The Genius of Joffe

ON A MISSION WITH BRITISH CINEMA'S ONCE GREAT HOPE...

 By Calum Waddell

I conducted this interview at the 2008 Cannes Film Festival. It has never been seen before. oland Joffe was in town to promote You and I, a film which stars Mischa Barton and the girl-pop group t.A.T.u. The film was finally released a year ago and has been seen by practically no one. It is a shame that Joffe ended up directing a movie based upon the years-after-the-sell-by-date appeal of one-hit-wonder pseudo-lesbian chart moppets t.A.T.u (whose 'one hit' was, to be fair, actually really good) given that he was once hailed as the future of the British film industry. Acclaimed after his first two movies, 1984’s The Killing Fields and 1986’s The Mission, as the darling of our national cinema, the filmmaker nevertheless saw his career hit hard times. For instance, 1992’s follow-up drama - City of Joy, failed to set the box office on fire and met with a lukewarm critical reception, whilst 1993’s disastrous video game adaptation Super Mario Bros. is rightly forgotten about. 1995’s Demi Moore vehicle The Scarlet Letter was an attempt to return to artier material, but proved dead on arrival, whilst 2000’s black comedy Vital met with similar commercial silence. His entry into the 'torture porn' horror genre with 2007's occasionally stylish Captivity saw Joffe back in the headlines for all the wrong reasons. His film was slammed for its misogynistic advertising campaign and, even worse, the Elisha Cuthbert-starring slasher picture failed to illicit even the sleazy shocks that its marketing promised.

It is a curious story but, unlike most of the bored press hacks I came across ("Just doing this to meet t.A.T.u really") I was fascinated by the prospect of speaking to Joffe. For a start, he made one of the greatest, and most important, films of all time in The Killing Fields. Ask yourself how many filmmakers make even one great feature. Very few. But Joffe has. Moreover, anyone who has read my blog on Hamburger Hill will know that the Vietnam War is a personal interest of mine - and there is no discussing that torrid period in US foreign policy without speaking about Cambodia and its fall to the Khmer Rouge.

The Killing Fields remains the best [fictonal] feature to date about Pol Pot's attempt to create "year zero" and its star, the actual genocide survivor Haing Ngor, who wrote the essential book "Survival in the Killing Fields", won an Oscar for his role in Joffe's production. Unfortunately, Ngor - whose wife and unborn child lost their lives under the Khmer Rouge - would be shot on the streets of Los Angeles in 1996. A tragic end to a tragic life.

Naturally, I spoke to Joffe about Ngor - and I am happy to finally have these words available. For anyone who has not seen The Killing Fields: shame on you. It comes highly recommended, along with The Mission - evidence of an artist at the prime of his power and someone who, by rights, should have gone on to form a legacy of provocative and thought provoking productions...

What was it that attracted you to your new movie, You and I?

There are a couple of things that drew me to this film and I am unsure which was the most attractive. However, first of all there was the idea of making a film in modern day Moscow. If someone asked me what Moscow looked like before I actually went there then I could describe the Kremlin and a couple of other things, but it really lives in your head in the way that other cities do not. You see, life is so frenetic in modern Moscow, and so brutally different for different groups of people, that you are not quite the same person when you leave. So the more time you spend in modern Moscow the more you see a city in total change. I think that the Russians are trying to work out who they are right now and they are going through an incredible crisis over this and what part they have in the world. I believe that part of this is also related to their relationship to capitalism. Does capitalism mean that you only make money and that is the most important thing? You know, the more money you make the more powerful you are? Or does capitalism mean that you give everyone the chance to makes some money? Or does capitalism mean that you turn everyone into a consumer so that those who have the money hold the power and everyone else is stuck like flies to flypaper just being consumers? Perhaps that is a hell of a lot smarter than trying to hold fixed elections as a communist country. All of these things are being debated right now by people in Moscow and that was one part of the story which I really loved. But I when I was doing The Killing Fields it was, primarily, a story of friendship because you can only understand war if you understand friendship. As long as you understand that then you can understand the price of war – otherwise it is just “bang, bang, you’re dead.”

