Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse

1 00:00:06,000 --> 00:00:12,074 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm 2 00:00:33,825 --> 00:00:35,701 My film is not a movie. 3 00:00:38,454 --> 00:00:41,165 My film is not about Vietnam. 4 00:00:43,209 --> 00:00:44,794 It is Vietnam. 5 00:00:45,753 --> 00:00:48,422 It's what it was really like. It was crazy. 6 00:00:52,343 --> 00:00:54,470 And the way we made it was very much 7 00:00:54,554 --> 00:00:57,557 like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. 8 00:00:57,890 --> 00:00:59,851 We were in the jungle. 9 00:01:00,184 --> 00:01:02,103 There were too many of us. 10 00:01:05,022 --> 00:01:07,942 We had access to too much money, 11 00:01:09,735 --> 00:01:11,696 too much equipment, 12 00:01:12,196 --> 00:01:15,074 and little by little, we went insane. 13 00:02:05,082 --> 00:02:07,335 <i>This movie I'm making is not in the tradition</i> 14 00:02:07,418 --> 00:02:10,463 <i>of the great Max Ophüls or David Lean even.</i> 15 00:02:10,796 --> 00:02:14,342 This movie was made in the tradition of Irwin Allen. 16 00:02:15,801 --> 00:02:20,806 I made the most vulgar, entertaining, 17 00:02:20,890 --> 00:02:24,101 exciting, action-full, sensoramic, 18 00:02:25,686 --> 00:02:27,772 give-them-a-new-thrill- every-five-minutes, 19 00:02:27,855 --> 00:02:30,524 have it everything, sex, violence, humor, 20 00:02:31,943 --> 00:02:34,695 <i>because I want people to come and see it.</i> 21 00:02:35,488 --> 00:02:39,283 But the questions that I kept facing or running into, 22 00:02:39,367 --> 00:02:43,037 into the stupid script about four guys going up to kill a guy... 23 00:02:43,120 --> 00:02:44,747 But that was the story. 24 00:02:44,830 --> 00:02:49,210 But the questions that that story kept putting me, I couldn't answer. 25 00:02:49,293 --> 00:02:52,380 Yet I knew that I had constructed the film in such a way 26 00:02:52,463 --> 00:02:55,341 that to not answer would be to fail. 27 00:03:36,841 --> 00:03:40,761 <i>The film Francis is making is a metaphor for a journey into self.</i> 28 00:03:40,845 --> 00:03:43,681 <i>He has made that journey and is still making it.</i> 29 00:03:44,598 --> 00:03:47,518 <i>It's scary to watch someone you love go into the center of himself</i> 30 00:03:47,601 --> 00:03:49,437 <i>and confront his fears,</i> 31 00:03:49,520 --> 00:03:53,691 <i>fear of failure, fear of death, fear of going insane.</i> 32 00:03:53,774 --> 00:03:57,111 <i>You have to fail a little, die a little, go insane a little,</i> 33 00:03:57,194 --> 00:03:58,821 <i>to come out the other side.</i> 34 00:03:58,904 --> 00:04:01,532 <i>The process is not over for Francis.</i> 35 00:04:03,242 --> 00:04:05,911 <i>My greatest fear is to make a really shitty,</i> 36 00:04:05,995 --> 00:04:09,874 <i>embarrassing, pompous film on an important subject,</i> 37 00:04:09,957 --> 00:04:11,667 <i>and I am doing it.</i> 38 00:04:13,294 --> 00:04:15,171 <i>I confront it. I acknowledge.</i> 39 00:04:15,254 --> 00:04:19,508 <i>I will tell you right straight from the most sincere depths of my heart,</i> 40 00:04:19,592 --> 00:04:21,635 <i>the film will not be good.</i> 41 00:04:23,804 --> 00:04:26,849 <i>It's like going to school. You finish your term paper</i> 42 00:04:26,932 --> 00:04:29,226 <i>and maybe you get a B instead of an A+ that you wanted,</i> 43 00:04:29,310 --> 00:04:30,311 <i>so you got a B.</i> 44 00:04:30,394 --> 00:04:32,480 <i>But I'm gonna get an F.</i> 45 00:04:41,906 --> 00:04:46,118 <i>This film is a $20-million disaster. Why won't anyone believe me?</i> 46 00:04:46,202 --> 00:04:48,537 <i>I am thinking of shooting myself!</i> 47 00:05:08,307 --> 00:05:11,769 <i>Good evening. This is Orson Welles inviting you to listen now</i> 48 00:05:11,852 --> 00:05:14,688 <i>to</i> The Heart of Darkness <i>by Joseph Conrad.</i> 49 00:05:19,068 --> 00:05:21,821 <i>Imagine the feelings of a skipper of a fine frigate or a bark.</i> 50 00:05:21,904 --> 00:05:25,032 <i>A civilized man at the very end of the world.</i> 51 00:05:25,324 --> 00:05:27,701 <i>He'd land in a swamp, march through the woods,</i> 52 00:05:27,785 --> 00:05:30,913 <i>and in some inland post feel the savagery,</i> 53 00:05:30,996 --> 00:05:34,917 <i>the utter savagery that stirs in the forests and the jungles</i> 54 00:05:35,459 --> 00:05:37,628 <i>in the hearts of wild men.</i> 55 00:05:41,757 --> 00:05:44,885 In 1939, Orson Welles planned to make Heart of Darkness 56 00:05:44,969 --> 00:05:46,971 <i>as his first motion picture.</i> 57 00:05:47,096 --> 00:05:49,974 Heart of Darkness <i>is the story of a ship captain's journey</i> 58 00:05:50,057 --> 00:05:53,185 <i>up the Congo River to find Mr. Kurtz, an ivory trader</i> 59 00:05:53,269 --> 00:05:55,563 <i>stationed deep in the jungle.</i> 60 00:05:55,646 --> 00:05:59,900 <i>A brilliant man of high ideals, Kurtz intends to enlighten the natives.</i> 61 00:05:59,984 --> 00:06:02,236 <i>Instead, he succumbs to the primal temptations</i> 62 00:06:02,319 --> 00:06:04,572 <i>of the jungle and goes insane.</i> 63 00:06:06,699 --> 00:06:08,701 <i>Screen tests were done with Welles as Kurtz</i> 64 00:06:08,784 --> 00:06:10,453 <i>and sets were designed,</i> 65 00:06:10,536 --> 00:06:12,413 <i>but the studio backed away from the project,</i> 66 00:06:12,496 --> 00:06:15,416 <i>fearing the elaborate production would go over budget.</i> 67 00:06:15,499 --> 00:06:18,085 <i>Welles made</i> Citizen Kane <i>instead.</i> 68 00:06:18,169 --> 00:06:21,505 Heart of Darkness <i>was abandoned in pre-production.</i> 69 00:06:23,841 --> 00:06:27,428 <i>In 1969, Francis founded American Zoetrope,</i> 70 00:06:27,511 --> 00:06:31,515 <i>a company dedicated to filmmaking outside of the Hollywood system.</i> 71 00:06:31,599 --> 00:06:34,310 <i>One of their first projects was</i> Apocalypse Now, 72 00:06:34,393 --> 00:06:38,022 <i>a Vietnam War story based loosely on</i> Heart of Darkness. 73 00:06:38,105 --> 00:06:40,941 Apocalypse Now <i>concerns a Captain Willard on his mission</i> 74 00:06:41,025 --> 00:06:44,320 <i>to assassinate a Green Beret colonel named Kurtz.</i> 75 00:06:44,403 --> 00:06:45,696 <i>Kurtz has gone insane</i> 76 00:06:45,779 --> 00:06:49,116 <i>and is conducting the war on his own terms deep in Cambodia.</i> 77 00:06:49,200 --> 00:06:51,702 <i>George Lucas was to direct John Milius' screenplay.</i> 78 00:06:52,411 --> 00:06:55,706 Francis said that <i>Heart of Darkness,</i> 79 00:06:55,789 --> 00:06:58,417 which was one of my favorite things I'd ever read, 80 00:06:58,876 --> 00:07:03,422 he said it had been tried and no one could lick it. 81 00:07:03,506 --> 00:07:07,134 He said that Orson Welles tried it and he couldn't lick it. 82 00:07:07,218 --> 00:07:09,887 Richard Brooks, I think, or somebody else... 83 00:07:09,970 --> 00:07:13,265 That's the best thing to tell a young writing student, 84 00:07:13,349 --> 00:07:16,101 you know, say, "No one could possibly write this." 85 00:07:16,185 --> 00:07:17,853 That was the first thing I tried. 86 00:07:20,356 --> 00:07:22,191 <i>The war was raging then,</i> 87 00:07:22,274 --> 00:07:25,486 <i>and everybody was either getting set to go or to get out of it</i> 88 00:07:25,569 --> 00:07:27,613 <i>or whatever they were going to do.</i> 89 00:07:27,696 --> 00:07:31,450 And we prepared a method of doing this whole thing in Vietnam. 90 00:07:31,534 --> 00:07:34,370 We were going to do it in 16 millimeter in Vietnam. 91 00:07:34,453 --> 00:07:37,456 That was John's idea. That was John's idea. 92 00:07:37,540 --> 00:07:40,960 I was the one that was gonna have to go over and do it. 93 00:07:41,043 --> 00:07:44,505 John is very good at being grand. 94 00:07:45,172 --> 00:07:50,844 We would have been there right in time for Tet, probably and whatever. 95 00:07:50,928 --> 00:07:53,681 And all these people that were in school with me 96 00:07:53,764 --> 00:07:56,892 who'd done terrible things or were planning to go to Canada, 97 00:07:56,976 --> 00:08:01,021 do something as drastic as getting married to avoid the war, 98 00:08:01,105 --> 00:08:03,774 <i>they were willing to go to Vietnam. They didn't care.</i> 99 00:08:03,857 --> 00:08:09,154 <i>They wanted to carry lights and sound equipment over minefields.</i> 100 00:08:09,238 --> 00:08:11,532 And I think that Warner Brothers finally backed off on it 101 00:08:11,615 --> 00:08:14,868 because they figured most of us would probably be killed 102 00:08:14,952 --> 00:08:17,329 because we were so stupid. 103 00:08:17,413 --> 00:08:20,416 We then tried to take <i>Apocalypse</i> around to all the other studios. 104 00:08:20,499 --> 00:08:23,544 Nobody wanted to have anything to do with it and they just... "No way." 105 00:08:23,627 --> 00:08:24,712 Why? 106 00:08:24,795 --> 00:08:27,881 Because it was during the war and there was a lot of... 107 00:08:27,965 --> 00:08:30,467 I don't know whether it was pressure or just fear or whatever, 108 00:08:30,551 --> 00:08:33,012 but the studios would not finance a film about the Vietnam War. 109 00:08:33,262 --> 00:08:36,181 People were so bitter about the war, you know, 110 00:08:36,265 --> 00:08:38,392 that there were riots. Remember, we were living at a time 111 00:08:38,475 --> 00:08:40,019 when there really were riots on the streets. 112 00:08:40,102 --> 00:08:42,730 People were spitting on soldiers. 113 00:08:42,813 --> 00:08:46,859 And studio executives, they're the last people 114 00:08:46,942 --> 00:08:49,945 who are gonna get in the middle of that thing. 115 00:08:50,029 --> 00:08:54,950 Studio executives are not noted for their social courage. 116 00:08:56,410 --> 00:08:58,996 <i>Without a studio, Apocalypse Now was shelved,</i> 117 00:08:59,079 --> 00:09:01,999 <i>and Francis put his dreams for Zoetrope on hold.</i> 118 00:09:02,082 --> 00:09:05,085 <i>He went on to direct The Godfather Parts I and II.</i> 119 00:09:05,169 --> 00:09:09,673 <i>The films won eight Academy Awards and made Francis a multimillionaire.</i> 120 00:09:09,757 --> 00:09:12,760 <i>In 1975, he revived his plans for Zoetrope</i> 121 00:09:12,843 --> 00:09:15,888 <i>and chose</i> Apocalypse Now <i>as its first project.</i> 122 00:09:16,639 --> 00:09:20,100 I was in the position whereas I wanted to always write original work. 123 00:09:20,351 --> 00:09:24,772 Original work really takes six, eight months minimum to do, 124 00:09:24,855 --> 00:09:26,357 and here was the script of <i>Apocalypse</i> 125 00:09:26,440 --> 00:09:30,402 that we could clean up and send out immediately. 126 00:09:30,486 --> 00:09:32,029 So I basically said, 127 00:09:32,112 --> 00:09:34,615 "Well, what if I just did <i>Apocalypse Now?"</i> 128 00:09:34,698 --> 00:09:35,783 <i>And in doing so,</i> 129 00:09:35,866 --> 00:09:41,038 <i>we were able to make our company independent and further our goal.</i> 130 00:09:41,497 --> 00:09:46,126 <i>But nothing really prepared me for the date I had</i> 131 00:09:46,210 --> 00:09:49,880 <i>with trying to do a modern telling of</i> Heart of Darkness 132 00:09:49,963 --> 00:09:52,007 <i>in a Vietnam setting.</i> 133 00:09:52,091 --> 00:09:54,635 Mike, would you read Kilgore? 134 00:09:54,718 --> 00:09:59,473 Glenn, I'd like you to read... No. I'll wait for a minute. 135 00:09:59,556 --> 00:10:03,060 I'd like Tommy, you read Willard. 136 00:10:03,894 --> 00:10:06,313 Freddy's gonna read Chef. 137 00:10:06,397 --> 00:10:08,440 And, Sam, you read Lance. 138 00:10:09,233 --> 00:10:10,984 And, Albert, you read Chief, okay? 139 00:10:11,068 --> 00:10:13,320 Let's just... What we'll do now, we'll just read it, just to read it, 140 00:10:13,404 --> 00:10:14,905 to know what we're doing. 141 00:10:15,447 --> 00:10:18,992 <i>Apocalypse Now has been budgeted at $13 million.</i> 142 00:10:19,076 --> 00:10:23,914 <i>In order to maintain creative control, Francis had to raise the money himself.</i> 143 00:10:23,997 --> 00:10:28,001 <i>If the film goes over budget, Francis is responsible.</i> 144 00:10:28,085 --> 00:10:30,796 <i>He has put up our personal assets as collateral.</i> 145 00:10:30,879 --> 00:10:35,092 <i>A couple of million dollars of Francis' money was in it.</i> 146 00:10:35,175 --> 00:10:37,010 But that was Francis' style. 147 00:10:37,094 --> 00:10:42,099 His philosophy was always, and remains to this date is, 148 00:10:42,182 --> 00:10:44,727 "I'm gonna go and make the movie. 149 00:10:44,810 --> 00:10:47,730 "And if everybody knows I'm going to make it, 150 00:10:47,813 --> 00:10:49,314 "it will fall into place. 151 00:10:49,398 --> 00:10:54,027 "And if I don't go forward as if I'm making it and start making it, 152 00:10:54,111 --> 00:10:56,029 <i>"nothing will happen."</i> 153 00:10:57,948 --> 00:11:02,202 My attitude towards money has always been, "I don't have very much of it, 154 00:11:02,286 --> 00:11:07,541 "but if I use it in a very audacious way, it multiplies it." 155 00:11:07,624 --> 00:11:12,796 If you have $1,000, but you're willing to use it, really not caring of risking, 156 00:11:12,880 --> 00:11:14,798 you can make it feel like $10,000. 157 00:11:16,216 --> 00:11:19,636 <i>Marlon Brando has sent word that he will do the part of Kurtz.</i> 158 00:11:19,720 --> 00:11:24,141 <i>Brando has agreed to three weeks of shooting at a million dollars a week.</i> 159 00:11:24,224 --> 00:11:27,269 <i>Francis sent him a $1 million advance.</i> 160 00:11:30,522 --> 00:11:32,483 <i>After auditioning dozens of actors,</i> 161 00:11:32,566 --> 00:11:35,152 <i>Harvey Keitel has been cast as Captain Willard.</i> 162 00:11:36,153 --> 00:11:39,031 <i>For the four-man boat crew who will take Willard upriver,</i> 163 00:11:39,114 --> 00:11:41,241 <i>Sam Bottoms will play Lance.</i> 164 00:11:42,451 --> 00:11:44,244 <i>Albert Hall, Chief.</i> 165 00:11:46,079 --> 00:11:48,457 <i>Frederic Forrest, Chef,</i> 166 00:11:48,540 --> 00:11:52,461 <i>and Larry Fishburne, age 14, will play Mr. Clean.</i> 167 00:11:52,544 --> 00:11:56,465 The whole thing's really fun. I mean, a war is fun. Shit. 168 00:11:56,757 --> 00:11:58,258 You can do anything you want to. 169 00:11:58,342 --> 00:12:01,053 That's why Vietnam must have been so much fun 170 00:12:01,136 --> 00:12:04,014 for the guys that were out there. 171 00:12:04,097 --> 00:12:07,726 I mean, like, I know this one dude who came back. Shit. 172 00:12:07,810 --> 00:12:11,104 And he's nothing but a dope smoker, and all he does is smoke dope. 173 00:12:11,188 --> 00:12:14,983 He said, "Vietnam was the best thing they could have done for my ass." 174 00:12:23,826 --> 00:12:25,994 <i>The Philippines has been chosen as the location</i> 175 00:12:26,078 --> 00:12:29,706 <i>because of its similarity to the terrain in Vietnam.