THE VIETNAM WAR | PBS Previews: Unsettled History | PBS Video Lecture | The Impact of the Vietnam War Era on the Present day - Personal Learning

- Soldiers adapt.
You go over there with
one mindset, you know,
and then you adapt.
You adapt to the
atrocities of war.
You adapt to
killing, dying.
After a while, it
doesn't bother you.
I should say it doesn't
bother you as much.
When I first arrived in Vietnam,
there were some interesting
things that happened,
and I questioned
some of the Marines.
I was made to realize
that this is war,
and this is what we do.
And, that stuck in my head.
This is war, this is what we do.
After a while, you embrace that.
- Okay, everybody here?
Good morning, everybody.
The biggest thing I want to say
is this is not a finished film.
We are two and a half
years from broadcast.
As we said yesterday,
this is the earliest
we've ever brought
folks in to do that--
- One of the great joys
of a project like this
is that we get to work with
some of the leading experts
on the subject of
the Vietnam War.
We pull together a wide
range of historians
who have many different
perspectives about the war.
- I think dropping it in
makes great sense, actually.
So, I may disagree
with that a little bit.
- Listening to those advisors
helped us immeasurably,
and as we go around
to get their comments,
and we take diligent notes,
but you can almost
read in their faces
where they're at, what
their concerns are.
- There's a group
of us outsiders who
are taking a look at the
very, very rough first cut
of the documentary.
And, a lot of the
group are historians
who can say, "Well, you
didn't quite get this right,"
or whatever.
- They work with us.
They come to screenings.
They give us notes.
We make changes.
They come to more screenings.
They give us more notes.
We make more changes.
We listen to them talk
to each other and argue.
- For me, the focus is maybe
too much on the Americans
and the North Vietnamese Army.
- I think that's a
really important point,
and it gets to what I was
trying to argue earlier.
- One of our favorite
things is to listen to them
disagree about things.
Then we realize okay,
there's no right answer here.
There's disagreement.
Vietnam is a particularly
unsettled subject
about which historians and
people who lived through it
disagree quite
vehemently at times.