Rory Kennedy is an award-winning filmmaker whose resume includes five Emmy nominations with one win in 2007 for “Outstanding Nonfiction Special” Ghosts of Abu Ghraib. She has many nominations and awards from a variety of film festivals, and her latest film, Last Days in Vietnam, has been nominated for an Academy Award.

 

“My brother [Chris] says I do two types of films: depressing and really depressing,” Rory Kennedy told journalists recently. “I disagree with him because I find them very hopeful.” Kennedy’s latest film chronicles the final days and hours of Americans in Vietnam before the communists took over Saigon and the country fell. For Ms. Kennedy, Last Days in Vietnam highlights American heroes and courage, and includes lessons to learn from the past.

 

“When we premiered this film in Washington, D.C., it was the night that Obama gave his ISIS address. And there was a great article in The New Yorker saying that Obama should see this film because there are so many parallels between what happened during these final days and what’s happening today.” Ms. Kennedy explained.

 

“It’s been such a great honor for me to tell this story and share this story with Americans, because I think it’s really an opportunity to adjust our perception of this war just a little bit, that there were Americans and the film tells the story of the abandonment – the American abandonment of the Vietnamese,” Kennedy explained. “That is the story. But within that context, there are these extraordinary acts of courage on the part of these Americans.” She said those who have seen the film when it played in film festivals and in theaters “feel proud to be American and to be a part of this effort of these individuals who did the right thing in this wave of history moving against them. It’s just an honor to tell the story.”

 

The film itself is remarkable and for those who lived through the final days of South Vietnam, the memories it brings back are intense. For those who were too young to remember or were not born at the end of the war, this is a story that isn’t taught in schools. Even those who remember many of the images shown in this film will see and learn more and understand events that occurred during the final hours of American presence in Saigon and the empathy, courage, and sensitivity of the Americans.

 

Several specific stories are highlighted in this film, including that of the USS Kirk. When helicopters were being used to shuttle South Vietnamese to safety before the communists arrived, the Kirk played an important role. While the American fleet was in the South China Seas loading the evacuees, the USS Kirk was there to monitor the situation and keep the fleet safe. However, many Vietnamese pilots loaded their families and friends onto other helicopters and started flying them to safety. The Kirk hosted many of them, but once a chopper landed, there was no room for another, so after each landing the helicopter would be pushed over the side of the Kirk to make room for the next group of refugees. This is just one amazing story told in the documentary.

 

The scene of a Vietnamese ship being re-flagged with the American flag in order to dock in a safe port is also memorable and very poignant.

 

For Rory, “Vietnam, I would say, was very much part of my consciousness from a very young age, and I’ve always been fascinated with Vietnam. My father, Robert Kennedy, ran his last campaign in 1968 really because he wanted us to get out of Vietnam. And I would say that was absolutely the primary reason, if not the sole reason, that he jumped into that campaign.”

 

Kennedy didn’t want to rehash stories about the war that have been told over and over again. But she said the stories she tells in this film are, in most cases, completely new to Americans. “And that’s been one of the striking things over the course of the last year, showing it at film festivals and at community screenings with PBS, that people say, ‘I can’t believe we don’t know this story.’ It’s such an extraordinary story and such an important story. And historians, politicians, people who have studied the Vietnam War don’t know what happened, and don’t know these events. And I was really struck by that. It’s a dramatic story, and it’s an important story, and it’s hugely relevant.”

 

Having the film air on PBS is something that, for the filmmaker, is a great opportunity to have people see the film and learn what happened those final days.

 

Last Days in Vietnam is available for free streaming on PBS station websites February 5-7 and will air on PBS’ American Experience April 28, 2015.

 

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

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In the new ABC sitcom Fresh off the Boat, Hudson Yang plays little Eddie Huang, and will undoubtedly steal the hearts of TV viewers.