</i> 176 00:12:29,790 --> 00:12:32,084 <i>Since the US Army has refused to cooperate</i> 177 00:12:32,167 --> 00:12:34,670 <i>with a movie about the Vietnam War,</i> 178 00:12:34,753 --> 00:12:39,049 <i>Francis has made a deal with Philippine President, Ferdinand Marcos.</i> 179 00:12:39,550 --> 00:12:43,220 <i>The production will pay the military thousands of dollars per day</i> 180 00:12:43,303 --> 00:12:46,557 <i>as well as overtime for the Philippine pilots.</i> 181 00:12:46,640 --> 00:12:50,686 <i>In return, Francis can use Marcos' entire fleet of helicopters</i> 182 00:12:50,769 --> 00:12:54,940 <i>as long as they're not needed to fight the communist insurgency in the south.</i> 183 00:12:55,399 --> 00:12:57,693 <i>A band of rebels has been waging a fierce war</i> 184 00:12:57,776 --> 00:13:01,154 <i>for control of the southern Philippine islands.</i> 185 00:13:02,865 --> 00:13:05,784 <i>But the real phenomenon of being in that situation,</i> 186 00:13:05,868 --> 00:13:08,078 <i>being in the middle of that jungle</i> 187 00:13:08,161 --> 00:13:11,999 and dealing with all the unfriendly elements that we were dealing with 188 00:13:12,082 --> 00:13:14,084 was part of what the movie was about. 189 00:13:14,167 --> 00:13:20,424 <i>That was the first directorial decision that put us all in a circumstance</i> 190 00:13:20,507 --> 00:13:23,844 <i>that reflected, you know, what the movie was about.</i> 191 00:13:31,143 --> 00:13:33,854 <i>I gave him all the information that we had developed</i> 192 00:13:33,937 --> 00:13:35,731 <i>on shooting in the Philippines.</i> 193 00:13:35,814 --> 00:13:37,774 <i>I said, "Francis, it's one thing to go over there</i> 194 00:13:37,858 --> 00:13:40,611 "for three weeks with, like, five people 195 00:13:40,736 --> 00:13:46,158 "and sort of scrounge a lot of footage using the Philippine army. 196 00:13:46,241 --> 00:13:48,243 "But if you go over there as a big Hollywood production, 197 00:13:48,327 --> 00:13:50,537 "they're gonna kill you, you know. 198 00:13:50,621 --> 00:13:53,373 "The longer you stay, the more in danger you are 199 00:13:53,457 --> 00:13:55,959 <i>"of getting sucked into the swamp."</i> 200 00:14:00,130 --> 00:14:01,965 <i>On March 1st, I came to the Philippines</i> 201 00:14:02,049 --> 00:14:03,884 with Francis and our three children, 202 00:14:03,967 --> 00:14:07,220 <i>Gio, 12, Roman, 10,</i> 203 00:14:07,304 --> 00:14:08,805 <i>and Sofia, four.</i> 204 00:14:10,307 --> 00:14:12,559 <i>Francis has asked me to make a documentary film</i> 205 00:14:12,643 --> 00:14:15,228 <i>for the United Artists publicity department.</i> 206 00:14:15,312 --> 00:14:18,315 <i>I don't know if he wants to avoid the addition of a professional team</i> 207 00:14:18,398 --> 00:14:23,028 <i>on an already-overloaded production or if he's just trying to keep me busy.</i> 208 00:14:23,570 --> 00:14:26,698 <i>The heat and humidity are overwhelming.</i> 209 00:14:26,782 --> 00:14:29,076 <i>It's the first time any of us have seen water buffalo,</i> 210 00:14:29,159 --> 00:14:31,453 <i>rice paddies and nipa huts.</i> 211 00:14:31,536 --> 00:14:35,165 <i>Sofia said, "it looks like the Disneyland jungle cruise."</i> 212 00:14:45,926 --> 00:14:47,970 <i>Today, I shot some footage of the construction</i> 213 00:14:48,053 --> 00:14:50,722 <i>at the main set, Kurtz's compound.</i> 214 00:14:50,806 --> 00:14:53,350 <i>It is supposed to be a decaying Cambodian temple</i> 215 00:14:53,433 --> 00:14:54,434 <i>at the end of the river</i> 216 00:14:54,518 --> 00:14:57,896 <i>where the character of Willard will confront Kurtz.</i> 217 00:14:58,897 --> 00:15:00,774 <i>Dean Tavoularis, the production designer,</i> 218 00:15:00,857 --> 00:15:02,693 <i>is orchestrating the construction of the temple</i> 219 00:15:02,776 --> 00:15:06,363 <i>out of dried adobe blocks, each weighing 300 pounds.</i> 220 00:15:22,379 --> 00:15:25,048 <i>There were 600 people working on this thing.</i> 221 00:15:25,132 --> 00:15:26,133 <i>In Hollywood or New York,</i> 222 00:15:26,216 --> 00:15:28,135 <i>if you want another person, it's quite a big deal.</i> 223 00:15:28,218 --> 00:15:31,179 With the fringes and their salary, it's thousands of dollars. 224 00:15:32,305 --> 00:15:35,142 So, for a dollar a day or three dollars a day, 225 00:15:35,225 --> 00:15:38,603 I hope we weren't taking advantage of people, but that's what they were paid. 226 00:15:39,438 --> 00:15:43,942 <i>So, you could get not one person. You could get 10 or 20 or 100.</i> 227 00:15:54,119 --> 00:15:56,747 <i>Ever since I was a student in college,</i> 228 00:15:56,830 --> 00:15:59,666 we used to do a thing before every production, 229 00:15:59,750 --> 00:16:01,543 and since I've been making films, we did it, 230 00:16:01,626 --> 00:16:04,379 and it made those films have good luck. 231 00:16:05,839 --> 00:16:07,424 And what it is... 232 00:16:07,507 --> 00:16:09,968 Everyone kind of just grab someone or touch someone 233 00:16:10,052 --> 00:16:11,511 that's connected with everyone. 234 00:16:11,595 --> 00:16:13,680 Gather round so that everybody can see. 235 00:16:13,764 --> 00:16:15,766 - Good luck. - Good luck. 236 00:16:17,225 --> 00:16:21,688 And then we say this word three times. "Puwaba." 237 00:16:24,691 --> 00:16:26,026 - What's the word? - Puwaba. 238 00:16:26,109 --> 00:16:27,652 Puwaba. 239 00:16:27,736 --> 00:16:28,820 One, two, three. 240 00:16:28,904 --> 00:16:31,281 Puwaba, puwaba, puwaba! 241 00:16:31,364 --> 00:16:32,908 Hey! 242 00:16:37,662 --> 00:16:41,291 <i>It's the first day of shooting. There's a current of excitement.</i> 243 00:16:41,374 --> 00:16:44,377 <i>The location is a salt farm next to a river.</i> 244 00:16:45,462 --> 00:16:48,507 <i>In the scene, a helicopter brings Willard to meet the patrol boat</i> 245 00:16:48,590 --> 00:16:50,509 <i>that will take him on his mission.</i> 246 00:16:50,592 --> 00:16:52,761 Okay. Stand by! 247 00:16:54,513 --> 00:16:55,931 Action! 248 00:17:08,360 --> 00:17:11,279 <i>On one level, the film is an action-adventure story.</i> 249 00:17:11,363 --> 00:17:14,825 <i>It's a story of a journey into a strange and unknown area,</i> 250 00:17:14,908 --> 00:17:19,246 <i>but it also will hopefully exist on a philosophical and allegorical level,</i> 251 00:17:19,329 --> 00:17:23,333 so that, ultimately, my desire is that it sheds some light 252 00:17:23,416 --> 00:17:28,046 on the events that took place and why they took place 253 00:17:28,130 --> 00:17:29,923 and what it did to the people involved in them. 254 00:17:36,930 --> 00:17:40,308 <i>Almost we are persuaded that there is something after all,</i> 255 00:17:40,392 --> 00:17:45,605 <i>something essential waiting for all of us in the dark areas of the world,</i> 256 00:17:45,689 --> 00:17:48,942 <i>aboriginally loathsome, immeasurable,</i> 257 00:17:49,734 --> 00:17:51,862 <i>and certainly, nameless.</i> 258 00:18:03,832 --> 00:18:05,458 <i>Last night, Francis watched the footage</i> 259 00:18:05,542 --> 00:18:07,294 <i>from the first week's shooting.</i> 260 00:18:07,377 --> 00:18:10,755 <i>They were the scenes with Harvey Keitel, who plays Willard.</i> 261 00:18:10,839 --> 00:18:14,092 <i>Afterward, he sat down on the couch with the editors and said,</i> 262 00:18:14,176 --> 00:18:16,136 <i>"Well, what do you think?"</i> 263 00:18:16,219 --> 00:18:18,471 <i>I went upstairs to say good night to the children,</i> 264 00:18:18,555 --> 00:18:21,183 <i>and when I came down 15 minutes later,</i> 265 00:18:21,266 --> 00:18:24,603 <i>Francis had made the decision to replace his leading man.</i> 266 00:18:27,105 --> 00:18:31,860 We bit the bullet and did a very, very unpleasant thing, 267 00:18:31,943 --> 00:18:35,238 which is replace an actor in mid-shooting. 268 00:18:35,322 --> 00:18:37,824 Not only unpleasant, but expensive, 269 00:18:37,908 --> 00:18:41,953 <i>since we had to throw out several weeks of work and start over.</i> 270 00:18:42,996 --> 00:18:44,289 Take one. 271 00:18:46,750 --> 00:18:48,001 Action. 272 00:18:48,335 --> 00:18:50,545 What do you think, Willard? 273 00:18:52,255 --> 00:18:54,925 Terminate the Colonel. 274 00:18:56,927 --> 00:19:00,096 Terminate with extreme prejudice. 275 00:19:02,682 --> 00:19:06,394 <i>Two days ago, Francis shaved off his beard and flew to Los Angeles.</i> 276 00:19:06,478 --> 00:19:09,439 <i>He met with Martin Sheen at the airport.</i> 277 00:19:09,940 --> 00:19:13,026 <i>Marty agreed to take the role of Willard.</i> 278 00:19:13,818 --> 00:19:17,239 <i>I had some personal concerns about my own physical condition.</i> 279 00:19:17,322 --> 00:19:22,452 <i>I was 36 at the time, and I felt old and out of shape,</i> 280 00:19:22,535 --> 00:19:27,082 <i>and I was smoking three packs a day, not a healthy guy.</i> 281 00:19:28,041 --> 00:19:31,211 I wondered if I'd be able to keep up a strenuous schedule. 282 00:19:31,294 --> 00:19:36,091 At the time I hired on, I remember it was only a 16-week shoot, 283 00:19:37,300 --> 00:19:40,470 which didn't prove to be the case, 284 00:19:40,553 --> 00:19:42,055 but who knew that at the time? 285 00:19:51,481 --> 00:19:53,608 <i>It is the fifth week of shooting.</i> 286 00:19:53,692 --> 00:19:56,611 <i>It's getting hotter as we move into summer.</i> 287 00:19:56,695 --> 00:19:59,656 <i>Every day, the project seems to get bigger.</i> 288 00:20:03,660 --> 00:20:07,289 Now, what I want is, let's say, five helicopters, right? 289 00:20:08,957 --> 00:20:11,876 Then you have a camera here, a camera there. 290 00:20:11,960 --> 00:20:14,004 I want two cameras at once. 291 00:20:14,087 --> 00:20:17,257 We'll have a camera with Enrico inside the Loach. 292 00:20:17,340 --> 00:20:18,383 <i>In the script,</i> 293 00:20:18,466 --> 00:20:22,429 <i>a helicopter unit led by a brash air cavalry colonel named Kilgore</i> 294 00:20:22,512 --> 00:20:24,097 <i>leads an attack on a coastal village</i> 295 00:20:24,180 --> 00:20:28,810 <i>in order to escort Willard's boat into the river that will lead him to Kurtz.</i> 296 00:20:28,893 --> 00:20:31,479 <i>This scene with all the extras and special effects</i> 297 00:20:31,563 --> 00:20:35,275 <i>is the most logistically complicated of Francis' career.</i> 298 00:20:45,243 --> 00:20:48,121 Francis was always reminding me. 299 00:20:48,204 --> 00:20:51,291 He says, "Vittorio, remember, this is not just a documentary 300 00:20:51,374 --> 00:20:53,209 "about the war in Vietnam. 301 00:20:53,293 --> 00:20:56,963 "This is a main show in the sense that wherever America goes, 302 00:20:57,047 --> 00:20:59,883 "they make a big show on everything. 303 00:21:00,592 --> 00:21:01,634 <i>"They make a big event.</i> 304 00:21:01,718 --> 00:21:05,388 <i>"They make a big show about lights, music.</i> 305 00:21:06,139 --> 00:21:10,018 <i>"Even the idea to put Wagner on during the battle sequence,</i> 306 00:21:10,101 --> 00:21:11,936 <i>"it's part of the show. It's part of the opera.</i> 307 00:21:12,020 --> 00:21:17,067 <i>"It's part of the major fantasy that American people has."</i> 308 00:22:02,445 --> 00:22:04,364 - Tell them to cut. - Cutting. 309 00:22:04,447 --> 00:22:06,866 - Very good. - All cameras are cutting! 310 00:22:06,950 --> 00:22:09,744 You know, just at the last scene, the third trip, 311 00:22:09,828 --> 00:22:13,123 when the Huey come, 312 00:22:13,790 --> 00:22:15,375 they pass too high. 313 00:22:16,751 --> 00:22:18,128 <i>Okay. This is Coppola.</i> 314 00:22:18,211 --> 00:22:21,881 <i>All aircraft, all Hornets, all picture aircraft,</i> 315 00:22:21,965 --> 00:22:25,552 <i>everyone land in the rice paddies. We'll have a meeting.</i> 316 00:22:26,177 --> 00:22:28,179 <i>Because of the civil war in the south,</i> 317 00:22:28,263 --> 00:22:30,306 <i>everyday, the government sends different pilots</i> 318 00:22:30,390 --> 00:22:32,767 <i>who haven't participated in the rehearsals,</i> 319 00:22:32,851 --> 00:22:36,271 <i>wrecking tens of thousands of dollars worth of shots.</i> 320 00:22:37,564 --> 00:22:41,109 <i>All day today, a Philippine air force general was on the set.</i> 321 00:22:41,192 --> 00:22:45,071 <i>There were rumors that the rebels were in the hills about 10 miles away.</i> 322 00:22:45,155 --> 00:22:46,739 <i>The Filipino commanders were afraid</i> 323 00:22:46,823 --> 00:22:49,993 <i>there could be an attack on the helicopters we were using.</i> 324 00:22:50,076 --> 00:22:51,911 <i>In the middle of a complicated shot,</i> 325 00:22:51,995 --> 00:22:55,457 <i>the helicopters were called away to fight the rebels.</i> 326 00:22:55,540 --> 00:22:56,541 So, what? 327 00:22:56,624 --> 00:23:00,336 - They're taking away five. - Five? They said two. 328 00:23:00,420 --> 00:23:02,172 Wait a second. Stand by. 329 00:23:02,255 --> 00:23:05,049 We just heard they're taking away five of our helicopters. 330 00:23:05,133 --> 00:23:06,676 Should we do it? 331 00:23:07,844 --> 00:23:10,138 The Huey go away. 332 00:23:12,015 --> 00:23:14,017 We'll do it next week. 333 00:23:27,572 --> 00:23:28,781 <i>There have been stories in the press</i> 334 00:23:28,865 --> 00:23:30,658 <i>about production problems with the film.</i> 335 00:23:30,742 --> 00:23:33,244 Has the filming been delayed? 336 00:23:33,328 --> 00:23:37,832 Well, we're behind, but we have not stopped shooting at all. 337 00:23:37,916 --> 00:23:40,585 I mean, it's just that the film is enormous. 338 00:23:40,668 --> 00:23:43,755 I would say it's twice the scope 339 00:23:43,838 --> 00:23:46,382 <i>in terms of the production of any film I've done,</i> 340 00:23:46,466 --> 00:23:48,343 <i>including the two Godfathers together.</i> 341 00:23:48,426 --> 00:23:51,471 <i>And it's such an enormous film with so many different aspects.</i> 342 00:23:51,554 --> 00:23:55,350 <i>We're out here hacking inch by inch.</i> 343 00:23:55,433 --> 00:23:58,728 <i>We are up against, everyday, 100 problems.</i> 344 00:23:58,811 --> 00:24:01,064 <i>It's like a great war itself.</i> 345 00:24:05,735 --> 00:24:08,238 - Change! - You mean right now, sir? 346 00:24:08,321 --> 00:24:11,282 I wanna see how rideable that stuff is. Go change. 347 00:24:11,366 --> 00:24:12,909 It's still pretty hairy out there, sir. 348 00:24:12,992 --> 00:24:15,161 - Do you wanna surf, soldier? - Yes, sir. 349 00:24:15,245 --> 00:24:20,041 That's good, son, 'cause you either surf or fight. That clear? Now, get going. 350 00:24:20,375 --> 00:24:24,003 <i>I guess these air cavalry guys did some pretty crazy stuff</i> 351 00:24:24,087 --> 00:24:26,965 I heard from some of the technical advisors 352 00:24:27,048 --> 00:24:30,426 stories about the air cavalry that were real, 353 00:24:31,261 --> 00:24:34,681 that would serve my fulfilling fiction, 354 00:24:34,764 --> 00:24:38,017 that they really did, you know, like, for instance, 355 00:24:38,101 --> 00:24:41,354 a guy would go into his helicopter in North Vietnam 356 00:24:41,437 --> 00:24:45,608 and try to hook a bicycle and steal it with the runner. 