Yeah, I want to touch upon The Killing Fields. Can you talk about your memories of the late Haing Ngor?

Haing was a very exceptional man because of the life that he had led. He never thought that he was a very nice person. He was a bit of a playboy when he was young and he felt dreadful about what happened to his own wife. I think that Haing could never expiate this terrible conundrum that life had given him but he never shrank from it.

He had never acted when you put him in The Killing Fields...

One of the reasons I wanted him to be in The Killing Fields was because he was telling me all about his own ordeal one day and I thought “I cannot put an actor in this film.” I turned to him and said, “Haing, why don’t you tell me that story again? But act it.” He said “Oh no, I can’t act.” So I told him to go and stand at the window and to tell me about when the Khmer Rouge came and he began to act. At a certain point he turned to me and he said “you have to leave now!” He began crying after that. I said to him, “Haing, I am sorry about this but I have to blackmail you – for the sake of your country you need to play this part because no one else can do it better.” He didn’t speak any English, really, mainly French – so I had to lie to Warner Bros. and then, during the filming, run around the floor underneath the camera and say all kinds of terrible director things to get his emotions going. But I loved him very much. He had tremendous grace and was very, very giving. When he died they found his Oscar in his room. All the gold had been wiped off it because he treasured it so much. And that was a big thing.

At the time Cambodia was operating under Pol Pot, Noam Chomsky, perhaps surprisingly, expressed considerable denial about the genocide that was taking place under the regime. He would later blame the Khmer Rouge's rise to power on the Vietnam War and America's bombing of Cambodia and infiltration of her borders - something that I would largely agree with. That said, this in no way justifies slamming the press reports, of the time, which rightly indicated the Khmer Rouge was murdering hundreds of thousands of people. I am surprised that Chomsky has not been more vocal in apologising for his, let's say, soft-handed approach towards a form of government that was as cruel as the National Socialists... (For a solid report on this see: Chomsky and the Khmer Rouge)

Yes, I was offended by him. It comes back to something I feel about belief. Noam Chomsky reminded me of it actually. When I agreed to do The Killing Fields I got a visit from two members of the WRP (note: Worker’s Revolutionary Party) who told me I should not do the movie because I would be attacking a young socialist state that was only trying to find its feet. I said “Well yes, but can you see the shortcomings of this argument?” they told me they could not. I said “You want me to gloss over what happened in order to do what?” And they told me “to protect socialism.” I said, “I am sure socialism is strong enough to take the criticism.” I then said, “I don’t think I am betraying socialism at all, but if I am then I will live with it.” Chomsky had the same problem.

Right, I also fail to see why criticising the gross inhumanity of the Khmer Rouge - which owed little to the ideals of Marx and Engels anyway - is attacking any sort of left-wing order. Chomsky is a great mind, but he really should have known better...

Chomsky is a very, very bright man but you have to ask, “Why did he go blind in that area?” Well he went blind in the area that we all go blind in and that is why I have never tried to make a movie about a specific political point of view. Belief and personality is so interwoven that we are often deformed by them. They become us. So Noam Chomsky, who could be so observant about language, could not bring himself to see what had happened in Cambodia. He could only read it as propaganda. I don’t think he was bad – but his comments did make me think, “If Noam Chomsky is that smart and he can’t get out of that trap then why would you believe you could?” That is why I have not tried to make my career as a movie director attached to politics. Rather it has been as a movie director attached to people.

You mentioned there that you do not make movies with a specific point of view but, judging from what you said earlier about You and I, you seem to be a little taken aback by Russia’s open armed acceptance of free market capitalism. Is that a fair statement?

Well if you can take this from a very ignorant human being… If we accept that capitalism is just a system in the same way that our bodies are just a system and the movie industry is just a system… For me, if we lay aside any criticism of it and look at how the system operates – no system operates without checks and balances. The body checks that your liver doesn’t turn into your spleen for example… So capitalism, of itself, is not necessarily bad, but it is designed to make profits and we need to ask what the profits should be. You see, of itself it won’t stop – it is like cancer, it wants to keep growing, but when cancer grows it eventually kills the body. Capitalism is exactly the same – it will just keep growing.

