When I was in college, beating the draft was a top priority
for most young American males, and Vietnam seemed like the last place anyone
would want to go on vacation. But now that I’ve read Gold Rush in the Jungle, by science journalist Dan Drollette Jr., I’m
ready to pack my bags. Not that Drollette’s Vietnam sounds relaxing. In his
pages, I’ve read a lot about leeches, landmines, and disease. But when it comes
to exotic wildlife, this corner of Southeast Asia is clearly a paradise, though
it’s a paradise that could easily be lost in the not-too-distant future. Hence
Drollette’s subtitle: The Race to
Discover and Defend the Rarest Animals of Vietnam’s “Lost World.”
Normally I focus on movies, not nature. So when I write
about Vietnam, it’s hardly surprising that I think about the movie connections
to this nation long troubled by war. I’m obviously not the only one. I learned
from Drollette that the country’s most popular chain of bars, decorated with
Sixties memorabilia, operates under the name Apocalypse Now. This, of course,
is a reference to Coppola’s 1979 war epic, which of necessity was filmed not in
Vietnam but in the Philippines. Name a film about the Vietnam War, and you can
bet it was not made in country. Platoon and
Hamburger Hill both were shot in Filipino
jungles; The Deer Hunter filmed its
Vietnam scenes in Thailand; and Stanley Kubrick’s powerful Full Metal Jacket actually used England as a stand-in for
Indochina. (John Wayne’s noxious The Green
Berets, which was intended to rouse public support for the war, was shot entirely
stateside, so I hear.)
We in
the Roger Corman world took advantage of Roger’s longstanding connection with producer-director
Cirio Santiago to film a passel of war flicks in the Philippines. At least one
of our writers, Tom Cleaver, had actually served in Vietnam, which helped give
our stories a modicum of authenticity. But unlike the challenging dramas being
made by Coppola, Kubrick, and Oliver Stone, ours were little more than excuses
for blood, guts, and “a man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.” They all blend together in my mind, but I
remember Beyond the Call of Duty because
(on short notice) I had to finish a script that a writer had left lacking. And
I remember Nam Angels -- about bikers
who ride behind enemy lines to rescue captive American soldiers -- because Cirio, wanting his actors to
wear matching emblems on their leather jackets, blithely copied the Hells Angels’
logo, which happens to be trademarked. Their lawyer duly claimed that the movie
had sullied the Angels’ sterling reputation,
and for a while we at Concorde-New Horizons had colorful visitors in our
office waiting room.
Now Vietnam makes its own films, like Three Seasons, which features Harvey Keitel as a former soldier
searching for the daughter he’d fathered years before. But as Dan Drollette’s
book vividly illustrates, today’s Vietnam contains a lot of great stories that
have nothing to do with war. Drollette’s heroes are the wildlife biologists who’re
desperately trying to save some of the most unique species on earth -- like
the langur, the saola, the kouprey –
from extinction. On a daily basis, these scientists face down poachers, corrupt
bureaucrats, the tourism industry, a severe lack of funds, and an astonishing array of ecological
challenges. Here’s how he begins: “Like the cramped, narrow streets of Hanoi’s
Old Quarter, the work of wildlife biologists in Vietnam is full of the
unplanned and serendipitous, as well as the messy, the crowded, the dirty, and
the wonderful. This is their story.”