357 00:24:46,109 --> 00:24:47,068 And they would shoot at him. 358 00:24:47,151 --> 00:24:48,570 He'd hover a while until they stopped shooting. 359 00:24:48,653 --> 00:24:50,697 Then they'd finally hook the bicycle and stole... 360 00:24:50,780 --> 00:24:54,534 It's like games to break up the boredom of being in that war. 361 00:24:55,326 --> 00:24:57,287 <i>Men play strange games.</i> 362 00:25:08,131 --> 00:25:11,009 I love the smell of napalm in the morning. 363 00:25:11,092 --> 00:25:13,678 You know, one time we had a hill bombed for 12 hours. 364 00:25:13,761 --> 00:25:16,514 And when it was all over, I walked up. 365 00:25:17,307 --> 00:25:20,643 We didn't find one of them, not one stinking dink body. 366 00:25:22,895 --> 00:25:25,690 But the smell, you know, that gasoline smell... 367 00:25:25,773 --> 00:25:27,567 The whole hill, 368 00:25:28,568 --> 00:25:29,861 it smelled like 369 00:25:32,947 --> 00:25:34,157 victory. 370 00:25:39,370 --> 00:25:41,789 Someday this war's gonna end. 371 00:25:44,459 --> 00:25:46,711 <i>It was a combination of not just</i> Heart of Darkness, 372 00:25:46,794 --> 00:25:48,254 <i>but, like, the Odyssey.</i> 373 00:25:48,338 --> 00:25:50,131 <i>Kilgore was like the Cyclops.</i> 374 00:25:50,423 --> 00:25:53,968 He was something that had to be overcome, had to be tricked. 375 00:25:54,052 --> 00:25:57,472 <i>And then the Playboy bunnies were like the Sirens.</i> 376 00:26:01,517 --> 00:26:05,021 This sure enough is a bizarre sight in the middle of this shit. 377 00:26:08,941 --> 00:26:11,861 <i>The war was taking on an interesting character,</i> 378 00:26:11,944 --> 00:26:15,114 <i>and it was becoming a psychedelic war, you know.</i> 379 00:26:15,198 --> 00:26:20,119 <i>The culture was influencing, sort of seeping into Southeast Asia.</i> 380 00:26:20,203 --> 00:26:24,457 <i>The strange US culture that was going on</i> 381 00:26:26,125 --> 00:26:29,629 <i>where you really get a tone that it is a rock 'n' roll war,</i> 382 00:26:29,712 --> 00:26:34,717 <i>that things have gone a little further than anyone realized.</i> 383 00:26:37,178 --> 00:26:38,471 <i>At the point when we were developing this,</i> 384 00:26:38,554 --> 00:26:40,682 <i>nobody knew that there were drugs over there.</i> 385 00:26:40,765 --> 00:26:43,768 Nobody knew all the craziness that was going on. 386 00:26:43,851 --> 00:26:45,645 A lot was being kept back. 387 00:26:45,728 --> 00:26:47,146 So it was a chance to really make a movie 388 00:26:47,230 --> 00:26:49,857 <i>that would reveal a lot of things.</i> 389 00:26:51,234 --> 00:26:54,404 <i>What we'd done is strung together all of John's anecdotes</i> 390 00:26:54,487 --> 00:26:56,322 <i>and some of the things that he had from his friends</i> 391 00:26:56,406 --> 00:26:58,449 <i>who had been fighting over there.</i> 392 00:26:58,533 --> 00:27:01,828 <i>And it was really a quest or a trek or something</i> 393 00:27:01,911 --> 00:27:06,207 <i>that would take us through the various aspects of the Vietnam War,</i> 394 00:27:06,290 --> 00:27:09,544 <i>and we would see it for the insanity that it was.</i> 395 00:27:10,169 --> 00:27:15,508 At that point, we had it ending in a very large battle with the Viet Cong 396 00:27:15,591 --> 00:27:19,971 <i>and having Willard and the Kurtz character</i> 397 00:27:20,054 --> 00:27:22,014 <i>fighting off all the Viet Cong.</i> 398 00:27:22,098 --> 00:27:24,767 <i>And then when they bring in the helicopters to bring his men out,</i> 399 00:27:24,851 --> 00:27:26,352 <i>he says, "No, I fought too hard for this land,"</i> 400 00:27:26,436 --> 00:27:28,271 <i>and he shoots down the helicopter.</i> 401 00:27:34,777 --> 00:27:36,988 "I summon fire from the sky. 402 00:27:37,363 --> 00:27:39,198 "Do you know what it is to be a white man 403 00:27:39,282 --> 00:27:42,869 "who can summon fire from the sky? What it means? 404 00:27:42,952 --> 00:27:45,288 "You can live and die for these things. 405 00:27:45,371 --> 00:27:48,040 "Not silly ideals that are always betrayed... 406 00:27:48,124 --> 00:27:50,543 "What do you fight for, Captain?" 407 00:27:52,295 --> 00:27:55,006 Then he answers, "Because it feels good." 408 00:27:57,842 --> 00:28:02,096 I never cared for the ending so much. I always thought the ending was weak. 409 00:28:02,180 --> 00:28:05,057 The ending didn't top what had happened with the helicopters, 410 00:28:05,141 --> 00:28:09,228 and it didn't answer any of the kind of moral issues 411 00:28:09,312 --> 00:28:14,025 that got into a real gung-ho, macho kind of a comic book ending. 412 00:28:15,234 --> 00:28:19,697 <i>And my choice was to make it much more back to</i> Heart of Darkness 413 00:28:19,781 --> 00:28:22,617 <i>than really John and George were intending.</i> 414 00:28:22,700 --> 00:28:26,704 I'd like to save the in-depth stuff for the second reading. 415 00:28:27,663 --> 00:28:31,501 And I think very early on, I knew that even when I arrived there, 416 00:28:31,584 --> 00:28:35,254 I was gonna take John's script and mate it with <i>Heart of Darkness</i> 417 00:28:35,338 --> 00:28:37,340 and whatever happened to me in the jungle. 418 00:28:37,423 --> 00:28:40,301 <i>I mean, I knew that was, like, my concept.</i> 419 00:28:41,844 --> 00:28:45,014 <i>This afternoon Francis got a call from his attorney.</i> 420 00:28:45,097 --> 00:28:48,851 <i>Apparently, Brando is refusing to give Francis the extra time he needs</i> 421 00:28:48,935 --> 00:28:51,395 <i>to rewrite the ending of the movie.</i> 422 00:28:51,479 --> 00:28:53,439 <i>Brando is threatening to drop out of the project</i> 423 00:28:53,523 --> 00:28:56,150 <i>and keep his million-dollar advance.</i> 424 00:28:56,234 --> 00:29:00,446 Yeah, but are they seriously saying that Marlon would take a million dollars 425 00:29:01,030 --> 00:29:02,657 and then not show up? 426 00:29:05,076 --> 00:29:06,911 <i>And imagine, here I am</i> 427 00:29:06,994 --> 00:29:10,206 <i>with about 50 things that are just quasi in my control,</i> 428 00:29:10,289 --> 00:29:12,750 <i>like the Philippine government and fucking helicopters</i> 429 00:29:12,834 --> 00:29:14,585 <i>which they take away whenever they feel like,</i> 430 00:29:14,669 --> 00:29:16,462 <i>and they've done it three times already.</i> 431 00:29:16,546 --> 00:29:20,633 <i>I mean, all I'm asking is for Marlon to allow me to start him a little later.</i> 432 00:29:20,716 --> 00:29:23,219 <i>And I know it's all my fault. But I'm saying is that</i> 433 00:29:23,302 --> 00:29:25,972 <i>do I also have to shoot the last 30 minutes of the movie</i> 434 00:29:26,055 --> 00:29:27,098 <i>in the beginning?</i> 435 00:29:27,181 --> 00:29:29,350 Tell them to keep acting, Randy. 436 00:29:29,433 --> 00:29:33,729 <i>I assumed that there would be some malleability about Marlon,</i> 437 00:29:33,813 --> 00:29:40,069 <i>and I also didn't realize the immensity of the constructions and stuff</i> 438 00:29:40,361 --> 00:29:43,489 <i>I mean, the picture's bigger than I thought. It's just gigantic.</i> 439 00:29:43,573 --> 00:29:47,201 <i>I personally, as an artist, would love the opportunity</i> 440 00:29:47,285 --> 00:29:49,579 <i>to just finish the picture up until the end,</i> 441 00:29:49,662 --> 00:29:52,540 <i>take four weeks off work with Marlon, rewrite it,</i> 442 00:29:52,623 --> 00:29:54,292 <i>and then in just three weeks, do the ending.</i> 443 00:29:54,375 --> 00:29:56,669 <i>I think I could make the best film that way.</i> 444 00:29:56,752 --> 00:29:59,505 <i>It seems like such a, kind of, bright thing to do.</i> 445 00:29:59,589 --> 00:30:02,592 <i>And I feel that the people back there</i> 446 00:30:02,675 --> 00:30:06,053 <i>feel that postponement is like, "The picture's in trouble or something."</i> 447 00:30:06,137 --> 00:30:08,139 <i>It's just that very intelligent, major studios</i> 448 00:30:08,222 --> 00:30:11,851 <i>used to do things like this all the time. No, I know that.</i> 449 00:30:11,934 --> 00:30:15,396 <i>And that's what sort of bugs me is the ludicrousness of thinking</i> 450 00:30:15,479 --> 00:30:17,690 <i>that I'm gonna go through all that I'm doing,</i> 451 00:30:17,773 --> 00:30:21,402 <i>after all I've been through in the past, after all the pictures I've made</i> 452 00:30:21,485 --> 00:30:24,906 <i>and after shooting 16 weeks, that I'm not gonna finish a movie</i> 453 00:30:24,989 --> 00:30:28,034 <i>in which I've invested three years of my life just because...</i> 454 00:30:28,117 --> 00:30:30,161 <i>I mean, it's stupid, man.</i> 455 00:30:30,953 --> 00:30:33,873 <i>Yeah, but even if Brando drops dead, I can still finish the movie.</i> 456 00:30:33,956 --> 00:30:35,041 <i>I'll just get another actor.</i> 457 00:30:35,124 --> 00:30:37,335 <i>If I can't get Redford, I'll go back to Nicholson.</i> 458 00:30:37,418 --> 00:30:39,086 <i>If I can't get Nicholson, I'll go back to Pacino.</i> 459 00:30:39,170 --> 00:30:41,672 <i>If I can't go to Pacino, I'll go back to someone else.</i> 460 00:30:41,756 --> 00:30:45,676 <i>I mean, sooner or later, I can get someone for three weeks.</i> 461 00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:50,139 <i>I mean, it's not in the cards that we're not going to finish the movie.</i> 462 00:31:08,658 --> 00:31:12,828 <i>This is the first day of heavy rain. A typhoon is off the coast.</i> 463 00:31:12,912 --> 00:31:15,206 <i>I've never seen it rain so hard.</i> 464 00:31:15,289 --> 00:31:17,541 <i>Water has started coming in the rooms downstairs,</i> 465 00:31:17,625 --> 00:31:20,336 <i>and Sofia is splashing around in it.</i> 466 00:31:20,419 --> 00:31:22,338 <i>Francis has decided to make pasta,</i> 467 00:31:22,421 --> 00:31:25,174 <i>and he's turned on.</i> La Bohème <i>full volume.</i> 468 00:31:26,342 --> 00:31:30,846 I knew that if weather came, that I was gonna try to incorporate it. 469 00:31:31,222 --> 00:31:33,933 I didn't realize that it was on such a big scale. 470 00:31:34,016 --> 00:31:37,353 So I was only thinking that I got to shoot tomorrow. 471 00:32:14,306 --> 00:32:18,144 Even after that typhoon hit, he began to film. 472 00:32:18,227 --> 00:32:22,314 He said, "This has happened, and monsoons hit Vietnam. 473 00:32:22,982 --> 00:32:26,736 "There's a lot of mud, a lot of rain around. Let's film." 474 00:32:28,279 --> 00:32:30,197 Hey, don't leave without me. 475 00:32:31,407 --> 00:32:35,411 <i>We went to Iba to shoot the scene that got cut.</i> 476 00:32:36,912 --> 00:32:40,041 <i>The set was, like, 80% demolished.</i> 477 00:32:40,124 --> 00:32:42,752 It was, like, mud up to the knees. 478 00:32:42,835 --> 00:32:45,337 It was like pissing, man. 479 00:32:45,421 --> 00:32:47,089 I mean, it was hitting you so hard, it hurt. 480 00:32:52,678 --> 00:32:56,015 It started out just as raining a lot, and after a while, we realized 481 00:32:56,098 --> 00:32:59,185 it was knocking out centers of civilizations, 482 00:32:59,268 --> 00:33:03,147 <i>and rivers were overrunning, and people couldn't get to the places...</i> 483 00:33:03,230 --> 00:33:06,067 They were all on the roofs of hotels and stuff. 484 00:33:06,150 --> 00:33:08,444 We had to stop for a while. 485 00:33:08,527 --> 00:33:10,279 And I realized that certain sets had been destroyed. 486 00:33:34,136 --> 00:33:35,679 <i>In order to rebuild the sets,</i> 487 00:33:35,763 --> 00:33:38,641 <i>Francis has closed down the production for two months.</i> 488 00:33:38,724 --> 00:33:41,310 <i>The cast and crew have been sent home.</i> 489 00:33:41,769 --> 00:33:44,355 <i>It was an opportunity for everyone, really,</i> 490 00:33:44,814 --> 00:33:46,982 to have a little relief from the situation, 491 00:33:47,066 --> 00:33:50,569 because it became apparent that it was gonna go on longer 492 00:33:50,653 --> 00:33:52,988 <i>than we realized in the beginning.</i> 493 00:33:57,201 --> 00:33:59,787 <i>Last night, we slept outside on the lawn.</i> 494 00:33:59,870 --> 00:34:02,998 <i>It was beautiful, so clear, with stars.</i> 495 00:34:03,082 --> 00:34:05,918 <i>Francis tossed and turned, having nightmares.</i> 496 00:34:06,001 --> 00:34:09,588 <i>This morning he said he'd had a dream about how to finish the script.</i> 497 00:34:09,672 --> 00:34:12,758 <i>But now that he was awake, it wasn't any good.</i> 498 00:34:12,842 --> 00:34:15,261 <i>He said he couldn't go on making the John Milius script</i> 499 00:34:15,344 --> 00:34:17,596 <i>because it didn't really express his ideas,</i> 500 00:34:17,680 --> 00:34:22,101 <i>and he still doesn't know how to make the film into his personal vision.</i> 501 00:34:22,184 --> 00:34:24,520 <i>He's been struggling with this for so long.</i> 502 00:34:24,603 --> 00:34:27,022 <i>He knows the material backwards and forwards.</i> 503 00:34:27,106 --> 00:34:29,650 <i>He is practically chasing his tail.</i> 504 00:34:29,984 --> 00:34:33,445 <i>First of all, I call this whole movie the Idiodyssey.</i> 505 00:34:34,697 --> 00:34:38,075 <i>- The Idiodyssey? - This is the Idiodyssey.</i> 506 00:34:38,159 --> 00:34:41,078 <i>None of my tools, none of my tricks,</i> 507 00:34:41,162 --> 00:34:45,958 <i>none of my ways of doing things works for this ending.</i> 508 00:34:46,709 --> 00:34:50,171 <i>I have tried so many times that I know I can't do it.</i> 509 00:34:51,088 --> 00:34:53,215 <i>It might be a big victory to know that I can't do it.</i> 510 00:34:53,299 --> 00:34:56,051 <i>I can't write the ending to this movie.</i> 511 00:34:56,385 --> 00:34:59,722 I was on the spot. I had gotten myself into something big. 512 00:34:59,805 --> 00:35:03,726 Some people had come through, a lot of people hadn't. 513 00:35:04,185 --> 00:35:06,687 And it was my job and also my financial burden 514 00:35:06,770 --> 00:35:08,731 to pick up the pieces and finish the movie. 515 00:35:08,939 --> 00:35:12,735 I didn't quite understand all the ramifications of the financing. 516 00:35:12,818 --> 00:35:15,821 I felt that he'd do whatever he had to, we'd borrow the money. 517 00:35:15,905 --> 00:35:17,489 But I really support him as an artist, 518 00:35:17,573 --> 00:35:21,410 and I feel like whatever the artist needs to do 519 00:35:21,493 --> 00:35:24,121 in order to get his artwork is okay. 520 00:35:24,205 --> 00:35:26,665 And I always felt confident. So what's the worst that can happen? 521 00:35:26,749 --> 00:35:30,002 They take away your big house, they take away your car, so what? 522 00:35:30,085 --> 00:35:33,297 <i>He was a very creative person and could make another film</i> 523 00:35:33,380 --> 00:35:38,928 <i>and could do another job and earn his living and provide for us.</i> 524 00:35:39,011 --> 00:35:42,514 <i>So I really wasn't frightened by it.