This mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist. The morning following Willard’s drunken
night begins with a sergeant and a private visiting a hungover and confused Willard in
his hotel room, saying that they have orders to escort him to the airfield. What are the charges? Sir? What did I do? There’s no charges, Captain. You have orders
to report to COMSEC intelligence at Nha Trang. Willard tries to go back to sleep and the
men drag him out of bed and into the shower. Martin Sheen’s scream is real here—that
was actually ice cold water that he was under (Commentary). Francis Ford Coppola: “You know sometimes
a director feels badly about some of the things he puts the actors through but, you know,
knowing at the same time that actors love to be able to perform things that will be
memorable, that will be looked at for years and years. And so on one hand you’re doing
something that is terrible and on the other hand you’re doing something that’s wonderful,
in that they live forever in what they’ve been able to achieve.” This is an interesting perspective. I’ve
heard many times the saying, “pain is temporary, film is forever,” which has been sort of
a mantra for people like Peter Jackson and Leonardo DiCaprio on some of the tougher shoots. Of course, taking a cold shower was nothing
compared to some of the pain and hardships Sheen would have to endure during other parts
of the production. Coppola had filmed some more shots of the men cleaning Willard up,
and shaving him while he drinks coffee that didn’t make it into the final film. I imagine that they discovered the great transition
from Willard’s scream to the sound of the helicopter arriving at the airfield in the edit, which might be why they cut the shaving portion out. Willard enters what looks like a mobile home
on the airfield with a nice little porch area and a large air conditioner on top—a little
slice of America in a foreign land. Coppola wanted to make sure that he portrayed in the
production design of this scene that the American officers had all of the comforts of home while
in Vietnam (Commentary). According to Coppola, this is what it was really like during the
war. If the enemy has the home-field advantage and America is such a rich and powerful country,
why not bring these American resources and luxuries to the country you are fighting in? What’s interesting though, is that the production
of Apocalypse Now itself would take a similar approach while on-location in the Philippines. I thought we’d have a bite of lunch while
we talk, I hope you brought a good appetite, Captain. Francis Ford Coppola and the rest of the family—Eleanor
and the kids Gio, Roman, and Sophia—arrived in the Philippines on March 1st, 1976 with
“a projectionist, a housekeeper, and a babysitter” (Cowie 49). The Philippine government was afraid that
Francis might get kidnapped by rebels and “cause an international incident,” so
there was a “full-time government bodyguard with a machine gun” waiting for him when
he arrived (Coppola 26, Cowie 49). The family was put up in a mansion in Manila with all
the amenities they might expect back in America (Travers 104). Production designer Dean Tavoularis arrived
in the Philippines long before everyone else and was working on 292 scenes near the end of February at the headquarters in Pagsanjan (Cowie 31). He called working on Apocalypse Now,
“one of the greatest miseries of [his] life” saying, "The weather was either hot and raining,
or hot and not raining. When you were drawing, tracing paper would stick to your hand" (Cowie 30). When the production arrived in the Philippines,
they hired “thousands of Filipinos” to help with building sets, basic crew positions,
driving and flying, and to act as extras—and injected millions of dollars into the local
economy (Cowie 47). Many of these Filipino workers were paid just three dollars a day
for their work. Dean Tavoularis: “In Hollywood or New York
if you want another person it’s quite a big deal, with the fringes and their salaries,
it’s thousands of dollars. So for a dollar a day, three dollars a day, I’d hope we
weren’t taking advantage of people but that’s what they were paid. So you could get, not
one person, but you could get ten or twenty or a hundred.” This is how they were able to build a giant
temple out of 300-pound adobe blocks out in the jungle (Hearts of Darkness). To put this
into perspective, each special effect bullet-hit also cost three dollars (Coppola 195). Meanwhile, the main cast and crew of around
500 people would usually eat [quote] "roast turkey, leg of lamb, peperonata, Lyonnaise
potatoes, carrots a l'anglaise, a variety of salads, caramel custard, soft drinks and
coffee” as well as “Philippine food such as adobong baboy and sautéed vegetables”
(Cowie 52). Now let’s see what we have here––roast
