GEORGE ESPER - All American
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A Documentary Film About the Nature of and the Need for Trustworthy Journalism as Practiced by One of America's Most Revered Reporters
About the Film
1. Origins / 2. Outline of the Film / 3. Script Samples / 4. Finishing Funds
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1. Origins of the Film
In April of 2005, George and I recorded 18 hours of interviews on video--each session was about an hour to an hour-and-a-half. We had agreed that it would be historically important to create a first person account of his experiences as an American journalist. We spoke mostly about Vietnam, but we also discussed events in his life and career both before and after Vietnam.
I was immediately taken by his memories of growing up in an immigrant family in western Pennsylvania and his fearful assumption that he was destined to be seen always as an outsider, a foreigner. He simply wanted the opportunity to earn for himself a place of respect and to be judged by the quality of his work and accomplishments.
The fact is that George succeeded far beyond his wildest dreams. He was a natural as a journalist. It came to him easily and he loved it. He found lifelong friends among his colleagues, especially those he worked with in Vietnam, where he was respected for the quality of his reporting and admired for his spirited dedication. Not long after his return to the U.S. the Associated Press promoted George to Special Correspondent--the highest writing title
in the AP--one of only five in the worldwide agency at that time.
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I came to see George as the embodiment of the literary figure of Everyman--the spirited soul who is propelled forward by his own zeal and by those who recognize his gifts and support him as he pursues his calling. When I asked about the many friends and colleagues he has gathered over the years, he simply shrugged and with a smile said,"They seem to like my spirit."
After re-listening to our conversations over the years and living with them in my mind for so long--followed by reading a few thousand of his AP dispatches--it became obvious that the only proper way to tell George Esper's story was to see him and hear him tell it himself.
The documentary, therefore, will be a memoir of sorts--an "in-person" rendering of his experiences over four decades with The Associated Press. My questions will be cut and no other persons will be interviewed. The documentary will be told in the way George recalls his most significant experiences and the manner in which he wrote his most memorable stories...sometimes only moments after they happened.
2. Outline of the Film
Note: The outline of the film presents a sequence of topics George regarded as among the most significant of his life and career, but please bear in mind that reading the outline is different from experiencing the film itself. What the outline cannot deliver are the images and the sounds that will vividly suggest a sense of place and evoke the moods of the moment as George remembers them.
Opening/Introduction to George
The film opens with the North Vietnamese Army advancing rapidly toward Saigon. When the capital city falls, George writes his final dispatch from Vietnam. As he reads aloud his lede sentence we dissolve to an elementary school in Uniontown, PA (c. 1940) as the class recites the Pledge of Allegiance with their hands over their hearts. George then begins telling the story of growing up in Uniontown, the son of immigrants. He always felt insecure and tentative because, he says, he knew others saw him as a foreigner.
We transition to the West Virginia University football practice field (c. 1951) and learn of the coach who saw something in George on the practice field and convinced him to become the team's manager. This was the turning point for George--somebody saw something special in him. He thrived at WVU and began writing sports stories for local newspapers.
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Next we quickly go through the beginnings of his career--The Uniontown Herald Standard, general assignments and high school sports; The Pittsburgh Press covering the Pirates and Steelers; the Associated Press, in their Philadelphia office as an overnight reporter/editor; and finally the AP's home office in New York and an unexpected offer to join the Saigon Bureau in Vietnam.
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VIETNAM: 1965-1968
The 10 years George spent in Vietnam--1965-1975--will be the largest section of the film, running between 30 and 40 minutes. It begins with his arrival in country, meeting some of the AP's top journalists--Peter Arnett; Ed White; Horst Faas; George McArthur; Nick Ut; et al--and heading north 400 miles to Da Nang for his first assignment, covering the U.S. Marines who patrol the northern section of South Vietnam, just below the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ).
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George was impressed with the spirit of the young Marines he met--mostly 18-to-22 years old. They were confident, optimistic and full of fun at the Marine base. Some boasted that they expected to complete their assignment in Vietnam in a matter of months and be home in time for Christmas.
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General William Westmoreland, commander of all U.S. forces in Vietnam had devised a strategy of attrition--known as "Search and Destroy"--which deployed large numbers of ground troops to search the countryside, find the enemy and apply maximum fire power--using aerial bombing, artillery strikes and helicopter gunships--to support the troops on the ground. The aim of the strategy was to kill as many VC and NVA troops as possible, forcing the enemy to eventually give up and sue for peace.
Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, devised a metric known as the "Body Count," a weekly report of the number of enemy killed-in-action (KIA) compared to the number of U.S. and South Vietnamese KIA . The weekly calculations were intended to suggest to the American people that the war in Vietnam was being won.
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The soldiers of the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and the Viet Cong (VC) proved to be more wily and resilient than American leaders had imagined; and, despite the capacity to wield overwhelming firepower--on the ground and in the air--U.S. ground forces were quick to learn that the enemy was elusive, clever and lethal. While DoD's body counts continued to suggest that American forces were winning, it was clear that the enemy never gave up. They kept coming back...again and again...usually at a time and place of thier choosing and they would vanish back into the night, again, at a time of their choosing.
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Covering combat was new--and frightening--for George; but, his resolve to faithfully report what he saw and what he learned in the field was more powerful and more compelling than his most vivid fears. He had been selected to join the team of journalists in the Saigon Bureau that included some of the best correspondents and photographers in The Associated Press and he intended to secure his place among them. His self confidence remained undiminished.
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During his first few years in South Vietnam he continued to cover combat operations; occasionally writing profiles of enlisted men and young officers; he also interviewed senior government and military officials--both on and off the record; wrote about popular opposition to the Saigon regime, especially among Buddhists; and, sometimes wrote the daily "roundup" of military action throughout South Vietnam based upon the most recent reporting of AP journalists in the field.
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While reporting on the scale of the carnage he witnessed and the number of young Americans returning home in coffins, George also wrote about the death and destruction suffered by Vietnamese civilians, especially the peasants in the countryside.
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In late 1967 the Viet Cong and the North Vietnamese Army began secretly preparing for a massive offensive against all the major population centers in South Vietnam. The uprisings were to begin simultaneously throughout the nation the night of January 30,1968 when Tet celebrations of the Vietnamese lunar new year were to began.
General Westmoreland and his intelligence operatives, however, were convinced that the North Vietnamese were preparing a massive cross-border invasion into South Vietnam from the north. Westmoreland began redeploying tens of thousands of troops north to positions just below the DMZ in order to repel the anticipated invasion; he also began sending B52 bombers to lay waste to suspected North Vietnamese troop concentrations above the DMZ.
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While American and South Vietnamese troops continued to redeploy to the north, the enemy rose up in the middle of the night on January 30 and attacked major cities and military installations throughout South Vietnam, including the United States Embassy in Saigon.
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During the first hours of the uprising, George returned to the AP Bureau and began working the phones trying to reach his military and government contacts around the country in order to get a picture of what was going on and develop a strategy for AP staff and stringers to cover this unimaginable nationwide attack.
Members of the press from other news agencies continued to come to the AP Bureau during the night and morning hours in order to stay current through the night and the next day.
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The body counts were enormous for both sides--the number of reported enemy KIAs was, as expected, far larger than the number of American and South Vietnamese KIAs--but, perhaps more significant than the numbers of dead, the NVA and the VC had demonstrated their capacity to stage a vast, coordinated, and undetected military offensive throughout the country, making clear to the American military their will to fight and their determination to win.
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Vietnam: 1968 - 1973
Tet turned everything upside down in the way the war was conceived and understood by the Americans. Gen. Westmoreland was replaced by Gen. Creighton Abrams, who replaced the Search and Destroy strategy with one that relied more on air power and less on ambitious ground operations. The aim was to begin lowering the American body count and turning more ground combat operations over to the South Vietnamese.
The next five years saw a slow and painful deterioration of American forces. Morale among the troops was low and kept getting lower; drug use was on the rise and getting worse; racial tensions were surfacing and becoming heated; discipline was declining and eventually troops began ignoring orders and refused to go out on patrols. Increasingly, American troops were seeing the war as hopeless and without purpose. No one wanted to be the last man to die in Vietnam.
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George continued writing daily roundups and began following the air war more closely as it was replacing the ground war. He remained particularly concerned with South Vietnamese civilian deaths, especially those of children; and, he wrote about the morale problems among the troops and the ever ascending body-count of young American troops.
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His focus on the air war led to breaking stories about illegal air attacks on parts of Cambodia and Laos by U.S. bombers based mostly in Thailand. He also broke the story of a decorated B52 pilot who refused to fly any more bombing missions because he was "tired of killing civilians, especially women and children," and was being held in Thailand awaiting Court Marshall.