I agree. I think we can see by the exhaustion of our natural resources, global warming and the life opportunities afforded to those in developing nations - illustrated by sweatshop labour and so forth - that unregulated market capitalism is of benefit to only a small minority of people who have little interest in the morality of how they are making their millions or billions.

I think that Milton Friedman’s idea of an unregulated market was totally banal and utterly, utterly immoral and disgraceful. Yet the Victorians, who we criticise, at least had the balls and the guts to know that was a mistake and Teddy Roosevelt, who was a Republican, at least understood that if you don’t put checks and balances on those train and coal barons the country would fall apart. But here we are 70 years later running around thinking that free market trading is the answer to everything and it can’t be, because if you allow capitalism to run wild it becomes a cancer in its own right. Human beings love to trade and to banter and capitalism is based on trading and banter. Human being also like power – we like it because it makes us feel safe but too much power is a nightmare. Russia is totally dedicated to power and committed to using capitalism for that means in a way that no one in the West has dared to do since the days of the old train and coal barons. It is a throwback to the way capitalism was and that is very scary… They think they are ahead of the curve and they are not.

According to the excellent book My Indecision Is Final: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Goldcrest Films you were told during the making of The Mission that if your movie failed to make a profit Goldcrest would go under. What kind of pressure did that put you under? (Note: The Mission failed to go into profit during its initial release and Goldcrest folded)

It was very strange in a way (laughs). I recall being told, in the middle of shooting, “we need to cut $5 million out of the budget and the movie still has to work,” and everyone at Goldcrest was very distressed. I said to them, “Right now Jeremy Irons and Robert DeNiro don’t like each other, I am working with a waterfall which does what it wants, not what I want, and I am responsible for group of Indians - who I have flown over 235 miles across Colombia - and who have a rat infestation in their village. And now I have to add Goldcrest to the list?” I thought to myself, “Well if it really comes down to it, I have to protect the Indians first, DeNiro and Jeremy second and Goldcrest third.” It had to be in that order. I just had to get on with making the movie and you never know if a film is going to work. It is an exercise in faith and trust.

Why didn’t DeNiro and Irons get along?

They came from very, very different acting areas. Bobby is very interior – he finds his way outside by going in and Jeremy finds his way inside by having been out. He wants to know what his costume is, what his clothes are, where he is going to do and what he has done. But Bobby doesn’t want to know anything. He wants to find his interior. So I had to be the bridge between them both. But that is what I am paid to do.

You shot the movie in Colombia, in the rain forest, what were the conditions like?

The conditions varied. We also shot it in the middle of an area used for coke trafficking, which led to some problems because we were in their way. I remember we had to leave the set one weekend for that reason. However, because I am not a sadist, and I didn’t want the crew to have a bad time we all stayed in hotels. In truth, when I was scouting the movie and I went down the river by boat and lived in an Indian village for two weeks, it was pretty fascinating to me but also tough in its own way. I tried to locate the set somewhere that we could reconstruct all of that, but also be near a hotel so that we could always go back and relax at night. If you really, really look at the end battle scene you can see, under camouflage netting, the main Transamerica highway with things going backwards and forwards on it. That was also the highway where the coke trafficking was going on.

How did you feel about the accusations of misogyny that greeted Captivity? 

(Sighs) Whatever people say about you, you have to live with it but if it is not true then it should not worry you. Captivity is not a misogynistic film at all but I had a different end to it. At the end of my version of the movie you see a vigilante killing and it turns out that the character played by Elisha Cuthbert had actually done this before she was kidnapped. So in my version of the movie the message was “if you treat women with violence then they will become violent back.” Personally I was furious that they changed the end. I just could not come out and say anything at the time but I can now. So the misogyny in that film was not my fault. I don’t believe it is a misogynistic movie but, on the other hand, you cannot fault the press for coming to something with an attitude. You hope that some journalist will say it is not misogynistic – and some did – but if you adopt any kind of public persona then you have to take the knocks. I spent a lot of my life with people saying I was a moralist and I was too emotional so it was quite funny to be labelled as something else entirely.

