During my tour of duty in Bangkok with DEA (75-78), I had occasion to travel back home to LA. This would have been in 76 or 77, I don’t recall. While I was home, my cousin came to visit. She was a film producer and brought a female friend who also worked in the film industry. The lady asked a favor when I returned to Bangkok in the next few days. She explained that her company was producing a film to be called, “The Deer Hunter”. Part of the film was to be filmed in Bangkok. She asked me to carry the script with me to Bangkok and that an associate would pick it up later in Thailand. I agreed, and a few days later, was on my way back to Thailand via Europe, script in hand.
I read the script on my way home with stops in Amsterdam and Rome. As I recall, a few weeks later, someone came to our apartment and picked up the script.
Later, I was contacted by someone from the film crew, and we met for lunch at the Oriental Hotel. I took along our Thai investigative asst, as the producers wanted advice on how to arrange for Thai cops to assist them in setting up crowd control, blocking off sites, etc for filming. As I recall, we put them in touch with some Thai cops.
When the filming actually began, probably in 77, the Viet Nam segment was filmed in Thailand, and Bangkok was used to portray Saigon. Numerous Americans and Europeans living in Bangkok were recruited to portray American servicemen and other bit parts. The “doctor” in the Viet Nam hospital scene (who tried to interview Christopher Walken) was one of our intelligence analysts who happened to be an amateur actor. The fellow who portrayed the European "Russian roulette organizer" was portrayed by the owner of the Metropolitaine, a prominent French restaurant in Bangkok.
One night, I went down to Pat Pong, the notorious red-light district, looking for a European informant I was working with who was being used as an extra. That night, they were filming a bar scene, using one of the bars and some of the girls as extras. While I was standing there, an American lady, who was working on the set, approached me and asked if I was American. She then asked me if I would be willing to be an extra in the bar scene. They would pay me $20.00. I said OK, and she told me to stand by. A few minutes later, she came back and took me across the street to wait in front of the bar, as Thai on-lookers furiously snapped photos, thinking I must be one of the stars.
After standing in front of the bar (which, if I remember correctly was the Mississippi something or other), she came back and told me I was not needed after all. I left without finding my informant.
A day or two later, I was informed by the Thai police that our informant had been shot to death on Sukhumwit Blvd in an apparent botched robbery attempt, in which he tried to fight back. To this day, I still don’t know if that was the true motive for the killing. or if it was related to his informing activities. He did, in fact appear in the above scene in the movie for a split second.
Of course, "The Deer Hunter" went on the win an Oscar as best picture of 1978, in spite of protests that it portrayed the Vietnamese people in a negative light.
Several years later, (late 80s) while I was stationed in Pittsburgh, one of the Pennsylvania State Cops attached to our office told me that he had also been used as an extra in the US-filmed segment in a bar as part of the wedding reception scene. Small world.
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