beef, and usually it’s not bad. Try some Jerry, pass it around. Around March 11th, the production had [quote]
“rented a section of one of the Philippine film studios in downtown Manila” and the
whole place was buzzing with activity (Coppola 23). Eleanor Coppola wrote, "There were offices
with people poring over maps, interviewing pilots and truck drivers and planning how
to get the company to the first major location, Baler, which is six hours away over rough
dirt roads. It is thirty minutes by plane. They were planning where hundreds of people
could be housed and fed. Baler is a little town with only one small hotel" (Coppola 23). Each time I looked around, the walls moved
in a little tighter. The production kept sending people to Pagsanjan
to build sets there and in the nearby towns, growing the population of the area [quote]
“well beyond its 16,000 residents” (Cowie 30). Here are just some of the nearby locations they were building in: April 7th was Coppola’s thirty-seventh birthday
and the production flew in [quote] “hundreds of pounds of hamburger and hot dogs” from
San Francisco and six-by-nine-foot cake (Coppola 28). Just the tax and shipping cost $8,000
(Travers 105). Unfortunately “someone had forgotten the spatulas” and people had to flip their burgers with pieces of cardboard (Coppola 28). Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro and his Italian
crew flew in their own food from Italy—"tomatoes, spaghetti, and olive oil” and they even
managed to get a local bakery to forego the sugar and milk and make "Italian-style bread”
for them (Cowie 53). Coppola also had sent the "best wine and Lalique crystal, along
with state-of-the-art stereo equipment and top-of-the-line cooking utensils” and they
"drank Champagne from Tiffany glasses” (Travers 105). Later on today we will host a gourmet dinner
of steak and ice cream and your choice of beverages, flown in from Saigon. The production itself was beginning to feel
bizarrely similar to not just the war but the story of the film. And it would be the
subtext to what would otherwise be a simple exposition scene. Francis Ford Coppola: “We had access to
too many–too much money, too much equipment…” One of the first things you’ll notice about
the mission briefing scene is that there is a small role played by Hollywood legend Harrison
Ford. Ford plays Colonel Lucas—most likely a nod to George Lucas. What’s interesting here is that this scene
was filmed in 1976 and the movie came out in 1979. So, between the filming of this small
role and the release of the film, Harrison Ford achieved mega-stardom with Lucas’ Star
Wars, which came out in 1977. He had very recently wrapped production on Star Wars,
which, if the documentary Empire of Dreams is any indication, Ford was not expecting
the movie to be such a big hit. At this point, he was mainly known for roles in American
Graffiti and The Conversation. Ford was hired on for “$1,750 a week, plus expenses”
(Cowie 67). Producer Fred Roos was the casting director on American Graffiti and arranged
to have Ford appear in the film (Commentary). You might recognize this actor playing General
R. Corman—which I have to imagine is a nod to Coppola’s mentor Roger Corman. He was
played by G. D. Spradlin who played the corrupt senator in The Godfather Part II, and just
happens to be sitting next to the real Roger Corman in this shot. Spradlin was paid $5,000 a week—the same
fee that Dennis Hopper would get (Cowie 67). They had already filmed the mission briefing
with Harvey Keitel, so this entire scene was reshot (Cowie 68). To make up for lost time
after Keitel’s firing, Martin Sheen’s schedule was really intense during this period.
The scene was scheduled to be filmed on August 4th 1976— the day after they filmed Sheen’s
drunken night in the hotel (Cowie 67). Considering how drunk Sheen was during the filming of
that scene, I would imagine that he was pretty hungover if they shot this the next day. They
do reference Sheen’s cut hand that accidentally happened while filming that scene. That hand there, are you wounded? Just a little fishing accident on R&R, sir. Fishing on R&R? Yes, sir. As we can see from the slate in some behind-the-scenes
footage, it looks like at least one of the days they worked on this scene was August 6th. You might NOT recognize this man who plays
Jerry the civilian—a government official, maybe CIA. This character was played by Jerry
Ziesmer who was actually the First Assistant Director on Apocalypse Now (Commentary). The important Kurtz-dossier makes its first
appearance in this scene. The dossier required the production to make a ton of materials
including Marlon Brando in fatigues (Commentary). We’ll talk about this more in a later episode. On the day of filming, Harrison Ford was tired
from traveling and seemed visibly nervous about doing so much dialogue (Commentary).
