WE WERE THE SCENERY (2025)

Other than trying to analyze the background of Marvel movies for easter eggs, have you every thought of the background actors? There are the beloved behind the scenes shared by fans such as the storm trooper bopping their head on the doorframe or the helmet kicking scene in Lord of the Rings. These are the scenes that are anticipated by fans upon rewatch and where the scenery becomes the accidental star. These stories often add a layer of warmth and connection to the movie with fans.

Now imagine watching a movie, a very famous movie. A movie that is considered legendary status, analyzed by millions of film students, and has a firm seat in film history. A film so famous that everyone knows the movie, even if they haven’t actually watched it. Then someone you know turns to you, and shares that their parents are in the movie as the background actors. If that someone was Cathy Linh Che, then she’s got a great story to share with you.

Cathy’s parents, Hoa Thi Le and Hue Nguyen Che fled from Vietnam to a refugee camp in the Philippines in 1975. While at the refugee, the local Red Cross in the Philippines recruited Cathy’s parents along with hundreds of other refugees to be casted as background in Coppola’s APOCALYPSE NOW.

They casted actual Vietnamese refugees to as background actors in an American psychological epic war movie about Vietnam War.

Che shares her parents experience in the documentary short, We Were The Scenery. The short is a visual collage with scenes from California, Vietnam, and the Philippines. The parents voices connect throughout all of the locations that were spliced among shaky cam and home footage reels. Her parents sit on a couch and do a running commentary of the movie that they are rewatching on their VHS. system. Just the scene of the distinctive plastic clack as the VHS is pushed into the player instantly sets the ambience to nostalgia.

The short is a layer upon layer of time and memories. For her parents, it was a time of fond recollection. For them, acting out as fictional refugees in a movie was not an insult or anything. As they recalled it, it was just a movie. For them this is not even close to the real horror, this was absolute play acting in a safe environment. Where they can pretend to "die" only to get up again after the director yells cut.

The documentary short is a very brief glimpse into their past. It’s more of a sweet family moment than anything else. Beyond their brief stint as background actors, they came to America and raised a family. For children of immigrants, we are all well aware of the trials and hardships our parents endured to give us a home, education, and another way of life. For some it has been moderately difficult, for some it was a life altering journey. Not many of those parents can claim to have been in the background of a war movie.

Cathy Linh Che (*Writer and Producer of WE WERE THE SCENERY*) - photo by Tonith Photography

Sheltered within a screening room during one of the most windiest nights in Southern California, we were able to not only watch the screening but also to listen to Cathy Ling Che talk about the film. On answering the question of how did the filmmakers decide to make a film personal experiences, Che shared the following.

“I've always known about my parents story about being extras in APOCALYPSE NOW. I can't imagine this time when I didn't know this because my parents are very avid storytellers. We would be at the kitchen table and they just honed me about their lives and that was our bridge between the US…They're very good storytellers, and they tell stories together, and they fill in the gaps of that story and, and so our house was filled with that and also the radio. The stories were there. Just not in the news broadcast, not in the newspaper. It's not even in the fiction or the non-fiction Vietnamese perspective.

So growing up, it felt very lonely, and I wanted to be able to self-define and also invite people into that really blessed living room or kitchen table where my parents are telling this. So there's a stake in terms of Vietnamese representation on the fundamental level.

It's a piece of film history that hasn't been recorded. We don't know of anybody who's recorded the Vietnamese people in the filming of APOCALYPSE NOW. Which sounds like it should be obvious like it's a Vietnam War film, so talk to the Vietnamese people, and it hadn't been done before.

I have a very intimate access to these stories. On the filmic level. It's important because APOCALYPSE NOW it’s very storied. It's very well documented. People know about it a lot, especially film people. It's a favorite film, so people know about the travails of the production but they don't know about what it was like to be Vietnamese on the set….A couple essential questions are just: what is reality and fiction? What does it mean for real people to be in a fictionalized war? Their answers aren't what we want or expected, They're like, we liked it. That doesn't fit in with the kind of decolonial, anti-exploitation narrative. That was one of the essential questions.

The other one question is just about memory. What do you do? What do you do with the trauma of war, and what does your life become 50 years afterward?

As a poet, I wanted to look at Vietnamese literature, and it's all trauma even though I participated in that, that's not the totality of who we are, and to present the possibility of joy, laughter alongside that real and honest account of what they’ve been through”

We Were the Scenery is a short that should should be a companion watch alongside APOCALYPSE NOW. It is indeed one of the few authentic media that provides a voice to those who always seemed to be pushed aside in history. With this short, the are moved to the foreground with this brief glimpse of experience.

For more information on the show and the team behind the short, please go to https://www.wewerethesceneryfilm.com/.