The marketing for Captivity also came under scrutiny because it highlighted a series of very visceral advertisements with women being tortured…

Again, it all got sucked it into some kind of marketing system that I had no control over. I said to them “if you show this movie to women with my ending then they will say that it does raise some serious issues.” If a woman is raped is she not entitled to be angry? A lot of women have written that when they were raped, people were angry at them for being angry. They would say “I want to kill this man and castrate him” and they were told that they could not have those feelings. That argument kind of fell on deaf ears - although I made it to the press as much as I could and as often as I could… Eventually, however, I had to shut up because I didn’t feel like I should sabotage the movie. I didn’t realise that they had changed the end, which I thought would justify everything, but what can you do?

Looking Back at A Nightmare on Elm Street

(Note: this was originally published in Dreamwatch magazine, issue 146, from 2006. I figure that offering some oldies from my archives at least preserves them online. Plus, A Nightmare on Elm Street is one of my favourite films of all time!)

Calum Waddell gets dreamy-eyed over the fright-film which gave a generation of teens sleepless nights and developed into the horror genre’s most reliable franchise…

One, two – Freddy’s coming for you… Three, four – better lock your door… Five, six – grab your crucifix…

Back in 1984 horror director Wes Craven had yet to break into the mainstream. Dismissed by no less than Stephen King (in his book Danse Macabre) as a purveyor of “porno-violence”, Craven’s reputation lay entrenched with a couple of down and dirty, but nonetheless profitable, exploitation films – 1972’s Last House on the Left and 1977’s The Hills Have Eyes. After these two infamously nasty cheapies, the filmmaker had tried to enter the mainstream with his comic-book adaptation of DC Comics’ super-vegetable Swamp Thing (1982), but the resultant freak flick was a box office dud.

Even worse, every studio in town was turning its back on a script that was dear to Craven’s heart – A Nightmare on Elm Street. “The studios kind of psychologically distance themselves from the genre,” recalls Craven, adding, “although they love the fact that they can make a lot of money from it. After you make one or two horror films your name is kind of known with that genre but there’s also a personal thing where you want to go into areas that are dark and hard to imagine.”

Thankfully, a lowbrow independent outfit called New Line Cinema, headed by Robert Shaye, finally agreed to finance Craven’s latest terror offering and, as a result, the most important scary movie of the 1980s was gorily birthed. Released to a then-stellar $26 million gross in the US, A Nightmare on Elm Street spawned numerous imitators, put New Line on the path to becoming the Hollywood player it is today and made star Robert Englund the true heir to the throne of Bela Lugosi and Boris Karloff.

“I would do anything for Wes Craven,” laughs Englund, who is understandably grateful to the filmmaker for giving him such a prominent and profitable, role. “I would sign up with him on anything because he is such a gentleman and so easy to work for.”

Englund maintains that, over 20 years since the release of the first film, it continues to attract new admirers. “It’s really becoming a certifiable classic now,” maintains the actor. “I remember being a little boy in the mid-50s and when television happened we discovered the golden age of horror from the 1930s. We would sit at home and watch Dracula, Frankenstein and The Black Cat and even as young kids we would love them. I think that is what has happened with A Nightmare on Elm Street. Some films stand the test of time and because of the great hook – the bad dream, which is universal – we keep catching new generations.”

Craven agrees with his leading man, mentioning that Freddy Krueger had a far more worldly appeal than his previous screen baddies – namely the cannibalistic mountain dwellers of The Hills Have Eyes and David Hess’s Krug Stillo from Last House on the Left. “Everyone can relate to having bad dreams," states the director. "Plus, a film really lives or dies by its actors [and] Robert Englund is wonderful.”

Craven also admits his own affection towards working in horror, which, arguably, hit its peak with A Nightmare on Elm Street. “I think that it’s a tremendously flexible and very vital form for the audience,” he begins, “It’s kind of cathartic – there’s a certain amount of affection, there’s a lot of intelligence and a bit of suspicion of the establishment when you’re dealing with dreams and nightmares.”

