Platoon Documentary - Brothers In Arms

30th 1987 platoon a low-budget independent non-sag film cast with mostly unknowns making their first movie won four academy awards including best picture and the winner is platoon platoon [Applause] this isn't a story about winning awards but rather the journey of the no-name grunts that made this film what it is and the impact that experience had on all of us i had a teacher and she would say do you know when you're in the presence of something beautiful i had no idea of the profundity of the question platoon was one of those circumstances when you put together the audition the boot camp the filming the relationships now i know when i'm in the presence of something beautiful who have left that experience and then come back here in june and the summer hit was top gun i just thought well we're [ __ ] top gun was glorifying war what oliver made was this film about horrible horrible things happening not glorious things that wasn't oliver's experience there the glory that oliver experienced was love and brotherhood and that's the film he shot that brotherhood is the reason i'm narrating this film the same reason we all wanted to be part of this passion project by our friend and fellow grunt paul sanchez well let's not get ahead of ourselves first oliver needed to get his film made hollywood is full of great scripts that never see the light of day oliver peddled the platoon for over a decade without success i had just gotten into the production business and a friend said listen do you know who oliver stone is oliver stone for midnight express i said sure i know oliver's uh he says well he has this the script about vietnam and i ran up to my office and i sat at my desk and i couldn't believe what i was reading i was literally sobbing i had tears coming down my my face and and said to me what's wrong i said i just read the greatest screenplay i've ever read it's academy award time will never get closer and i called oliver stone and i said listen i just read a script who goes i want to make this movie he then got caught up with salvador and i was trying to get platoon financed i met with the people that had financed salvador he was refusing to make eight cuts in the movie he's really digging in and they said we're not getting any closer to another movie with oliver unless he agrees to make the cuts and i met with oliver he read it he says okay and signed it and i got the movie made i did a little over 20 years active duty in the united states marine corps served all over the world including three tours in vietnam one tour in the middle east in beirut lebanon 82-83 when i retired from the marine corps i really didn't know what to do with myself i'd seen every military movie there was for obvious reasons what i had seen pissed me off it's not us it's not combat that's not war that's hollywood's pipe dream so i said you know what i'm gonna fix this it took me some chicanery but i finally got his number and i called and i said look i know and you know that the only way to do this credibly is we've got to train those guys uh he got it because he's oliver and he loves a left-handed approach and because he knew what i was telling him was true i'm going to give you 33 actors we're going to shoot in the philippines i had to produce a trained rifle platoon i look at my life as uh as as bp before platoon and ap after platoon tom barringer i think definitely was the most successful and the most high-profile actor being looking for mr goodbar my auspicious debut i was in a show at kings island in cincinnati i was moosey and rock around the clock telemarketing yeah [Laughter] i telemarketing graduated i was looking for something to do and this is my first film i was doing commercials always lisa i was auditioning for commercials i wasn't getting a lot of commercials i had done uh the smash follow-up to grizzly called uh grizzly to the predator i got eaten by a giant bear i didn't feel like an old hand let's put it that way but next to almost everyone else where it was their first film i guess i i felt a little more like an old hand than they did got a scholarship from stella adler to go to new york city uh eddie and the cruisers and i got my first job hoosiers banging around new york i just got out of nyu in 1984. i had been in a movie called stranger paradise before i got the job i just joined this band i had made one of the film before platoon that was uh the thing i was on unemployment just having a good time and then the big chill really not much of hardly anything professionally platoon there was a project called the platoon originally it was set to go with dino de laurentiis in like 84 and i went up to the gulf western building many times the film got very close to getting done and didn't get done and it was a long casting process and everybody and his mother read for these roles over and over and over again but a lot of people don't realize this is that my brother emilio had gotten the part the christian part huge desk oliver sitting behind it and every single space was filled with stacks i would say this high of black and white photos two years later oliver called up and said mckinley we're going to shoot the movie again do you do you want to come in and audition i'm like well i got the role last time oliver stone is doing this film platoon and he's looking for he has a list of like eight actors that he's looking for and it's just like wow and i got the call from oliver saying we're back on i read in backstage magazine about this uh audition for this film i'd like to play the the southern sargent um i don't know if that's what he was thinking i said i'd like to get an audition for this film they said you know you just have to leave a picture resume and i said oh really where are they auditioning and for some reason she told me the empire hotel walked in nobody was sitting out front oliver you said you're you're you're too mannered you're doing all this tony danza [ __ ] and oliver offered me sergeant neal there was one line here was one lane there it was like you know it's like we got kooks coming over the ridge they don't i don't see you on the list and i um i just threw a [ __ ] fit i said you know my [ __ ] agent [ __ ] up all the time i'm so sick of it you know what call my agent i gave her a phony number i said you know i gotta get to the bottom of it i can't take this the second time this happened to me he was like hey can you go get me a coffee he's like yeah no problem mr stone i ran out i got him a coffee and i was like i might i think i might have a real shot at this part and she said all right all right relax relax just do a monologue for me i told mark i said listen i'm going to do this low-budget independent film in the philippines the greatest script i've ever read it's for no money but when you read and there's a juicy part [Music] wouldn't want to get raped by you guys gave it to me called my agent he got me in but this time i'm auditioning for oliver she said you know what come back tomorrow like get to meet the director then when i finish she goes you know i want you in my film i just watched my film i came down and called my agent told him i got this film and he said uh yeah forget it and just blew it off every single agent at every agency went don't go to this movie it's not insured they don't know what's going on got called back i lost 10 pounds i flew to los angeles and he said great you have the part gained 20 pounds i brought in my 357 magnum to the audition the casting director freaked out he's like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa what the [ __ ] is this and i was like shut up sit down relax oliver had like a big grin on his face and i knew i had him like i knew i was in it's really because of to live and die in l.a that he cast me because he wanted to do kind of casting against type which is funny because to live and die in l.a is a very cool movie but i look at him it looks like such a little kid trying to play tough monologue in my head you did not ask me to prepare anything this was just a conversation make sure i didn't gain 50 pounds and you already told me i was cast and i remember i kind of lost it i don't remember much but i wound up under his desk and i remember looking up at oliver and his hands stuck out and said chill out man so i thought i got the part of raw and i told my agent like yeah i'm in i got it he told me i had it i know that's cool and i thought the raw was a cool part and then they go well no you didn't get the part of raw you got the part attacked yeah but you're doing sound and of course i went to the script like where the [ __ ] is sound oh there he is by monday i get a call saying you know would you like to come play and it was my first you know how it is when you get your first job i remember it was raining on a monday and i was on fifth avenue and i'm like jumping in the street and i didn't care how big the road was and i called my aunt who was like my muse my my confidant and i said guess what i got a movie this is baby great that's wonderful she said where