</i> 525 00:35:42,598 --> 00:35:46,518 <i>In fact, at that point in time, we had escalated our lifestyle.</i> 526 00:35:46,602 --> 00:35:49,772 <i>We had this big 22-room Victorian house,</i> 527 00:35:49,855 --> 00:35:51,690 <i>you know, a staff and a screening room.</i> 528 00:35:51,774 --> 00:35:54,777 <i>Life was kind of complicated for me. And entertaining...</i> 529 00:35:54,860 --> 00:35:57,655 And I would have loved to have had my lifestyle 530 00:35:57,738 --> 00:35:59,949 reduced to some smaller scale. 531 00:36:00,032 --> 00:36:02,076 So that part of me was just fearless in that regard. 532 00:36:02,159 --> 00:36:08,249 It really didn't matter if it all went down the tubes in financing this project. 533 00:36:08,332 --> 00:36:09,375 It was really okay. 534 00:36:15,339 --> 00:36:18,175 <i>A melodrama is currently playing itself out in Hollywood</i> 535 00:36:18,259 --> 00:36:21,971 <i>that for sheer emotionalism rivals anything put on film.</i> 536 00:36:22,471 --> 00:36:25,849 <i>The embattled figure in this drama is director Francis Coppola,</i> 537 00:36:25,933 --> 00:36:28,227 <i>who once again finds himself waging a war</i> 538 00:36:28,310 --> 00:36:30,729 <i>to keep his dream financially afloat.</i> 539 00:36:30,980 --> 00:36:33,732 <i>Now, if you read newspapers at all or listen to the radio, you know</i> 540 00:36:33,816 --> 00:36:37,611 <i>that Mr. Coppola has been involved in the production of this motion picture</i> 541 00:36:37,695 --> 00:36:39,613 <i>for more years than even he would care to count.</i> 542 00:36:44,827 --> 00:36:46,495 <i>The press painted a portrait of me</i> 543 00:36:46,578 --> 00:36:50,082 as sort of a crazy person and financially irresponsible, 544 00:36:50,165 --> 00:36:53,085 which I don't particularly think is really true. 545 00:36:53,168 --> 00:36:54,920 <i>No doubt that it was my money.</i> 546 00:36:55,004 --> 00:36:58,173 <i>But the difference was that</i> Apocalypse Now <i>was about Vietnam.</i> 547 00:36:58,257 --> 00:37:02,344 <i>That was what made it sound like such a crazy financial bet.</i> 548 00:37:02,886 --> 00:37:04,930 Did you ever consider quitting? 549 00:37:05,014 --> 00:37:09,310 How am I going to quit from myself? Am I going to say, "Francis, I quit"? 550 00:37:09,852 --> 00:37:13,272 You know, I was financing the movie. How could I quit? 551 00:37:16,567 --> 00:37:18,694 <i>July 25th, 1976.</i> 552 00:37:19,528 --> 00:37:22,698 <i>We've returned to the Philippines to resume production.</i> 553 00:37:22,781 --> 00:37:26,410 <i>Francis hopes to finish shooting in the early fall.</i> 554 00:37:33,834 --> 00:37:37,588 <i>There is a kind of powerful exhilaration in the face of losing everything,</i> 555 00:37:37,671 --> 00:37:38,922 <i>like the excitement of war</i> 556 00:37:39,006 --> 00:37:42,343 <i>when one kills or takes the chance of being killed.</i> 557 00:37:42,426 --> 00:37:44,636 <i>Francis has taken the biggest risk of his life</i> 558 00:37:44,720 --> 00:37:47,139 <i>in the way he's making this film.</i> 559 00:37:47,222 --> 00:37:49,641 <i>This film is now $3 million over budget,</i> 560 00:37:49,725 --> 00:37:53,020 <i>which the distributor, United Artists, has agreed to put up.</i> 561 00:37:53,103 --> 00:37:57,649 <i>But Francis has to pay it back if the film doesn't make $40 million or more.</i> 562 00:37:57,733 --> 00:38:00,819 <i>That just gets me all the more focused on the present moment</i> 563 00:38:00,903 --> 00:38:04,990 <i>and not allow myself to think about the "what-ifs" of the future.</i> 564 00:38:06,533 --> 00:38:08,369 I know that every building that's built 565 00:38:08,452 --> 00:38:12,039 runs into big production overages, every bridge that's built. 566 00:38:12,122 --> 00:38:13,165 Every NASA project, 567 00:38:13,248 --> 00:38:18,629 any large project that involves lots of people, conditions, weather, 568 00:38:19,046 --> 00:38:20,130 <i>of a construction nature,</i> 569 00:38:20,214 --> 00:38:21,965 <i>goes over all the time.</i> 570 00:38:22,049 --> 00:38:24,259 <i>And a movie is no exception.</i> 571 00:38:24,343 --> 00:38:27,137 <i>It's true that since it was my own money,</i> 572 00:38:27,221 --> 00:38:29,848 <i>and once I felt that I was going in a direction,</i> 573 00:38:29,932 --> 00:38:33,185 <i>I wanted to continue going in that direction.</i> 574 00:38:33,268 --> 00:38:35,938 Since it was my money, I just did it, really. 575 00:38:36,230 --> 00:38:38,524 There was a sequence in the film, 576 00:38:38,607 --> 00:38:40,901 so-called the French plantation sequence, 577 00:38:40,984 --> 00:38:43,028 and it involved 578 00:38:43,112 --> 00:38:45,697 the PBR coming ashore 579 00:38:45,781 --> 00:38:51,745 <i>to this rubber plantation still run by these French-speaking people,</i> 580 00:38:51,829 --> 00:38:53,747 <i>and they had a whole bunch of cadre,</i> 581 00:38:53,831 --> 00:38:56,708 <i>and they'd been fighting the Viet Minh before the Viet Cong,</i> 582 00:38:56,792 --> 00:38:58,961 <i>and they weren't letting go.</i> 583 00:39:00,045 --> 00:39:01,880 <i>Hey, this is French plantation discussion.</i> 584 00:39:01,964 --> 00:39:02,923 <i>French plantation...</i> 585 00:39:03,006 --> 00:39:08,095 <i>The whole scene is gonna be made of wisps of fog close to the ground,</i> 586 00:39:08,178 --> 00:39:11,265 <i>and a place that's like a dream.</i> 587 00:39:11,682 --> 00:39:13,725 <i>If you need more fog machines...</i> 588 00:39:13,809 --> 00:39:17,312 <i>Have more than enough machines. How much do they cost?</i> 589 00:39:17,396 --> 00:39:19,398 <i>- Can I buy the ones I already bought? - Sure.</i> 590 00:39:19,481 --> 00:39:21,483 <i>Okay I'll give them to you as a gift after the show,</i> 591 00:39:21,567 --> 00:39:22,568 <i>but have enough of them.</i> 592 00:39:22,651 --> 00:39:24,194 <i>Now, I want some real machine guns.</i> 593 00:39:24,278 --> 00:39:27,406 <i>Get the PC to go over and strafe the side of that house</i> 594 00:39:27,489 --> 00:39:30,409 <i>as though Fidel Castro had his last stand there.</i> 595 00:39:30,492 --> 00:39:34,830 <i>I'd like three or four French people, and I'll spend money for it.</i> 596 00:39:34,913 --> 00:39:36,582 <i>But I don't want to fly them from France.</i> 597 00:39:36,665 --> 00:39:40,711 <i>If you can't get them from Hong Kong, Singapore, Japan, Okinawa,</i> 598 00:39:40,794 --> 00:39:42,754 <i>then I will fly them from France.</i> 599 00:39:42,838 --> 00:39:44,798 <i>White wine should be served ice cold.</i> 600 00:39:44,882 --> 00:39:48,218 <i>Red wine should be served at about 58 degrees.</i> 601 00:39:48,302 --> 00:39:51,847 <i>Should be opened approximately an hour to an hour-and-a-half</i> 602 00:39:51,930 --> 00:39:54,183 <i>to even two hours before served.</i> 603 00:39:54,266 --> 00:39:57,769 <i>I want a French ceremony that is right out of a fucking...</i> 604 00:39:57,853 --> 00:40:01,607 <i>I want the French to say, "My God, how did they do that?"</i> 605 00:40:02,858 --> 00:40:04,943 <i>Well, my idea was, as they progressed up the river,</i> 606 00:40:05,027 --> 00:40:08,030 <i>they were, like, going back more and more in time</i> 607 00:40:08,113 --> 00:40:10,240 <i>in a funny kind of way,</i> 608 00:40:10,324 --> 00:40:13,285 <i>that we were revisiting the history of Vietnam in reverse.</i> 609 00:40:13,368 --> 00:40:15,996 <i>And the first stop was in the '50s almost.</i> 610 00:40:16,079 --> 00:40:17,915 <i>We now are with the French.</i> 611 00:40:17,998 --> 00:40:21,502 That was what I was looking for in the French plantation 612 00:40:21,585 --> 00:40:24,671 that was a kind of ghostly afterview of something, 613 00:40:24,755 --> 00:40:27,257 almost like they talk about the light from the stars. 614 00:40:27,341 --> 00:40:30,302 We see it after the star's already dead, 615 00:40:30,385 --> 00:40:32,179 you know, and it was that kind of mood. 616 00:40:34,681 --> 00:40:37,935 <i>It was like having dinner with a family of ghosts.</i> 617 00:40:38,560 --> 00:40:42,940 <i>There were still a few hundred of them left on plantations all over Vietnam,</i> 618 00:40:43,023 --> 00:40:46,735 <i>trying to keep themselves convinced that it was still 1950.</i> 619 00:40:47,402 --> 00:40:51,114 <i>They weren't French anymore, and they'd never be Vietnamese.</i> 620 00:40:51,949 --> 00:40:55,327 <i>They were floating loose in history, without a country.</i> 621 00:40:55,410 --> 00:40:59,122 <i>They were hanging on by their fingernails, but so were we.</i> 622 00:40:59,790 --> 00:41:02,376 <i>We just had more fingernails in it.</i> 623 00:41:03,418 --> 00:41:06,922 How long can you possibly stay here? 624 00:41:09,341 --> 00:41:11,260 - Stay? - No, no. I mean, 625 00:41:13,053 --> 00:41:14,763 when will you go back home to France? 626 00:41:16,181 --> 00:41:17,516 Back home? 627 00:41:17,933 --> 00:41:20,394 I mean, this is our home, Captain. 628 00:41:20,477 --> 00:41:22,729 - Sooner or later, you're gonna... - No, Captain! 629 00:41:24,773 --> 00:41:28,235 I mean, you don't know anything about the French mentality. 630 00:41:28,318 --> 00:41:31,572 <i>It was just the idea of the French still being there.</i> 631 00:41:31,655 --> 00:41:34,825 There was some speech that he gives at the end, that he said, 632 00:41:34,908 --> 00:41:38,579 "if they drive us from the house, we will live in a ditch, 633 00:41:39,246 --> 00:41:43,500 "and if they push us out of the ditch, we'll live in the jungle. 634 00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:48,880 "All the time we will clean the blood from our bayonets." 635 00:41:48,964 --> 00:41:50,382 I like that. 636 00:41:50,966 --> 00:41:54,553 So when you ask me why we want to stay here, Captain, 637 00:41:56,305 --> 00:42:00,726 we want to stay here because it's ours. It belongs to us. 638 00:42:00,809 --> 00:42:03,145 It keeps our family together. 639 00:42:05,147 --> 00:42:07,190 I mean, we fight for that. 640 00:42:08,275 --> 00:42:10,110 While you Americans, 641 00:42:11,028 --> 00:42:15,907 you are fighting for the biggest nothing in history. 642 00:42:17,492 --> 00:42:19,661 <i>Our budgets were cut way down</i> 643 00:42:19,745 --> 00:42:22,247 and we didn't get the cast that we wanted. 644 00:42:22,331 --> 00:42:24,458 But of course, the art department and the other departments 645 00:42:24,541 --> 00:42:27,210 didn't cut theirs down, so I was very incensed 646 00:42:27,294 --> 00:42:30,505 that I had this extraordinary set, that costly set. 647 00:42:30,589 --> 00:42:34,509 <i>Extraordinary decorations and stuff</i> 648 00:42:34,593 --> 00:42:37,596 <i>I was just angry at the French sequence.</i> 649 00:42:37,679 --> 00:42:39,931 <i>I cut it out, out of that.</i> 650 00:42:40,015 --> 00:42:42,851 I was very unhappy on every count. 651 00:42:42,934 --> 00:42:44,478 The light, the whole thing. 652 00:42:44,561 --> 00:42:47,606 So everyone forget that we even shot it. 653 00:42:47,689 --> 00:42:49,858 No longer does it exist. 654 00:43:04,039 --> 00:43:08,752 <i>What I'm worried about is that I'm getting into a self-indulgent pattern.</i> 655 00:43:08,835 --> 00:43:11,922 <i>But don't you, on the one hand, feel like that's</i> 656 00:43:12,005 --> 00:43:14,883 <i>where your gifts as an artist are working?</i> 657 00:43:14,966 --> 00:43:17,135 <i>They're on that brink of not knowing what to do.</i> 658 00:43:17,219 --> 00:43:19,179 <i>What if you just scream out to the heavens,</i> 659 00:43:19,262 --> 00:43:20,972 <i>"I don't know what the fuck I'm doing!"</i> 660 00:43:21,056 --> 00:43:22,391 <i>I've done that.</i> 661 00:43:22,474 --> 00:43:25,227 <i>That's another form of self-indulgence.</i> 662 00:43:26,395 --> 00:43:29,314 <i>I'm sure I've missed a whole bunch of opportunities,</i> 663 00:43:29,398 --> 00:43:31,108 <i>and I'm gonna miss others.</i> 664 00:43:31,191 --> 00:43:32,984 <i>But I've caught a lot of them, too.</i> 665 00:43:33,068 --> 00:43:37,197 <i>In the end, it's how many I catch, not how many I lose.</i> 666 00:43:43,620 --> 00:43:46,123 <i>Francis is in a place within himself,</i> 667 00:43:46,206 --> 00:43:48,458 <i>a place he never intended to reach,</i> 668 00:43:48,542 --> 00:43:50,001 <i>a place of conflict.</i> 669 00:43:50,085 --> 00:43:54,423 <i>And he can't go back down the river because the journey has changed him.</i> 670 00:43:54,506 --> 00:43:57,384 <i>I was watching from the point of view of the observer,</i> 671 00:43:57,467 --> 00:44:00,679 <i>not realizing I was on the journey, too.</i> 672 00:44:00,762 --> 00:44:03,140 <i>Now, I can't go back to the way it was.</i> 673 00:44:03,223 --> 00:44:06,101 <i>Neither can Francis. Neither can Willard.</i> 674 00:44:11,440 --> 00:44:14,526 <i>It was like traveling back to the earliest beginnings of the world</i> 675 00:44:14,609 --> 00:44:18,321 <i>when vegetation rioted on the Earth and the big trees were kings.</i> 676 00:44:18,405 --> 00:44:21,032 <i>Trees, millions of trees,</i> 677 00:44:21,116 --> 00:44:24,703 <i>massive, immense, running up high.</i> 678 00:44:24,786 --> 00:44:27,539 <i>And at their foot, hugging the bank against the stream,</i> 679 00:44:27,622 --> 00:44:31,710 <i>crept the little begrimed steamboat, like a sluggish beetle</i> 680 00:44:31,793 --> 00:44:35,255 <i>crawling on the floor of a lofty portico.</i> 681 00:44:35,338 --> 00:44:38,884 <i>Where the company men imagined it crawled to, I don't know.</i> 682 00:44:38,967 --> 00:44:40,177 <i>For me,</i> 683 00:44:40,927 --> 00:44:42,929 <i>it crawled toward Kurtz.</i> 684 00:45:00,280 --> 00:45:02,991 <i>Francis works in a very intuitive way.</i> 685 00:45:03,533 --> 00:45:08,413 <i>So he likes to take advantage of things as he moves along through a picture.</i> 686 00:45:08,497 --> 00:45:10,999 And Francis just likes it to flow. 687 00:45:11,082 --> 00:45:13,084 And whenever you do that, 688 00:45:13,168 --> 00:45:16,755 you end up with a problem of having a film 689 00:45:16,838 --> 00:45:19,174 at times that is way too long 690 00:45:19,257 --> 00:45:23,094 and a film that doesn't have a really strong narrative line in it 691 00:45:23,178 --> 00:45:26,932 <i>that you can keep the audience hooked in.</i> 692 00:45:27,015 --> 00:45:29,309 And when you get into this anger, Albert, 693 00:45:29,392 --> 00:45:32,479 don't decide where you're gonna get to. 694 00:45:32,562 --> 00:45:36,024 Wherever you get to, as long as it's out of you, is okay. 695 00:45:36,107 --> 00:45:38,109 Francis used to write on these little cards. 696 00:45:38,193 --> 00:45:41,321 I managed to hold on to some of these. 697 00:45:42,864 --> 00:45:43,990 You want to read one of them? 698 00:45:44,074 --> 00:45:46,284 Well, let me get the pages right. 699 00:45:46,368 --> 00:45:49,412 And see, we put them on little cards like this. 700 00:45:51,081 --> 00:45:54,918 Now we have the main boat approaching. 