Every crack represents a life I've saved. You know what I mean? Francis Ford Coppola’s method of modifying
the characters to fit the actors themselves becomes even more interesting when you
consider that the role of the crazy photojournalist is perhaps one of the
closest to its real-world counterpart. In this video, we’ll talk about how Hopper’s
own major artistic risk lead to career slump that Apocalypse Now would help fix, how
Hopper would bring even more insanity to the production, the inspirations
for the photojournalist character, and the story behind the Colby character that
was cut from the movie–including the crazy death scene of Colby and the photojournalist
that didn’t make it into the final film. When the patrol boat docks at the
Kurtz Compound, they are greeted by a man who introduces himself as a photojournalist. I’m an American! His name is never mentioned in the movie, but in
a call sheet we can see that his name is Hurley. In Coppola’s 1975 rewrite
of the script, the character is named Moonby and is an Australian
soldier who has deserted his post. In the script, Moonby says that he convinced the
Montagnard army not to kill Willard and the patrol boat crew, but it was difficult because they don’t
want Kurtz to leave. Moonby also says that Kurtz was going to kill him for being a deserter, but
didn’t because Moonby had hidden a huge stash of various drugs in the jungle (Screenplay). None
of this is in Milius’ 1969 version of the script, but in that version, we learn that Kurtz’s
army is being funded by a huge stash of drugs. This is the way the f***ing world ends!
Look at this f***ing s**t we’re in, man! At the time that Apocalypse Now was in production,
Hopper’s career had been slowly dying for six years. All because of one movie. But before we get
into that, I want to give you a couple of movie recommendations you can find on this episode’s
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level to get extended access to mubi as a perk. Now back to the show! In 1969, Hopper had become an icon for
the youth with his movie Easy Rider, which he directed, co-wrote, and starred
in. The super low-budget movie made a ton of money and the screenplay even
earned Hopper an Oscar nomination. In the same year, he had a role in
the John Wayne classic True Grit. I can't do a thing for you, son. Your
partner has killed you, and I'm done for him. The movie also featured another
Apocalypse Now actor–Robert Duvall. I call that bold talk for a one-eyed fat man! Fill your hands you sonofabitch! But in 1971, he wrote, directed, and
starred in The Last Movie and it was a box office failure. Hopper attributed it
to Universal refusing to distribute the movie properly (Last Movie Wiki). After seeing the
enormous success of Easy Rider with young people, Universal allowed Hopper to do whatever
he wanted, but they were “horrified” by the abstract experimental nature of the
movie he turned in (Last Movie Wiki). Hopper: “I wasn’t going to re-edit the
movie, which is what he wanted me to do. “They re-cut it?” “No, they never could re-cut it
because I had Final Cut. But I had Final Cut and cut my own throat.”
(The Last Movie (Film Insight).mp4) Despite winning the Critics Prize
at the Venice Film Festival, the movie is really only now being recognized
for its artistic merit (Last Movie Wiki). Nonetheless, after the failure of the movie,
Hopper was basically “exiled” from Hollywood for nearly a decade acting in only a
few low-budget movies (Last Movie Wiki). Hopper: “I was not in the greatest of shape
as far as my career was concerned. I was delightful to hear I was going to go do
anything anywhere.” (Hearts of Darkness). Hopper: “I didn’t know until two weeks before I
came here that I was going to be in the picture much less playing the photojournalist, the guy
in tatters and rags taking photographs trying to explain what this is all about and how
it’s blown his mind.” (Hearts of Darkness). On October 1st, Coppola made a memo
that Hopper’s character is [quote] “a very important element of the script in that
he is really the comic relief” (Cowie 82). I should have been a pair of ragged claws,
scuttling across floors of silent seas. I mean… Stay with the boat. Hopper arrived in the Philippines
on September 6th and a production assistant named Tony Dingman was given the job of
keeping an eye on him (Cowie 80). Dingman said, “When Dennis arrived, he brought so much laughter and excitement” (Cowie 80). Hopper was a pretty
eccentric guy known for his erratic behavior. One night, Hopper had been drinking and threw
a bottle at troops on patrol in Manila (Cowie 80). They might have shot him if it hadn’t been
for Dingman dragging Hopper away (Cowie 80). Hopper was always late to set and would arrive drunk and stoned–Dingman was tasked with
keeping him on time and sober, but soon, Dingman and Hopper would arrive late to the set
and they’d both be drunk and stoned (Garretsen). Dingman, Hopper and the prop guy would go out
drinking and visit a local massage parlor “two or three times a day” for a happy ending (Cowie
82). Hopper had brought his girlfriend with him to the Philippines and one time at 2 in the
morning, the crew was woken up by the sound of screaming coming from his room and then
pistol shots (Zeismer 273). Hopper ran into assistant director Jerry Zeismer’s room
to hide (Zeismer 273). He told Zeismer, “I’m OK. She just gets like this