is it i said the philippines she hung up the phone on me okay i got the job then the war breaks out in the philippines [Laughter] in 1986 ferdinand marcos lost the election but he refused to relinquish power the people revolted my plane was the last plane to arrive from anywhere before the airport got closed i got picked up i went to the manila garden hotel i took a nap the first thing i did off between rebellious military elements and marcos loyalists began saturday woke up a little later and i remember opening the curtains and looking down there were tanks going down the street unbeknownst to me the people power lebanon revolution started to happen this is all going down we obviously can't shoot here they said just sit tight the film's probably cancelled we'll get you out when we can i flew from savannah to l.a and was going to make connection the philippines and they went oh no and i remember hitting the streets with bob richardson and some other people and we went to the people power barrack barricade around campanaldo because what happened is some uh faction of the army kind of mutinied and said we're not going to suppress the people fidel ramos leading the reformists had decided on mutiny against president marco and then another faction marcos told to go and you know arrest those guys but the trucks and armored personnel carriers were met with an amazing display people came and made a million-person barrier around camp agonaldo and basically said you have to go through the million of us to get to them i think it put a lot of pressure on the four governments they got him out of there and uh you know it was a big celebration it was really special because these millions of filipinos saying a westerner they were like so happy because it was a feeling that ah you're gonna tell the world about this and then i remember alex hoe saying i think we can get it back together and uh we were back on tom behringer staff sergeant bob barnes john glover my character in platoon was sanderson you're going on reports are now i'm totally tired and i was blessed to play the role of sergeant warren it's taken us this far right you'll take us the rest of the way mark moses i uh played lieutenant wolf in platoon i gotta run i'll uh catch you men later i'm ivan kane and i played uh tony hoyt go for it let's do the whole [ __ ] village hi i'm bob orwig and i was gardener i'll show you a picture of lucy gene i'm reggie johnson and i play junior [ __ ] that hockey [ __ ] how to give me some motown game hi i'm johnny depp and i had the um uh privilege of playing the role of the learner hi i'm cory glover i played francis d-e-r-e it's d-e-a-r i'm chris patterson i played crawford it's o'neil god a nose up the lieutenant's ass already robert rock golotti assistant military technical advisor and played spec for thomas huffmeister kevin dillon i play bunny and platoon yeah but i still like a piece of [ __ ] once in a while kevin eschelman [ __ ] i played morehouse my name is willem defoe sergeant elias i'm captain dale dye uh united states marine corps retired and i was the military advisor on the platoon i'm james terry mcelveen goddamn bride he does a.k.a ace uh john c mcginley i played sergeant o'neal no no no no no no no paul sanchez i played doc in platoon he's bad man i got bad vibes here uh david nightorff and i played tex i ain't getting greased on this bush tonight so you keep this sorry cheese dick off my ass my name is keith david and i played king in pluto you gotta be rich in the first place things like that richard edson sal you mean the ghost stuff let's get out of here mark i am one of the technical advisors for the moon was an actor in it i'm corky ford i played manny washington in the film platoon i'm charlie sheen i played chris taylor in platoon [Music] i'm living in a funeral parlor at the time on sullivan street a five-story walk-up and so i'm walking down the stairs and he didn't walk cher adam got those goofy duffle bags or whatever we were allowed to take like cher walking into my funeral parlor and i'm going to do some low-budget piece of [ __ ] halfway around the world in revolution torn philippines i'm like i stepped out of a hit play what am i doing it was not like okay my agents and my handlers and my superstar people will package this together there's a bunch of like idiots from the street who like showed up and we're in the right place at the right time this time i'll get dumped on a plane to manila that's really how it happened until my girlfriend had to tell my band members had to tell my parents that i'm going away i'm not coming back for like what i thought wasn't gonna be a month turns out to be three months the first time we all met was because everyone had to change planes in l.a you guys were coming from new york paul mcginley ivan a bunch of us flew out of new york we stopped in l.a we met a bunch of the other actors we started bonding right away in that bar and then i think we felt pretty good when we got on the plane we sat around and just kind of drank and uh then got on a plane for a long time there's either little filipino families or us 33 guys just pounding beers you know in my head i thought oh i'll be looking over my script because we were young and we'd never been on like a 16-hour plane ride it was guys just tossing beers from the stewardess station we were taking drinks off of people's trees while they weren't looking david night off who ended up getting a blanket like lying in the aisle the air hostesses like kicking him out and telling him to move a few hours later and like the flight all the way through i think we felt really good by the time we eventually landed in manila in the morning it was a cool plane ride man mom packed for you didn't she she did yeah she did she she packed for me and she she sent a bunch of stuff ahead of me uh what was it about 14 boxes because we'd been there uh during apocalypse and she knew that the stuff we might need we got off the plane i remember the heat gun hitting me in my face it was everything that my mom was worried about you know tanks going down the street you know armed guys with uh with m16s all over the place so i'm sitting there thinking what the [ __ ] am i doing back here and all those feelings that i remember so intensely you know as a child i spent eight months in a set of apocalypse i vowed never to return [ __ ] i'm still only in saigon and what are the freaking odds that i'd come back 10 years later with my own vietnam film and narrate the damn thing i think you'd sooner win the lottery in five states on the same night i don't think i can keep this up for a year grandma i think i made a big mistake coming here the warrior leading us through boot camp captain dale dye usmc retired was lovingly referred to as di we which means captain in vietnamese i've designed a two-week program in which they lived in the jungles in the hills they lived exactly as we lived as young men in vietnam so we all knew heading over there that there was going to be a boot camp but i don't think any of us were really prepared for what was awaiting us boot camp was designed to be shock and awe those of us that couldn't cut it might be on a plane back to the states but when you landed it was a full military indoctrination like hey welcome how you doing good to see you now boom ain't got no agents now he stormed in that room right and he started barking at us right away and you know it was really intimidating just grab your toothbrush that's the only thing you're gonna need we're like uh-oh myself golotti and drew were the drill instructors but we were the dogs we had to put the fair god into you guys did you know once we got out there we were just staying there i know i didn't either i thought we're gonna like you know take a look and you know maybe maybe uh you know just take out our spot and then go back so everybody gets off the bus right in the bushy tail then the element screaming starts once we got there it it was on so i'm gonna dig a fighting hall wrong place dig a fighting hole here we need to dig our own freaking holes the dirt was was like super crete we all had to dig these four or five foot berms in front of where we were sleeping so i walked up to stand wide and i said what do i do about this and he looked at my hand he said those blisters i said yeah and he grabbed them and he smashed him and i'm like yeah you'd look over look over here dudes and be like like blisters everywhere man and bursting they said uh well you're still alive aren't you and i said yeah i said i just rub a little dirt and it'll be okay i wanted to reduce them to the lowest common denominator grind them down tire them out until the only thing on their mind was how do i get away from that crazy white-haired bastard uh we humped heavy weight no styrofoam they gave us real equipment i mean it was heavy you know we had to walk 25 clicks a day we we get issued weapons and [ __ ] you know it's like oh this is real i mean oh my god and that's when it felt for the first time real and it felt good like you know this is going to be