701 00:45:55,001 --> 00:45:57,295 Now we have the birds. We don't have the birds great, 702 00:45:57,379 --> 00:45:59,548 but we'll never get it great. The birds... 703 00:45:59,631 --> 00:46:02,926 And then I propose that we do four close-ups. 704 00:46:03,009 --> 00:46:06,429 Sam, Chief, Martin, everyone, looking at the birds, 705 00:46:06,513 --> 00:46:09,140 so I can use the sound of the birds or maybe three birds going through, 706 00:46:09,224 --> 00:46:11,560 and I can create the illusion of there being birds. 707 00:46:11,643 --> 00:46:15,564 "Birds. Lance. POVs of blackbirds. Boat." 708 00:46:15,647 --> 00:46:18,483 It was like this. This was his shot list. 709 00:46:18,942 --> 00:46:22,612 Sometimes we'd get pages that would say... 710 00:46:22,696 --> 00:46:25,866 It'd say "scenes unknown" on the call sheet. 711 00:46:25,949 --> 00:46:27,993 You just would show up, you know. 712 00:46:28,076 --> 00:46:29,286 They didn't know what they were going to do. 713 00:46:29,369 --> 00:46:31,872 We didn't just go out there and, "Oh, what can we do today?" 714 00:46:31,955 --> 00:46:34,791 There was a real plan for each day. 715 00:46:34,875 --> 00:46:37,460 But since Francis is a writer 716 00:46:37,544 --> 00:46:40,005 <i>and was a co-writer of the script,</i> 717 00:46:40,088 --> 00:46:43,425 <i>he could create things at the moment,</i> 718 00:46:43,508 --> 00:46:46,094 and if a new idea came up, 719 00:46:46,177 --> 00:46:48,722 he would sit there up all night and write it. 720 00:46:48,805 --> 00:46:52,267 Then you're gonna get into this weird speech of, "Fire, fire. 721 00:46:52,350 --> 00:46:53,810 "You demons. You sons of bitches. 722 00:46:53,894 --> 00:46:55,896 "Get away from us. Get away from this boat. 723 00:46:55,979 --> 00:46:58,815 "Back, you walking dead, you zombies, you sons of bitches. 724 00:46:58,899 --> 00:47:00,317 "Captain, you made this. 725 00:47:00,400 --> 00:47:02,652 "This is your hell, your nightmare." 726 00:47:02,736 --> 00:47:06,281 I felt that he just thought a lot of his actors, 727 00:47:06,364 --> 00:47:11,411 we were gems who were to bring his ideas to life. 728 00:47:11,494 --> 00:47:14,748 And he also took a lot of our creative input. 729 00:47:15,457 --> 00:47:19,711 Why don't we go, "You want to kill us all. You're insane. 730 00:47:19,794 --> 00:47:22,464 "You've gone insane. You're more of a savage. 731 00:47:22,547 --> 00:47:24,382 "You're insane, savage like those people." 732 00:47:24,466 --> 00:47:25,717 - Or something like that? - Okay. 733 00:47:25,800 --> 00:47:27,719 You try it, though. "This is your hell." 734 00:47:27,802 --> 00:47:31,389 "This dream is your hell. This is your nightmare. 735 00:47:31,473 --> 00:47:35,143 "You made it, you liquor-guzzling, dipsomaniac son of a bitch. 736 00:47:35,226 --> 00:47:36,478 "You bastard!" 737 00:47:37,062 --> 00:47:40,649 Somehow get the idea that you... You're going mad. 738 00:47:40,732 --> 00:47:44,027 You've gone mad. 739 00:47:44,527 --> 00:47:48,573 Once he set that feel for us, we just started improvising 740 00:47:48,657 --> 00:47:50,575 everything that was happening on the boat. 741 00:47:50,659 --> 00:47:53,495 Sampan off the port bow. Let's take a look. 742 00:47:54,454 --> 00:47:56,122 Lance. Bring them in. 743 00:47:56,206 --> 00:47:58,458 Clean, on the .60. Chef, get a. 16. 744 00:47:59,334 --> 00:48:02,712 <i>Francis had us write up lists of things</i> 745 00:48:02,796 --> 00:48:04,756 <i>that we wanted our characters to do.</i> 746 00:48:06,466 --> 00:48:07,467 I remember we all decided 747 00:48:07,550 --> 00:48:10,011 that we wanted to do sort of a My Lai Massacre. 748 00:48:10,095 --> 00:48:11,471 We thought an interrogation of a boat 749 00:48:11,554 --> 00:48:15,016 that ended in a firefight and the loss of many lives. 750 00:48:15,725 --> 00:48:17,727 We wanted to experience something like that. 751 00:48:18,019 --> 00:48:19,729 - There ain't nothing in here. - What's in the boxes? 752 00:48:19,813 --> 00:48:21,064 Not a fucking thing. 753 00:48:21,147 --> 00:48:22,273 - Look in that tin can. - Nothing. 754 00:48:22,357 --> 00:48:24,859 - That rusty can. - Just fucking rice, that's all! 755 00:48:24,943 --> 00:48:26,152 - There ain't nothing on it! - Check the yellow can. 756 00:48:26,236 --> 00:48:28,780 Check the yellow can. She was sitting on it. What's in it? 757 00:48:32,867 --> 00:48:34,119 Chef! 758 00:48:38,915 --> 00:48:41,501 Motherfuckers! 759 00:48:44,087 --> 00:48:46,756 - Hold it! - Come on, let's kill them all! 760 00:48:46,840 --> 00:48:49,384 - Fucking cocksucking mothers! - Hold it! Hold it! 761 00:48:49,467 --> 00:48:51,886 Let's kill all the assholes! Shoot the shit out of all of them. 762 00:48:51,970 --> 00:48:55,390 - Chef, hold it! - Why not? Jesus Christ. 763 00:48:56,224 --> 00:48:58,518 Why the fuck not? 764 00:48:59,978 --> 00:49:01,646 - Clean? - I'm good. 765 00:49:06,359 --> 00:49:08,570 See what she was running for? 766 00:49:11,781 --> 00:49:13,575 It's a fucking puppy! 767 00:49:13,908 --> 00:49:18,371 <i>I think what it was that was me that was Clean was just that I was a kid.</i> 768 00:49:18,663 --> 00:49:21,249 And that's, I think, what my role is about. 769 00:49:21,332 --> 00:49:24,753 I mean, it's about the kids that were over there 770 00:49:26,671 --> 00:49:29,382 who didn't know anything about anything. 771 00:49:30,759 --> 00:49:34,345 They were just kind of snatched up and used as cannon fodder for this war. 772 00:50:06,294 --> 00:50:08,379 <i>Everyone who has come out here to the Philippines</i> 773 00:50:08,463 --> 00:50:12,008 <i>seems to be going through something that is affecting them profoundly,</i> 774 00:50:12,092 --> 00:50:15,970 <i>changing their perspective about the world or themselves,</i> 775 00:50:16,054 --> 00:50:19,724 <i>while the same thing is happening to Willard in the course of the film.</i> 776 00:50:19,808 --> 00:50:23,103 <i>Something is definitely happening to me and to Francis.</i> 777 00:51:14,362 --> 00:51:15,738 <i>Filmmaking, at least for me,</i> 778 00:51:15,822 --> 00:51:19,450 wasn't really just a matter of writing this little script 779 00:51:19,534 --> 00:51:22,954 and then going and doing it as you thought that your own life 780 00:51:23,037 --> 00:51:24,956 and your own experience during the making of it 781 00:51:25,039 --> 00:51:27,375 was also a very strong element, 782 00:51:27,959 --> 00:51:30,545 and that somehow the director works 783 00:51:30,628 --> 00:51:34,549 with more than just having the script 784 00:51:34,632 --> 00:51:36,968 and having the team of people and actors. 785 00:51:37,051 --> 00:51:41,764 Also, the conditions and the mood of the company and of each individual 786 00:51:41,848 --> 00:51:43,808 <i>and what personally people are going through</i> 787 00:51:43,892 --> 00:51:48,396 <i>is also one of the primary elements of the film.</i> 788 00:51:48,479 --> 00:51:52,358 I mean, what's the matter with you? You're acting kind of weird. 789 00:51:52,442 --> 00:51:55,195 Hey, you know that last tab of acid I was saving? 790 00:51:55,278 --> 00:51:57,655 - Yeah. - I dropped it. 791 00:51:57,739 --> 00:52:00,867 You dropped acid? Far out. 792 00:52:00,950 --> 00:52:04,537 <i>Most of my character was done under the influence of pot.</i> 793 00:52:05,246 --> 00:52:07,248 We smoked a lot of that. 794 00:52:09,584 --> 00:52:13,504 You know, the film crew just became our guests upriver with us. 795 00:52:14,589 --> 00:52:16,841 - Did you drop any acid? - Sure. 796 00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:19,177 Did you drop any acid during filming? 797 00:52:19,260 --> 00:52:20,345 Sure. 798 00:52:21,387 --> 00:52:23,097 At Do Luong bridge? 799 00:52:26,726 --> 00:52:30,104 No, I did something else at Do Luong bridge. I... 800 00:52:31,439 --> 00:52:34,776 I didn't take any acid there. I did something else. 801 00:52:35,610 --> 00:52:38,529 - What did you do? - I was doing speed then. 802 00:52:38,613 --> 00:52:43,785 We were working lots of nights, and I wanted a speedy sort of edge. I... 803 00:52:46,621 --> 00:52:48,831 And marijuana and alcohol... 804 00:52:48,915 --> 00:52:51,334 I mean, we were bad. We were just bad boys. 805 00:52:51,584 --> 00:52:54,796 Sort of crazy, you know. Slightly mad. 806 00:52:55,588 --> 00:52:56,839 The whole thing was mad, you know. 807 00:52:56,923 --> 00:52:59,300 We felt after a while we really weren't there. 808 00:52:59,384 --> 00:53:01,302 It was like we were in a dream or something. 809 00:53:01,970 --> 00:53:03,221 <i>We'd say to Francis,</i> 810 00:53:03,304 --> 00:53:07,267 <i>"I'm not here, Francis. I'm in Montana with Jack Nicholson."</i> 811 00:53:07,350 --> 00:53:09,227 <i>So they'd say, "Where are you today, Freddy?"</i> 812 00:53:09,310 --> 00:53:11,688 <i>I'd be in Waco, I could be in Des Moines...</i> 813 00:53:11,771 --> 00:53:13,481 <i>Wherever I wanted to be.</i> 814 00:53:13,564 --> 00:53:17,277 <i>And you would just go through your day. You weren't in that place.</i> 815 00:53:17,360 --> 00:53:18,945 ...study at the Escoffier School. 816 00:53:19,028 --> 00:53:20,321 <i>That was really crazy, man,</i> 817 00:53:20,405 --> 00:53:23,741 <i>that time in the jungle with me and Marty and the tiger.</i> 818 00:53:23,825 --> 00:53:27,078 <i>Yeah, that was really... That was just insane.</i> 819 00:53:27,453 --> 00:53:31,040 <i>We had this guy there with the tiger... A couple, the trainers.</i> 820 00:53:31,124 --> 00:53:32,917 He had a slight speech impediment. 821 00:53:33,001 --> 00:53:36,337 He had scar tissue, like, all over his face 822 00:53:36,421 --> 00:53:39,173 where he'd had some bouts with his tiger, Gambi. 823 00:53:39,799 --> 00:53:44,012 You had a cat that's done that two or three times, it's no longer worth it. 824 00:53:44,762 --> 00:53:47,432 Because once they put a hole in your leg... 825 00:53:47,515 --> 00:53:50,351 It's usually on the joint because it's usually where they're going for, 826 00:53:50,435 --> 00:53:53,104 and you can't walk for a year. 827 00:53:53,187 --> 00:53:54,272 And you don't wanna do it anymore, 828 00:53:54,355 --> 00:53:57,191 so you usually put the cat out and start over again. 829 00:53:57,275 --> 00:54:01,112 <i>The trainer had, like, a pig on a string, so the tiger would see him.</i> 830 00:54:01,195 --> 00:54:02,405 <i>Then he was gonna pull him back</i> 831 00:54:02,488 --> 00:54:04,615 <i>to make him jump at the right angle or something.</i> 832 00:54:04,699 --> 00:54:06,617 So the guy'd come around and say, 833 00:54:06,701 --> 00:54:10,455 "Gambi's very hungry today, Martin. He's very hungry, Mr. Coppola. 834 00:54:10,538 --> 00:54:12,623 "I'm sure he will do exactly what you want. 835 00:54:12,707 --> 00:54:14,625 "We haven't fed him in a week." 836 00:54:14,709 --> 00:54:16,627 <i>- Oh, shit.</i> - Action. 837 00:54:18,338 --> 00:54:20,923 <i>We'd come out there and Francis'd keep saying, "Get closer."</i> 838 00:54:21,007 --> 00:54:24,635 <i>We're saying, "You get closer, Francis. You get closer."</i> 839 00:54:28,848 --> 00:54:30,224 What is it? 840 00:54:32,477 --> 00:54:34,395 Charlie? VC? 841 00:54:40,693 --> 00:54:41,903 Tiger! 842 00:54:44,030 --> 00:54:45,782 <i>Man, I've never been so frightened in my life,</i> 843 00:54:45,865 --> 00:54:47,742 <i>because it was so fast, man.</i> 844 00:54:47,825 --> 00:54:50,953 Guys were running everywhere, climbing trees. 845 00:54:51,037 --> 00:54:53,498 I gotta remember. Never get out of the boat. 846 00:54:53,581 --> 00:54:54,916 Never get out of the boat! 847 00:54:54,999 --> 00:54:58,878 <i>And to me, that was the essence of the whole film in Vietnam,</i> 848 00:54:58,961 --> 00:55:02,882 <i>where it was the look in that tiger's eyes, the madness,</i> 849 00:55:02,965 --> 00:55:06,427 <i>like it didn't matter what you wanted. There was no reality anymore.</i> 850 00:55:06,511 --> 00:55:09,389 <i>If that tiger wanted you, you were his.</i> 851 00:55:15,937 --> 00:55:18,147 <i>Never get out of the boat.</i> 852 00:55:18,231 --> 00:55:20,191 <i>Absolutely goddamn right.</i> 853 00:55:22,235 --> 00:55:24,695 <i>Unless you were going all the way.</i> 854 00:55:26,447 --> 00:55:30,535 <i>I remember complaining to Francis one day about my confusion</i> 855 00:55:30,618 --> 00:55:33,955 about all that was going down, and I said to him, 856 00:55:34,038 --> 00:55:37,125 "I don't know who this guy is. Who is this Willard?" 857 00:55:37,208 --> 00:55:40,294 And Francis just looked at me square in the eye and he said, 858 00:55:40,378 --> 00:55:43,506 "He's you. Whoever you are. 859 00:55:44,841 --> 00:55:48,928 "Whatever we're filming at the time, you are that character." 860 00:55:53,683 --> 00:55:55,518 <i>Francis said he had a dream a few nights ago</i> 861 00:55:55,601 --> 00:55:58,229 <i>about being on the set of the Saigon hotel room</i> 862 00:55:58,312 --> 00:56:00,940 <i>with Marty and a Green Beret advisor.</i> 863 00:56:01,023 --> 00:56:03,651 <i>In the dream, the Green Beret was telling Francis</i> 864 00:56:03,734 --> 00:56:08,156 <i>that what he was doing with Marty was wrong. It would never be like that.</i> 865 00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,075 <i>The Green Beret said those guys were vain.</i> 866 00:56:11,159 --> 00:56:12,368 <i>The guy would go to the mirror</i> 867 00:56:12,452 --> 00:56:15,538 <i>and admire his beautiful hair and beautiful mouth.</i> 868 00:56:15,621 --> 00:56:19,625 <i>In Francis' dream, he had Marty go to the mirror and look at himself,</i> 869 00:56:19,709 --> 00:56:21,377 <i>admire his mouth.</i> 870 00:56:21,461 --> 00:56:22,920 <i>And when he turned around,</i> 871 00:56:23,004 --> 00:56:27,091 <i>Francis could see that Marty had suddenly turned into Willard.</i> 872 00:56:33,222 --> 00:56:35,766 <i>Francis was going for a moment</i> 873 00:56:35,850 --> 00:56:39,896 <i>where you see Martin Sheen's dark side,</i> 874 00:56:39,979 --> 00:56:42,231 <i>his primeval being or something...</i> 875 00:56:42,315 --> 00:56:46,444 Some part of him that would lead you to understand 876 00:56:46,527 --> 00:56:49,280 how this person could commit an assassination. 877 00:56:49,697 --> 00:56:53,493 At the time of doing that scene, I was talking in terms of 878 00:56:53,576 --> 00:56:58,122 showing the different levels of good and evil in yourself. 879 00:56:58,206 --> 00:57:02,084 And I imagined that this guy did things that nobody had ever seen, 880 00:57:02,168 --> 00:57:04,504 or he'd never talk to anyone, must still be in him. 881 00:57:04,587 --> 00:57:08,758 And he must have that Kurtzian other side in him. 882 00:57:09,342 --> 00:57:11,636 Fellows, get ready as soon as you can, please! 883 00:57:11,719 --> 00:57:13,346 Let's go. Got to reload. 