Let’s have a look, Chief.
Willard and the members of the PBR crew find the Air Cavalry–their escorts to the "mouth of the
Nung River"–30 kilometers before their designated meeting area, cleaning up after a battle.
This is the first epic scene we see in the movie with hundreds of extras, tons of fire and smoke,
as well as large military land vehicles and several helicopters flying overhead.
This scene will not only introduce us to one of Apocalypse Now's most memorable characters
and Willard's first major obstacle to his quest–Colonel Kilgore–but
it will also introduce us to the bizarre nature of the war in this story.
So, let’s take a look at how this scene was made
and the evolution of the Colonel Kilgore character.
Terminate? With extreme prejudice.
Are you an assassin? I’m a soldier.
As you can imagine, the scene was incredibly complex to coordinate with so much going on,
but the scene was further complicated by the many different languages present (Commentary).
Coppola and most of the crew spoke English, cinematographer Vittorio
Storaro and his crew spoke Italian, there were Vietnamese extras who spoke Vietnamese,
there were Filipino extras who spoke Tagalog, and some even spoke French (Commentary).
Every time I watch this scene, I'm blown away by all the little details and strange things going
on–beginning with this large menacing vehicle with painted on eyes and teeth
that climbs out of the water and seemingly begins eating a modest Vietnamese house.
When Coppola builds a scene like this,
he writes out a series of vignettes on index cards (Commentary).
He did this with The Godfather as well. Part of his planning for The Godfather was to paste the
pages of the novel into a notebook with wide margins surrounding each page for his notes.
In the margins, he would–among other things–write out various
little details to be included in the scenes to make them more memorable.
For the wedding scene, there would be details like the little girl dancing on Tessio's feet.
Francis Ford Coppola: "People must feel that they're seeing the real thing with hundreds
and hundreds of interesting specifics like the children sliding around the sandwich man,
throwing the sandwich. 'Hey Beno, two gabagool and one prosciutto!'"
We will see many of these kinds of memorable details and vignettes in this scene and the
upcoming Valkyries sequence. Coppola said that many of these little moments came from talking
to veterans of the war (Commentary). Coppola collected about 30 vignettes, narrowed them down,
and then just tried to do it shot-by-shot (Commentary).
The first vignette Willard encounters after leaving the boat
is a film crew with a director urging the soldiers not to look at the camera.
Don’t look at the camera, just go by like you’re fighting! Like
you’re fighting! Don’t look at the camera! It’s for television!
As you can probably already tell, the director of the film crew is Coppola himself.
Cinematographer Vittorio Storaro is manning the camera
and production designer Dean Tavoularis is holding the microphone (Commentary). This cameo
was unplanned–the actors playing the film crew weren't able to get to the set in time because
of travel and communication issues and Coppola, Storaro, and Tavoularis subbed-in (Commentary).
Watching this, I can't help but remember George Lucas' idea to film Apocalypse Now
with a similar 16mm film crew.
In some new behind-the-scenes footage for the Final Cut Bluray,
you can see Coppola and Storaro in their costumes while the camera is being reset.
Even though this is just a brief vignette, there is actually a lot being said here.
The Vietnam War was the first televised war and had a huge impact on how the war
was perceived by the American public and President Lyndon Johnson actually
believed that televising the war caused the United States to lose.
Coppola says,
“Just go by like you’re fighting, like you’re fighting!”
This was a real practice by journalists in the field. Combat footage or what appeared
like combat footage was what the networks wanted. I found a lot of really interesting information
on the impact television had on the war and how the difficulties in producing
media in a warzone shaped perception and potentially the outcome of the war.
You can read it in this episode’s Companion PDF for one dollar.
This scene is also where we get our first real look at the wide variety of costumes
we will see in the movie. As well as being the production designer, Dean Tavoularis also designed
the costumes (Cowie 30). All of the costumes had to be absolutely authentic and Tavoularis
actually fired "some local workers" because they blended polyester and cotton for the Vietnamese
soldier uniforms instead of the ‘pure’ cotton that the real ones were made of” (Cowie 30).
It was very difficult to keep clean because of the wet muddy landscape and helicopters blowing dirt
everywhere. That said, Coppola noted that Vittorio Storaro was always looking "like a prince,"
often dressed in pristine white and even when he fell in the mud,
he would get up and not be dirty (Writing with Light).
In an interview with American Cinematographer,
Storaro said that "everywhere Americans go, they make a great show of things" (AC). We
see this with the Air Cav, but you could say the same for the production itself.
The production would descend on the locations like an invading army.