really fun learning how to clean our weapons learning how to shoot the weapons these sort of things we were with soldiers that were teaching us how to do soldier things i can teach a monkey how to carry a weapon and wear his gear and wear his uniform where i wanted to go was inside their minds and inside their guts the way to survive this was to learn to rely on each other if you could do that you would then begin to understand the relationships that men in combat have they love each other and it's that kind of love that i had to teach we always addressed each other by our cast names and i can i insisted on that throughout the run of the film in fact it's happening still today for two weeks you weren't allowed to be called your name which stanislaus would have loved it and it was genius in retrospect everybody got into uh their characters and it seemed to gel right away you don't get that kind of luxury every day during training we had two new guys come in sal and corki we were laid clerky and i we hear this noise we look up the street and there's a bunch of soldiers all decked out looking like just some bad ass dude who the hell are these guys and then i realized this is us how did these guys get get so good looking so good and authentic so quick i only fed them twice a day if they didn't piss me off if they pissed me off that day they only ate once a day yeah i definitely lost like 20 pounds for sure they were eating military rations those mres the one that i liked the best was some kind of turkey thing that looked like brains or something but it tasted okay the rest of it i didn't want no part of meals ready to eat mres they're how should we say meal's ready to throw up those i hated that [ __ ] food the bean component was the uh that was just bad luck first time you eat those mris you sweat you can nev you'll never eat it again and you'd rather eat dirt than than these mris so everybody lost a lot of weight nobody likes a dehydrated beef patty it was it was the worst however johnny depp would end up wanting to get that because i taught johnny how to make a cheeseburger out of it you want a cheeseburger you want to do this or that i mean he they found out ways to mix these things and but then a couple days later they start tasting really good it's like they they're fully chemical and they taste like they're worse than dirt on the set where they have fish heads and rice and a garlic sauce where the actors like we can't eat this give us an mre you know you did something right when they're asking for mres there's a predetermined uh result that they'd like from those mres constipates you beyond comprehension so for most of us out there the first three four even five days nobody went to the bathroom it's trying to persuade you to not wander out in the middle of the night what i thought was was a giant root that i was poised over it began to to slide and slither my first movement was on top of a of a giant constrictor that happened [Music] old ideas that's it calling anyone with grit [Music] change this change that but don't ever quit yesterday's thinking is done from a challenge we never run so keep pushing forward toward a better world for everyone the future isn't decided yet it's up to us to make it happen make a different future start different at godaddy.com we had all the marine guys around us and they were no joke these guys were hardcore put us through the wringer you know i mean it was thrilling to me that there was nothing there was nothing better than that i mean no okay there's the idea of it and then there's the reality of it you slept two hours on two hours off person would have to be awake and look around and the other person could sleep i would push my my watch i had a half an hour and then uh and then wake dude up and say come on man you're up it's your turn i can say no no no there's no way i'd be like check the watch brother this is where i learned how to sleep standing up so you were up pretty much all night my theory was they need to know what tired is it wasn't like you had to make some effort to think about what it might have been like for those guys at night when you're on watch because at night you were on watch we were seriously sleep deprived they would keep us on our toes drew clark ebb and hawk and i would move around and we would get into positions to attack i'm in my foxhole and i'm just trying to keep my eyes open it's got to be like three o'clock in the morning during the attacks we would fire blanks at these guys eve demono would set up explosives to enhance the experience they're trying to fire and they've got weapons on safety and dale's running up and down like yeah fire i mean and they are just panicking they have no clue what to do oh this sucks this sucks i [ __ ] this sucks we're throwing things at him and we're breaching lines come on you gotta go you gotta go we're being bombed uh what's going on here the [ __ ] just started blowing up man i mean [ __ ] was just blowing up it was like it sounded like the real thing and the lights are going off about 15 feet from charlie sheen i was on patrol with uh bunny and we heard some rustling or some noise out in the bush as i'm crawling up and i'm real quiet [Music] you can see the silhouette of charlie turned sideways like that with his rifle opening up with an ak-47 and the muzzle flash is coming off these full-on blanks and i remember seeing charlie's face as it's strobing with the muzzle flashes and his eyes went from normal to i was i was not far from charlie and the next thing i knew some guy got his balls like scorched by an explosion because he was walking over it when it went off she got stopped on a dime hit in the balls with a smoke grenade that came in from like saint louis and i sort of heard this involuntary inhumane noise jesus christ jesus christ i'm hit i'm hit i'm so mad that i just emptied every magazine i had on me just screaming and die [ __ ] you know just [ __ ] snapped i jumped into the hole with ivan kane and charlie sheen so he's like give me a mag give me a mag paul's gonna copy a time mag and he claims to this day that i handed him a magazine which was [ __ ] i we snuck up on me and put something to my neck and said you did bang learner you're dead die we that was an embarrassing moment i was a big fan of diawees i was kind of gung-ho and a true believer he cared enough to make us just miserable enough but oh yeah i'm gonna [ __ ] with you i'm gonna try to make you [ __ ] up cause i gotta teach your mouth to [ __ ] up he was just a no [ __ ] kind of guy he didn't cuddle us he didn't treat us like actors i remember i took this this canteen and i filled it up with water in the stream because it was running strain it's 110 degrees they give us a little salt tab and i treated with some pills and then we went upstream and we saw this big carcass of a bloated water buffalo like you know dead for like two weeks like it was rotting corpse and i thought man i just put got my water from and i thought well i'm okay because the pills we didn't think anything of it we kept hiking hiking hiking i wasn't okay i'm told uh wilm's not feeling well i go to him his fatigues are drenched and he's just shaking and shivering in a ball and and i touch him and he's ice cold i went into like a fever and i remember sweating through things i mean he looks like death he looked like he lost 10 pounds that night i have this thing called uh nux vomica can i get you a couple aspirin i don't know what i'm going to do he was in bad shape you know and i kind of thrust a uh just a batch of [ __ ] in him and i came back and he's kind of like he's kind of leaned up against this thing you know and he's more pale than in uh the liver diet in l.a i don't remember but i remember being really taken care of and i look over and there's there's there's a puddle of puke right and in the puke are all these like half dissolved little white pills i go over to die away and i said listen willem has a really high fever he looks like he's gonna die i don't know what to do now he looks at me he goes do your best we're hours away from any kind of medical facilities and we've got a job to do i never really investigated what it was but that was intense i saw grown men weep because what dale and oliver did was to strip us down to get rid of all that new york and l.a artifice like no we weren't actors doing boot camp we were real people doing this training when you live in a dirt hole in the jungle for two three weeks you get a little bored and weird flash didn't speak a lick of english i mean the dude would say hello he was like a truck driver in nigeria or something and they cast him suddenly he's in the jungle with a bunch of 30 other guys i started teaching him english repeat after me eat eat my my shorts sharks [ __ ] decade i said i'll put it all together i was i was lucky enough to be near when he would uh yeah uh give that salutation to the captain [Laughter] just this pure innocent in the kindest eyes elijah d hey ty we was like what was that he learned it well he used it a lot toward the end of the two