Dinh Q. Le says he's not angry about the American war in Vietnam anymore. This makes our interview a lot easier; we are both of Vietnamese descent and there is a chance that talking about the war could polarize us very quickly, even though we are one generation removed from those that fought.

About the same time that I thought I was being traumatized by having to play rugby and cricket in the English home counties, Le, his mother and one younger sibling were escaping from Vietnam, which included a year in a refugee camp in Thailand. Some of his family didn't make it out and were imprisoned for trying to leave.

Arriving in the U.S. in the late '70s, first in Oregon — which seemed like a paradise after what he had been through — then moving to southern California, Le tried to fit in and leave Vietnam behind. He refused to watch movies about the war, until his friends asked him what he thought of on-screen portrayals of the conflict so many times that he decided to catch up on the numerous Hollywood films that came out in the 1980s and '90s.