In a separate interview, Storaro describes a typical day on the production. He said,
"At around 7 a.m. my driver came to pick me up, then the camera operator Enrico Umetelli. Then
we headed for Manila Airport, where we boarded Francis’s private airplane, with Francis, Dean
Tavoularis, Eddie Flowers (the special effects guy) and Gray Frederickson - no more than six or
seven people could be loaded on that plane. We had a twenty-minute flight over the mountains, landing
on a small strip in Baler. Two small helicopters were waiting for us, and took us to the set,
where we usually arrived at 8 sharp on the ground. And beside the ocean
we’d see the crew approaching from the little village of Baler" (Cowie 51).
Storaro's cinematography in this scene is incredible--not to mention the production design.
It's kind of hard to wrap your mind around a scene like this with so much going on and it is all done
for real without any computer animation available. It feels like painting with reality–-to think of
so many helicopters, burning buildings, and extras carrying out their own stories in the background.
Look at all these people acting out a specific scene and they will only
be seen in the background for a fleeting moment.
Vittorio Storaro: “Any moment we were doing any single shot, even simple ones–sometimes
just a close-up–behind that close-up, we maybe should put some colored smoke,
or maybe we should put some napalm explosions, we maybe supposed to put some helicopters, so
any shot in any simple sequence–it became a major issue.”
And it wasn't just the background. In this behind-the-scenes footage, we can see a soldier
trying to convince a kid to come down from the mast of a small boat. In the final shot,
we just barely get a glimpse of this little story in the foreground as the camera passes by.
However, with all of the different elements in the scene,
it was very difficult to get the continuity right. Coppola employed his own technique
when it came to continuity as Eleanor Coppola wrote in her diary on November 14th, 1976.
"Today Francis was talking about how he doesn’t ever match down in a scene.
If he has a master shot with something he changes in the close-up, he never tries to
make the good film conform to the less good. He stops and makes it all conform to the piece
that evolved to be better, or he tries to get around it in the editing. ” (Coppola 165).
“All that matters is what’s on the screen.
Nobody cares about what you cut away and whether it matched or not.”
Willard asks for the commanding officer--Colonel Kilgore--who happens to be in a black "Huey"
helicopter descending through the smoke with"death from above" written across
the front. Notice the surfboards attached to the sides--we'll get to that in a bit.
Kilgore was apparently based on someone screenwriter John Milius actually knew (Travers
120). You might think the name Kilgore is a little over-the-top, but wait till you hear the name
Milius originally chose for the character in his early draft--Colonel William Kharnage (Cowie 39).
Milius described Kharnage as "tough-looking, well-tanned with a black mustache (Cowie 39).
In Coppola's June 29th, 1976 draft of the script,
he had changed Colonel Corman to General Corman, added the TV film crew, and changed Colonel
Kharnage to Colonel Kilgore (Cowie 45). Coppola kept Milius' great opening line for Kilgore:
Lieutenant! Bomb that treeline back about a hundred yards–give me some room to breathe!
Yes, sir!
This was cut from the original theatrical release,
but it was later put back in for the Redux version.
In the original theatrical release, Willard finds Kilgore already on the ground.
Also, in Milius' draft, Kharnage tells Willard that he was expecting him--Coppola
wanted this changed, writing in the margins of Milius' script [quote] "I like the idea...that
no one is easily accepted. There must always be the stink of conspiracy in the air" (Cowie 39).
In the final film, we get this exchange:
I understand Na Trang has briefed you on the requirements of my mission.
What mission? I haven’t heard from Na Trang.
Kilgore tells Willard he'll do what he can and to stay out of his way.
Colonel Kilgore was played by the great Robert Duvall.
Duvall had worked with Coppola many times, acting in The Rain People,
The Godfather Parts 1 and 2, The Conversation, and he played the lead role in George Lucas' THX 1138,
which you'll remember, nearly destroyed Coppola's American Zoetrope studio
and lead Coppola to The Godfather and the success that would bring him to take on Apocalypse Now.
Robert Duvall: "There was somebody else slated to play it and I said, 'Look, Francis, I'll ask
you one time. I'd love to play that guy. I know he's written as a much bigger guy than I am,
but”–and then he came to me and, you know, and it was–I really liked playing it a lot."
Duvall signed on to play Kilgore for $65,000 and 1.5% of the net profits (Cowie 17).