884 00:57:13,429 --> 00:57:14,472 Give us a little boost here! 885 00:57:14,555 --> 00:57:16,766 Okay, fellows, here we go. 886 00:57:20,937 --> 00:57:25,191 <i>They set up this hotel room, and Marty decided to have a few drinks.</i> 887 00:57:26,067 --> 00:57:27,735 <i>He wasn't drinking at all at the time,</i> 888 00:57:27,818 --> 00:57:31,572 <i>and they rolled the cameras without telling him what to do.</i> 889 00:57:34,909 --> 00:57:37,495 Fellows, watch your reflections in the mirror. Here we go. 890 00:57:37,578 --> 00:57:38,829 Yeah, places, everybody. 891 00:57:38,913 --> 00:57:41,415 Five-B, take three, camera A. 892 00:57:41,666 --> 00:57:42,875 Action! 893 00:57:45,336 --> 00:57:50,508 <i>That opening sequence was shot on my 36th birthday, August 3rd,</i> 894 00:57:50,591 --> 00:57:53,761 <i>and I was so drunk, I couldn't stand up, frankly.</i> 895 00:57:54,554 --> 00:57:57,348 Marty, go look at yourself in the mirror. 896 00:57:59,767 --> 00:58:01,185 I want you to look at how beautiful you are. 897 00:58:01,269 --> 00:58:05,189 I want you to look at your mouth, your mouth and your hair. 898 00:58:09,569 --> 00:58:11,779 You look like a movie star. 899 00:58:15,575 --> 00:58:17,785 Now frighten yourself, Marty. 900 00:58:19,453 --> 00:58:22,248 Show yourself the part that's an animal. 901 00:58:34,552 --> 00:58:38,347 <i>I was so intoxicated, I didn't realize how close to the mirror I was.</i> 902 00:58:38,431 --> 00:58:39,724 <i>So when I struck it,</i> 903 00:58:39,807 --> 00:58:44,103 <i>I ended up catching my thumb in the mirror and split it open a bit.</i> 904 00:58:46,314 --> 00:58:47,523 Okay, cut. 905 00:58:49,358 --> 00:58:50,651 <i>Do we have a doctor?</i> 906 00:58:51,485 --> 00:58:54,113 Francis tried to stop it, and he called for a doctor. 907 00:58:54,196 --> 00:58:58,826 There was a nurse standing by, and I said, "No, let it go. 908 00:58:59,660 --> 00:59:02,079 "I want to have this out right here and now." 909 00:59:02,163 --> 00:59:04,457 It had to do with facing my worst enemy, myself. 910 00:59:06,000 --> 00:59:10,171 <i>I was in a chaotic, spiritual state inside.</i> 911 00:59:15,509 --> 00:59:17,053 Talk to me. 912 00:59:22,475 --> 00:59:25,478 Why did you come back? Why did you come back? 913 00:59:32,985 --> 00:59:35,196 <i>I fought him like a tiger.</i> 914 00:59:36,322 --> 00:59:40,201 <i>It was real hard for me to reveal myself.</i> 915 00:59:41,619 --> 00:59:43,496 You fucker! 916 00:59:45,122 --> 00:59:46,666 Think about it. 917 00:59:48,209 --> 00:59:49,627 Your wife. 918 00:59:52,046 --> 00:59:54,715 - Your home. - I... 919 00:59:54,799 --> 00:59:56,133 Your car. 920 01:00:00,221 --> 01:00:01,347 My... 921 01:00:03,391 --> 01:00:06,560 My heart is broken! 922 01:00:09,772 --> 01:00:11,899 God damn it! 923 01:00:13,818 --> 01:00:15,653 <i>The room had been charged with the possibility</i> 924 01:00:15,736 --> 01:00:19,156 <i>that Marty might lunge at the camera or attack Francis.</i> 925 01:00:19,240 --> 01:00:23,369 <i>There was an electricity in the room. Anything could happen.</i> 926 01:00:23,452 --> 01:00:26,664 <i>They were inside somebody, in his personal territory,</i> 927 01:00:26,747 --> 01:00:29,792 <i>with a man alone in his most private moment.</i> 928 01:00:38,259 --> 01:00:42,596 I pretended I couldn't remember a lot of the things I'd done that night. 929 01:00:42,680 --> 01:00:44,765 Actually, I remembered it all. 930 01:00:45,516 --> 01:00:47,435 Dave, give me a hand, would you? 931 01:00:48,227 --> 01:00:50,771 Come on, pal, let's take a shower. 932 01:00:52,565 --> 01:00:57,278 Marty is extremely generous, big-hearted man. 933 01:00:58,779 --> 01:01:01,073 He's filled with a lot of love, 934 01:01:01,615 --> 01:01:04,618 and... 935 01:01:05,619 --> 01:01:07,371 Much unlike Willard. 936 01:01:09,749 --> 01:01:13,294 <i>And so, when you ask Marty</i> 937 01:01:14,170 --> 01:01:17,423 <i>to examine the darker nature of this character,</i> 938 01:01:18,799 --> 01:01:21,469 <i>it meant closing himself down a lot</i> 939 01:01:21,969 --> 01:01:25,431 <i>and becoming very inward,</i> 940 01:01:25,514 --> 01:01:28,142 <i>in order to find the killer</i> 941 01:01:28,225 --> 01:01:31,979 <i>who could carry out the task and terminate Kurtz.</i> 942 01:01:33,272 --> 01:01:34,899 <i>I think it was...</i> 943 01:01:34,982 --> 01:01:38,194 <i>Willard was definitely responsible</i> 944 01:01:38,277 --> 01:01:41,030 <i>for Marty's own breakdown.</i> 945 01:01:47,536 --> 01:01:49,955 <i>March 1, 1977.</i> 946 01:01:50,289 --> 01:01:51,916 <i>Last night at 2:00 in the morning,</i> 947 01:01:51,999 --> 01:01:54,835 <i>Marty Sheen experienced severe chest pains.</i> 948 01:01:55,336 --> 01:01:58,172 <i>At daybreak, he crawled out of his room and down to the local highway,</i> 949 01:01:58,255 --> 01:02:01,091 <i>where he was picked up by a public bus.</i> 950 01:02:01,175 --> 01:02:02,760 <i>After being taken to the production office,</i> 951 01:02:02,843 --> 01:02:05,304 <i>he was rushed to the hospital.</i> 952 01:02:05,387 --> 01:02:09,016 <i>Marty, it turned out, had suffered a serious heart attack.</i> 953 01:02:09,099 --> 01:02:13,062 <i>He received last rites from a priest who did not speak English.</i> 954 01:02:15,314 --> 01:02:19,944 I really had a very close call and I realized... 955 01:02:20,027 --> 01:02:22,404 It's nothing that I can put into words. 956 01:02:22,488 --> 01:02:25,616 I just knew that if I wanted to live, it was my choice. 957 01:02:25,699 --> 01:02:27,368 If I wanted to die, that was my choice, too. 958 01:02:27,910 --> 01:02:28,953 <i>There wasn't even any fear.</i> 959 01:02:29,036 --> 01:02:33,249 <i>The fear only came when I realized later how close I came to the end.</i> 960 01:02:33,332 --> 01:02:35,376 <i>That's when I got scared.</i> 961 01:02:35,960 --> 01:02:40,214 <i>I remember the phone ringing, and my secretary said,</i> 962 01:02:40,923 --> 01:02:46,887 "Marty's had a heart attack, and Francis doesn't want to admit it." 963 01:02:47,346 --> 01:02:50,140 <i>Dave Salvin let Melissa tell Barry Hirsch</i> 964 01:02:50,224 --> 01:02:53,686 <i>that Marty had a heart attack! What the fuck is that?</i> 965 01:02:54,728 --> 01:02:56,313 <i>What the fuck is that?</i> 966 01:02:56,397 --> 01:02:59,692 <i>You know that it's gonna be all over Hollywood in a half an hour?</i> 967 01:02:59,775 --> 01:03:02,862 <i>If Marty is so seriously stricken,</i> 968 01:03:02,945 --> 01:03:05,030 <i>then he must go back.</i> 969 01:03:05,114 --> 01:03:07,408 <i>Of course he will go back, and we'll eat it,</i> 970 01:03:07,491 --> 01:03:10,411 <i>but when I talked to the doctor, they didn't know.</i> 971 01:03:10,494 --> 01:03:11,745 <i>Marty's a young man.</i> 972 01:03:11,829 --> 01:03:15,666 <i>He probably would be able to be up and about in three weeks.</i> 973 01:03:17,209 --> 01:03:19,420 <i>I said, "Could he do non-strenuous work</i> 974 01:03:19,503 --> 01:03:22,006 <i>"such as just close-ups, sitting and acting?"</i> 975 01:03:22,089 --> 01:03:23,340 <i>He said, "Possibly, yes."</i> 976 01:03:23,424 --> 01:03:25,301 <i>That's all I need to hear from the doctor.</i> 977 01:03:25,384 --> 01:03:29,513 <i>So what's going on in fucking trade winds is fucking gossip.</i> 978 01:03:29,597 --> 01:03:30,848 <i>Gossip.</i> 979 01:03:31,348 --> 01:03:32,892 <i>That gossip can finish me off.</i> 980 01:03:32,975 --> 01:03:35,561 <i>If UA hears that it's eight weeks,</i> 981 01:03:35,644 --> 01:03:37,855 <i>UA with a $27 million negative</i> 982 01:03:37,938 --> 01:03:40,524 <i>is gonna force me to complete it with what I've got,</i> 983 01:03:40,608 --> 01:03:43,152 <i>- and I don't have the movie yet. - Right.</i> 984 01:03:43,235 --> 01:03:44,361 <i>All right, now, you understand exactly?</i> 985 01:03:44,445 --> 01:03:45,487 <i>Yes.</i> 986 01:03:45,571 --> 01:03:48,866 <i>If Marty dies, I wanna hear that everything's okay,</i> 987 01:03:48,949 --> 01:03:50,910 <i>until I say, "Marty is dead."</i> 988 01:03:50,993 --> 01:03:51,994 <i>- You got it? - Right.</i> 989 01:03:52,077 --> 01:03:55,039 <i>If it's not done, man, ship the whole office out of here.</i> 990 01:03:55,122 --> 01:03:56,540 <i>- You know what I'm saying? - Yes.</i> 991 01:03:56,624 --> 01:03:58,208 <i>Okay, I'm really scared, guys.</i> 992 01:03:58,292 --> 01:04:00,794 <i>The first time I've been scared on this movie.</i> 993 01:04:01,629 --> 01:04:06,216 Whenever Francis gets in trouble on a picture, and not sure... 994 01:04:06,300 --> 01:04:09,303 The thing is to keep going, which I respect and admire. 995 01:04:09,386 --> 01:04:11,180 You gotta keep moving forward. 996 01:04:11,263 --> 01:04:12,473 <i>'Cause, I mean, of course,</i> 997 01:04:12,556 --> 01:04:15,225 <i>the guy had mortgaged his home and everything else</i> 998 01:04:15,309 --> 01:04:17,603 <i>to be able to make this movie.</i> 999 01:04:20,272 --> 01:04:22,441 <i>We shot masters of scenes.</i> 1000 01:04:23,192 --> 01:04:26,487 <i>A lot of that material we shot with a double over Marty's shoulder.</i> 1001 01:04:26,570 --> 01:04:30,366 <i>Then we went back when he came back and shot the close-ups.</i> 1002 01:04:31,367 --> 01:04:33,994 So we had to find work for the shooting unit 1003 01:04:34,078 --> 01:04:36,872 for as long as it was gonna take to get Marty back. 1004 01:04:37,331 --> 01:04:38,582 <i>Okay...</i> 1005 01:04:38,666 --> 01:04:41,502 <i>I'll shoot anything. Tell me something I can shoot.</i> 1006 01:04:41,585 --> 01:04:44,046 <i>We're out of little pickups to shoot.</i> 1007 01:04:44,129 --> 01:04:45,756 <i>I'll shoot the transition to medevac.</i> 1008 01:04:45,839 --> 01:04:48,801 <i>Or I'll do a take of this. I'll shoot anything.</i> 1009 01:04:49,843 --> 01:04:51,720 <i>Give me a break. What did I accomplish today?</i> 1010 01:04:51,804 --> 01:04:53,847 <i>You found out, number one,</i> 1011 01:04:53,931 --> 01:04:55,265 <i>that we're going to have a tremendous problem</i> 1012 01:04:55,349 --> 01:04:56,600 <i>without Marty with these scenes.</i> 1013 01:04:56,684 --> 01:04:57,935 <i>We knew we were gonna have to</i> 1014 01:04:58,018 --> 01:05:00,437 <i>at least open one major scene without Marty.</i> 1015 01:05:00,521 --> 01:05:01,522 <i>I knew that a lot.</i> 1016 01:05:01,605 --> 01:05:04,274 <i>I told you we could get through three weeks or four weeks maybe,</i> 1017 01:05:04,358 --> 01:05:06,652 <i>but after that, we were in trouble. We both knew it.</i> 1018 01:05:06,735 --> 01:05:09,905 <i>All I'm saying is, from my point of view, I'd like to do something.</i> 1019 01:05:09,989 --> 01:05:14,702 <i>I feel like I'm this Peck's Bad Boy who's, like, being unreasonable.</i> 1020 01:05:16,870 --> 01:05:18,330 Can I have a club soda? 1021 01:05:18,414 --> 01:05:20,582 - Club soda department? - Yeah. 1022 01:05:31,677 --> 01:05:34,054 <i>Who knows what Francis had put together?</i> 1023 01:05:34,138 --> 01:05:36,974 <i>And they brought me back to put the script back together,</i> 1024 01:05:37,057 --> 01:05:40,394 and everybody said, "Thank God! He's returned to reason! 1025 01:05:40,477 --> 01:05:43,897 "Thank God! This will be all right now! This is a new day! 1026 01:05:43,981 --> 01:05:46,191 "This thing will finally be released." 1027 01:05:46,275 --> 01:05:49,987 They said, "Go in there and tell him that he's been crazy." 1028 01:05:50,070 --> 01:05:51,488 And all this kind of stuff. 1029 01:05:51,572 --> 01:05:56,785 I felt like von Rundstedt going to see Hitler in 1944, 1030 01:05:56,869 --> 01:05:58,120 and I was gonna be telling him 1031 01:05:58,203 --> 01:05:59,788 there was no more gasoline on the eastern front, 1032 01:05:59,872 --> 01:06:02,374 and the whole thing was going to fold. 1033 01:06:02,458 --> 01:06:04,960 And I came out an hour-and-a-half later, 1034 01:06:05,044 --> 01:06:08,088 and he had convinced me that this was the first film 1035 01:06:08,172 --> 01:06:10,841 that would win a Nobel Prize, you know. 1036 01:06:10,924 --> 01:06:13,052 And so I came out of the room like von Rundstedt, 1037 01:06:13,135 --> 01:06:16,180 "We can win! 1038 01:06:16,263 --> 01:06:18,307 "We don't need gasoline!" 1039 01:06:18,390 --> 01:06:22,144 He had completely turned me around. I would have done anything. 1040 01:06:25,606 --> 01:06:27,858 <i>April 19th, 1977.</i> 1041 01:06:28,609 --> 01:06:30,903 <i>This is Marty's first day back on the set.</i> 1042 01:06:30,986 --> 01:06:32,946 <i>He arrived about an hour ago.</i> 1043 01:06:33,030 --> 01:06:34,156 <i>He looks tan and terrific,</i> 1044 01:06:34,239 --> 01:06:36,742 <i>just like he came back from Palm Beach.</i> 1045 01:06:36,825 --> 01:06:40,204 <i>Francis put his ear on Marty's chest to check him out.</i> 1046 01:06:40,287 --> 01:06:42,414 <i>He said he looked too good.</i> 1047 01:07:00,682 --> 01:07:02,726 <i>Part of me was afraid of what I would find</i> 1048 01:07:02,810 --> 01:07:05,354 <i>and what I would do when I got there.</i> 1049 01:07:07,731 --> 01:07:10,484 <i>I knew the risks,</i> 1050 01:07:10,567 --> 01:07:12,319 <i>or imagined I knew.</i> 1051 01:07:14,696 --> 01:07:19,618 <i>But the thing I felt the most, much stronger than fear,</i> 1052 01:07:20,410 --> 01:07:22,704 <i>was the desire to confront him.</i> 1053 01:07:35,300 --> 01:07:38,929 <i>What I have to arrive at in my mind is Willard's state of mind</i> 1054 01:07:39,012 --> 01:07:42,224 <i>when he arrives at the compound.</i> 1055 01:07:42,307 --> 01:07:45,269 <i>He could either arrive incredibly angry</i> 1056 01:07:45,352 --> 01:07:48,939 <i>or like a newborn baby.</i> 1057 01:07:49,022 --> 01:07:52,359 <i>And I think what he should find at the end is death.</i> 1058 01:07:52,693 --> 01:07:56,864 <i>That at the end of this whole thing,</i> 1059 01:07:56,947 --> 01:07:59,199 <i>there is a frightening...</i> 1060 01:08:01,660 --> 01:08:04,788 <i>A frightening place that just smells of death.</i> 1061 01:08:08,000 --> 01:08:09,042 <i>In the script,</i> 1062 01:08:09,126 --> 01:08:13,297 <i>Kurtz has trained a tribe of local Montagnard Indians as his private army.</i> 1063 01:08:13,380 --> 01:08:15,924 <i>Rather than dress up Filipino extras everyday,</i> 1064 01:08:16,008 --> 01:08:18,177 <i>Francis has recruited a tribe of Ifugao Indians</i> 1065 01:08:18,260 --> 01:08:20,470 <i>from the mountains to the north.</i> 1066 01:08:20,554 --> 01:08:22,890 <i>There is a rumor on the set that, until recently,</i> 1067 01:08:22,973 --> 01:08:25,893 <i>the Ifugao were practicing headhunters.</i> 1068 01:08:27,019 --> 01:08:29,146 <i>Last Saturday, they had a feast.</i> 1069 01:08:29,229 --> 01:08:33,108 <i>The old men of the tribe sat in the priest's house and chanted.</i> 1070 01:08:33,192 --> 01:08:34,526 <i>I wanted to film the ceremony,</i> 1071 01:08:34,610 --> 01:08:37,613 <i>so their mayor asked permission for me to shoot.