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Vietnam: 1973 - 1975
The AP cut back on the staffing of the Saigon Bureau after the last American Combat troops left South Vietnam on March 29, 1973. George was the Bureau Chief in Saigon as he and a few others continued to report on the war in Vietnam between the North and the South, as well as cover the quickly moving Khmer Rouge rebellion in Cambodia.
The North Vietnamese Army dominated the South Vietnamese Army and was able to methodically move down from the north capturing large swaths of territory as they went. The war lasted two more years before the NVA had finally conquered all of Vietnam, and what was left of the South Vietnamese government simply collapsed and surrendered.
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Return Home...and...Columbus, Ohio 1975 - 1976
George experienced a painfully difficult time after returning to the United States. He first went to the refugee center at the Marine Corps Camp Pendleton in California to find his wife and children before he returned to Uniontown. The AP had given him a few months to rest and readjust after the war, but when New York finally called, they told him he was being assigned to the Columbus, Ohio bureau. He was stunned. Friends from the Saigon Bureau called and said they couldn't believe it. George refused to report to Columbus and he threatened to quit the AP; but, after another month or so feeling depressed and confused, he moved by himself to Columbus and reported for work. His wife, Cuc, and their two sons returned to California to be with members of her family.
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Starting all over again was as bad as he had been afraid it would be. He couldn't come up with ideas, couldn't concentrate, and worst of all, he couldn't write. He would become obsessed with trying to find the perfect lede for a story, but couldn't do it. Several nights he slept at his desk in the Bureau and was unkempt and unshaven in the morning when the rest of the staff and the Bureau Chief arrived. He was "drinking lousy coffee and eating cheap sandwiches out of vending machines." In addition to the collapse of his self-confidence, Cuc had remained in California and she eventually filed for divorce.
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What saved George was the confidence the Columbus Bureau Chief and some of AP's senior editors in New York had in him. They dedicated time to work with him on his story ideas and writing style; but, perhaps most important of all, they were kind and respectful, letting him know how much they valued him as a member of the AP.
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George's "break through" was a feature story he did about one of the last barn-artists who painted ads for shaving cream and chewing tobacco on the sides of barns across America. His story was published in the Sunday edition of newspapers throughout the nation....and according to George, "It was a smash hit."
Boston -- The Second Half of George's Career 1977 - 2000
After nearly a year in Ohio, George was reassigned to the Boston bureau, where he was based for the rest of his career, covering New England stories, national stories and international stories. Not long after joining the Boston bureau, the AP promoted him to Special Correspondent, the highest writing title within The Associated Press. He was one of only five active Special Correspondents and had the privilege of being able to assign himself to the stories he wished to cover and in the way he wished to cover them.
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Some of the stories George covered during his final 23 years with the AP and which he describes on camera are:
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Vietnam War Veterans (various years): George wrote several stories after the war focusing on the difficulty many veterans had readjusting to life back in the U.S.--post traumatic stress syndrome; depression; drug abuse; alcoholism; poverty; and disdain from friends as well as strangers for their service in Vietnam.
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Roger Tory Peterson (1978): Author of the famous Field Guide to Birds books was the subject of one of George's feature stories for Sunday editions. Originally, he turned it down when it was offered to him, but after he spent a few days with Peterson, it became one of the most precious memories of his career.
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Jonestown (1978): George was among the first reporters to arrive in Jonestown, Guyana after the mass killing of the followers of Rev. Jim Jones. George was unnerved by what he saw, especially the bodies of so many children. After reading some of the notes people left behind, he said, "These were the people nobody wanted or cared about...and this wasn't mass suicide, it was mass murder."
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Vietnam Veterans Memorial (1982-83): Opened November 13, 1982, the wall instantly became a powerful source of healing for thousands of veterans and their families. George wrote about the design and planning, but the most important part of the story is the embrace the nation offered to the veterans of the Vietnam War--for those who died; for those who suffered severe wounds, both physical and emotional; for the families who understood the sacrifices so many young men and women willingly made when their nation's leaders called upon them to serve.
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20 years after Kent State (1990): George was still in Vietnam when the National Guard opened fire on campus protesters, killing 4 students and wounding nine others. So, when the twentieth anniversary of the event approached he decided to write reflective story about the day of the shootings and the lasting impact it had on the families of the four students who were killed.
