Be Good, Smile Pretty: filmmaker interview with Tracy Droz Tragos

Afterimage, Sept-Oct, 2003 by Christine Sevilla

I wasn't sure. I wanted people to take in this story on a personal level. I wanted to express the cost and damage of this war--the long, long-term aftermath. Vietnam is still a very controversial subject, and there is still a lack of reconciliation and coming together. It's still so politically charged. This story is being told from my point of view, and the point of view of others: my mother, my uncle, comrades of my father. I didn't want the film itself to be political. That was very important. One of the obstacles that I faced in having people trust me was the question, "which side was I on?" Again and again I'd say "I'm not on any side." I was three months old when my father was killed, so I did not have a "side." If I made the film a political statement I thought it would be too easy to dismiss as just another anti-war film.

When I saw the film in June, it was screened for a group of about one hundred people at the Rochester Unitarian Church by then-interim minister David Keyes, your adoptive father. He was very proud of you and of the film, and he admitted that the filming had been a painful time for him. I found the film profoundly poignant--particularly in that context of David Keyes introducing the film and sharing his anguish. You and other family members are in the film. But what about the impact of his experience? Why wasn't he included more in the film?

I asked him to be interviewed several times. Again and again he said no. Which, at the time, was kind of devastating, because I was hoping to include him more, and to have him share more in my process of getting to know my biological father and the grief I was enduring. I knew that, as a result, he was going through his own grief, but so were my mother and I. But now I think he has a greater understanding of why I needed to make the film, and perhaps sympathy for that process. I certainly wanted to include him, and his experience, as much as possible because I think that not to include him whitewashes the experience, and ignores a very fundamental obstacle to reviving my father's memory. There was a certain layer of not talking about it because we didn't want to offend or disrespect David. I think that experience is shared by a lot of people, not just Vietnam orphans, but by all children who are adopted and want to know where they come from.

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The film is effective because it is so personal. People who saw the film said they were moved by its intimacy and by the connection they felt to the film through all of the psychological issues that it illuminates: the futility of keeping secrets, the imposition of silence over painful memories, the need to grieve a loss, or the need for forgiveness. Those are really powerful themes in this film that affect everyone, and the story forms a compelling context. Were there any unusual reactions to those issues or themes that you might have seen--or anything that you didn't intend?

I've actually been more surprised by how much people get what I did intend--some of the small details that people appreciate of which I thought "well, I appreciate this, but will anyone else appreciate it?" People responded to something as straight-forward as my grandmother's great sense of humor, or David's pain, the sensitivity to his experience. He has only a small amount of time in the film, but people have a very deep understanding and sensitivity towards his perspective. People particularly noted the subtleties and the progression of my relationship with my mother throughout these two and a half years. There were times of hopelessness, but in the end, ultimately, a sense of the journey as having been worth it. I was worried, "Did I have to explain this more? Do I have to put it in a context more?" I'm really quite happy that I didn't. I have been so grateful that people have taken away all that they've taken away. So many people have responded--WW II veterans, Korean War veterans, children of WW II veterans or Korean War veterans, children who lost fathers in Vietnam. At one of the first screenings there was a man who had just lost his teenage son who described his grief and his struggle to keep the memory of his son alive without being morbid or allowing it to be the center of his life. He found relevance in my struggle to do that as well. Above our editing system was a sign on the wall with the words, "breaking the silence to heal." Beneath that we had a log line that--and it always seems a little weird to talk about yourself in the third person, but we did it as a way to focus--it said, "a daughter's journey to know her father ...." At first I'd added "and to come to terms with his death." My husband--a producer who would review cuts with us and was very helpful in shaping the final film--looked at those words and said "no, no, it's not to come to terms with his death, it's to live with his memory: a daughter's journey to know her father and live with his memory." That was the question. How do you live with someone's memory? How do you integrate the importance of someone you've lost into your life rather than pretend they never lived, never existed? People who have experienced loss under any circumstance relate to these questions on a very deep level. But Vietnam has an extra stigma associated with it for all of the reasons that you brought up earlier--all the controversy that still surrounds it, all the pain, all the shame, all the guilt. No matter what side you're on, these emotions still surround it, and make it easy to keep trunks in the garage and suitcases in the attic, to just keep it locked away--not to deal with it, not to open it up, not to try to somehow reconcile, and integrate, and accept the loss and the resulting emotions.