The Ugly American...

This movie being my first Siff film to watch was very interesting, I never had this kind of experience of being at a film were the screen writer, Stewart Stern would be present. It was surprising to me that he was actually there. That was a new experience for me, and I took more respect for the Siff festival, I saw that it wasn't only watching a movie that will only be there to see, but I really liked that even after all these years since the movie was made, they still wanted to show it and have Stewart Stern present giving him the time to express and tell his story. If I was in his place, I would have felt very honored that at this time people would still be honored to have me there wanting to listen to what I had to say.

I found this photo of Stewart Stern at a website called Northwest Film Forum.

Stewart Stern talked about his hollywood life, but mostly about his and his friends of the film's adventure and what they went through just to be able to bring along this film. Like figuring out thing there, who could they actually persive the culture and show how the lie and stituation was there. They had to get permission from the president of the United States so they could be allowed to be traveling in Asia and being accepted there. That was a big challenge they had to face, not being welcomed there. He said it cost them a lot of money, because mostly all the crops were made new just for the movie, everything was original, and it was hard for them to keep up with everything. But on the side of that, what he mostly expressed with joy was his experience he had doing this movie, mostly because he expressed that they were sent to Asia to come up with a certain kind of movie to make, and they spent a lot of time and energy trying to figure that out, but in the long run later they made up the story as they went and figured out.

Watching the film 'The Ugly American" was very interesting, it had a lot of different views and perspectives to look through. One was having the view of the Asian people and their view of an American person, how an American is being perseived, and this brings me back memories. I couple of years ago I was traveling over in europe and the people that knew I was Mexican would tell me to hide my American, meaning United States passport. Since I didn't look white like an american, and if I hid the American passport I would be safer. Why would they say this? Well because ever since that movie and since now present in my life time, the United States has had another view from mostly European Countries. It is sometimes a threat you give yourself if you show your american passport, because you never know how they will treat you, or what they will do to you. But coming back to all the different views of this film, it shows how at that time war has very present and how easy it was to kill people. The movie also showed us some culture, but mostly about the true history that those people had to go go through and their history. Maybe that move might be very interesting and beautiful made for our view, for own joy, but just put yourself in the place of those peoples persived there in the movie. These people went through that history, they suffered, they had the experiences and most important their memories. When they watch this film, they will sertainly hav another feeling to it that we will never be able to experience.