undoubtedly sing enemy, not of misguided and immoral U.S. policy. They, and by with sincerity, and the film sympathizes with their earnest implication the nation, have suffered much but perpetrated rendering of the song.24 Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—11

What might account for all the discussion of irony if ascribing to the men who fought in Vietnam,” and it castigated nobody was willing to assert that the scene was ironic? When what it called “the career anti-Vietnam war movement” Keith Nolan’s interviewer conflated irony with satire, he was (including the Oscar ceremony protesters) for its “eagerness to inviting Nolan to reject the notion that The Deer Hunter withhold from these veterans the least measure of self-respect.” somehow mocked the characters’ reassertion of national faith in The Deer Hunter, these admirers concluded, did not engage in light of what had happened to them. But without calling it irony, jingoistic flag-waving. “God Bless America” represented its many of the film’s admirers saw the last scene as confirmation of characters’ efforts to salvage some hope – “a sense of Cimino’s claims that The Deer Hunter represented the war and community, friendship and love,” as ’s Jack Kroll put its effects from its working-class characters’ point of view. Even it – from their terrible losses.26 its “often objectionable depiction of Vietnamese characters is In aspiring to speak for or give voice and visibility to not, I think, propaganda,” wrote a defender of the film’s veterans – specifically working-class veterans – The Deer Hunter “fictional truth.” “It is an accurate portrait of that war seen anticipated a broad movement of cultural rehabilitation over the through the eyes of its central characters.” A viewer from next decade. ’s praise for the film’s Bakersfield, California responded to ’s criticisms by challenge to the guilt-ridden vet stereotype echoed in public avowing that The Deer Hunter is “not a racist or a political film. discourse in the 1980s. As early as March 1979, the Carter It is a collection of impressions as seen through the eyes of three administration announced the first Vietnam Veterans Week. At young men who were anything but political.” These observations the ceremony to mark the occasion at the end of May, Carter about the limited perspective of the characters implied an ironic addressed the neglect that veterans had suffered: “[T]o offer distance from that perspective, however sympathetically the film one’s life in the most horrible possible circumstances, the most conveyed it. “Is Cimino serious?” asked about the dangerous circumstances, with the realization that people back singing of “God Bless America.” “How does he intend us to take home do not give you that support, their prayers, their deep this? As irony on his part?” Canby thought not, though “ironic” appreciation, and a sense of sharing, requires an extra measure of strikes me as an appropriate term for his characterization of the patriotism and sacrifice.” Carter acknowledged the “right” to scene. Cimino, Canby explained, “doesn’t condescend to his protest the war, but said that its “unfortunate” effect had been to characters’ feelings. He respects them, and if they can express stigmatize vets. Reagan, of course, went further; on the campaign those feelings only in second-rate sentiment, that is the rub.” trail in August 1980, he declared that the war had been “a noble Because The Deer Hunter was true to its characters’ cause” – defending a “small country” and its quest for “self-rule” perspectives, it met what Canby called “its obligations of both art against “a totalitarian neighbor bent on conquest” – and said that and history.” But the film also allowed viewers to stand outside “[w]e dishonor the memory of 50,000 young Americans who of the characters’ “second-rate sentiment,” and even, as Canby died in that cause when we give way to feelings of guilt.” As put it, to feel a sense of “horror” at the characters’ “passivity.” Fred Turner has argued, the focus on guilt shifted in this period “Not once,” he wrote, “does anyone question the war or his from what soldiers had done and witnessed in Vietnam to how participation in it . . . . What are these veterans left with? badly they were treated when they came home. Culpability Feelings of contained befuddlement, a desire to make do and, increasingly came to refer to the trauma produced by this perhaps, a more profound appreciation for love, friendship and undeserved stigmatization and neglect – to veterans as victims of community. The big answers elude them, as do the big a divided and ungrateful nation. The Iran hostage crisis of 1979- questions.”25 81 extended the trope of America-as-victim; “the media cast [the By representing the war and its aftermath from its Tehran embassy hostages] as surrogates for the whole nation, characters’ point of view, The Deer Hunter staked a claim to suffering for us all,” Christian Appy observes. The triumphant honoring Vietnam veterans. Where Tim O’Brien saw the film as return of the hostages after Reagan’s inauguration served as a a more sophisticated, bigger-budget rehashing of the old reminder of how Vietnam veterans, by contrast, had been ignored stereotypes, Cimino saw himself as giving voice to those whose or abused when they came home. Critics of The Deer Hunter had views had been excluded or marginalized: sought to stave off this narrative of victimization and to defer a The people that the film is about are the people who process of national “healing” that failed to come to grips with the fight