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In My Living Room

In My Living Room is a short cinematic documentary.  A Federal Administrative Court Judge, Pat Toal from Chicago, Illinois, U.S.A. was a soldier in 1968 in the Vietnam War, he tells a few moving stories about himself and his adventures in Vietnam as a gunnery soldier in my living room.  The stories are unscripted, unrehearsed, and were filmed only once so that the audience sees exactly what the director saw for the very first time.  The stories are punctuated with artwork that was carefully selected from the Vietnam War Veteran artists whose works tell the same story of pain, courage, instinct and insight as does the soldier’s story.

The stories are also punctuated with carefully created and assembled photographs of this soldier’s days in Vietnam, seeing many situations never seen before.  In addition and with just cause, the stories are set amid a backdrop of original film never seen before, of the demonstrations in Chicago’s Grant Park at the 1968 Democratic Convention.  The soldier in the film wants to leave Vietnam and get “Back to the World” and what a world it is, filled with our own violence and pain.

The film discusses the costs of war and mankind’s responsibility to each other.  We watch as one soldier struggles to find some answers.  He asks why them and not me?  The sound is unusual filled with hope and sorrow, leaving a haunting backdrop of home and Vietnam, of waterfalls and War!