sometimes, doesn’t last long” (Zeismer 273) He said, ‘if you take my picture again,
I’m going to kill you’… and he meant it. In an interview for NPR’s Fresh Air, Eleanor
Coppola was asked why Francis cast Hopper during a period in which Hopper was experiencing
some serious issues and had a drug problem. Eleanor Coppola: “Well, I don’t think Francis
realized he was in that kind of shape. He thought he was a really good actor. And he had a lot of
admiration for him. And he was, cast in a role, Green Beret role. And when he really got out
there, Francis realized there's no way that he could play this, Green Beret. And he had to
then sort of invent a part for him because he thought he was very talented, and there
must be some way to use his gifts. And, so Francis has the great ability to make the
part fit the actor rather than the other way around. If the actor comes and can't play the
part as written, he rewrites the part. And, he certainly did that in Dennis's case and tried
to somehow utilize the character that he was, because that was one of the, issues in
the Vietnam War is the use of drugs and, the availability of drugs. And in fact, they're
in the Philippines because of where we were there in, Asia, the there were drugs available and
cheaply and things that aren't available just, here in, while everybody's home in Los Angeles.
So that, there was experimentation” (NPR). Also, let’s not forget that, like Coppola,
Hopper was an alum of B-Movie mogul Roger Corman and Coppola must have had an
admiration for Hopper as an auteur filmmaker who took big risks and didn’t
let studios compromise his artistic vision. Coppola: “The character that Dennis Hopper played
wasn’t even in the script. I just made it up out of–when I saw him, how wacky he was I made it out of the character that’s in the
Conrad novel.” (Yellow King Film Boy) Conrad’s Heart of Darkness features
a Russian trader who is completely devoted to Kurtz and is described as
looking like a harlequin or jester. Hopper: “And what they give me is in
the book, is the Russian Jew who has all these things like tarot cards, so
that’s who the photo news journalist became was the spinski’s tarot card fool,
who had all the secret ones is a world, but he couldn’t remember how to use them.”
(Scene by Scene - With Mark Cousins.mp4) Coppola: “I have Dennis Hopper playing
a spaced out photojournalist with twelve cameras here because he’s going
to get the truth. And it’s all, ‘man’ and he’s a wonderful
apparition” (Hearts of Darkness). Several of the lines that Hopper says are
basically taken directly from the book, such as: You don’t talk to the colonel. Well, you
listen to him. The man’s enlarged my mind. The character was also loosely based
on Sean Flynn, who was the son of the famous Hollywood Golden Age actor Errol
Flynn–best known for playing Robin Hood. Sean Flynn was an actor like his father,
but in the 60s he made the switch to being a freelance photojournalist documenting the
Vietnam War in very high-risk situations, even finding himself in combat
several times (Sean Flynn Wiki). In 1970, Flynn and another photographer
named Dana Stone came across a “white four-door sedan” blocking the road while riding
motorcycles to Saigon (Sean Flynn Wiki). It was a makeshift checkpoint and the car belonged to
several missing journalists (Sean Flynn Wiki). They decided to go up to the checkpoint
to interview the Khmer Rouge rebels who marched the two men into a nearby treeline and
they were never seen again (Sean Flynn Wiki). Sean Flynn took off into the jungles
of Cambodia to bring the news of the war to the world. That was April 6th, 1970,
and Sean hasn't been accounted for since… I ask you, whatever happened to Sean
Flynn? If you don't help, who will? The photojournalist character was also loosely
based on a photographer that makes an appearance in Michael Herr’s book Dispatches–a photographer
named Tim Page. Page was a friend of Sean Flynn and even more of a daredevil when it came to
finding himself in dangerous locations that few photographers would go to. He miraculously
survived the war despite several incidents that earned him life-threatening injuries–the worst
of which was a time when a helicopter he was in landed to retrieve some wounded soldiers and
a sergeant directly in front of Page stepped on a landmine blowing his legs off and sending a
two inch piece of shrapnel into Page’s brain. Page: “I mean, who really wants to watch the Queen
walk around? You know? It’s just not interesting. At least, here, you’re seeing history
made. You’re seeing something exciting. On the set was a photographer
named Chas Garretsen whose photos have made appearances throughout this series. In 1968, Garretsen crossed the Cambodia border
on foot to become a freelance photojournalist in Vietnam (Garretsen Wiki). There, he became friends
with photographer Dana Stone–the photographer who went missing with Sean Flynn–and worked as
a cameraman for ABC TV and sold photos to American publications (Garretsen Wiki). In the
early 70s, Garretsen photographed the American invasion of Cambodia and then covered the
1973 Chilean coup d’état (Garretsen Wiki). Things weirdly came full circle, when, in 1976, Coppola was looking for a photographer and hired
Garretsen after seeing his incredible portfolio of war photography (Garretsen). So now a real war
photographer would be taking photos of a fake war. In 2021, Garretsen published
the book Apocalypse Now: The Lost Photo Archive and it is so cool.
