 Trenchard-Smith did a straight-to-video thriller, "Out of the Body" (1988) then travelled to the Philippines to make a Vietnam War film, "The Siege of Firebase Gloria" (1989).In January 1990 Trenchard Smith moved to Hollywood.He has said that when he left Australia "I was possibly a medium-sized fish in one of cinema's smaller ponds" and when he arrived he "immediately became plankton."