Movie producer turns cameras on Rich Hill

Friday, January 6, 2012
Tracy Tragos.

RICH HILL -- A California filmmaker who often visited Rich Hill as a child has begun work on a documentary about this Bates County community as exemplary of a small town whose efforts to survive are characterized by the uniqueness of its people.

A 2003 Emmy Award-winning film that Tracy Droz Tragos made about her father, a casualty of the Vietnam War, will be shown at 7 p.m. Thursday, Jan. 12, at the Rising Sun Opera House at Sixth Street and Park Avenue. Admission is $2 to see the 57-minute work "Be Good, Smile Pretty."

Rich Hill businessman Larry Hacker, a retired postmaster who is working with Droz Tragos, said Tuesday that the producer brought a crew here from Dec. 18 through 20 to film school events, the Methodist Church's Christmas program and other scenes.

Asked what the title will be, Hacker said, "Tracy is still flexible on that and what specific direction she'll go in.

"She will be back eight more times to do interviews and shoot film. Her general direction is to focus on Rich Hill as a small community, what happens here and how we survive. It's a struggle as a town of 1,500 between two county seats, Butler and Nevada, and soon to be between two Walmart Supercenters."

Referring to a Supercenter's opening next week at Butler, Hacker said the town has the assets of being alongside a major highway, U.S. 71, having Rich Hill Youth Development Center with its 30 employees and having its public school and the Rich Hill Mining Review newspaper.

"This was a coal mining town in the early days with over 10,000 population," he said. "Tracy always came back to visit her late grandparents, Glenn and Dorothy Droz, and she still has family here."

Hacker said the Santa Monica producer will not attend the Jan. 12 program but is scheduled to return in February.

Taking inquiries at (417) 825-7038 about the showing, coordinator Natalea Hoeper said Droz Tragos was 3 months old when her dad, Lt. Donald Glenn Droz, a swiftboat commander and Naval Academy graduate, died in a 1969 ambush on the Duong Keo River.

"Tracy's film has been frequently shown on PBS stations throughout the United States, oftentimes around Memorial Day and Veterans Day" said Hoeper. "It's available on Netflix. She will be depicting the life, events and struggles that face many small communities today.

"Plans are for the film crew to make frequent trips to Rich Hill throughout the year to capture the actual life happenings of residents in small town America. The town is buzzing."

Droz Tragos' Web site says "Be Good, Smile Pretty," the title taken from letters Lt. Droz had written home, also won the President's Award for Excellence in Documentary Film from the Vietnam Veterans of America. The film stars actor Terrence Howard and U.S. Sen. John Kerry.

Having taken a degree in English at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and a master's in fine arts at the University of Southern California, Droz Tragos began her career at the DreamWorks Co., producing story-based CD-ROMS including "Goosebumps: Escape from Horrorland" with Jeff Goldblum and Isabella Rossellini, her Web site said.

She founded and is president of the Orphans of War Foundation. "By chronicling my own personal struggle to know my father, I hoped to raise awareness," she wrote.

"It is estimated that nearly 20,000 Americans lost fathers in Vietnam. The loss we endured is real and so is the opportunity to heal.

"Our fathers were young men with blemishes and fears who faced difficult choices, who fought in a war that wounded a nation and who wanted more than anything to come home to us."

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