The Big Picture · Discussion
August 14, 2023/ 48 min/ Brian Raftery
Brian Raftery's Vietnam-film history reaches 1978, when The Deer Hunter and Coming Home dragged the war onto the big screen and split the Oscars between them.
13 films across 1 segment.
AI-generated This episode was transcribed and analyzed with AI models. The matches aren't perfect — expect the occasional misheard title or a link to the wrong film.
How Hollywood brought Vietnam to the screen1977-79, told through the films that fought over the war
Michael Cimino's three-hour epic, built entirely to reach its Russian roulette scene. De Niro, Walken, Savage, Cazale and Streep; nearly four hours in Cimino's cut before Verna Fields was secretly hired to trim it. Won Best Picture and Best Director at the 51st Oscars.
Jane Fonda's five-year passion project, from a love triangle between a paralyzed vet (Jon Voight) and her angry husband (Bruce Dern). Directed by Hal Ashby. Won acting Oscars for Fonda and Voight plus original screenplay.
John Wayne's pro-war film, the old model the '78 films were reacting against; the military lent Wayne equipment it later denied Coming Home.
Robert Aldrich's missile-silo thriller with Burt Lancaster as a POW blackmailing the president over Vietnam. Its ads never said the word 'Vietnam.'
Henry Winkler as a struggling vet, sold as a Fonz-and-Sally-Field rom-com to hide the war.
John Milius's surf coming-of-age epic (Busey, Katt, Jan-Michael Vincent) with Vietnam in the background, marketed as a feel-good beach movie.
Referenced from the previous episode as a cavalry-vs-Native-Americans western read as a Vietnam allegory.
Aldrich and Lancaster's harsh cavalry western, another Vietnam allegory.
Fonda and Donald Sutherland's anti-war revue documentary; pulled from theaters after her North Vietnam trip.
Won adapted screenplay for a young veteran named Oliver Stone, whose own Vietnam scripts were still stalled.
One of Stone's two Vietnam projects stuck in development limbo in 1979.
Stone's other stalled Vietnam script, then titled 'The Platoon.'
Teased at the close: Coppola, on the Oscar stage, still trying to finish the decade's maddest Vietnam film.
Also mentioned raised along the way
In passing Easy RiderCar WashThunderbolt and LightfootSilent RunningBarbarellaKluteThe Grapes of WrathMy Darling ClementineThe Last DetailJawsSaturday Night FeverMidnight CowboyCleopatra
Not films filtered out: TV, games, ads
TV The Tonight Show Starring Johnny CarsonThe Barbara Walters interview (1988)
Podcasts 22 GoalsJust Like UsGene and Roger
Ads CarvanaBoar's HeadFIFA World Cup Launch Edition (Netflix)