Pearl of the Orient

Logline: In the midst of war in 1967 Vietnam a young Green Beret becomes involved in opium smuggling and a CIA-led Montagnard revolution while navigating a love triangle with a beautiful-but-deadly Dragon Lady and a mysterious young nightclub singer--all the while struggling to understand a transformative spiritual experience that overcame him in battle. Pearl of the Orient is an un-produced screenplay inspired by a true story-highly dramatized and hyperbolized of course. It had a shot at Hollywood a number of years ago being passed on by name-brand directors and such and since has been collecting dust in the virtual bottom drawer of my laptop. Recently in a moment of nostalgia for Vietnam I pulled it up reread it and still liked it-a lot. I realized though that I bring to my reading of it a huge amount of background and imagery that is not on the page and began giving serious consideration to making the movie myself even planning a trip to Vietnam to scout locations and talk with a production company I found there. Through a series of mistakes on my part and cosmic intervention that trip did not happen. In the aftermath I had a What was I thinking? moment. At age 72 with no prior experience directing films just who did I think would finance me? My flight of fancy was fun while it lasted and to be honest mixed with my disappointment was great relief. A burden had been lifted. For decades I had felt like I had a responsibility to create some kind of art from what was a unique and compelling experience of the Vietnam War. When my heroic effort to do it all myself fell through that all went away. What I decided though was to create an artifact of that obsession something I could hold in my hand. Hence this book. It is the screenplay slightly rewritten into what I hope is a more readable format than a shooting script sort of a cross between a screenplay and a novella. It is all I need to feel done and complete with this story. However if this book should find its way into the hands of someone who somehow sees what I see in it and would like to put it on the screen please let me know. Hope springs eternal and all that.