I’ll put a link to it in the description. Here’s another picture of Hopper in
“regular military fatigues” (Garretsen). Coppola changed Hopper’s look every day until he
ended up looking like what we see in the movie. After a week, Coppola asked Garretsen what
he thought. Garretsen said that the character definitely wouldn’t have film canisters
taped to the strap of his only camera, saying that it made him look like a hippie
wannabe combat photographer and that he needs more than one camera (Garretsen). The next
day, the prop guy told Garretsen that they need his cameras for Hopper’s character and that
they’d reimburse him for new ones (Garretsen). The funny thing is that it took Coppola a week to
convince Hopper to not tape film canisters to his camera strap (Garretsen). Hopper was
annoyed because that’s how he carried his film when he did photography (Garretsen).
This is his most famous photo that is part of LA’s Museum of Modern Art collection:
I think it’s titled “Double Standard”. Hopper: “And I really appreciate Francis’s
writing even though he does drop it on you sometimes and it does sometimes take an idiot like
me a whole day to learn it.” (Hearts of Darkness). Things were quite difficult with Hopper. He
had a really difficult time remembering his lines and would improvise just
a bunch of stuff so insane that everyone would cry laughing when they
would watch the dailies (Garretsen). What are you doing here? You
doing a story on this guy? No man, I’m not doing a story here.
Well, you see, this is the story. And you’ve arrived. Oh you’ve been a
lot of places and I’ve been a lot of places, but this is the war, man. This is it.
You just look it right in the face motherf***er if you can stand it. You just grab
it and you take it and you kiss it right on the mouth if you can stand it.
What’s your name again? Coppola: “Why didn’t you say that to
him in the scene? Something clever like that? Why didn’t you say, ‘who are you?’”
Hopper: “Because I haven’t learned my lines yet.” “I know, you’ve had them for five days.”
“The other thing I’d like to say is that” “Those glasses are–”
“These glasses… I can’t see anything through them, but like you know, every
crack represents a life I’ve saved. You know what I mean? They represent a life I’ve saved.”
“You should say all that in the scene.” “I do, but you know, the director, the
director says, ‘you don’t know your lines.’” “Well, if you know your lines, then you
can forget them. You know more or less–” “Oh, I see. That’s what I’m
trying to do… forget those lines.” “But it’s no good to forget them if you’ve
never knew them.” (Hearts of Darkness). Hopper: “The point is this, there was
no dialogue. We would sit– Francis and I would sit in the morning, he would write these
things, we'd write these things and so and write them out and he’d say, ‘now, this is a general
idea’ so you go ‘okay great.’ Then we go and improvise. There was nothing, I mean I mean he's
talking about learning your lines, what lines Francis? Good god been improvising everything.
Did you say that to him? Well, yeah, but I mean, you know.
