84 CHARLIE MOPIC [AKA 84C MOPIC] (1989)
Synopsis
Written and directed by Vietnam veteran Patrick Sheane Duncan, 84 Charlie MoPic
is an in de pen dently produced American combat drama set during the Vietnam War
about a small, stealthy long- range reconnaissance patrol (LRRP) (pronounced
“lurp”) that probes deep into enemy- held territory to gather intelligence. The story
is told through the eyes of an army motion picture (MoPic) cameraman who has
been assigned to make a documentary about the patrol.
Background
Patrick Sheane Duncan served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s 173rd Airborne
Brigade (“Sky Soldiers”) in 1968–1969, was twice wounded in combat, and earned
a Bronze Star for bravery. Some years after his military ser vice, Duncan began to
write spec scripts. The idea for 84C MoPic occurred to Duncan in 1983 while he
waited in traffic that had piled up due to an accident on the highway. A TV news
cameraman arrived on the scene and began to shoot footage as he wandered amid
the wreckage. “I watched him go up to a woman who was sitting on a hillside. He
stuck the camera in her bleeding face. It was horribly intimate. I said, ‘Aha, this is
the way to do my film’ ” (Norman, p. H15). Duncan wrote the screenplay in five
days, but couldn’t find a director who understood his vision for the film. He deci-
ded to learn how to direct himself at Robert Redford’s Sundance Institute. With
Sundance cachet and the success of other Vietnam movies, Duncan and his pro-
ducer, Michael Nolin, were fi nally able to find financing five years after the script
was completed.
Production
84C MoPic was shot (in Super 16 mm) in Southern California with a crew of 30,
on a bud get of just over $1 million. Prior to start of the shoot (which lasted only
17 days: 9–27 May 1988), Vietnam veteran Capt. Russ “Gunny” Thurman, USMC,
Retired (also the technical advisor for Vietnam War Stories) conducted a week- long
training course for the movie’s seven actors playing members of a long- range recon-
naissance patrol with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. Thurman taught the men
reconnaissance techniques; stealth in the field; camouflage discipline; and the use
of small arms, including M-16A1 rifles, an M-60 machine gun, and the M-79 gre-
nade launcher. Because the story involved the patrol running into an enemy
ambush, Thurman drilled the actors until they were intimately familiar with their
weapons and could reload them quickly and correctly in a combat situation.