Seven, Eight – Better Stay Up Late…

A Nightmare on Elm Street introduced audiences to Freddy Krueger and his nemesis Nancy Thompson (played by newcomer Heather Langenkamp). Thompson is revealed as the daughter of two parents who took part in the group slaying of a local child murderer after he walked free from court on a technicality. After being burned to death by the irate parents of Elm Street, Freddy returns years later to stalk and kill their children inside their dreams whilst they sleep. Also starring a pre-stardom Johnny Depp and Enter the Dragon’s John Saxon, the original flick kept Englund’s burned bogeyman hidden away in the shadows, although his trademark comical wisecracks are still present.

“I think one of the problems is that when you get too relentless with a horror movie there is too much tension built up and eventually you kind of emotionally short out,” states the actor. “However, if you use humour to relieve that pressure eventually you can set the audience up for a scare again.” Craven himself states that behind the scenes there were a few laughs too. “It’s strange because when you’re shooting a horror film you tend to be laughing a lot,” concedes the filmmaker. “Part of it is because you’re dealing with these horrific subjects but where you have some control over them.”

Reflecting on the shoot of the first Elm Street, Englund admits that – after playing Freddy in no less than eight films and a TV series – his recollections of each feature have started to blur into one. “It’s so long ago my memories get clouded with the other movies,” he laughs. “Sometimes I start to mention something that I did in part one but it turns out it was part three. However, I do recall Johnny Depp telling me a few stories about his beginnings and there was a big fiasco when we did the exploding blood bed for his death scene; that took a while to work properly [laughs]. I also remember Sean Cunningham doing some second unit work with us.”

Indeed, Cunningham – who had produced Craven’s Last House on the Left and directed 1980’s Friday the 13th – was given a “special thanks” on the end credits of A Nightmare on Elm Street. However, as Dreamwatch discovers, his involvement went a lot further than that. “I shot a whole bunch of stuff over two or three days,” mentions Cunningham, who remains close friends with Craven. “I shot one dialogue scene with Johnny Depp and Heather and part of the alley scene with Robert chasing the girl. I just did whatever Wes told me to do. What Wes had done was he had mortgaged his soul to Bob Shaye to make it and Shaye was the only person who believed in it as much as Wes. We were right behind schedule and we were running out of budget. So, you know, Wes just wanted whatever help he could get and I was fortunate to be in a position where I could come in and help, walk around and tell people what to do for a couple of days [laughs].”

Nine, Ten – Never Sleep Again… 

For Englund, his success in the Freddy role was bittersweet – largely due to the complex prosthetics that needed to be glued to his face every morning. “Usually, the hell of Freddy is getting the make-up put on every morning for four-and-a-half-hours,” he sighs. “But I don’t want anyone else to do him because I feel proprietary towards the old guy.”

Of course, that might yet happen – especially given the rate at which Hollywood is remaking classic horror flicks. “Yeah, I agree,” replies the actor, “Although there is also talk about having John McNaughton, the director of Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, come in and do a prequel – which will be shot in a documentary style. I think that could be very interesting. I don’t know if I’m too old now or not, but I would love to be involved with that. When I first began doing Freddy I was in my early 30s but I was playing him older – I was playing him at about 48. So, currently, I feel like I’m the right age.”

As for the legacy of A Nightmare on Elm Street, Englund believes that even the worst of the sequels has something to offer. “Of course the first one is great and scary, but three and four are terrific as well,” he says. “I also think that there is a lot of good stuff in part five. I adore Wes Craven’s New Nightmare and obviously everyone loves Freddy Vs Jason. So out of eight movies I would say that six of them are great and there is even some good stuff in the other two. I think Freddy – me and my silhouette and the glove and the posture and the hat – stands up as a logo for the experience of all of these movies, which are currently sitting on someone’s desk in a DVD box set. They all hold up and always will.”