Coppola shot the scene over and over again to try and find something unique that would
make the scene memorable. He decided to incorporate Ford’s nervousness (or exhaustion) into the scene and have him accidentally drop the dossier (Commentary). Jeezus––operations officer for the Special
Forces... Francis Ford Coppola: “I think that’s
a familiar technique that directors do, they note whatever is––seems to be there in
the reality of shooting it and then try to make that part of the scene.” Ford is always such a cool guy in movies,
it’s kind of fun to see him sort of playing against type… before he really had a “type.”
Coppola took a similar approach in The Godfather with Luca Brasi practicing his greeting for
Vito Corleone. The actor, Lenny Montana, wasn’t an experienced actor—he was a professional
wrestler and bodyguard. They shot the scene of Luca Brasi meeting with Vito, played by
the legendary Marlon Brando, and upon seeing Brando in the flesh, Montana “froze and
fumbled his lines” (Time). I’m grateful that you have invited me to
your daughter...ers wedding... On the day of your daughter’s wedding. Coppola then shot the bit of Luca practicing
his greeting, so that it would appear that Luca was nervous about Vito instead of Montana
being nervous about Brando (Time). Don Corleone, I am honored and grateful that
you have invited me to your home on the wedding day of your daughter. In a similar vein, Spradlin wrote some of
his own lines at home and brought them in for the shoot. These were lines such as: I don’t know how you feel about this shrimp,
but if you’ll eat it you’ll never have to prove your courage in any other way. and this line: Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln
called “the better angels of our nature.” Coppola thought that Spradlin was “padding”
his part, but he didn’t mind because it was always so good (Commentary). Coppola likes using food as a prop in his
films. He finds that it gives the actors a lot of opportunities to make additions to
the scenes that are memorable (Commentary). This is where we get that interesting bit
with the weird-looking shrimp heads. You also might notice that some of the dialogue
doesn’t seem to match the actors’ mouths. Pick up Colonel Kurtz’s path at Nu Mung
Ba. This is because one of Brando’s ideas that
he tried to force onto Coppola was a different name for his character, Colonel Kurtz. We’ll
talk about this more in the Kurtz episodes, but Brando thought that the name Kurtz was
too ugly and brutal. He wanted a name that [quote] “sounded like the wind blowing through
the wheat fields — Leighley, Leighley…” (Cowie 76). Yeah, he wanted Kurtz to be named
Leighley. In these clips, the actors are saying “Leighley,” which was then dubbed over
to “Kurtz.” There is an interesting video about this by
Steve Legge where he goes into more detail. You can find the link in the description.
Steve Legge also found that there is a shot of one of the photos of Kurtz with the name
‘Leighley’ sewn onto his uniform. In the outtakes and deleted scenes included
with The Final Cut there is a portion of this scene in which you can hear them refer to
Kurtz as Walter E Leighley. You’ve heard of Colonel Walter E. Leighley,
Captain? Pick up Colonel Leighley’s path at Nu Mung
Ba. Say again, sir? Terminate Colonel Leighley’s command. The great line Terminate, with extreme prejudice. was a reference to an article on an real-life
colonel who was involved in the assassination of a north-Vietnamese counter-agent (Commentary).
The colonel's name was Colonel Rheault and this episode's companion PDF features the
fascinating story of Colonel Rheault and the assassination that would inspire the MacGuffin
of Apocalypse Now, as well as excerpts from the drafts of the script in which Willard
had previously met Colonel Kurtz, and some interesting comments from the previous episode.