weeks he started to say you guys are beginning to look and act like a like a rifle platoon the present was we were allowed to ascend down a wall of two and a half story wall we were allowed to rappel down the wall f d follow directions you're standing you know over 60 feet and i remember like kind of just tiptoeing dude that thing was swaying in the breeze do you hear anything creaking you know you're not going up there to [ __ ] around i mean this ain't no time to be nothing but follow directions so i remember kind of just like taking like a few steps down the damn thing just like one two three and then he kept saying uh come on come on taylor bounce bounce push off push off slide bounce you know and i remember just stopping and being like halfway down and i i looked up at him and i said sir the balancing thing is not going to that's a [ __ ] direct quote we had this final exercise where we were supposed to apply all the things we learned and i had two of the squads and elias william defoe had one and were supposed to meet up the idea was we were gonna converge on a north vietnamese ammunition dump and there was a farmhouse on the map and there were different routes to get there we were supposed to go from point a to point b and one of the weakest things for everybody was laying navigation we're gonna go off here to the left east on the maps or something west that whatever and one group went one way and another group went the other way and they were locked and it became clear we had no idea where we were and we didn't wander around around around and this jackass has to read a map in the middle of this triple canopy jungle he didn't know what the hell he was doing so he was like why are you going to play i had this on map you know i had like two days of when i had to read a map mark moses the lt was perfect he totally got us ass [ __ ] lost which every time he he had an opportunity to he'd get us lost he was very proud at that he never found whatever we were looking for he never found him um yeah it was a disaster we lost radio contact gunny was with us and die we was with the other side and dale's freaking out where the hell is here by jesus christ we gotta find him it's getting dark what's the delay up on point you have encompassed trouble again wolf couldn't find this place everyone was getting hot everyone had drank all their water and then we got to a cliff i remember climbing up and i found a way that was clear enough to get out up a rock wall about 40 feet tall climb up the cliff you guys had learned to repel so steep we could have been killed i'm climbing it getting weaker and tired and i get about five foot from the top oh [ __ ] i'm stuck and mark heavenhawk found me stuck on the side of the wall and he said are you okay i said i'm not so sure i'm okay or not and he actually climbed up took my weapon to the top he said oh you can do this you can make it and i made that last five foot and he actually was really responsible for me being here today because i think he saved my life and saved all our lives so now we get up to the top of this area and we thought okay we're in a clearing we're good let's we're going to we're going to bid whack here for the night we don't have anything to eat because we didn't plan on being gone for the night so guys are hungry guys have drained all the water in their canteen so they're totally thirsty it was only supposed to be a day trip it was not supposed to be an overnighter so you guys weren't ready for it i saw a cow and they're going hell yeah there's beef let's let's let's light a fire let's go kill the damn thing let's go eat it and it's like no no no no no no no no if i just hit him like right behind her or you leave the damn bowl alone we found that farm can we grab these pineapples it's like dude you ain't got nothing else to eat there ain't no farmer around here so there was a little bit of a raid on the pineapples and bananas we were all so hungry and so out of water that people gorged themselves on pineapples and to a man everyone got these horrible lesions in their mouths if they can't get the coconuts down you might as well bring the [ __ ] tree down screw it yeah then we uh chop them down a couple guys took a whack at that thing with a machete it took about an hour pulling the tree down as it flipped over i remember you built a fire and then it was like campfire girls at night all the fun stories because then all the bitching stuff you were fat dumb and happy it was sort of like an adventure away from dale die we didn't have to go out that night we could actually sleep we had we had a fire a bonfire so we had we had kind of a good time i thought that was the moment where everything turned probably for my money the most fun the most fun and the most that i learned in the training camp rock was uh sent by die weed to reconnect with us gunny made us march in really proud and really strong stan stopped us and said we're gonna march in there and we're gonna march in there like men the other half of the platoon came out to greet us and welcome us back and ask us if we wanted anything to drink and we were like [ __ ] no dale died told me they gave me the wrong coordinates on purpose and i'll stay with that story [Music] easy short stack dude he's got a ring hold up is that two-ply toilet paper man the neighborhood is coming up protect your home right from your phone with the ring video doorbell 3. learn more at ring.com yeah we had our graduation and uh a lot of it's a little foggy we were rewarded with uh with with copious amounts of moonshine and it was like overproof whatever it was you could start fires we had the drink whatever that coconut rum was and we're howling at the moon we heard it was coconut wine it was supposed to be good because it had a little bit of uh coconut in it or some [ __ ] it wasn't it was lighter fluid it was pretty smooth for 200 proof it was pretty smooth wambanok yeah lumbernog ah yeah lamanak lamanak lambanak it was lombanoc and it was pretty much moonshine was essentially moonshine man it was a moonshine lamanc [ __ ] i'm still only drinking lambodak people woke up the next day like out of comas we had to wake up really early in the morning a couple of guys were lifted into the truck it was such a throbbing gristle in the skull and confusion and then all of a sudden they faked us out and said we're gonna go shoot that first scene just walking to the jungle there was no way to get rid of the hangover because we couldn't get our hands we couldn't get our mitts on the lombanog anymore we're looking bad because we're like you know dirty because we hadn't changed in two weeks people looked at us and they were kind of horrifying and we were i remember good you should be horrified but he went from there just feeling miserable so we looked perfect now we're going to something that might look like a hotel and we'll start this thing tomorrow [ __ ] and then oliver to his eternal credit uh woke everybody up and we had to walk around along this blue and it's the first time in the movie that any of us were actually on camera in that condition what i was told was the kids are going to walk in from boot camp and we're going to roll camera but everyone had that look um because nobody gave a [ __ ] about the movie because we're all sick when i brought them down out of the jungle and they were looking rugged and they were looking ragged oliver looked at me and he said yeah i think so i think that's them we became a rival platoon somehow when the guys were coming out of the jungle all of you you look like you've been in war for about a year and which is exactly the way oliver wanted you he wanted you mean you were hating him for doing this to you but he got that look so we started to sense uh right there and then oliver's manipulation [Music] oliver as we have all got to know and love him is not easy because he thrives on confrontation you know wants to upset you i've done six films with oliver oliver doesn't direct by committee it is a quasi collaboration but it's oliver's movie and it's oliver's vision oliver can be chaotic when he directs he feeds off of that sort of thing i understood it i've served with commanding officers who are like that he wore his experiences on his sleeve i mean i felt like there was part of him that was still in the jungle he's crazy genius has that look in his eye and that smile that you have no idea what the [ __ ] is really going on in there i was on point and i was uh rigged up with just a zillion squibs in my hand i have the deal that shoots off the squibs charlie comes in and carries me there was the the kind of you know oh my god i'm dying seeing please tell my mother that you know the gurgle gets you about two and a half lines [ __ ] [ __ ] do it again all right back in you know just laying on the ground rain blood he's working on me charlie's talking or not he's still my mom cut [ __ ] [ __ ] [ __ ] and and he hit me with that about seven times man you're full of [ __ ] you're [ __ ] lying but from that moment on i would avoid any conversation with stone that you