According to Duvall, he flew to the Philippines and shot for six weeks (fivealex2010). I believe
this was for the Valkyries sequence that directly follows this one, but as you'll remember they had
been shooting with Harvey Keitel and when Keitel was fired from the production, they needed to
reshoot some stuff with Martin Sheen. It was six months later that Duvall came back to the
Philippines and reshot some of the Valkyries stuff with Sheen and shot this scene (fivealex2010). So,
between filming much of the Valkyries sequence and filming the earlier scene in which we meet
Kilgore, the production had shot all of the Kurtz scenes with Marlon Brando (fivealex2010).
Duvall said that, during the six months between shooting the Valkyries sequence and this scene,
he spoke with a lot of the Air Cavalry people and heard about a bunch of bizarre stories.
Robert Duvall: “I heard that the head general of the Air Cavalry
used to deer hunt twice a week along the Cambodian border, from the helicopter. And
the helicopter–and he got killed, and that’s how he was killed, the thing got crashed into a tree.”
Kilgore's obsession with surfing fits with these real stories, but more on that in a bit.
Kilgore struts though the scene with his cavalry hat and boots with spurs tossing "death cards"
on the bodies of the deceased. This was meant to demoralize the enemy. We'll talk about this more
in the next episode on the Valkyries sequence. According to Duvall, the only inaccuracy was
that every officer in the Air Cav should have had the cavalry hat and spurs, which
was a tradition going all the way back to the 7th Cavalry regiment in 1866 (fivealex2010 Duvall).
The "death cards" have the same "death from above" motto written on them. I actually got to see a
few of the cards they used in this scene at the Museum of the Moving Image in Queens, New York.
They also had some of the designs for what was painted on Kilgore's helicopter,
which I'm assuming was done by Dean Tavoularis.
Check out these notes on the designs as well like:
"Pilot's name on left side only (nothing on right door). Not stencil. Use white block letters."
and
"Kilgore's name on both sides between step flaps. Not stencil. Use white block letters."
Seeing this little moment of Kilgore telling a somber soldier to:
Cheer up, son.
I can't help but remember the scene in Patton--co-written by Coppola--where
Patton slaps a shell-shocked soldier, calls him a coward, and sends him back to the front lines.
This was a scandal and Patton made a public apology.
Now I freely admit that my method was wrong, but I hope you can understand my motive.
The soldier is wounded and seems like he could be shell shocked
or simply just zoned out amidst all the death and destruction around him.
This counterpoint to the Patton scene gives us a glimpse into the, at times,
bizarre code that Kilgore lives by. We'll see plenty of this in the brief time we know him.
Famous photographers Nancy Moran and Mary Ellen Mark were on the set during the filming of this
scene. They were taking photos of the production and Coppola simply had them dress up as war
photographers and included them among the various other elements of the setting (Commentary). Moran
was a photojournalist in Saigon in the 70s for the New York Times (Moran Muppets). I couldn’t
find a picture of what she looks like, but seeing as she took this picture of Duvall,
this could very well be her in the scene.
Several great photographers visited the set throughout the production,
but perhaps none more famous than Mary Ellen Mark, who we'll talk about in the Kurtz episodes.
I haven't been able to spot her in this scene. If you do, leave a comment down below.
Here, we can see a photographer taking this picture from
the Valkyries sequence, although I'm not sure who it is.
We see Kilgore through John Milius' eyes, as a man of honor who takes great care in helping evacuate
civilians and making sure they get medical care despite being the one who invaded their village.
We even see his respect for a dying enemy--offering the man a drink from his canteen.
Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped to him can drink from my canteen any day.
Francis Ford Coppola: “This scene is very much a John Milius sentiment. There’s a
sense of honor to John in war, that the Colonel would give the suffering man
water because of his courage. They say that in some way the character was based on certain
Air Cav commanders, I even heard once the name of General Patton’s son, as a very colorful
commander in Vietnam. Of course, General Patton wore ivory-handled pistols during his war term.”
However, we get a bit of dark humor in that,
as Kilgore is about to give the dying man begging for water a sip from his canteen,
he is informed that one of the soldiers accompanying Captain Willard is famous
surfer Lance Johnson causing him to immediately get up before the man gets a chance to drink.
What’s your name, sailor?
Gunner's mate third class L. Johnson, sir!
Gunner’s mate third class–
Alright. Lance Johnson the surfer?
For this part, Coppola wrote in the margins of Milius' draft that after meeting Lance [quote]
"only now does the coldness, the mistrust and sense of conspiracy sub-side" (Cowie 39).
Well you can cut out the “sir” crap Lance, I’m Bill Kilgore, I’m a goofy-foot. This guy with you?
Yeah.