It's just $1 and really helps the series or you can join my Patreon at the $5 level to
get this companion PDF and all of the previous bonus materials I've made. This has become one of my favorite scenes
of the movie despite it being just exposition to set up the rest of the story. The incredible
sound design in the tape of Kurtz speaking madly about the snail crawling over the straight
razor teases our interest in him even though we won’t see him for another two and a half
hours (in the redux version). That’s my dream, it’s my nightmare. I love how Jerry, the civilian, passively
dishes himself some of the weird-looking shrimp during the recording of Kurtz’s insanity
that seems to reveal an evil force wreaking havoc out in the jungle and Jerry, without
emotion, tells Willard to terminate an American Colonel “with extreme prejudice.” Meanwhile,
the subject weighs heavy on General Corman and Willard, and Colonel Lucas can barely
get the words out. Infiltrate his team by [clearing throat] whatever
means available, and terminate the Colonel’s command. It’s also a clever touch to have Willard
not verbally accept the mission, but instead, accept the mission by accepting the offer
of a cigarette from Jerry. The way things happen off-screen and how the
frame floats around to see from Willard’s point of view as he takes this all in and
the brilliant use of eye-lines to give impact to certain lines by having the characters
look directly into the camera makes this such a haunting scene. I got a chance to interview a professional
cinematographer about the eye-lines in this scene that we then turned into a video for
another project called 8Hours. I’ll put the link in the description so you can check
it out. Walter Murch: “His instructions to the camera
operator––who did not speak English––were, ‘You are photographing these three men from
Willard’s point of view. Willard is hung over and whenever you, the camera operator,
feel bored, I want you to pan to somebody else. Look at something else, don’t feel
that you have to stay on the same actor. Even if the actor is talking, you can pan off of him.’” The brilliant cinematography was the work
of Vittorio Storaro. I talked about Storaro a bit in previous episodes, but I want to
take some time to talk about the interesting story of how he came to work on Apocalypse
Now. Storaro first became interested in cinematography at a young age while watching Charlie Chaplin
movies (NYFF55). His father was a projectionist and when Vittorio was seven years old, he
saw his father and some people bring in a piece of machinery, paint the wall white,
and, for the very first time, they watched Chaplin’s City Lights (NYFF55). Storaro
went to an Italian film school and became a camera operator at 21 years old, but he
initially refused offers to be the cinematographer on projects. He felt that he couldn’t just
shoot any story—there had to be a “magnetic relationship” between him and the director
(NYFF55). He refused cinematography jobs until he was 28 years old in 1968 when Franco Rossi
asked him to shoot a movie called Youth March in black and white (NYFF55). Storaro was very
interested in light and shadows and felt that working in black and white would be a good
start to his journey as a cinematographer (NYFF55). He said that he cried when they
finished the production because that first film was like his first love—his first chance
to express himself completely in cinematography and story (NYFF55). Only a year later, he
would work with director Bernardo Bertolucci on The Conformist, one of Coppola’s favorite films. You may have seen the documentary Jodorowsky’s
Dune, about a planned adaptation of Dune with Orson Welles, Mick Jaggar, and Salvador Dali
acting, with concept art by HR Giger and music by Pink Floyd. The movie was never made, but
Jodorowsky, at one point, asked Vittorio Storaro to do the cinematography for the film (A.
Cinematographer 95). Coppola saw The Conformist at the New York
Film Festival and loved it so much that he bought a 16mm print (NYFF55). He told Storaro
that, anytime he was feeling depressed, he was screening The Conformist and having a
good time. According to Storaro, Coppola loved the film so much that he knew it better than
Storaro himself (NYFF55). Coppola had actually tried to get Storaro to shoot The Godfather
Part II, but Storaro refused saying that “only Gordon Willis could repeat the magic of that
first masterpiece" (Cowie 10). Fred Roos flew to Rome in the summer of 1975
to ask Storaro, in person, to do the cinematography for Apocalypse Now (Cowie 10). Storaro must
have really respected Willis’ work, because he declined again asking Coppola why he hadn’t
given the job to Willis (Cowie 10). Mr. Corleone is a man who insists on hearing
bad news immediately. Coppola told Storaro, "This is a completely
different project… to be made completely outside the United States, and Gordon doesn’t
like traveling and going on location. I need another passion. I’ve seen The Conformist,
and I’d love you to do it” (Cowie 10). Storaro later said, “[W]hen I spoke with
Gordon about it, he assured me that he was not a part of the project, even though there
was nothing wrong between him and Francis” (A. Cinematographer 95). Storaro finally accepted the job of cinematographer,
but he was still unsure saying, "I knew that it was very difficult to shoot a war picture,
because usually there is the army, the soldiers, the helicopters, and they can never wait for
you because the light is not ready, or because they need to do something else. Plus the Vietnam
War was so far removed from my normal world, my own culture, that I wondered if I could
find anything to help this story. So Francis urged me to read Heart of Darkness, from which
the main structure, the concept, stems” (Cowie 11). Apocalypse Now would be Storaro’s first
American film (Writing with Light). In a diary entry from May 12th, 1976, Eleanor Coppola
wrote, "[Vittorio] began talking to me about how he almost didn’t take this film, because
he had never worked on an American production and he was afraid that he couldn’t be precise
and definitive enough—maybe he couldn’t do it the American way. At one point, Francis
joined the conversation. He had been drinking a lot of wine and talking to someone else.