know involved anything more than action or cut he's a genius a dark evil genius at whatever cost he's going to get what he wants what he's after and that's great if you're sitting in a movie theater looking at a 40-foot screen but when you're on the opposite end of that you know you've got to be selective you got to treat different actors different ways because you've got to have some sort of intuition about how they're going to respond during the film i didn't really like oliver very much i felt he was kind of distant he liked and i think this is the way he made films he likes to kind of stir [ __ ] up like create crises and stress and i mean he shoots that i knew what he was doing but it was i felt it was unnecessary doc sanchez in that head hooch where the line was let military justice do the job on them we did 30 something freaking takes of it i say let military justice do the job on it it was just oliver being oliver and doc would try it different ways and he'd get more pissed and it was just oliver [ __ ] with doc i'm alone in that giant pool just swimming laps and all of a sudden you see these feet it's oliver he goes what are you doing i go what do you mean what am i doing i'm i'm working out i'm swimming he says are you coming out today tonight i said i go well i'm not really working he goes yeah but you're coming out are you show a little support to the guys then i get there and i'm watching a scene i don't know it's like lieutenant wolf and and and ra francesco once you take those two holes right there and there you're tying it off with barnes up here king down there and i'm watching the scene off back behind the camera and he turns around goes what are you doing i said i'm watching the scene he says you're making them nervous like what you're staring at i go i'm watching the scene you told me to come back off get over there this is this is oliver the way he would but yo hey it's not working you know this this you know the scene is flat what's matter you're the [ __ ] actor you know i mean you know i don't think people know how dramatic he can be confrontational dramatic sets up uh antagonism wherever he goes i did a scene and when it was done he just he just dropped his eyes and shook his head and turned and walked away when you're a young kid as you first film and man all you want to do is please and he knows that when you don't know that's just a setup because the next scene you do two days later where you break down that's 48 hours of thinking you're the biggest [ __ ] on this planet he treated us like we were suddenly the worst casting choice i just thought well god damn it man there's such a smoother and cooler way to to get results oliver loved to [ __ ] around with the actors push them around bully them if you will so there was one day i came to set prepared for for what was on the call sheet and there was a new scene that had been added ace had talking to oliver sent i've written my monologue i've got this thing and you know you can shoot we could just get it oliver shot it and bob richardson operated as oliver said i'm gonna need you in the background of this shot what am i what am i doing you're carrying uh water buckets back and forth i said the same water buckets he said nah if you exit frame we'll think that you're gonna load up new ones then you're taking those back over and i said but shouldn't the thing be empty on the way basis don't worry about it oliver would go you know you cut him you know at a certain point kill his confidence there you go don't waste my [ __ ] time now just go let's do it again jesus is [ __ ] crazy they do about 15 tanks and i'm back there and you know i'm just giving him my all he wrapped the scene and he was already off to the next next location and i i caught up with him and i said hey man what uh what was that all about i'm talking to boost i said you know we got some stuff out of the guy there's stuff in there let's see [ __ ] him and he goes there's no filming the camera man there's no filming account and he did this just as an exercise in in in torture yeah it was like psych warfare you know sometimes it happens to people that can't take it and then it gets ugly in that village baron just screaming it what about the [ __ ] rice and the weapons who did the man and the woman i'm interpreting oliver's standing back there and she's not crying he wants real tears she couldn't have been more than nine oliver's strategy into bringing real tears to the little girl's face was a bit much over young at us is one thing he raised his voice and it went on for for longer than it needed to [Music] these people aren't actors these people aren't actors sergeant barzibal who had been involved quite a lot in our in our uh training camps down there he was with the philippine constabulary police you know the dude was he could handle himself very well he just reached in for his weapon and was like you know he was coming out and he was he was moving forward and i went and i just put my arms on his wrist you came over you were like whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa whoa calm down everybody calm down it's okay and then borrows a ball explain to us what i just witnessed i will never see again [Music] you come after a little girl like that the philippines is a very big place people disappear here all the time you know that was a very heated scary [ __ ] moment though because because she was he wasn't joking man that was bad i'll never forget it so i was going to the restroom and i saw at the edge of the bar there's a restaurant i saw oliver and alex ho i literally thought this is it i will make my statement here and now i was wasted so i climb up on this marble banister and i got behind oliver's table was there was a curtain right here oliver's head's there so i unzipped the old fly and um pulled out the old friend and uh was about ready to uh [Music] yeah i was going to urinate on oliver and history will absolve a challenge after challenge after challenge at word after word afterward and you go oh i'll get you man i'll get you and that was my moment i seen and i was about to take it and uh i felt this violence like tug on the back of my shirt we fell flat on the ground and it was the first a.d h gordon booze and he says are you out of your [ __ ] mind what are you doing look this on his [ __ ] head no oliver chose each of us for our commitment and our desire he led us and willingly we followed we didn't always appreciate his methods but we gave his film everything we had because we believed in him and his vision even tom had to surrender to oliver's vision and it worked the power of that kind of authenticity suddenly we didn't we didn't have to act anymore one of the things that i that i think is a mark of a good director is putting your actors under the circumstances to which you just have to now find the behavior so you don't have to act to jump into where oliver had been for two tours in vietnam the actors were not strained to take that leap and so people were in i think he thought the material deserved it and they should be operating from a place where they aren't too in their stuff oliver was full of passion to make this movie i mean he desperately wanted to tell this story and he had worked for 10 years to get this story told and couldn't do it and here was our only opportunity and neither one of us wanted to strike out with this because it represented the experience we'd had in southeast asia it did force me to really dig a little deeper the one thing he did that was amazing made us feel like we were a platoon that's why we formed such a brotherhood that 30 years later is still there he gave me my first job ever in film i will always owe oliver stone and i'll always thank him and love him for that the night before our first day of scenes with actual dialogue a piece of paper was slipped under my door it turns out it was a call sheet i've never seen a call sheet before it says oh i'm putting my pocket we might need it tomorrow second id says okay so we're gonna go uh you got about five minutes left at breakfast then we're gonna go rehearse and shoot and i said what what the [ __ ] are we going to shoot and i was starting to go in a panic i didn't know this at the time it was your your first day and i think your first time ever speaking on on film so we started to do the scene and uh charlie collapses i get covered in uh in ants you know i'm bug fabric like like like a [ __ ] they don't just like stay on your neck they start in your neck and wind up everywhere else he's really uncomfortable he slams down willem comes over to him says hey okay i come over all the guys are marching behind us it's 110 degrees oh this is fine you know charlie this is fine see the red ants are bad but the black ants are the what caught i went oh please don't beat me please don't beat me i think william [ __ ] up i hope well i'm [ __ ] up and oh my gosh susie what's the line she goes black ants are bad but red yeah i thought so the red ants are the worst oh so everybody's like everybody in the background grumbles because