wars, produce the materiel for them, and who suffer the conduct and the effects of the American war in Vietnam.27 consequences of them. For so long, this war – the Vietnam war – belonged to the press and to a certain segment of the American Jan C. Scruggs, founder of the people who commented on it from a certain vantage point. Vietnam Veterans Memorial, People like our characters couldn’t comment on it directly and standing at the apex of the nobody ever really spoke for them. Wall. By this account, Hans Koning and other critics who complained that the film evaded crucial issues of responsibility An ex-infantryman’s missed its more rounded portrayal of the war’s effects on insomnia after seeing The Deer veterans and their communities. A New Jersey viewer explained Hunter one night in March 1979 that the singing of “God Bless America” “is not a celebration of became the most important that banal slogan ‘My Country, Right or Wrong,’ which Mr. instance of the film’s role in Koning infers”; it suggested instead the characters’ struggle “to promoting the cultural cope with their feelings of cynicism, disillusionment and, yes, rehabilitation of Vietnam guilt.” A Wall Street Journal editorial welcomed the film’s rejection of the assumption that “guilt is the only emotion worth Cimino: THE DEER HUNTER—12 veterans and in providing a public after The Deer Hunter appeared on HBO space for enduring struggles over and on a few broadcast stations in the fall of the war’s meanings and memories. 1980. (The broadcasts on election night in sat up drinking New York and Los Angeles beat out the whiskey alone at his kitchen table coverage of the Reagan-Carter returns in the in a Maryland suburb of ratings.) The victims ranged in age from Washington, scenes from the movie eight to thirty-two and in location from and from his own war experiences Pennsylvania to California, Minnesota to running through his head. “Scruggs . Their literalizations of the metaphor became upset,” he wrote in a produced a unique moment in the ongoing dramatic third-person discussions of TV violence, according to autobiographical account, “not by The Christian Science Monitor, because the combat scenes, but because of here it was possible to “pinpoint” the the scenes showing blue-collar connection between a specific scene and its youth in a Pennsylvania coal town. They were the people who re-enactment: “What is extraordinary about the continuing had believed in their country, which then abandoned them when tragedy of the ‘Deer Hunter’ case is that the violent scene is so the war went sour – the people he’d seen suffer and die in bizarre and therefore so traceable.”29 Vietnam.” He saw them again that night, in a flashback, twelve Another attempt to literalize the metaphor took place at of his friends blown up while unloading an ammunition truck. the same time in a court martial at Camp Lejeune, North “The flashbacks ended,” he recalled, “but the faces continued to Carolina, where PFC Robert Garwood, the last actual U.S. pile up in front of him. The names, he thought. The names. No prisoner to return from Vietnam (Rambo didn’t pull off his one remembers their names.” The next morning he announced to fictional POW rescue until 1985), stood charged with his wife his plan for a memorial that would list all the names of collaborating with the enemy. A defense psychiatrist testified Americans killed in the war. Whether or not the idea came to that Garwood had been “driven insane” by watching his captors Scruggs in quite such an epiphany, there’s no reason to doubt force South Vietnamese prisoners to play Russian roulette. “In that The Deer Hunter inspired him to initiate the effort that my assessment,” Dr. Robert Rollins concluded, “the result of that would lead, three years later, to Maya Lin’s Vietnam Veterans was to destroy his free and independent judgment.” The marine Memorial in Washington – a memorial that, in the process of jury wasn’t persuaded that Garwood, who had arrived back in the being commissioned and built, aspired to be apolitical only to United States in March 1979 after fourteen years in Vietnam, produce its own vehement debates over the aesthetics and ethics shared Michael, Nick, and Steven’s onscreen trauma. He was of Vietnam War remembrance.28 found guilty and, facing the possibility of a life sentence, * * * received a dishonorable discharge. Garwood continued to insist A short postscript on Russian roulette: that he really had witnessed Russian roulette in a Viet Cong Alarming stories began surfacing as early as April 1979 prison camp. His sympathetic biographer describes Garwood as about young men shooting themselves in re-enactments of the being “riveted by the scene.”30 already notorious sequence. At least fifteen deaths were reported

COMING UP IN THE SPRING 2019 BUFFALO FILM SEMINARS (SERIES 38) Apr 16 Terry Jones Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life 1983 Apr 23 Eyes Wide Shut 1999 Apr 30 Frederick Wiseman Monrovia, Indiana 2018 May 7 Alfonso Cuarón Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban 2004

CONTACTS:...email Diane Christian: [email protected]…email Bruce Jackson [email protected] the series schedule, annotations, links and updates: http://buffalofilmseminars.com...to subscribe to the weekly email informational notes, send an email to addto [email protected] cast and crew info on any film: http://imdb.com/ The Buffalo Film Seminars are presented by the State University of New York at Buffalo and the Dipson Amherst Theatre, with suppport from the Robert and Patricia Colby Foundation and the Buffalo News.