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First Gulf War (1991): George was the Bureau Chief for the AP, stationed in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia where he tried to direct and assign coverage leading up to the war; however, he found the U.S. military was imposing rigid restrictions on media coverage, including permission to travel, access to military personnel and military locations, and an aggressive system of censorship. George worked overtime trying to gain what access he could for his reporters and he found the military's censorship regime aggressively hostile to the press, making the First Gulf War, "the least reported on war I'v ever known."
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War in Bosnia-Herzegovina (1992 and 1995): George covered combat and the searches for mass burial sites of Muslim men and teenage boys. He also wrote about the civilian populations--both Muslim and Christian--trying desperately to cope and keep their families alive while trapped in war zones where neighbors were fighting neighbors.
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Somalia (1992 and 1993): These were the most frightening experiences George had in his entire career. Warlords and their militias were fighting each other and there was uncertainty about what alliances might or might not be if effect. Covering the hostilities seemed to George a bit like playing Russian roulette. He traveled, like most journalists, with body guards in a pickup truck armed with a large high caliber machine gun mounted in the back. Violence could erupt anywhere at anytime with bullets and grenades coming from many directions at once.
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Associated Press Opens New Bureau in Vietnam (1993 - 94): In 1993 the Associated Press negotiated an understanding with the Hanoi regime to open a new bureau in Hanoi to cover Vietnam and much of the rest of Southeast Asia. George was asked to set up the bureau and be the first Bureau Chief. Once the bureau was up and functioning, George focused much of his own reporting on the final efforts of the U.S. and Vietnamese to locate the remains of unaccounted for American POWs and MIAs so they could be returned to their families in the United States.
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Oklahoma City bombing (1995): George was part of a group of AP correspondents following a variety of storylines connected to the bombing of the federal building. He wrote a profile of school teacher whose husband worked in the building but was still unaccounted for. George spent a few days with her and was there when she got the call that her husband's body had finally been found in the building's wreckage.
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Retirement from the AP and Teaching at West Virginia University (2000 - 2008)
George retired from The Associated Press in 2000, after 42 years with the news agency and was offered a professorship in the School of Journalism at his alma mater, West Virginia University. He found the experience of working with aspiring journalists more rewarding than he ever imagined it would be. It invigorated him and generated a sense of optimism in the future that had been worn down after seeing so much death and destruction throughout his career. George retired from WVU in 2008 and returned to his home in Boston where passed away four years later at the age of 79.
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The Film Ends at his Gravesite in Uniontown:
Next to his headstone a small American flag flutters in a gentle breeze. After a moment we begin to hear school children reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. Excerpts from Richard Pyle's obituary for George scroll up over the headstone.
4. Finishing Funds
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The interview material has been organized, roughly edited and a script has been drafted.
Post-production work remaining:
research archival film and archival photographic material
acquisition of rights to archival film and photographic material
music: original compositions and/or acquisition of rights to recorded music
digital graphics: animated maps, newspaper facsimiles, typing across screen, titles, credits, etc.
editing the documentary picture and audio
mixing audio tracks
color correction of video
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The estimated cost for post-production will be between $250,000 and $300,000.
Archival Research & Acquisition
We need to contract both a film archivist and a photography archivist to find the most historically accurate and compelling images to accompany George's recounting of his experiences. For most images we can provide the date and location, when and where George observed something and/or the date his story was published.
estimate: $ 75,000
Composer/Music
Contract a Composer to create original music compositions plus hire musicians for recording session. Additionally, acquisition of rights to recordings of traditional Vietnamese music.
estimate: $35,000
Sound Designer & Mixer
Contract a Sound Designer/Editor/Mixer to oversee construction of an engaging audio track to enhance the feeling of being present to events that took place decades ago. This may also require the renting of a sound studio.
estimate: $ 25,000
Video Graphics Designer
Contract a Video Graphics Designer to create Video Maps of South Vietnam with the ability to depict battles, troop movements and aerial attacks; newspaper facsimiles; rapid typing of a typewriter; linotype; movement within photographs and film frames; titles and credits, etc.
estimate: $ 20,000
Color Correction
The adjustment of color qualities throughout the film to bring consistency to film and photographic images that were created and reproduced using a variety of materials, equipment and personnel.
estimate: $. 15,000
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