 

Young Eddie Huang is not happy about moving with his family from Chinatown in Washington, DC. to Orlando, Florida and tries to fit in with his new friends. It’s difficult for him to make friends and relies on rap music to help him make it through. “It’s been a lot of fun and I love being part of the show,” the 11-year-old told television journalists. “It is my first big thing.” He admitted that he also auditioned for “a nerdy role.”

 

Hudson’s only other acting credit was in the film Sisterhood of Night, a 2014 teen movie. So, only 18 months after entering the acting profession, Hudson is now costarring on what ABC hopes will be a breakout sitcom. Young Hudson first became interested in acting after a friend told him about her experience in a television commercial.

 

Hudson convinced his parents to take him to an open casting call in 2013 for the movie The Inevitable Defeat of Mister and Pete. He didn’t get the part but was one of the two finalists. Then he was cast in The Sisterhood of Night, and caught the attention of Eddie Huang, the writer of the bestselling book Fresh off the Boat. Eddie then cast him in his new sitcom and the rest is yet to come.
Yang is like a typical 11-year-old when he’s not on set. He enjoys singing karaoke and playing Minecraft.
Fresh off the Boat premiers February 4, 2015 on ABC.

 

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

Follow her on Twitter

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We’ve all wondered at one time or another what our lives would be like if we had made a different decision in the past. Well, in the VH1 scripted series Hindsight, Becca (Laura Ramsey) gets a second chance at life. On the eve of her second wedding, Becca magically awakens 20 years earlier in 1995, on the day of her first wedding.

 

Becca knows everything that happened in the past 20 years and now has the chance to change her life. Will she decide to marry her first husband again or possibly her second fiancé? Will she quit her job? What will she do? The only person she tells about this amazing experience is her best friend Lolly (Sarah Goldberg).

 

As Susan Levinson, EVP, Original Programming & Production at VH1 explained, “Becca will soon discover there is no sure-fire way to make the right choices in life, even when you’re viewing those choices in hindsight.”

 

“We all think that we know because we chose door A what would have happened if we had chosen door B, so this show sort of examines both the fantasy aspect of that, which is what would you do if you had this this maturity and all this perspective and all this knowledge and you could make all these decisions again, but of course, the treacherous aspect of that is if you change one thing, you change everything,” added Emily Fox, the creator and executive producer of the series.

 

What Becca misses first is the Keurig coffee maker. Then she discovers life is tough without her iPhone. But the actors agree the wardrobes and hairstyles were a fun aspect of reliving the 1990s.

 

Sarah Goldberg said, “And the romance of the grand gesture that’s required, and you have to show up with both your feet. It’s not just your thumbs on a screen. It’s so much fun for drama because there’s these big events in the show where [there’s] the 3 a.m. knock on the door. It just feels like now that would be a text message, and there’s a freedom in the period nature of the show, and there’s a joy to that, [and] an innocence as well.”

Emily Fox described what she wanted the series to be. “The truth is we just romanticize whatever is 20 years behind us. So this [show] is really a love letter to the ’90s or love letter to our youth, a time when we just had a tremendous amount of freedom and a tremendous amount of personal interaction. And I think there’s something to looking back on a decade. It doesn’t really coalesce into a thing until you’re looking back on it from about 20 years hence.”

 

If you went back in time and had the opportunity to change your life, knowing what you know now, would you want to? Becca time traveled via an elevator, and now she is afraid to get back into another elevator, opting to take the stairs even if her destination is 10 floors up. She’s afraid where she’ll end up if this anomaly happens again. Even though she has to get used to not texting, no iPhone, and all the modern conveniences – or inconveniences – she wants to play the new cards she has been dealt.

 

Hindsight airs Wednesday nights on VH1. It’s an intriguing and entertaining show and well worth checking out.

About the Author

Francine Brokaw has been covering all aspects of the entertainment business for 20 years. She also writes about technology and has been a travel writer for the past 12 years. She has been published in national and international newspapers and magazines as well as internet websites. She has written her own book, Beyond the Red Carpet The World of Entertainment Journalists, from Sourced Media Books.

Follow her on Twitter

Like her on Facebook