In this video, we’re taking a look at the story
behind the horrifying ‘Puppy Boat Massacre’ scene in Apocalypse Now,
Get on that boat!
There’s nothing on it, man!
Get on it!
Well, alright!
including its last-minute addition, the real event that inspired it, the strange backstory
of the actors in the scene, and why this small scene is actually really important to the story.
Check
the yellow can.
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After the silly fun of Playboy Show and the Medevac Sequence, we get another funny bit with
Chef ragging on Clean while cooking soup on the boat’s engine and Lance paints his face because…
So they can’t see you. They’re everywhere, Chief.
There was another bit here that was cut out of the movie where there is a small
floating bed for a dead baby, which seems to be some kind of ritual for
the locals. Lance wants to keep it, but Chief yells at him before shooting it.
You know they booby trap them things.
Chief is annoyed wrangling the crew because they
are like children. They’re having too much fun for a war setting.
And stop smoking that dope! You hear me?!
And that fun is about to end.
Chief sees a Sampan boat and insists they search it as protocol demands. Willard
tells him to let the Sampan go, but we’ve seen how seriously Chief takes his job.
Chief forces Chef onto the Sampan to check if they are hiding supplies for the Viet Cong.
Frustrated with Chief, Chef tears apart the boat and when he gets to a basket,
the woman runs over and Clean shoots her and the rest of the civilians.
The woman was concerned about her puppy,
showing that the situation that has been created by the war has instilled a fear
that made Clean think that she must be running for a weapon to kill them with.
Producer Fred Roos said, "The scene where they come upon the little sampan boat;
the fear of the Americans on that boat, triggers the killing that went on,
and I think the truth of that scene so portrayed what that war must have been like" (Travers 134).
This disturbing sequence of events was actually suggested to Coppola by editor
Walter Murch when Coppola was back in California during December of 1976.
Coppola: “It was Walter’s idea that we add to the script–it wasn’t in it–a kind of My Lai Massacre.
And I thought about it, I went back,
he was not there. He was in California. We had come back and he told me, ‘What you need
is a massacre scene.’ And so I cooked up the ‘puppy sampan’ as it became known.”
Sam Bottoms, who played Lance, implies that it was the cast that came up with the idea,
so maybe it was a combination of Much and the cast. Bottoms said, "Francis had us all list a
set of things they wanted their characters to do, and I remember we all wanted to do
a sort of My Lai massacre,...We thought an interrogation of the boat, and firefight,
and the loss of many lives; we wanted to experience something like that” (Travers 134).
“In the winter of 1968, Charlie Company was losing men to an enemy they could not see or
catch–the Viet Cong. Army intelligence told Charlie Company that everyone in
the Vietnamese village of My Lai was a Viet Cong. They were deadly wrong.”
The My Lai Massacre, which happened around the same time that the movie takes place,
was a war crime committed by US soldiers in which they killed around five-hundred
unarmed South Vietnamese citizens of all ages–some of the stuff they did was too
unspeakable to mention here (My Lai Wiki). Only one soldier was convicted and [quote]
“was originally given a life sentence, but served three-and-a-half years under house
arrest after President Richard Nixon commuted his sentence” (My Lai Wiki).
According to Seymour Hersh–the journalist who uncovered the story–the military units
involved had lost around 20% of their men to the Viet Cong snipers and land mines,
but never saw the enemy (Hersh Interview). Over the following weeks the units became
“increasingly brutal” to civilians until they were ordered to go to My Lei and engage the
North Vietnamese who were reportedly there for some payback, but when they arrived drunk
and stoned they found only South Vietnamese civilians cooking breakfast (Hersh Interview).
The My Lai Massacre was more directly referenced in other movies like Casualties
of War and Born on the Fourth of July, but perhaps none moreso than in Platoon
where the soldiers are convinced that the villagers are working with the Viet
Cong and commit atrocities against them and the village is burned down.
In Apocalypse Now, this scene is framed differently. We know the patrol boat crew
now. We know that none of them are sociopaths who think of killing lightly. The character
who ultimately kills the civilians is Clean, the 17-year-old, who shoots when he sees the woman run
for the basket. Whereas Platoon says, ‘look at how psychos take advantage, look at what anger does,
look at how you can lose yourself, look at the courage it takes to go against what seems like the
inevitable sickness of human nature,’ Apocalypse Now says, ‘look at how these normal guys were
snatched up and used as cannon fodder for a needless war,’ ‘look at how this boy, who should
be living the life of a seventeen-year-old, has been turned into a killer.’
That’s my interpretation anyway.
The scene was shot in mid-April of 1977 and was the second-to-last scene they filmed.