this there's a line about you know red ants and black ants and i could see you were starting to start to panic behind it goes back to first positions and okay okay charlie goes down again and i come in and red ants are bad but black answered cut i thought okay i i get the nerves um but he's either dyslexic or or uh or or colorblind everybody's like oh my god it's one line instead of correcting me she crossed out the lines after a while and just put in whatever i said she wrote it into the script that's your new line and oliver looked over to suze is that it she goes yep okay moving on i get an email uh and it's it's yourself it's paul and he's uh reaching out to contribute to to this very documentary and i i wrote back red ants black ants blue ants then it says xoxc that's so emblematic of of how deep this stuff got into our dna we hadn't spoken for easily a decade not for any any reasons of whatever just because you know people's lives go different ways um but as soon as i got that i wrote you back um and the first thing i thought of was uh what was the various uh colors of those ants happy to help i had a beautiful role because he's kind of a charismatic sensitive guy and he dies so tragically which was you know it's a fantastic shot it's these helicopters it was physical it was complicated it was quite dramatic shot [Music] but thomas barnes was inspired casting he's the performance of the movie and he was able to contact some sort of rage and bitter disappointment that really ran deep out here you belong to me now tom is fantastic in that role i was the first to talk and the first to die i didn't live long but i had good screen time my line was oh man is that what i think it is behringer just came up with that phone and just re i think actually he knocked the helmet off with the telephone but a few times it just blew off by itself that's how strong those explosions were and they were frightened [ __ ] up you didn't do much acting sort of reacting [Music] we're working with those those huge helicopters that had no doors [Music] i just remember being being thrown on that chopper and it took off and it immediately went sideways you don't know where a camera is man there may be one in the chop you don't know so you just keep going just keep going and we had to keep flying around the ground is there now and i don't remember my gurney being especially roped in or anything and i'm wounded at that point and i don't know about you but i'm holding on to something because i'm not going to go through all this and not get in the final cut my favorite in the film would be the hooch scene i am reality because it is a great piece of theater kill me what are you doing and i said um this is my entrance you see yeah but you think you like me come around the corner i say we fragged that [ __ ] tonight if they're all in there talking about elias being killed and i set elias up for this you're wrong man any way you cut it barnes is a [ __ ] murderer you don't see me you hear me vegas what do you mean talking about killing they look around and i'm sitting down there in a little [ __ ] squat smoking a cigarette and you're going to follow jack daniels how long has he been there y'all experts how much did he hear y'all know about killing well i'd like to hear about it potheads you know you hit that point but anything you do is right for the character it was like the first night of of of the final siege you know and um you know me and corey are stuck in that in that fox home when it all goes to [ __ ] i missed a mark or overshot something and i was too close to one of the pots you know for the bombs and the [ __ ] went off right here i got knocked down i think that shot in the movie because i was basically drooling and you know dizzy eyes and also spraying my ankle it was it was a it was a [ __ ] bad night and so captain dye rolls up and he you know shakes on a cigarette and he says taylor it's moments like these why do we continue to smoke it was the ted offensive at the end of the movie and doc and the lt and myself were all featured in this one shot bombs going off all over the place for me it was an overwhelming experience to shoot that night and don't forget 40 bombs they put the little yellow flags in so crew and cameron knew where those uh bombs were and then just before filming they pulled the flags out and you have 125 extras at the top of that hill gonna have to run down in the dark didn't know where the bombs were i mean it was something it was such a huge huge shot it was one of one of the highlights for me [Music] tom cruise uh he done a film called taps so tom's last moment in taps before the tank just that's where i got that thing in the foxhole at the very end i just stole it for tomorrow in the script it was sound who was supposed to be blown up stuff let's get out of here no shot this is important which made sense he picked up the uh the metal box and i was like like i can't get respect around it no matter what but um so i was really like pissed off they took my arm and pinned it behind my back and then it took what was left out and they stuck a piece of like thing on there to make it look at my arm as well and same with the other so it was a long time it's probably from eight till about noon we took it to the makeup but then i saw what how much work he was like four hours preparing for that thing and i was like oh just as well it's probably 15 seconds on film but um it looks pretty well my favorite team would be uh the scene where when i bashed the guy's head open when bunny and i go into the hunt that day and discover the handicapped kid something snapped something [Music] did things that were brutally unsound they kept saying get it as close as you can get it as close as you can one time i actually accidentally hit them with a gun which they used on films [Music] because at that point we were so freaking tired and so just just addled i felt bad and i felt like the guy didn't understand acting he didn't understand so he didn't know he was looking at me like it was all real and it was really really hard to do at that point you know it was just it was just reaction and raw emotion i felt terrible for that kid felt awful about that i always carried all my all my pretium on me me and charlie took our perim we pulled it together we gave it to the kid so that he could get his cataracts fixed that same day shot the scene where i come in and and break up the rig my character was supposed to be the one right there the [ __ ] off don't do it don't do it my mom said please please don't do that don't [ __ ] get it do you man you just don't [ __ ] get it i was young and didn't want to upset my mom if i could compare one day to the hundreds that dad had an apocalypse that's the one day let's just say that there was a lot to drink away in the bar that night [Music] once we got out there it was shot so kind of unconventionally that um you had no sense of anything outside of that world that was one of the beauties of it we left hollywood so far behind you know we would drive the trucks they only went so far into the jungle and then we had to hike 30 40 minutes actors were picking up camera cases and humping them in and they didn't give it a second thought everybody wanted to be there and everybody carried their own weight we had gone down to manila and we had found actual vietnamese refugees who would play these roles what we didn't realize is that when we got them all together they would begin speaking vietnamese oliver actually had to walk off the set and he was sitting out on the dike of a rice paddy and i shook my head because it was really getting to me and finally i just went out and sat down next to him we didn't say a word because both of us at that moment were back in vietnam in making the movie yes were were actors but there were none of the trailers there were none of the makeup conventions and we were in a foreign area and a lot of these guys had never even been out of the country my dressing room my pot my helmet i'm sitting on my dress you know in the jungle so it was very exotic there were so many parallels and of course i'm not saying that that makes us i'm saying maybe it it invites us to pretend better not makes us understand better necessarily i remember teaching you uh to handle a sucking chest wound and you know you kept you kept wanting to add things and i said doc stop it you're a medic you've seen this before you know that this one is probably not going to make it you can talk to him you can try to keep him conscious try to keep him breathing but probably can't say that i knew that you would do the right thing with the battle dressings and so on and so forth what i didn't expect was the emotion that got to you and i saw it and i said you know that's not acting it's so [ __ ] hot and you are so tired and then people are harassing you and we just saw it a little bit and you know what like i'm pissed i'm thinking like any [ __ ] [ __ ] that comes in my path i'm gonna light your [ __ ] ass up [ __ ] you i don't care and i thought that is how they felt and that