Blacklists are called graylists. Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins are reviled as bleeding heart hippies. Halle, Nicole and J-Lo are amused, but stony during Michael Moore’s necessarily ranting Oscar speech. The so-called liberal Red-hunt is not so overt as it once was, but you don’t have to be Janneane Garofolo to feel the shadow of corporate Hollywood’s fist over your shoulder every time you make a statement even bordering on an anti-war sentiment. So when a woman manages to pluck her way through Hollywood as both screenwriter and producer, making a critical piece on the war during a time when there were even less women in Hollywood than there are now, and when critical work was truly few and far between, it is time sit up and take notice. Santa Monica College recently honored such a woman, American film pioneer Fay Kanin, for her contributions to cinema during their Women’s History Month celebrations. After a screening of her film, “Friendly Fire,” recipient of the 1979 Emmy Award for Outstanding Drama or Comedy Special, Kanin spoke about her work and the eerie timeliness of it.

Kanin co-produced and adapted the film from the book of the same name by C.D.B. Bryan. The film, starring Carol Burnett and Ned Beatty, details the true life story of Peg and Gene Mullen, an Iowa farm couple searching for the truth of their son’s death in the Vietnam War. The Mullens came to national attention after they printed two ads in the Des Moines Register in April 1970. The ads depicted over 700 crosses representing the number of deaths of Iowan soldiers that month along with the line: How many more lives do you wish to sacrifice because of your silence? Writer C.D.B. Bryan picked up on the story and expanded his piece for the New Yorker Magazine into a full-length book.

“I knew it was something that I really had to do,” Kanin said. “There’s a line in [“Friendly Fire”] when Bryan says, ‘When the country loses the loyalty of an Iowa family, then we are in some trouble.’ [The Mullens] made a great impact. When that ad appeared in one of the Iowa newspapers, it created a sensation.”

There hadn’t been many stories about Vietnam prior to “Friendly Fire.” Though television journalism was a major factor in changing public opinion towards the war, Kanin’s film was actually the first of its kind to hit the small screen.

“Up until this movie on television and ‘The Deer Hunter,’ which was the big screen movie the same year, people had not really wanted to look at Vietnam. They didn’t want to talk about it. I guess we were all recovering.” Kanin said. “And when ‘Friendly Fire’ came out on the home front and ‘The Deer Hunter’ came out on the big screen, it was like a huge sigh of relief. The critics’ responses were fantastic. They said, ‘At last at last we’re able to look at it.’ And I was so thrilled that it was so appreciated, that it did something important at the time.”

The impact of “Friendly Fire” on today’s audiences and its timeliness in light of the war in Iraq was not lost on the participants of the event’s discussion.

“There’s a horrific impact at the very end [when] the last title card notes [say] that we ultimately we pulled out of Vietnam on 29 of March 1973,” said panelist Shirley Saint Leon. “[That was] 30 years ago and shades of same old, same old. Of course that old question of, ‘When will we ever learn?’ is printed all over our minds.”

Kanin, who served as president of both the Screen Branch of the Writers Guild of America and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, also recognized the relevance of her film in relation to current world affairs.

“What’s so valuable about seeing this movie again was thinking about these people who are protesting the war [now] and thinking about whether they have a right to do that, whether they’re accused of being unpatriotic,” Kanin said. “Look at our congress. A lot of our people are afraid to speak up against the war because they’re afraid of being accused of being unpatriotic.”

She added, “I feel a lot of echoes of that time. The most I feel is that there should be freedom to express your dissatisfaction or your frustration or your disapproval. That’s what we’re fighting for. I think it’s awful when people are called unpatriotic if they are against the war. They’re certainly not against the soldiers… I would love to see all those boys alive and home again. I will do whatever is in my power to help that, but boy, I certainly love the people who speak out. They are not unpatriotic.”


Vorasarun is co-editor of Voices Magazine’s Arts and Entertainment section. She is currently relocating to New York to pursue work in radio.