He said, 'Vittorio, I have a confession to make. I am scared every day that you will
think I am an asshole, because I am not definitive enough, that I am trying to find my way, find
the direction for this film' (Coppola 63). Francis Ford Coppola: “When I selected Vittorio
to be the cinematographer of Apocalypse Now, I did so because I felt that the kind of poetic
vision I had hoped for with Apocalypse would require a photographer to have this kind of
intellect and this type of attitude towards the cinema.” (Writing with Light) Storaro was also worried about working on
an English speaking production when his English wasn’t very good, but Coppola agreed that
he could bring his Italian crew with him to the Philippines (Cowie 47). When production
was starting up, everyone was confident that shooting would last only three to four months—
Storaro’s contract said that filming would start between January 1st and 31st in 1976
and he would be paid $35,000 for his work (Cowie 20). Part of Storaro’s contract stated
that the film stock would be Kodak E.5383 and Storaro [quote] "insisted on Technicolor's
lab in Rome handling the developing and printing” (Cowie 20). The same lab in Rome would handle
Eleanor Coppola’s behind-the-scenes footage for the eventual Hearts of Darkness documentary
(Hearts of Darkness Commentary). Storaro would end up winning his first Academy
Award for cinematography for his work on Apocalypse Now. VIttorio Storaro: “Francis, thank you. Thank
you for the trust that you gave me. Thank you for the freedom that you gave me to express,
completely, myself in Apocalypse Now. Thank you.” He would win two more in the 80s for Reds
and The Last Emperor. He’s still working, so maybe he’ll win another. Could you imagine
if he had done the cinematography for Denis Villeneuve’s Dune after turning down Jodorowsky? The funny thing is that Storaro actually started
his work on Apocalypse Now while working on another movie called Scandal (or Submission)
in late 1974. He would stay on set after shooting to work with his electrician, grips, and crew
doing optical tests for Apocalypse Now (Cowie 48). He also asked Technovision to make [quote]
“a new series of lenses for the film in 1:2.35 ratio” (Cowie 48). Storaro said,
"We shot the film with Mitchell reflex cameras, which were modified by [the Italian company]
Technovision to accept Cooke Hobson Taylor anamorphic lenses from England (A. Cinematographer 100). On Storaro’s first day of the Apocalypse
Now production, Coppola gave him an anamorphic viewfinder with his name on it and Coppola
had his own (A. Cinematographer 100). Storaro said that Coppola and him would walk around
the set with their viewfinders and every morning Coppola would tell him his main ideas for
the day and his concept for the scene and usually addressed things “on a metaphorical
level" (A. Cinematographer 100). After those morning meetings, Storaro said, "I would then
try to use my knowledge to figure out how to achieve those concepts technically. I would
present my ideas, and if he didn’t think they would work, I would come up with something
else. But once he was sure that I had come up with the best way to translate his concept
onto film, he would give me total freedom to put together the entire sequence. He would
sometimes make a few little changes to our plan while we were shooting, but usually we
wouldn’t deviate much from the initial plan we had worked out in the morning" (A. Cinematographer
100). On the next episode, Willard boards the patrol
boat and meets the crew that will escort him to Kurtz and we’ll learn about Coppola’s
unique method for casting by mixing seasoned actors with young unknowns.