(NOTE: obviously this was written before the awful remake. Unfortunately, the prequel never did see the light of the day. Shame eh?)

THE FIRST BRITISH PEOPLE TO WALK UP HAMBURGER HILL IN VIETNAM

Well that was what we were told anyway.

Last year I fulfilled one of my bucket list ambitions by backpacking from Ho Chi Minh City (Saigon) to Hanoi in Vietnam - accompanied by my girlfriend Naomi Holwill. I have long been interested in the 20th century history of Vietnam - from the rise of Ho Chi Minh after the post-war Japanese retreat from the country and the return of French rule to the gradual American involvement in Indochina politics and, of course, the outbreak (unofficially) of fullscale war.

After the 1973 Paris Peace Accords, America left their self-created puppet state of South Vietnam. Inevitably - despite President Ford's failed last ditch attempt to gain financing for the re-introduction of American military - Saigon fell to the North on April 30th 1975. Even today, visiting Reunification Palace in Saigon is a moving experience - a site of liberation and the conclusion of a conflict which should never have been and, ultimately, achieved nothing outside of mass devastation, a body count (on both sides) which totalled seven figures and the relentless bombing of Laos and Cambodia. The latter of these may, depending on which history book you care to engage with, have led to the rise of the Khmer Rouge.

The below picture has become iconic and the helicopter pad remains on Reunification Palace: a reminder of a time when Vietnam was at the centre of world attention and the combat seemed neverending.

In visiting Vietnam there were certain sites that I wanted to get to - no matter how tricky they proved. I was determined to see My Lai, where Sargeant William Calley (now, despicably, a free man living in Atlanta and running a jewelery business) infamously ordered his soldiers to fire upon an unarmed village, rape the women and massacre the children. This may sound like 'dark tourism' and perhaps it is - I am not about to philosophise about what drives so many us to see places of genocide, from Auschwitz to Choeung Ek and so forth. All I can say is that I wanted to develop a greater image of what My Lai looks like and, although the recreated village that has been propped up in the area is surprisingly tacky, I have no regrets about going (well, except when some high school children came rushing in and thought the museum of bloody pictures was a laugh riot - the sole black spot of my entire Vietnam experience).

As an aside, cameras should be banned from these places.

The amount of tourists who think nothing of posing, with big 'holiday' grins, in front of areas where people were slaughtered is embarassing. It is bad enough when men in shorts and women in short skirts think this is suitable apparel for visiting Buddhist temples (or, in Malaysia, mosques) but pictures of your foreign mug in massacre sites is just ridiculous. I took one snap at My Lai - of the monument which was erected to honour the dead. I've posted it below. Exactly why some visitors feel the need to stand in front of this with a smile on their face is puzzling - what exactly are you celebrating with such an image?

For those who wish to visit the site the best place to be based is Hoi-An - a gorgeous town with nary a corporate logo in sight. Sheer heaven on earth. Tours can be organised via Viet Vision (http://www.vietvisiontravel.com/) and take about three hours there and back by car (with a sidetrip to the temples of Mỹ Sơn).

Anyway, moving on - I was also interested in visitng Hamburger Hill.

Put aside the rather rubbish movie of the same name from 1987 because the Battle of Hamburger Hill was so much more than this: it was a turning point in the war. The Tet Offensive of January 1968 had disorientated the US - even when, at the end of a raging fight with the North, Uncle Sam had still come out on top (the Tet Offensive, incidentally, is the fight which is documented in the latter half of Stanley Kubrick's Full Metal Jacket). Nevertheless, due to the clear evidence that the North was not about to back down, it was the beginning of the end for the US involvement in Vietnam and led to a number of quick-fix mini-battles which were designed to claim a large count of enemy bodies in the name of 'victory'. One such instance was Hamburger Hill (real title: Ap Bia Mountain) - so called because the mass amount of dead bodies looked like meat strewn across the muddy landscape.

The Battle for Hamburger Hill raged between May 10th - 20th 1969. The Americans actually succeeded in capturing the hill from the North Vietnamese army - but at the cost of 72 brave infantrymen and over 350 wounded. On the Viet Cong side, an equally brave 675 (reported) were killed.

