The Storyteller, new film on Korean War veteran with PTSD

Actor Christopher Atkins discusses his film 'The Storyteller' and post-war PTSD
(Photos)
Examiner
MAY 29, 2013
BY: RENE THURSTON

Fans probably best remember actor Christopher Atkins as a curly-locked boy, running around the beach with a teenage Brooke Shields in the 1980 film "The Blue Lagoon." Or perhaps soap fans remember him in the original run of series "Dallas" as Peter, a college student and camp counselor who has an affair with a much-older Sue Ellen Ewing.

With those images in mind, fans will no doubt have no idea they are looking at that blonde, blue-eyed actor in a loin cloth when they see the character of Walter, an elderly man suffering from the ravages of his time in the Korean War, in Atkins' new film "The Storyteller."

The 52-year-old actor sat down with Riverside Soaps on May 28 to talk about the making of this emotional new film.

Atkins plays Walter, a once-revered children's book writer who regresses to the world of a child after the ravages of the Korean war, and the loss of his wife and youngest daughter to a car accident, leave him reeling from grief and agony.

Walter's remaining daughter, Susan, in a poignant performance by Gabrielle Carteris, is a bitter and lost soul, left to care for her shell-shocked father, now in his 70's. With hope fading for ever reaching her father, Susan makes the decision to put him in a home; however, she is forced through tragedy to experience a miracle that will change her life forever.
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