</i> 1072 01:08:37,696 --> 01:08:42,326 <i>I was told if I entered, I could not leave during the first set of chants.</i> 1073 01:08:42,409 --> 01:08:47,539 I was interested in documenting, photographing the actual ritual 1074 01:08:47,623 --> 01:08:49,750 that they performed. 1075 01:08:52,002 --> 01:08:55,339 <i>They began at night, inside their hut up on stilts,</i> 1076 01:08:55,422 --> 01:08:59,218 <i>and they drank a lot of rice wine and chanted,</i> 1077 01:08:59,301 --> 01:09:02,471 <i>and they told a long story in their own language.</i> 1078 01:09:05,724 --> 01:09:07,184 <i>This went on during the night.</i> 1079 01:09:07,267 --> 01:09:12,356 <i>The next morning, they began to kill some chickens and look at their bile</i> 1080 01:09:12,439 --> 01:09:14,942 <i>and tell the fortune of the tribe.</i> 1081 01:09:15,025 --> 01:09:18,737 <i>And then they killed some pigs in a very sacrificial way.</i> 1082 01:09:27,996 --> 01:09:29,039 <i>By this time,</i> 1083 01:09:29,122 --> 01:09:31,541 <i>I felt that there was something very profound and moving</i> 1084 01:09:31,625 --> 01:09:32,709 about this experience, 1085 01:09:32,793 --> 01:09:35,712 so I ran back to the house to get Francis, 1086 01:09:35,796 --> 01:09:37,297 and I said, "You know, you've got to see this, 1087 01:09:37,381 --> 01:09:40,008 "because they're going to kill a caribou." 1088 01:09:40,092 --> 01:09:41,927 He was writing and didn't really wanna come, 1089 01:09:42,010 --> 01:09:44,596 but I really encouraged him to come back to the location. 1090 01:09:44,680 --> 01:09:47,683 <i>And we got back there just maybe 10 minutes</i> 1091 01:09:47,766 --> 01:09:51,395 <i>before they killed this caribou in this ritual way.</i> 1092 01:09:51,478 --> 01:09:53,730 <i>The caribou was standing there,</i> 1093 01:09:53,814 --> 01:09:56,066 <i>and they just seemed to come out from nowhere</i> 1094 01:09:56,149 --> 01:10:00,362 <i>and just kill it very quickly with these big machetes,</i> 1095 01:10:00,445 --> 01:10:02,322 <i>and it fell to the ground.</i> 1096 01:10:04,157 --> 01:10:07,077 <i>There was something very beautiful and strong and profound</i> 1097 01:10:07,160 --> 01:10:08,662 <i>about these people who killed this animal,</i> 1098 01:10:08,745 --> 01:10:13,208 <i>and then they all ate it at a festival,</i> 1099 01:10:13,292 --> 01:10:15,168 <i>kind of like Thanksgiving.</i> 1100 01:10:24,594 --> 01:10:26,763 <i>As Francis and I were getting ready to leave,</i> 1101 01:10:26,847 --> 01:10:28,765 <i>the mayor asked if we would do the priest</i> 1102 01:10:28,849 --> 01:10:31,268 <i>the honor of accepting the best part of the caribou</i> 1103 01:10:31,351 --> 01:10:34,313 <i>that is usually reserved for him, the heart.</i> 1104 01:10:34,813 --> 01:10:36,231 <i>We thanked him.</i> 1105 01:10:36,315 --> 01:10:37,357 <i>Through a translator,</i> 1106 01:10:37,441 --> 01:10:40,068 <i>he said that he would like his picture taken with Francis.</i> 1107 01:10:40,152 --> 01:10:41,278 <i>I took a photograph</i> 1108 01:10:41,361 --> 01:10:44,948 <i>of the two priests and Francis standing there together.</i> 1109 01:10:47,534 --> 01:10:53,332 <i>It was enough like people in war who get set up like little tribal chieftains</i> 1110 01:10:53,415 --> 01:10:57,711 <i>to stimulate the imagination along those lines.</i> 1111 01:10:58,879 --> 01:11:04,134 A film director is kind of one of the last truly dictatorial posts left 1112 01:11:04,801 --> 01:11:07,137 in a world getting more and more democratic. 1113 01:11:07,220 --> 01:11:10,349 So that, plus being 1114 01:11:10,432 --> 01:11:13,518 in a distant, Oriental country, 1115 01:11:15,062 --> 01:11:18,148 the fact that pretty much it was my own money 1116 01:11:18,231 --> 01:11:22,402 <i>and that I was making it on the crest of the acclaim of the</i> Godfather <i>films,</i> 1117 01:11:22,486 --> 01:11:24,154 <i>you know, I was wealthy,</i> 1118 01:11:24,237 --> 01:11:28,408 <i>did contribute to a state of mind that was like Kurtz.</i> 1119 01:11:37,000 --> 01:11:39,044 What did they tell you? 1120 01:11:41,421 --> 01:11:42,964 They told me 1121 01:11:43,924 --> 01:11:45,384 that you had gone 1122 01:11:46,593 --> 01:11:48,220 totally insane, 1123 01:11:50,889 --> 01:11:55,769 and that your methods were 1124 01:11:56,311 --> 01:11:57,396 unsound. 1125 01:12:01,108 --> 01:12:03,151 Are my methods unsound? 1126 01:12:09,074 --> 01:12:15,288 I don't see any method at all, sir. 1127 01:12:22,504 --> 01:12:23,547 <i>Thirty-eight takes</i> 1128 01:12:23,630 --> 01:12:26,716 <i>and Francis said the scene was never the way he wanted it.</i> 1129 01:12:26,800 --> 01:12:28,969 <i>The people who were playing the severed heads</i> 1130 01:12:29,052 --> 01:12:31,012 <i>sat in their boxes buried in the ground</i> 1131 01:12:31,096 --> 01:12:33,640 <i>from 8:00 in the morning till 6:00 at night.</i> 1132 01:12:33,723 --> 01:12:37,394 <i>All day they were there in the hot sun with smoke blowing on them.</i> 1133 01:12:37,477 --> 01:12:40,647 <i>Between takes, they were covered with umbrellas.</i> 1134 01:13:32,199 --> 01:13:35,452 It's nice because this is the moment when Chief dies, 1135 01:13:35,535 --> 01:13:38,705 that he looks up and sees this harlequin figure 1136 01:13:38,788 --> 01:13:40,790 waving all the people away. 1137 01:13:40,874 --> 01:13:44,377 He sees, essentially, Dennis Hopper. Know what I mean? 1138 01:13:45,128 --> 01:13:48,882 Zap them with your siren, man. Zap them with your siren. 1139 01:13:50,717 --> 01:13:53,220 <i>I have Dennis Hopper playing a spaced-out photojournalist</i> 1140 01:13:53,303 --> 01:13:57,307 <i>with 12 cameras who's here because he's gonna get the truth,</i> 1141 01:13:57,390 --> 01:14:00,435 <i>and it's all, "Man!" You know?</i> 1142 01:14:00,519 --> 01:14:02,896 <i>And he's a wonderful apparition.</i> 1143 01:14:03,813 --> 01:14:07,734 I'm an American! Yeah! An American civilian. Hi, Yanks. 1144 01:14:08,401 --> 01:14:09,986 Hi, American. 1145 01:14:10,070 --> 01:14:12,656 <i>I didn't know till two weeks before I came in</i> 1146 01:14:12,739 --> 01:14:14,157 <i>I was even going to be in the picture,</i> 1147 01:14:14,241 --> 01:14:20,288 much less play the photojournalist guy in tatters and rags, taking photographs, 1148 01:14:20,372 --> 01:14:24,584 trying to explain what this was all about and how it's blowing his mind away. 1149 01:14:24,751 --> 01:14:28,088 I was not in the greatest of shape, you know, 1150 01:14:28,171 --> 01:14:31,049 as far as, like, my career was concerned, 1151 01:14:31,132 --> 01:14:35,762 and it was delightful to hear that I was gonna go do anything anywhere. 1152 01:14:37,347 --> 01:14:40,308 And I really appreciate Francis' writing, 1153 01:14:41,184 --> 01:14:43,562 even though he does drop it on you sometimes, 1154 01:14:43,645 --> 01:14:46,648 and it does take you sometimes, an idiot like me, a whole day to learn it. 1155 01:14:47,065 --> 01:14:48,900 Why didn't you say that to him in the scene? 1156 01:14:48,984 --> 01:14:50,860 - Who? - Something clever like that. 1157 01:14:50,944 --> 01:14:53,196 When he says, "Who are you?" Why didn't you say, "Who are you?" 1158 01:14:53,280 --> 01:14:57,701 - Because I haven't learned my lines yet. - I know. You've had them for five days! 1159 01:14:57,784 --> 01:15:00,954 - The other thing I'd like to say is that... - Those glasses... 1160 01:15:01,037 --> 01:15:03,665 These glasses, I can't see anything through them. 1161 01:15:03,748 --> 01:15:07,752 But, like, every crack represents a life I've saved. 1162 01:15:09,004 --> 01:15:12,424 You know what I mean? They represent a life I've saved. 1163 01:15:12,507 --> 01:15:14,134 Say all that in the scene. 1164 01:15:14,217 --> 01:15:19,723 I do, but you see, the director says, "You don't know your lines." 1165 01:15:19,806 --> 01:15:21,474 Well, if you know your lines, 1166 01:15:21,558 --> 01:15:23,476 then you can forget them. You can know, more or less... 1167 01:15:23,560 --> 01:15:27,355 Oh, I see, but that's what I'm trying to do. 1168 01:15:27,439 --> 01:15:28,982 Forget those lines. 1169 01:15:29,065 --> 01:15:31,443 No, but it's not fair to forget them if you never knew them. 1170 01:15:32,527 --> 01:15:35,989 I'm not gonna help you. You're gonna help him, man. 1171 01:15:36,740 --> 01:15:38,408 You're gonna help him. 1172 01:15:38,491 --> 01:15:40,994 I mean, what are they gonna say, man, when he's gone, huh? 1173 01:15:41,077 --> 01:15:45,624 'Cause he dies when it dies, man. When it dies, he dies. 1174 01:15:45,707 --> 01:15:47,751 What are they gonna say about him? What are they gonna say? 1175 01:15:47,834 --> 01:15:51,546 "He was a kind man. He was a wise man. 1176 01:15:51,630 --> 01:15:55,258 "He had plans. He had wisdom." Bullshit, man! 1177 01:15:55,342 --> 01:15:59,721 Am I gonna be the one that's gonna set them straight? Look at me. Wrong! 1178 01:16:03,433 --> 01:16:04,517 You. 1179 01:16:30,919 --> 01:16:32,212 <i>For years, Francis has dreamed</i> 1180 01:16:32,295 --> 01:16:34,339 <i>of a group of poets, filmmakers and writers</i> 1181 01:16:34,422 --> 01:16:37,634 <i>who would come together to form American Zoetrope.</i> 1182 01:16:37,717 --> 01:16:41,554 <i>This morning I realized that this was it, right here in the heart of the jungle.</i> 1183 01:16:43,181 --> 01:16:47,435 <i>When you stop looking for something, you see it right in front of you.</i> 1184 01:16:54,317 --> 01:16:55,985 <i>I'm not disclosing any trade secrets,</i> 1185 01:16:56,069 --> 01:16:57,195 <i>but I want you to understand now</i> 1186 01:16:57,278 --> 01:17:01,324 <i>that Mr. Kurtz had taken a high seat amongst the devils of the land.</i> 1187 01:17:01,408 --> 01:17:03,118 <i>I mean, literally.</i> 1188 01:17:05,787 --> 01:17:09,582 <i>A group of natives appeared bearing a stretcher.</i> 1189 01:17:10,458 --> 01:17:13,586 <i>I looked down on the long, gaunt figure of Kurtz,</i> 1190 01:17:15,422 --> 01:17:17,549 <i>the hollow cage of his ribs,</i> 1191 01:17:19,008 --> 01:17:23,138 <i>a bald skeleton head, like an ivory ball.</i> 1192 01:17:27,684 --> 01:17:30,770 What did you do with Marlon Brando when he arrived? 1193 01:17:30,854 --> 01:17:34,566 <i>Well, he was already heavy when I'd hired him,</i> 1194 01:17:35,108 --> 01:17:37,527 <i>and he promised me that he was gonna get in shape.</i> 1195 01:17:37,610 --> 01:17:42,741 And I imagined if he were heavy, I could use that. 1196 01:17:43,241 --> 01:17:46,411 But he was so fat, he was very, very shy about it. 1197 01:17:46,494 --> 01:17:49,330 <i>Immediately when I saw him, I said, "Well, I'll write this as a man</i> 1198 01:17:49,414 --> 01:17:54,127 <i>"who really, you know, had indulged every aspect of himself".</i> 1199 01:17:54,210 --> 01:17:59,340 So he was fat, and he had two or three tribal girls with him 1200 01:17:59,424 --> 01:18:01,885 and was eating mangoes and kind of go the other way. 1201 01:18:01,968 --> 01:18:04,471 And he was very, very adamant 1202 01:18:04,554 --> 01:18:06,431 that he didn't wanna portray himself that way. 1203 01:18:06,890 --> 01:18:11,144 <i>I mean, clearly, he had just, kind of, left me in a tough spot.</i> 1204 01:18:11,227 --> 01:18:13,813 <i>The clock was ticking on this deal he had.</i> 1205 01:18:13,897 --> 01:18:16,983 <i>We had to finish him within three weeks,</i> 1206 01:18:17,066 --> 01:18:19,986 <i>or we'd go into a very expensive overage.</i> 1207 01:18:20,069 --> 01:18:23,907 <i>So the whole company was sitting up on the set, around the camera,</i> 1208 01:18:23,990 --> 01:18:26,409 <i>the crew all poised to go and shoot,</i> 1209 01:18:26,493 --> 01:18:30,538 <i>and Francis and Marlon would be talking about the character.</i> 1210 01:18:30,622 --> 01:18:32,707 <i>And whole days would go by.</i> 1211 01:18:33,333 --> 01:18:36,961 And this is at Marlon's urging, 1212 01:18:37,045 --> 01:18:39,506 and yet, he's getting paid for it. 1213 01:18:40,632 --> 01:18:43,134 <i>One of the things Francis said to Marlon in the beginning,</i> 1214 01:18:43,218 --> 01:18:46,304 <i>"Read</i> Heart of Darkness. <i>This is what we're going for."</i> 1215 01:18:46,387 --> 01:18:49,265 And Marlon really worked hours with Francis, 1216 01:18:49,349 --> 01:18:50,683 trying to develop the dialogue 1217 01:18:50,767 --> 01:18:54,938 and develop what it was that he said in these circumstances. 1218 01:18:55,021 --> 01:18:58,233 And, of course, after Francis had some dialogs with him, 1219 01:18:58,316 --> 01:19:03,154 he realized that Marlon had never read <i>Heart of Darkness,</i> 1220 01:19:03,696 --> 01:19:06,533 <i>and it was a complete shock.</i> 1221 01:19:07,659 --> 01:19:09,994 <i>Marlon's basic notes, as I understood them,</i> 1222 01:19:10,078 --> 01:19:13,206 <i>as I just glanced at them, were all motivation things.</i> 1223 01:19:13,289 --> 01:19:18,336 <i>In other words, it's like getting in to saying, "Why is he going on a boat?"</i> 1224 01:19:18,419 --> 01:19:19,838 <i>And I can't answer them,</i> 1225 01:19:19,921 --> 01:19:24,008 <i>because it's too late for me to change the structure.</i> 1226 01:19:24,092 --> 01:19:28,221 <i>So what I really need from him are the facts about who he is.</i> 1227 01:19:28,304 --> 01:19:30,473 <i>And in a way, I don't even care.</i> 1228 01:19:30,557 --> 01:19:35,854 <i>Is he a fat guy who's got his shirt off and starting to wear necklaces?</i> 1229 01:19:35,937 --> 01:19:40,191 <i>Or is he bulging, is his uniform bulging at the buttons?</i> 1230 01:19:40,275 --> 01:19:42,527 But I know that this guy's a fucking traitor... 1231 01:19:42,610 --> 01:19:43,778 You don't let me talk to you. 1232 01:19:43,862 --> 01:19:46,114 <i>See, my problem is not only I have to come up with a scene,</i> 1233 01:19:46,197 --> 01:19:49,492 <i>but it's gotta have the right shape to fit in the jigsaw puzzle.</i> 1234 01:19:49,576 --> 01:19:51,119 <i>Maybe I ought to get Dennis Hopper in this scene,</i> 1235 01:19:51,202 --> 01:19:52,954 <i>so it's just not with two characters.</i> 1236 01:19:53,037 --> 01:19:55,456 - You know. - No, I don't know, Francis. 1237 01:19:55,540 --> 01:19:57,375 You know, I don't. Nobody's told me. 1238 01:19:57,458 --> 01:19:58,835 <i>I mean, I have been afraid</i> 1239 01:19:58,918 --> 01:20:00,837 <i>to even put Dennis Hopper and Marlon together</i> 1240 01:20:00,920 --> 01:20:04,215 <i>'cause, Christ, I haven't figured out what Marty's going to do with Marlon.</i> 1241 01:20:04,299 --> 01:20:06,593 <i>What happens if I got crazy Dennis Hopper in there?</i> 1242 01:20:06,676 --> 01:20:08,177 - I know nothing. - I'll tell you. 1243 01:20:08,261 --> 01:20:11,264 - But you don't let me tell you. - Oh, I see. 1244 01:20:13,308 --> 01:20:15,184 Kurtz found out that he was an assassin 1245 01:20:15,268 --> 01:20:17,312 who was sent to kill him. 1246 01:20:17,395 --> 01:20:19,522 I know that. I have that information. 