was real for us in that moment we were doing the first night ambush where you see two nva soldiers come out of the fog and make that little signal about come ahead i always kept an m16 loaded with blank ammunition next to the camera because oliver would every once in a while want me to fire the thing and you know heat heat things up a bit so i was i was kind of leaning on the muzzle of the rifle next to the while all the fog was settling and outer said action and those nva came up and did this and i came awake and looked at them still in an eighth of a second when i mean because he was just standing there just sort of spacing out you know and just went you know you got a firearm it was one of the heaviest uh things i've ever seen you know puerto resort and they had a they had a lounge bar well we were just kind of salty at the end of the day when we got off the set we were filming for 12 hours and it's really intense things we come back looking like hell no one would go to the room everyone would forget how bloody you were or caked in dirt or whatever forget a shower we all went straight to the bar at the end of the day we all right in the barn again full fatigues blood we don't care we own this place we needed a break we needed a real sort of release from that sort of thing so the lounge at puerto azul was what we needed that bar was like it was like the greatest place in the world it was a real gathering um spot for us where uh we we sought refuge we all knew that binge drinking was dangerous you know so if you kept you kept your blood alcohol level to a certain point it was a whole lot easier to deal with [ __ ] but it really did help it helped a lot that was our moment just it didn't matter if you know the later we stay the less sleep we got it wasn't you know sleep smear i think we were all pretty inebriated i remember glasses breaking being chucked at the bar and there was this cover band basically singing pop tunes phonetically they didn't speak any english they were saying that we built this city there's a point where it's like hey you play guitar you play the drums we overtook this little band stand where the local band played the band would take a break and we'd pick up their instruments the platoon band consisted of the following johnny depp lead guitar corey glover vocals john glover vocals rhythm guitar chris patterson bass and richard edson on the drums playing you know old blues covers and old like soul songs and just and entertaining ourselves we just said hey can we borrow your instruments and then that was the first night then the second i was like hey we're taking your instruments and then after that it was like don't even come near the stage for four guys that never played together they were they were fabulous depp and john glover were some amazing guitar players and they were playing some of this stuff and it was sounding really really good i wasn't good enough to make the band i played the drums back then these are really talented musicians it was hard to break into the band they were very tight it was a really good band i mean amazing still didn't really consider the idea of myself as an actor i was still a musician as far as i was concerned and i remember johnny kept saying i don't want to be an actor i want to be a musician and look at him now it became a thing we came to the bar the manager's like okay you go on in 10 minutes what i'm not even sure those dudes ever came back they just left their instruments i don't know how much i pay today to have just one night but the better it was and as good as it got i started leaving [Music] payday is magical but life can blow your money away albert is the app that makes your budgeting simple turn it on and watch it go it ingeniously manages your money so every dollar goes to the right place negotiates to lower bills and spots you up to 100 so you aren't devoured by overdrafts meanwhile albert finds you more money to save for a rainy day new home or buying stocks to invest in your future subscribers have an extra 400 saved in just six months so download the app or go to albert.com [Music] we didn't really anticipate is as certain characters in the movie died they were sent home you had 33 people in this bar every night and one by one throughout the course of shooting there would be one less guy at the bar when you got killed in the movie you left the next day it's a practically enough thing but it had a weird effect because you get close to these guys and then they got killed and then they were gone the nba comes in and bob warwick i think stands up and his character gets a sucking chest wound and he's dead next day he's on a plane out we got bob on the airplane and sent him home and behringer looked at me and he said oh that feels weird doesn't it i said yeah it feels like we just lost one he's not dead in real life but it it felt like that because they were they were just suddenly gone manny the whole scene about looking for manny he's gone and you feel that loss corky was a good friend that like i went through boot with him i was i was having a good time with him everybody ended up in the bar of the hotel that night drinking san miguel beer and mourning the fact that we had lost one of ours now he was fine he was on an airplane going home but not to us to us we had lost one of them there was another clue that we had really done something special oliver obviously did a really smart thing he filmed the movie in sequence so that when people got killed they left so it was the most bizarre thing that you created this camaraderie of this acting company and then you get to a certain point in the schedule they were gone depp left we had a party the night before but he after his scene he was he was gone richard edson left early john glover left early all of a sudden there was fewer and fewer of those of us i don't want to lean on it too much but that that really plays on your uh on your imagination and the community we created you saw it get chipped away at you know you're a few days into filming and you already know how tight this group is if you could time lapse film a tableau of that bar and all of its initial glory and then watch it just shrink down and down and further and further and further kept the group kept getting smaller and smaller and smaller and smaller suddenly there was no band there was no music it was it was the few remaining souls and i go back to the hotel and it's just there's nobody there and i like i like back in my room and i'm getting like god they're all gone everybody's gone i'm getting depressed i i felt each death and each wounding much more deeply than i thought i think i had crossed some fourth wall and those were my guys you know the van's outside and i've got my stuff and i look in the bar which was normally packed with us well there was just john mcginley and it's just him there's no music there's nobody playing there's nobody and it's him the camera put my he kind of softly just slapped his shoulder and i said hey i just wanted to uh say goodbye because i'm leaving without turning not out of anger [Music] but to contain his emotions he just said well if you're gonna go then go all of a sudden there was fewer and fewer of us you didn't have to act your ass off you really had to hit your mark and say your lines and and and exercise this college of experiences that you've been bombarded by well i'm kind of bad feeling on this one all right i mean i got a bad feeling i don't think i'm gonna make it out of here i i sat next to this this businessman and uh as soon as we got airborne it was it was so it was so deeply akin to the the last chopper flight the war is over for me now but it will always be there the rest of my days when i was overcome with in that scene you know it was identical leaving the philippines i think now looking back we did not fight the enemy but this guy next to me he sees i'm in a state and i'm crying i'm just like you know i'm just out the window and i'm really having this this moment he says he says what's going on and i said i don't think this flight is long enough to explain it we got back to the state side a lot of the actors we did get together dale had several parties at his home and we would all go to that we were all clinging to that you know camaraderie i get to uh la and moved in with uh dapp we had a little studio apartment in hollywood and um it was cast and crew screening i remember we we watched it and i think all many of us were a little bit in shock platoon is a really really tough watch it's like ugly and violent and depressing and i had my grandmother and my mother and my stepfather kind of like oh my god i probably shouldn't have brought my family to this i'm my grandmother afterwards saying i never wanted to see him we'll be like that again you know my mom tried to scramble out in the middle of the scene where bonnie's bashing the head open and i basically had to physically put her back in the seat and say mom you have to stay you cannot walk out and it was it was tough for her to watch that they had a little party for us across