Film Courage: When you sit down to write a story do you start with a treatment or an
outline? Van Ditthavong, Filmmaker/Photographer: Now each process has been a little bit different
for me. For each one I've done quite a bit with treatments and outlines but they're very
useful. But what I found more useful is what we talked about before, the movie days that's
helped me give it a structure but I would come with an idea and sometimes it depends on each
script sometimes. I'll let it flow and just kind of I'll have an ending and I'll have an image and
we'll start from there but then maybe one month later I'll start an outline because I'm stuck.
But I like to be flexible on that in my routine on just depending on because some stories come
out i think it's like writing i can only imagine if it's like writing music some some songs you
always hear those great songs whether it's Dolly Parton doing something like nine to five in like
two minutes or something like that or like or like someone oh i just walked into the night
and just wrote this master's piece sometimes it pours out sometimes it's laborious um but again
um so i you know i think those are useful treatments and not online so definitely
that was a great movie too yeah oh nine to five oh yeah yeah that's great with
your film all roads to perla it started with an idea from seeing a paper bag or a plastic bag
yeah well i had an image of that i also had an image of the texas landscape
and i had the feeling of this wide open space uh at night and and i knew that one of the characters
was uh a wrestler and during when your wrestling season i used to wrestle
sometimes you would sleep in a plastic bag and then i had these images of plasti uh
you know there's a plastic bag hanging in a tree sometimes when you drive around in the desert
and things like that are out out there you'll see that so it it started what with with the landscape
seeing plastic and then having that feel of than i thought of plastic bag body bags
um than i thought which was all because of day jamming you think you start you driving your your
date well i told you not to drive and daydream but i was on the road a lot for for my assignments and
you're covering texas i covered like 5 000 miles in 21 days to do like 18 shoots one time and that
was how all roads are paralyzed sort of coming out um it's because i saw all these places and
faces and i didn't want that to end you know so i would just combine them and create my own story
and were you doing a full loop around texas the outskirts i did i've probably i've probably
seen more of texas and texans i've been to eagle pass brownsville um midlands petcos
um everything for just uh all different types of assignments so uh and that's that that's why that
landscape to me had so much like mystery so much history and and and it was just like wow this is
this is unbelievable you know it's like you hear stories of you know cowboys and this but
to actually see that land it was awesome you know and the people and and the culture uh you can't
yeah i was definitely inspired by by that and then i did and then i was sent down to houston to do
um uh a story and then that tied in to what i was doing and in houston there's this two mile stretch
where there are these massage parlors illegal massage parlors and then i was in um
i got to go on a raid with sheriff so i would i would have all these like interesting
heavy assignments um whether it's immigration to that to uh exoneree
the michael morton he was accused of killing his wife served uh like 22 years in death row but
later found out that he didn't do it so all these human interest stories i i wanted to understand
um it you know what that was all about we make these choices and sometimes those choices aren't
good enough and and then we um we have to live with the consequences good or bad so that's what
happened in my time driving around in texas how did you feel let's say you get out at a road stop
go to use the bathroom at an older gas station or you stop for a bite to eat at a cafe i mean like
how was that you're just interacting with it's interesting being an asian american
enjoying this of going around a different like i think i went to the least populated county once
population like 10 or something like that um uh it's cool it's cool it's it's again
um i felt like i was uh like in in in a movie all the time i felt like it was but it's real
it's awesome it's uh the people the culture again i keep talking about that um but when i would stop
it's sort of like when you get so used to thinking what could happen like if these laws could talk
who lived here 20 years ago 40 years ago what what family you know it's the same thing what
happened this stop what happened in this single single-family home who owned it before so your
brain just goes all over the place and i think um working as a photographer i was able to catch
it with one frame but now as like you you could write you could write these stories and just make
it up you know like oh this is what happened fred walked out the door got hit by a truck
his son's out for revenge there okay now let's have fun and let's spend next two hours writing
about that why who was who hid in the track was there a motive what fred do that other person you
know it's so that's that's kind of neat and that helps with if you daydream a lot because then you
just go oh what happens over there well maybe fred you know had it coming well that's what the mayor
said well the sheriff is about to you know just so good you can keep going it's it's fascinating
interesting on being on the road you you i think we're where we behave differently too if for let's
say i took a greyhound across country one time as a kid and you if you're in your own car versus
you're in you know waiting in line at an airport or something and you just you're seeing all these
people and you're imagining what their lives are like and they're looking at you thinking the same
thing you know and it's just i don't know we're just in a different mindset i think when we travel
even just domestically you know so anyway yeah when you're seeing like you know i would walk
when i was in new york or anywhere even here and you walk by so many people and you're just like
i wonder i wonder what their are we ever going to meet again then you're like i wonder how many
photos i'm in in the background that you know that i don't know of and things like that and you then
you realize how many people are in this world and then you realize how many um stories there are
but then you're like we're all human we have these same emotions how do we tap on into that
and that's why when you hear music and songs that could move a whole country a whole world
that is amazing to have write something in three minutes to have something play in three minutes
and it just moves everyone um yeah mozart or anything like that elvis elvis and and
and beatles so which means we're connected in a certain way we're connected with emotions
um so i think when we travel though we see different things different lands different people
who are still connected with those human emotions and things you know that's that's
what the fun part is as a creator so um i grew up um and if uh from i'm from laos my grandmother
um came to the states in 1986 she didn't know any english so and my allow is
not great the greatest so it's for us to communicate was there's other other ways maybe
that's why i like filmmaking or photography it was other ways to communicate there's
were like she would i would try to have to translate general hospital to her and why
luke and laura got married and things like that in lao and it was funny so when you when you with
another language and you got to find other ways to communicate maybe that i got so into visuals
into into sounds so those are things that could express things versus literally i am sad you know
i'm telling you i'm sad versus like uh a frown you know so that kind of stuff so it's it's it's neat
you