I’d say ‘About learning my lines? I guess I didn't learn my line.’ ‘Yeah well you should learn your
lines.’ There wasn't any lines. There wasn't in the end of the movie there was no character for me
to play.” (Scene by Scene - With Mark Cousins.mp4) Because so much of Hopper’s dialogue
was improvised and it would be extremely difficult to cut around, Hopper’s scenes
were shot with three cameras–wide, medium, and close-up–which meant three times the film
for the already costly production (Garretsen). Willard, Chef, and the photojournalist walk
up the hill to the base of the Kurtz Temple. This was a complicated dolly shot past the
whole front of the Kurtz Compound that took a lot of preparation. Storaro’s key grip
built a makeshift bridge for the dolly track that stretched over a hundred feet (Coppola
149). The place really smelled because of all the chicken crap everywhere and the key
grip laughed and said something in Italian, like, ‘Mr. Coppola has us down here
working in this shit’ and Coppola said, ‘Well, that’s life.’ and the key
grip said, “No, that’s not life, that’s the movie business. In life I have a
nice place that smells good.’ (Coppola 163). Willard sees a couple of Green Berets
who are now part of Kurtz’s army and recognizes one as Colby–the assassin
who was sent to kill Kurtz before him. This group of Kurtz’s men look
similar to the group that John Milius described in the first part
of his original script. Basically they look like psychedelic soldiers
who have been living in the jungle. It’s a really cool and surreal
looking shot. We see fog rising from the ground without any in-world explanation. The production brought in tons of
dry ice to add to the weirdness. It’s kind of funny to imagine Kurtz’s army
seeing the boat arrive and putting dry ice around and setting off colored smoke
grenades to make themselves look cool. Willard takes a closer look at the
man who was once just like him, but now completely under Kurtz’s spell. Colby. In an outtake, Willard asks Colby
about all of the bodies around. Last night…
NVA Regulars… We killed most of them… I think…
(All Outtakes.mp4) The character of Colby is a
really interesting one and was meant to be a much bigger
part of the story originally. In the summer of 1976, when Coppola hired GD
Spradlin and Harrison Ford for the mission briefing scene, he also hired Dennis Hopper for
$5,000 a week, but Coppola wasn’t sure how he’d use him (Cowie 67). When Hopper was brought on,
the initial thought was that he would play Colby, but when Colby’s role started getting diminished
as Coppola reworked the story on location, Hopper was put on the newly invented
photojournalist character (Cowie 67). For Colby, Coppola went with an unknown actor
named Scott Glenn who would go on to have a celebrated career–my favorite role of his probably
being Jack Crawford in The Silence of the Lambs. Clarice! Glenn, actually paid for his own flight
to the Philippines and was originally going to play a background part before
Coppola upgraded him to the role of Colby, but still, he was paid only $664.40 per
week while playing the part (Cowie 18). During the deadly typhoon that shut down the
production, Glenn risked his life going to the countryside to rescue locals (Cowie 18).
This was not out of character considering that not only was Glenn a veteran of the
Vietnam War, but to prepare for the role, he and Charlie Robinson would spend all
night patrolling the jungle next to the Kurtz temple set and lived in huts eating roots and
leaves with the military advisers (Zeismer 274). Despite all that preparation, almost all of Scott Glenn’s work on the movie wound
up getting cut during the edit. The heads. You’re looking at the heads. Sometimes
he goes too far. He’s the first one to admit it.
What’s interesting is that
the heads are real. I mean, not like that. The heads were played by
actors who were in boxes that were dug into the set so that only their
heads poked out (Zeismer 273). They only appear in a couple of shots and
are decently far away from the camera, which was an amazing detail considering
how miserable it was to play one of the heads. Those actors had to be basically
buried from 8 AM to 6 PM with one break for lunch (Coppola 144). It was really
hot and they were in direct sunlight, so little umbrellas would be placed over
them in between takes (Coppola 144). One of the heads was played by Tony Dettman who introduced Francis and Eleanor
to each other (Zeismer 274). During the part where Hopper and Sheen are walking
up to the temple, Coppola was getting really frustrated with Hopper not knowing his lines and
challenging him on everything, so one morning, Coppola went to assistant director Jerry Zeismer
and told him that Hopper was driving him nuts (Zeismer 275). Coppola came up with hand signals
so that Zeismer could communicate to him how he thought the scene was going (Zeismer 275). Coppola
said, "Look, I'm going crazy. I want you to signal to me what you think. To help me, see? Look, pull
your right ear if I should stay with the same shot and go again. If I should change the setup,
you wipe your forehead, see?" (Zeismer 275). In her diary, Eleanor Coppola wrote, “During one
take, Dennis Hopper backed up and stepped right at a girl’s cheek and collapsed part of the
container she was in, nearly stepping on her face. The mud on both sides of the dolly track
was deep and people kept slipping. Dennis and Fred Forrest both fell during takes. The sound man
had someone hold on to his belt in the back and stabilize him as he followed the actors, so that
he wouldn’t fall with the boom” (Coppola 144). On take twenty-six, Hopper yelled, “Whaddya want
me to do?” and Coppola yelled back, “I told you a hundred times…There are some f***ing heads on the
f***ing walkway, and you're saying what a great man [Kurtz] is, and you're trying to bridge that
contradiction. Explain to [Willard] that I know it looks funny, but the guy goes too far, but he
admits he's a good man. ACTION!!!’ (Cowie 83). They tried doing the scene at the temple steps
again, but nothing was working and Hopper was still challenging Coppola on every little thing
until Coppola finally exploded, saying, "I've let you do it your way for two days! Just once! Once!