the street some bar and i'll never forget you know everybody's saying oh great job great job about six of us actors moses mcginley myself ivan we just pushed right up to that bar yeah tequila but just drinking and maybe three words were shared like [ __ ] [ __ ] all of us knew we [ __ ] that film i was looking at my new things my god he had his finger on the trigger in this scene come on would we work for three months for we didn't get diaz instruction good enough oliver's dream was was gonna crash and burn i think it was the third time i saw the movie and we sat and watched it and uh and and and watched it differently this time because it wasn't like we had you know worried about you know getting a job from it or winning some [ __ ] award or some [ __ ] we just we we kind of watched it sort of over here and uh everybody was proud of it we're all proud of it you know um i found out the film was gonna be released right around christmas and i'm like super nothing says christmas like platoon what are we doing well [ __ ] out of luck nobody's gonna see this [ __ ] thing well we can show it to our cousins that'll be good uh and i'll be goddamned if it didn't all work out we're up at depths and it's christmas it's opening night let's go and see what the film is doing hop in the car i see some people milling about the box ops okay somebody's coming then we get closer close oh the okay there's a few people waiting you get to the corner there's a line down the block and we took a left down this block and a half a block up [Music] it's good to be wrong sometimes and i'll be oh my god oliver oh my god have i started hearing good things about it and then in those days because it wasn't so sophisticated as it is now i'm at home and my son's babysitter calls me up and says hey you've been nominated the only the only thing i think is like i really wish my dad was still around to see this he goes me too this most surreal thing was that it won the academy award i remember mcginley stood up and just couldn't didn't know what to make of it are they going to fall over because there's this little sound low budget film with a bunch of you know we're not you know we get like oh maybe two and a half actors in the thing and then the rest of us hemdale threw a party for us at la scala in beverly hills we were all dressed like we were going to the academy awards it was so great when the show was over oliver arnold tom willem they all came that was a really really special night that was a nice payoff [Music] when we won four academy awards including best picture my phone suddenly started ringing and all of those guys who said we don't need you suddenly did need me this is the beauty of it none of us had pumped in our heads that oh my god this movie's gonna win four academy awards it's gonna put us all on the map we didn't know that we were there to do the work he hired the right people at the right time that were hungry enough to get in there and do the task at hand to be part of the best picture it's like you won the championship that year maybe we didn't get the mvp but together we won the championship i like many other vietnam guys uh came home to not not so nice of welcome the country was bragging and the country was tired we were ostracized and i think a lot of vietnam veterans uh too damn many of them kind of went in the closet and they kept all this stuff inside i showed it around to a few veterans before it had ever been released or anything like that oliver gave me a copy and let me show it and a veteran said woof that's it but we now understand it and rare is the film that brings such understanding of horrible things this helped people understand it was a point of reference for something that they could never talk about a guy rushed over to me and he said listen man i don't want to disturb you i just want to know i want you to know that i was in the 365th of 1968 and i know you and he walked away and i wept that film had a huge sociological impact on the nation they were talking about platoon and talking about each other and talking about their experience and i think that was very healthy a lot of vietnam guys who had for 10 years kept this stuff inside eating a hole in their guts a lot of them took their family to see platoon and said look i haven't talked about it i can't talk about it i won't talk about it but there it is i'm here because of the impact do is make it out of here of a little movie we did every day the rest of your life great in the philippines 30 years ago a group of guys that i bonded with so quickly and so impactfully i think it was because it was a trial by fire that we all sort of went through together it may have been the the training we went through together uh we are we consider ourselves brothers it's not like a job that you get where you show up and you kind of know your lies and you're in a safety net this had no safety net if i see anybody it's like seeing a a brother yeah it was 30 years ago and when you get back together it's the same spirit that we had back then you and i see each other uh it's like yesterday and if i went into to anybody from our experience back in the world uh it didn't matter what i was doing what was going on it would it would all come to an absolute flintstones halt we all had the best time in the world and the worst time in the world i've never been in another circumstance like it it was it was wonderfully unique in that sense it gave us uh a chance to bond as actors and as human beings i love the guys i made that movie with on every film you go away for three months and you live together and you become like a family but this was a whole other level and watching you guys it was like brothers all of you guys and it's amazing even today just seeing you guys out in the hallway that it's like a bond that was created i don't want to romanticize it but it never existed for me i did 10 15 other movies and stuff it never existed on any other movie that bond it was the tightest bond i've ever had on any film you know it was the camaraderie that we formed it's the bond without a word you hug and it's like everything else will wait and you reconnect you look into their eyes and it doesn't matter if it's a month or three years or a decade these are my brothers these are really are my brothers it's truly a confluence of the time that we did it of the place that we did it in and of how we did it i'll probably you know be buried with my helmet and my entrenching tool and maybe a picture of my wife from the bond that was created isn't one that had to be reinforced by constantly seeing each other what is that because this is something special and this is something this is something you just don't forget what we all got 30 years ago is is a gift i think every one of us is going to die with and i am so proud to be here doing this today i've never been impacted more by three months or four months than platoon i'll never forget you you know it's like i love you guys i mean i have no problem looking these guys are saying i love you guys we all ended up sort of getting clipped on to one another in this in this very organic and necessary way we're all connected forever and we're all we're all just we are linked cosmically i just want to be back with those guys platoon was great for four months you got to be involved in something that actually came together and worked it grounded everybody just for once in excellence you got to connect with greatness if you can just reference it from time to time it functions as salvation as oxygen that bond strange bond will never go away it's it's it's seared onto my brain forever until the very final second when i become smoke used to know i found a matchbook [Music] good [Music] so it was a crime that shocked the nation a young woman

Channel: Loco Lobo

Views: 153,909

Rating: 4.8762455 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: ppqweNmL0Fo

Length: 88min 12sec (5292 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/[deleted]]

Watched this a couple years ago. It features pretty much all of the cast, including Johnny Depp. Great job by the doc in producing and directing this piece.

[u/MrWaaWaa]

I watched Platoon back in 86' in the theater with 70mm, it was a very moving film. It did a great job convincing you that war was hell.

[u/my7bizzos]

Cool thx for sharing. This is one of my favorite movies.

Funny how much this sounds like Tropic Thunder

[u/alaskanbearfucker]

That was dope. One of my all time favorite films. Thank you for sharing.

[u/jsqu99]

I thoroughly enjoyed that. Thanks so much for sharing. Earlier tonight I was sharing an anecdote about when Berenger yelled "take the pain!". My friend's son was freaking out over a small paper cut.

[u/jclittle94]

That’s from 2018

[u/AlphaQSoftly]

Hey I worked on this! Weird to see years later on the internet.

[u/wirewolf]

2021? not 2018? https://imdb.com/title/tt6111980/

[u/JesusStarbox]

First we invade. Then we go back and make a movie about how invading made us feel bad. Then we make a movie about how making the movie made us feel.