The actors who played the inhabitants of the sampan had fled Vietnam as fugitives
only two days before shooting this scene and “included a lawyer and a
doctor” (Cowie 96). They were “desperate” for money and agreed to be in the movie (Cowie 96).
Frederick Forrest said, "The whole scene where we shoot up the sampan was improvised…It flowed
like music. Francis set it up so the improv really flowed. Before we started,
he gave each of us something to do. For instance, I was to search the sampan” (Travers 134).
Albert Hall: “I felt that he just thought a lot of his actors. We were gems who would bring his ideas
to life and he also took a lot of our creative input. Once he set
that feel for us we just started improvising everything that was happening on the boat.”
Forrest said that they “just let the cameras roll” and the first
take [quote] “knocked everyone out” (Cowie 96).
Steven Travers writes that a scene like this was not something screenwriter John
Milius would have ever included in the script considering how ultra-patriotic his version
was (Travers 134). But seeing as Coppola refused to give any concessions to the US
Department of Defense and was, therefore, receiving no aid from the US military,
he was completely untethered and free to explore this aspect of the war. It almost
feels like something someone in Coppola’s unique position would feel obligated to do.
Forrest said, "When we had finished, it was absolutely quiet. [Cinematographer]
Vittorio Storaro was just stunned. He said it was the best scene that he'd
ever seen. But none of it was written down" (Travers 134).
When it turns out that the woman was running for her puppy, Lance
demands Chef give it to him and ultimately yanks the puppy away from Chef violently.
Perhaps the sounds of the puppy yelping were added in later,
but this was obviously too violent and I wish they hadn’t done that.
Lance takes the puppy through the Do Lung bridge sequence,
which you could say that it was a lucky charm that kept Lance
from getting killed after leaving himself open to get shot while tripping on acid.
Shortly after, the puppy goes missing when Clean is killed, which could be interpreted as a loss
of innocence, or maybe the puppy was added on a whim and Coppola didn’t want to have to figure
out how to incorporate it into the rest of the movie. And the Sampan scene and Clean’s death
were the last things filmed, but I’m assuming the puppy was somewhat planned because it is
featured pretty heavily in the Do Lung sequence. That said, when I watched the Final Cut version
of the movie on IMAX, I noticed that the puppy reappears on the boat right before
Willard leaves to go kill Kurtz. I’m pretty sure that’s the puppy and not a monkey or something. I
remember it being really clear on IMAX, but on the blu-ray, it’s a little hard to see.
What’s great about the Sampan sequence is how much it progresses each character’s arc in a
single scene. Willard and Chief clash because it is important to Chief that he has control
over his boat and his crew. He feels his job is important and
has a pride in fulfilling his duties by the book. He is trying to prevent chaos
on the boat with his child-like crew by instilling a sense of order and protocol.
Until we reach our destination, Captain, you’re just on for the ride.
Willard’s mission, while secretive,
superseded everything else and by the end of the scene, we see how serious he is about it.
I told you not to stop now let’s go.
Both of these objectives clash with Chef, whose only mission is to get the hell out
of Vietnam in one piece. He has no stake in being an asset to the war effort or Willard’s mission.
Clean, at such a young age, doesn’t seem to grasp the weight of what is happening. He
seems a bit shocked at the carnage, but he is too naive to feel responsibility
for it. And as expendable people are in this setting, he will be the first of the patrol
boat crew to die and we will never even see who was responsible for his death.
Finally, Lance, like Chef has no sense of duty to the war effort, but while Chef is
terrified and trying to claw his way out of the situation, Lance, like the surfer he is,
is mostly relaxed. He’ll participate, but he participates like a tourist on vacation. He
paints his face for fun. In the next scene, he drops acid. And now he has just been given
the symbol of his innocence–a puppy–to go through the story like himself–just going with the flow.
Semi-related, there was this insane moment that was cut from the movie where the patrol
boat passes by a sampan filled with monkeys and has the corpse of a man tied to the boat’s sail.
This is intercut with the ritual at the Kurtz compound from the end of the movie,
but the people are singing ‘Light My Fire’ by the Doors.
Come on, baby, light my fire.
Come on, baby, light my fire. It’s comin’ from where we goin’, Captain”
It was the way we had over here of living with ourselves. We would cut them in half
with a machine gun and give them a bandaid. It was a lie. The more I saw them, the more I hated lies.
On the next episode of Making Apocalypse Now, the crew of the patrol boat finally reach the
Do Lung Bridge–the last army outpost on the Nung River in a surreal sequence that would
mark the final point of no return for the crew and a shift in tone and visuals for the movie.
Do Lung bridge was the last army outpost on the Nung River. Beyond that there was only Kurtz.
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