i'm jeffrey wright and this is feature film faves my favorite film uh is apocalypse now
francis ford coppola martin sheen carl grando robert duvall young harrison ford albert hall
uh lawrence fishburne when he was known as larry just uh the most incredible cast you could
possibly imagine telling an epic story based on joseph conrad's heart of darkness but set
uh during the vietnam war mayhem madness i i first saw apocalypse i was released in 1907 uh
but i didn't see it until i was in high school i was introduced to it by some friends of mine
when they were big you know kind of war buff type guys so they introduced me to the film
and i just fell deep into it it's such an immersive film it's an epic film it's
sweeping just from the first frame it just pulls you in the the voice over is just so
uh hypnotic and it's iconic you know the first frame you hear uh you see the fan the fan roaring
above them as he's lying in bed in some sweaty room somewhere outside you know somewhere uh
in vietnam and the thing and that then the word the fan becomes a helicopter and he says saigon
i'm still only in saigon and you're off it is an examination of war it's it's it's i think more
so an examination of the madness of war as uh as described by uh william deforest who plays chef
the synopsis is never get out of the boat never get out of the boat
i probably seen apocalypse now i don't know there was a period where it was kind of a ritual for me
i probably see i don't know i've seen it at least i don't know conservatively maybe 75 times i
haven't seen it in a while though but uh yeah you know in the right head space and go and put the
movie on and just kind of um dive in the acting is just on another level because they were so
immersed and committed to that process they were really living you know that life to the
extent that you can as actors they were you know out in the jungle i mean they weren't living in
the jungle i'm sure they went back to their lovely uh cabanas and things like that at the end of the
day but there's an authenticity about it that is um is just uh you know undeniable and the
script is brilliant i mean just the language the imagery uh it's it's it's just poetic and and and
weird and but smart and you know just kind of sparks you know sparked my imagination and there's
a documentary about the film and france before copeland says there's one point he said dennis
you're you're you're you're you don't know your lines you're you're forgetting your lines
and then it says well yeah i i thought that was the point man he was just he's just brilliant and
then brando we find martin sheen has come to hunt him down and to bring him back into civilization
bring him back out of the darkness into the light uh so to speak and there's a scene that's kind of
he's in some hut somewhere something you barely see his face the shadow they don't even know is
it he said i do a terrible brand over there but he did he says clucks are you are you an assassin
he says i'm a soldier you're neither you're an errand boy sent by grocery clubs
to collect the bill and it's like you know that's it man i mean you know apocalypse now man
you