Do the scene the way I want it!” (Zeismer 275). Even when Coppola got angry, he rarely shouted,
so all the cast and crew got very tense when this happened (Zeismer 275). Finally, Hopper laughed
it off and did the scene the way Coppola had asked (Zeismer 275). According to Eleanor, he never
got that part the way he wanted it (Coppola 144). Sometimes he goes too far.
He’s the first one to admit it. Sometimes he goes too far.
He’s the first one to admit it. And if you could have heard him,
just two days ago. About life, poetry, philosophy… You can’t call the man crazy. If you could have heard
the man, just two days ago, you could have heard a man.
you going to call him crazy? Okay, just do what I ask when I say just explain
the poem and the reason you’re explaining the– See, I need to know the reason.
I’m telling you the reason. I can’t ever talk more than a f***ing sentence. The reason
that you’re explaining the poem to him is because you want to indicate to this guy that he does not
understand Kurtz, that Kurtz is a strange man. What you’re trying to express is that he’s kind
of in the twilight zone. That his twilight zone is our twilight zone and America’s twilight zone. So
that he will not judge him. So that he will accept him as a great man and help him.
(Hearts of Darkness) In a deleted scene, Willard asks Colby if he feels
anything when he kills people and Colby replies, Yes, I feel.
What. Recoil. I feel the recoil from
the shotgun. (All Outtakes.mp4) Willard tells Colby he’s going to go pee, but
he actually goes to talk to the photojournalist. The photojournalist, who realized that he’s
annoyed Kurtz enough that he will be killed, had escaped into the jungle, but came back
because he had something important to tell Willard. Willard finds a knife in a
corpse and hides it under his shirt. While the photojournalist is
demanding that Willard uphold Kurtz’s reputation when this is all
over, Colby sneaks up and shoots him. Willard throws the knife at Colby and
Colby falls. While Colby is dying, he tells Willard to kill Kurtz. I do think that the movie is better without
this. In the final film, the photojournalist understands that he will probably be killed and
disappears into the jungle with an unresolved fate similar to Sean Flynn and it is much more
profound to think that Willard didn’t need to escape and Kurtz would allow Willard
to kill him if he can find the will to. In the new 8 millimeter behind the
scenes footage on the Final Cut bluray, we can see them filming this scene. There was a
part where the photojournalist’s arm is blown off, so we can see Hopper with the fake arm. This is
the part where the knife was thrown at Colby. Dennis Hopper was upset by the scene
in which his character dies. They used a dummy of him for a wide shot of him
getting shot and falling and they had to wait until Hopper had left the set
to bring the dummy out (Zeismer 294). Eleanor Coppola wrote, “I shot an interview
with Dennis Hopper. One of the things he said that interested me the most was that he thought
filmmaking was in the same phase of development that art was during the cathedral-building period.
When they built those gr eat cathedrals in Europe, they employed stonemasons, engineers,
fresco painters, etc., and created the work through the combined talents of many. By the
nineteenth century, art evolved to the point where the major work of the day was being done
by individual artists working alone at an easel. Dennis was making the point that now filmmaking
involves the talents of many departments and perhaps eventually major films will be made by one
person with a video port-a-pack” (Coppola 145). On the next episode of Making Apocalypse Now,
Marlon Brando finally arrives on location. If you thought that Dennis Hopper was nuts, just
wait until you see what a troll Brando was. A special thanks goes out to
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