The idea of Kilgore being obsessed with surfing came from Milius in his earliest drafts of the
screenplay. In an interview with Milius by Quentin Tarantino, Tarantino brought up the actor William
Smith--who had acted in Milius' Conan movie--and how much he enjoyed Smith's work in biker movies.
One of these movies was The Losers where CIA-trained bikers "are sent to the Cambodian
jungle" to rescue an "American diplomat" by using modified motorcycles (Losers Wiki).
The Losers!
In the interview, Milius said, "I love The Losers...Big inspiration for Apocalypse Now"
and Tarantino replied, "Really? The Losers?"
and Milius said, "Yeah, bikers in Vietnam, surfers in Vietnam, same idea." (thenewbev).
The scene ends with the most surreal details–a
cow being airlifted while mass is being conducted amidst the flames of war.
Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name.
Complex scenes like this were made even more difficult by cinematographer Vittorio Storaro's
need to have control over the development process of the film he shot. In episode 7, we learned
that Storaro's contract stipulated that the film would be developed by the Technicolor lab in Rome,
but this caused some issues. When they sent the film out each week, they had to wait "at
least ten days" to get it back and see what they had actually shot (Cowie 53). This meant
that with all that was going on in front of and behind the scenes and all of the coordination
and logistics involved in a sequence like this, they had to trust that everything went
right and move on before confirming that there wasn't some big problem that went unnoticed.
Storaro also had to wait "three hours for a booked call" with the lab to communicate with Ernesto
Novelli--the technician who would supervise the development of all of Storaro's film (Cowie 53).
Producer Grey Frederickson begged Storaro to have the film developed in Los Angeles because
there were flights every two days and they could get the film back much sooner (Cowie 57). Storaro
said that he would leave the production if they forced him to develop in LA,
saying "I don’t feel comfortable sending rushes to a lab where they don’t know me and I don’t
know them,...So if there’s something on the creative side we need to discuss, that’s fine,
but if it’s just because the rushes arrive late, that does not make any difference to
me" (Cowie 57). The producers and Coppola agreed to what Storaro needed (Cowie 57).
Kilgore had had a pretty good day for himself.
They choppered in the T-bones and the beer and turned the LZ into a beach party.
Here, we get another example of the US military bringing
their home to the foreign land they're invading.
The more they tried to make it just like home, the more they made everybody miss it.
In the margins of the screenplay, Coppola notes that "This is an LA war" (Cowie 39). What we're
looking at could very well be a barbecue on a beach in Los Angeles. As you might expect,
night shoots on Apocalypse Now were more complex, but the main issue here was travel. The area
had [quote] "a curfew on private planes, [so] Coppola and his top associates had to
leave before 6 p.m. each evening, otherwise clearance was denied" (Cowie 51). For night
shots like this or even shots during sunset, the main crew would have to "camp somewhere in
Baler" (Cowie 52). Storaro said, "That wasn't too bad...because every evening we were there,
we would go to the Italian House to have pasta!" (Cowie 52). For the other crew members,
they had to first take a DC3 plane to a nearby airstrip, then a 40-minute jeep ride to Baler,
then another 30-minute truck ride "over bad roads" to get to the location (Cowie 52).
One night the Manila airport closed for curfew as Coppola was trying to fly out on his private plane
and the pilot said, "It's your plane, you fly it" (Travers 109). Coppola lost it and stomped on his
brand new [quote] "state-of-the-art miniature Nagra NSN tape recorder"
later saying, "I'm sorry, I've killed my little Nagra" (Travers 109).
Willard shows Kilgore a way that he can be escorted to the Nung River,
but Kilgore is apprehensive because the nearby village is dangerous
and contains heavy ordinance. But when he hears that it is a great
surfing spot with six-foot waves, he immediately changes his demeanor.
Well I mean, it’s pretty hairy in there, isn’t it? It’s Charlie’s point.
Charlie don’t surf!
Coppola writes in all caps on Milius’ script: "Kharnage goes to war not for
Willard's mission - but to surf! Can we add one simple absurd element?...a bathing suit,
a surfboard, a six-pack?" (Cowie 39). In Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness,
they bring "starched shirts" to the jungle, in Apocalypse Now, "it's surfboards" (Cowie 41).
On the next episode, we’ll take a look at one of the greatest and
most complex sequences in movie history–the Valkyries Sequence.
And don’t forget to check out this episode’s Companion PDF.
It’s just a dollar and really helps the series. Or you can support me on Patreon
at the five dollar level and get access to all of the Companion PDFs I’ve made for this series.
Thanks for watching!