1247 01:20:19,606 --> 01:20:21,733 - Yeah. - Okay, that's what I'm saying. 1248 01:20:21,816 --> 01:20:23,067 Okay, just do what I ask. 1249 01:20:23,151 --> 01:20:26,571 When I say you just explain the poem and the reason you're explaining is... 1250 01:20:26,654 --> 01:20:27,947 But, you see, I need to know reasons. 1251 01:20:28,031 --> 01:20:29,032 I'm telling you the reason. 1252 01:20:29,115 --> 01:20:31,868 I can't ever talk more than a fucking sentence! 1253 01:20:31,951 --> 01:20:34,829 The reason that you're explaining the poem to him 1254 01:20:34,913 --> 01:20:37,165 is because you want to indicate to this guy 1255 01:20:37,248 --> 01:20:41,044 that he does not understand Kurtz, that Kurtz is a strange man. 1256 01:20:41,127 --> 01:20:45,548 What you're trying to express is that he's, kind of, in the twilight zone, 1257 01:20:45,632 --> 01:20:48,343 that his twilight zone is our twilight zone. 1258 01:20:48,426 --> 01:20:50,762 It's America's twilight zone. 1259 01:20:50,845 --> 01:20:53,181 So that he will not judge him. 1260 01:20:53,264 --> 01:20:56,809 So that he will accept him as a great man and help him. 1261 01:21:01,147 --> 01:21:02,649 Okay, man. 1262 01:21:03,149 --> 01:21:04,901 There's no good, right, wrong, bad. 1263 01:21:04,984 --> 01:21:06,444 One through nine and back to one. 1264 01:21:06,527 --> 01:21:08,446 No fractions, no maybes, no supposes. 1265 01:21:08,529 --> 01:21:09,614 You can't travel in space. 1266 01:21:09,697 --> 01:21:13,910 You can't go out into space, you know, without like... With fractions. 1267 01:21:13,993 --> 01:21:15,870 What are you gonna land on? One-quarter? Three-eighths? 1268 01:21:15,954 --> 01:21:18,706 What are you gonna do when you go from here to Venus or something? 1269 01:21:18,790 --> 01:21:20,708 That's dialectic physics, okay? 1270 01:21:20,792 --> 01:21:22,752 Dialectic logic is, "There's only love and hate." 1271 01:21:22,835 --> 01:21:25,630 You either love somebody or you hate them. 1272 01:21:25,713 --> 01:21:26,714 Mutt! 1273 01:21:28,341 --> 01:21:29,342 You mutt. 1274 01:21:30,969 --> 01:21:32,220 <i>So what I should do...</i> 1275 01:21:33,012 --> 01:21:37,266 <i>What I should do is just shoot for the next three weeks irrationally.</i> 1276 01:21:38,184 --> 01:21:41,521 <i>In other words, if I did an improvisation every day</i> 1277 01:21:41,604 --> 01:21:44,107 <i>between Marlon Brando and Marty Sheen,</i> 1278 01:21:44,190 --> 01:21:49,696 <i>would I, at that time, have more magical and, in a way, telling moments</i> 1279 01:21:50,905 --> 01:21:54,701 <i>than if I just closed down for three weeks</i> 1280 01:21:54,784 --> 01:21:57,078 <i>and write a structure that then they act?</i> 1281 01:21:57,161 --> 01:21:58,204 <i>And the answer would be</i> 1282 01:21:58,287 --> 01:22:01,165 <i>I'm much better off to do an improvisation everyday.</i> 1283 01:22:01,249 --> 01:22:03,001 Two-sixty, take 3. 1284 01:22:08,548 --> 01:22:10,466 What is the blood lust? 1285 01:22:16,889 --> 01:22:18,599 The blood lust... 1286 01:22:20,101 --> 01:22:21,728 The blood lust, 1287 01:22:22,895 --> 01:22:24,105 they say, 1288 01:22:26,816 --> 01:22:29,318 all the men that I've read about, 1289 01:22:30,778 --> 01:22:36,492 they say that the human animal is the only one that has blood lust. 1290 01:22:41,080 --> 01:22:43,082 Killing without purpose. 1291 01:22:44,584 --> 01:22:46,419 Killing for pleasure. 1292 01:22:47,295 --> 01:22:49,630 You can see light through this. 1293 01:22:52,383 --> 01:22:57,096 You take the ones that are made for garbage detail. 1294 01:22:58,222 --> 01:23:02,393 You take the others who are made to think, but who can't act. 1295 01:23:02,477 --> 01:23:04,020 You take... 1296 01:23:08,107 --> 01:23:09,776 I swallowed a bug. 1297 01:23:11,360 --> 01:23:15,740 It's irresistible when a bee discovers honey. 1298 01:23:18,117 --> 01:23:20,369 He's irresistibly driven... 1299 01:23:21,370 --> 01:23:23,372 My... My friend laughs. 1300 01:23:24,749 --> 01:23:26,292 He's my critic. 1301 01:23:28,795 --> 01:23:32,882 My only critic perhaps, outside of myself. 1302 01:23:34,300 --> 01:23:36,385 <i>I mean, in a way, I'm like on a room</i> 1303 01:23:36,469 --> 01:23:38,387 <i>with all the floors covered with Vaseline</i> 1304 01:23:38,471 --> 01:23:41,057 <i>and all these new elements are coming at me.</i> 1305 01:23:41,140 --> 01:23:42,725 <i>And I'm trying to go ahead,</i> 1306 01:23:42,809 --> 01:23:46,813 <i>but now I've got Marlon Brando as an incredible joker to play.</i> 1307 01:23:46,896 --> 01:23:50,817 <i>And he's like a force of his own 'cause he don't give a shit.</i> 1308 01:23:51,984 --> 01:23:57,490 <i>I want a character of a monumental nature</i> 1309 01:23:57,573 --> 01:24:01,244 <i>who is struggling with the extremities of his soul</i> 1310 01:24:02,745 --> 01:24:05,957 <i>and is struggling with them on such a level</i> 1311 01:24:06,040 --> 01:24:09,252 <i>that you're in awe of it and is destroyed by them.</i> 1312 01:24:12,672 --> 01:24:16,259 It takes bravery. 1313 01:24:17,093 --> 01:24:21,222 The deepest bullets are not to be feared. 1314 01:24:21,305 --> 01:24:25,101 Phosphorous, napalm are nothing to be feared, 1315 01:24:25,184 --> 01:24:29,564 but to look inward, to see that twisted 1316 01:24:29,647 --> 01:24:34,610 mind that lies beneath the surface of all humans 1317 01:24:35,611 --> 01:24:40,449 and to say, "Yes, I accept you. 1318 01:24:41,742 --> 01:24:43,870 "I even love you because you're a part of me. 1319 01:24:43,953 --> 01:24:46,164 "You're an extension of me." 1320 01:24:48,958 --> 01:24:51,043 - What? - Can you walk now? 1321 01:24:56,632 --> 01:24:58,509 Why are we in Vietnam? 1322 01:24:59,510 --> 01:25:04,307 It's our time to grab this moment in history. 1323 01:25:08,436 --> 01:25:10,229 It's our time to... 1324 01:25:11,480 --> 01:25:13,274 - To teach. - Microphone. 1325 01:25:13,649 --> 01:25:14,650 Huh? 1326 01:25:22,783 --> 01:25:25,953 I can't think of anymore dialogue to say. 1327 01:25:27,747 --> 01:25:30,333 <i>And I am feeling like an idiot</i> 1328 01:25:31,709 --> 01:25:35,213 <i>having set in motion stuff that doesn't make any sense,</i> 1329 01:25:35,296 --> 01:25:38,007 <i>that doesn't match, and yet I am doing it.</i> 1330 01:25:38,090 --> 01:25:40,509 <i>And the reason I'm doing it is out of desperation,</i> 1331 01:25:40,593 --> 01:25:43,179 <i>'cause I have no rational way to do it.</i> 1332 01:25:43,262 --> 01:25:46,515 <i>What I have to admit is that I don't know what I'm doing.</i> 1333 01:25:46,599 --> 01:25:48,309 <i>Well, how do you account for the discrepancy</i> 1334 01:25:48,392 --> 01:25:49,602 <i>between what you feel about it</i> 1335 01:25:49,685 --> 01:25:51,270 <i>and what everybody else who see it feels?</i> 1336 01:25:51,354 --> 01:25:55,942 <i>Because they see the magic of what has happened before.</i> 1337 01:25:56,025 --> 01:26:00,029 <i>I'm saying, "Hey, it's not gonna happen! I don't have any performances.</i> 1338 01:26:00,112 --> 01:26:02,657 <i>"The script doesn't make sense. I have no ending."</i> 1339 01:26:02,740 --> 01:26:06,077 <i>I'm like a voice crying out, saying,</i> 1340 01:26:06,160 --> 01:26:08,871 <i>"Please, it's not working! Somebody get me off this."</i> 1341 01:26:08,955 --> 01:26:09,997 <i>And nobody listens to me!</i> 1342 01:26:10,081 --> 01:26:12,792 <i>Everyone says, "Yes, well, Francis works best in a crisis."</i> 1343 01:26:12,875 --> 01:26:16,087 <i>I'm saying, "This is one crisis I'm not gonna pull myself out of!"</i> 1344 01:26:16,170 --> 01:26:19,465 <i>I'm making a bad movie. So why should I go ahead? I'd rather...</i> 1345 01:26:20,132 --> 01:26:22,385 <i>I'm gonna be bankrupt anyway.</i> 1346 01:26:23,052 --> 01:26:26,389 <i>Why can't I just have the courage to say, "It's no good"?</i> 1347 01:26:28,933 --> 01:26:31,310 <i>There's almost anything I'd do to get out of it.</i> 1348 01:26:31,394 --> 01:26:34,897 <i>I'm already thinking about what kind of sickness I can get.</i> 1349 01:26:34,981 --> 01:26:37,233 <i>I'm in the rain on the platform thinking if I just moved a little,</i> 1350 01:26:37,316 --> 01:26:38,901 <i>of sickness fall 30 feet.</i> 1351 01:26:38,985 --> 01:26:41,946 <i>It might kill me, but it might paralyze me or something.</i> 1352 01:26:42,947 --> 01:26:45,241 <i>It'd be a graceful way out.</i> 1353 01:26:47,827 --> 01:26:50,288 <i>Did you ever fear for his sanity?</i> 1354 01:26:50,496 --> 01:26:54,583 Well, he did, at one point, he fainted, kind of... 1355 01:26:54,667 --> 01:26:56,544 He had a collapse. 1356 01:26:57,003 --> 01:26:58,087 And he told me 1357 01:26:58,170 --> 01:27:01,173 that he could see himself going down a dark tunnel, 1358 01:27:01,257 --> 01:27:04,135 and he didn't know if he was dying or leaving this reality 1359 01:27:04,218 --> 01:27:05,344 or what was happening to him. 1360 01:27:07,346 --> 01:27:08,889 <i>But he'd gone to the threshold,</i> 1361 01:27:08,973 --> 01:27:13,352 <i>maybe, of his sanity or something.</i> 1362 01:27:16,689 --> 01:27:20,943 It was scary, but also kind of exhilarating or thrilling 1363 01:27:21,027 --> 01:27:25,364 that he would take such risks with himself 1364 01:27:26,741 --> 01:27:28,868 in his experience to go that far. 1365 01:27:28,951 --> 01:27:31,996 And I think this film was all about risking, 1366 01:27:32,079 --> 01:27:33,372 risking your money, 1367 01:27:33,456 --> 01:27:37,126 risking your sanity, 1368 01:27:37,209 --> 01:27:40,796 <i>risking how far you could press your family members...</i> 1369 01:27:40,880 --> 01:27:42,089 <i>I mean, everything that he did,</i> 1370 01:27:42,173 --> 01:27:46,761 <i>he went to the extremes to test those fringe regions</i> 1371 01:27:46,844 --> 01:27:48,554 <i>and then come back.</i> 1372 01:27:49,263 --> 01:27:51,223 Nothing is so terrible as a pretentious movie. 1373 01:27:51,307 --> 01:27:54,310 I mean, a movie that aspires for something really terrific 1374 01:27:54,393 --> 01:27:57,355 and doesn't pull it off is shit, it's scum, 1375 01:27:57,897 --> 01:27:59,440 and everyone will walk on it as such. 1376 01:27:59,523 --> 01:28:03,027 And that's what poor filmmakers, in a way, that's their greatest horror, 1377 01:28:03,110 --> 01:28:04,695 is to be pretentious. 1378 01:28:04,779 --> 01:28:05,863 So here you are, on one hand, 1379 01:28:05,946 --> 01:28:07,823 trying to aspire to really do something, 1380 01:28:07,907 --> 01:28:10,201 on the other hand, you're not allowed to be pretentious. 1381 01:28:10,284 --> 01:28:14,163 And finally you say, "Fuck it! I don't care if I'm pretentious or not pretentious, 1382 01:28:14,246 --> 01:28:15,623 "or if I've done it or I haven't done it." 1383 01:28:15,706 --> 01:28:18,709 All I know is that I am going to see this movie, 1384 01:28:18,793 --> 01:28:21,003 <i>and that, for me, it has to have some answers.</i> 1385 01:28:21,087 --> 01:28:23,005 <i>And by "answers," I don't mean just a punch line.</i> 1386 01:28:23,089 --> 01:28:25,758 <i>Answers on about 47 different levels.</i> 1387 01:28:26,092 --> 01:28:29,970 <i>It's very hard to talk about these things without being very corny.</i> 1388 01:28:30,054 --> 01:28:32,807 You use a word like self-purgation or epiphany, 1389 01:28:32,890 --> 01:28:35,101 they think you're either a religious weirdo 1390 01:28:35,184 --> 01:28:37,061 or, you know, an asshole college professor. 1391 01:28:37,144 --> 01:28:40,898 But those are the words for the process, this transmutation, 1392 01:28:41,440 --> 01:28:44,443 this renaissance, this rebirth, 1393 01:28:45,736 --> 01:28:48,030 <i>which is the basis of all life.</i> 1394 01:28:48,739 --> 01:28:50,991 <i>The one rule that all man,</i> 1395 01:28:51,075 --> 01:28:53,244 <i>from the time they first were walking around,</i> 1396 01:28:53,327 --> 01:28:54,787 <i>looking up at the sun,</i> 1397 01:28:54,870 --> 01:28:57,123 <i>scratching around for food and an animal to kill,</i> 1398 01:28:57,415 --> 01:29:01,710 the first concept that, I feel, got into their head 1399 01:29:01,794 --> 01:29:04,213 was the idea of life and death. 1400 01:29:04,296 --> 01:29:06,632 That the sun went down and the sun went up. 1401 01:29:06,715 --> 01:29:09,635 That the crop, when they learned how to make a crop, it died. 1402 01:29:09,718 --> 01:29:11,220 In the winter, everything died. 1403 01:29:11,303 --> 01:29:12,471 The first man, he must have thought, 1404 01:29:12,555 --> 01:29:14,014 "Oh, my God, it's the end of the world!" 1405 01:29:14,098 --> 01:29:16,725 And then all of a sudden, there was spring, 1406 01:29:16,809 --> 01:29:18,310 and everything came alive, and it was better! 1407 01:29:18,561 --> 01:29:21,063 I mean, after all, look at Vietnam. 1408 01:29:21,147 --> 01:29:23,315 Look at my movie. You'll see what I'm talking. 1409 01:31:44,123 --> 01:31:45,457 The horror. 1410 01:31:49,336 --> 01:31:50,838 The horror. 1411 01:32:04,476 --> 01:32:07,980 <i>The river, sleepless,</i> 1412 01:32:08,063 --> 01:32:10,983 <i>crowded with memories of men and ships,</i> 1413 01:32:11,775 --> 01:32:15,029 <i>hunters for gold and pursuers of fame.</i> 1414 01:32:15,112 --> 01:32:18,574 <i>What greatness has not flowed on the ebb of that river</i> 1415 01:32:18,657 --> 01:32:21,327 <i>into the mystery of an unknown earth?</i> 1416 01:32:21,994 --> 01:32:26,248 <i>The dreams of men, the seed of commonwealths,</i> 1417 01:32:27,166 --> 01:32:29,251 <i>the germs of empires.</i> 1418 01:32:31,587 --> 01:32:34,298 <i>The river is black tonight, my friends.</i> 1419 01:32:34,632 --> 01:32:39,428 <i>Look, it seems to lead into the heart</i> 1420 01:32:39,511 --> 01:32:41,513 <i>of an immense darkness.</i> 1421 01:33:07,414 --> 01:33:08,457 To me, the great hope 1422 01:33:08,540 --> 01:33:11,627 is that now these little eight-millimeter video recorders 1423 01:33:11,710 --> 01:33:13,337 and stuff are coming out, 1424 01:33:13,420 --> 01:33:15,297 some people who normally wouldn't make movies 1425 01:33:15,381 --> 01:33:16,965 are gonna be making them. 1426 01:33:17,049 --> 01:33:18,300 And, you know, suddenly, one day, 1427 01:33:18,384 --> 01:33:21,637 some little fat girl in Ohio is gonna be the new Mozart 1428 01:33:21,720 --> 01:33:26,725 and make a beautiful film with her little father's camcorder. 1429 01:33:26,809 --> 01:33:29,561 And, for once, the so-called professionalism about movies 1430 01:33:29,645 --> 01:33:34,316 will be destroyed forever, you know, and it will really become an art form. 1431 01:33:36,985 --> 01:33:38,654 That's my opinion. 1431 01:33:39,305 --> 01:34:39,386 Watch Online Movies and Series for FREE www.osdb.link/lm