And for what?

Only 16 days later the hill was abandoned because it was considered of such little importance. A grand waste of lives on both sides - and an indication to the American public, and the world, that this was a war being fought with a wayward sense of longterm achievement.

Hamburger Hill is located near the Loation border. A part of the country which is still thick with landmines. To get there seemed unlikely until I finally discovered a young history scholar online called Mr. Vu who specialises in trips to the former DMZ and areas of interest across central Vietnam (his web site is here: Mr. Vu Tours). Despite the fact myself and Naomi were travelling across Vietnam during their New Year celebrations (which caused no problems at all despite some online forums stating that everything would be closed!), Mr. Vu agreed to pick us up and take us to Hamburger Hill.

The place to be for this trip is the Emperial City of Huế: the site of the Tet Offensive and still a place which shows evidence of the conflict which once made it one of the most dangerous places in the world (see below):

That said, Huế (pronounced "Whay") is every bit as safe as any other part of Vietnam (i.e. very safe) and - as with everywhere else we visited - English is widely spoken, making you feel all the while like a dumb foreigner. Although not as picturesque as Saigon, Hoi-An or the utterly stunning city of Hanoi - there are still some fantastic things to see in Huế, including the Purple Forbidden City (below):

Three days, however, is probably plenty - and so I strongly advise taking one or more of Mr. Vue's tours - especially since he informed us that, yes, we were the first British people to ask for a tour of Hamburger Hill (I know we're Scottish and he knew this too - but I wanted to make sure that we were not just the first Scots but Brits as well!). He mentioned that very few people at all bother with this tour - it seems that many young people who visit Vietnam today do so as a sidetrip from the party hub/ beach resorts of Thailand or as part of a wider jog around Southeast Asia. Very few, we were told, engage with the immediate history of the nation - and this is an enormous shame because, even if your knowledge of the Vietnam War is minimal, the drive to the Laotian border and Hamburger Hill is absolutely stunning:

With beautiful countryside and mountains, this is one of the most spectacular trips I have ever taken. With a time of about two hours from Huế, Hamburger Hill itself is not an especially gruelling car ride. Moreover, the hill was paved in 2009 which means that, as long as you are in fit shape, it is an easy jaunt to the top. That said, below is a small selection of just some of the stairs you will be expected to hike up (Mr. Vue is at the top) - so make sure you know just what your limitations are!

On the way up a reminder of the hill's past is evident in the impact wraught by bombs:

Hamburger Hill proved to be a peaceful hike - and upon reaching the top a new plaque has been erected. Mr. Vue explained that this was because returning American infantrymen, who survived the battle, have began to return to Vietnam and revisit the location. He told of one story where three ex-army men wanted to spend the night at the top of the hill: something that was unfortunately not possible because of the sensistive location near the Laotian border. I have included a picture of the plaque below:

On the way down, Mr. Vue and one of his colleagues - who was the gent that erected the new steps himself and also joined us on the trek - told me about a cave which was used by the Viet Cong. I was asked if I wanted to visit and I agreed: although none of us could have expected to find yet another remnant of the war past - a small piece of material from a Viet Cong outfit. Of course, this was put back where we found it.

Hamburger Hill is an incredible place to visit. The wildlife has never recovered from this area so it is remarkably quiet - moreso than any large woodland should be. In itself this lends a haunting atmosphere to somewhere that is already ominous. The scenery is, as expected, amazing - especially from the top. Furthermore, Mr. Vu is a well educated historian himself and he can provide you with answers to any questions you may have. I was honoured when he praised my knowledge of the war - and I would love to, one day, return to Vietnam and see even more of the country. Aside from being full of friendly, hospitable people - it is also a progressive and industrious nation, moving forward but rightly proud of their fierce independence: something that we should never forget how hard they fought for.

In closing, here are some more pictures - which rounds off my first ever piece of travel writing!

NEW MARK MILLAR INTERVIEW

For all you comic book fans out there!

Mark Millar SFX chat