The fact that you were able to edit that down to under 40 minutes and still maintain much of the context, was a massive achievement on its own. Well done and thanks for this.
Agree. A damn good editing. The only thing is I wish "The horror" would have been the original "The horror ... the horror" without editing out the second "the horror"
the only movie I have seen in a theatre that, when it was over, the entire audience walked out in compete silence. Not a word uttered. Not even a whisper.
Saw the movie in theater in 1979. Four months short of going into the USAF. When I walked out of the theater, I stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. I had just walked out of the jungle and wasn't sure what to do next.
Robert Englund tells a story about auditioning for this movie (he wanted to play Lance, the surfer). Coppola's casting director told him they were no longer looking for someone for that role, but he might fit for the space fantasy George Lucas was casting across the hall. And that was how Freddy Krueger auditioned to play Luke Skywalker. He didn't get the part, but he did go home to his roommate, Mark Hamill, and suggest that he have his agent set up an audition.
Case and point: I've seen this film several times, and when she said "Those are little kids" around 10:21 It was the first time I'd noticed them as anything other than "background" or "enemy soldiers". An assumption that I will not soon forget making, as it mirrors the commanders as well.
And so rare these days. I'm pretty sure she and I are close to the same age, yet I see the world in such a harsher light. Her innocence and sweetness are to be treasured, for sure. I only hope she doesn't lose it as she ages.
@@ReneeOfTheFae So wish we all for those we treasure. That the changes that befall them will not dim their light. Wild to see one who actually made it though! It's refreshing.
To quote Francis Ford Coppola at Cannes in 1979: "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."
Hollywood didn't want America to fight communism. That's why this movie was made. Same with pretty much every Vietnam War movie except "The Green Berets"
@@mikect500you can say what you want about communism.. You talk to a lot of vets from that war.. And you have to ask yourself.. "At what cost?" To stop communism.
@mikect500 But Apocalypse Now is anti-communist. John Milius hated communists, same guy who made Red Dawn. Copola didn't like them either, but his friends George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg loved communism.
Funny thing for Copolla to say, considering - "The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War."
My brother was a movie theater manager and his theater showed this when it came out (back when many theaters had only one screen). He told me some Vietnam vets would come to see it but as soon it started, with the helicopters flying by is slow motions with the altered propeller sounds, a few would go back to the box office and ask for their money back because those images instantly brought back terrible memories. He always gave them a refund.
I’ve read about this happening mostly with this film and The Deer Hunter. Both films were before my time, but even after this in the 80s into the 90s it was pretty easy to end up at a movie theater not fully knowing what you might be in for. Glad to know if they understandanly didn’t want to be there they at least got their $ back.
I knew a few vets, they watched as long as they could, but they ended up leaving and drank and what not for several days to get the smoke out of their heads.
When Willard, talking about home says "...I'd been there and it doesn't exist." This is some brilliant writing, he is describing the effect war has on the men sent to fight and how the horrors they experience changes them, that they can't relate to normal life despite it being all they desperately want. Home is now in the past, they are a very different person now - damaged by what they have seen, the innocence they once had has been stolen so going home can never feel the same. This is also a theme in Tolkiens work and the Lord of The Rings, he fought in WW1. Everything you fight for and even if you win, the cost of winning is so hard and takes so much - so finally when you get home, the thing you were fighting for no longer exists.
"damaged by what they have seen" or enlightened by it depends on the individual, perspective and opinion. They may be considered 'damaged' because they no longer surrender their freedom to society's norms. But is it the acquisition of knowledge that is damaging, or has society damaged us so that we cannot face the truth about ourselves?
@@mimikurtz2162 do you mean in terms of on the one hand training men to kill and turning them into brutal warriors with orders to kill but at the same time trying to then enforce rules and laws of morality on those same men? Ie ‘charging someone with murder here, is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500’ ? If you want soldiers to kill and win in war and train them to do so any ideas of morality are hypocritical as is punishing them for doing so, so like Kurtz you may as well ‘go all the way’. - yes i think that is part of it too.
@@55tranquility All that is true but my point is less specific and underpins it. We are all born to be predatory, avaricious warriors, but society teaches us morals enforced by rules. We become 'civilised'. Our instincts are buried but they are not eradicated. Under stress such as in war the confinements of civilisation are loosened and our primal instincts are encouraged to re-emerge. That is "the horror" of the human condition as exemplified in Kurtz: to be simultaneously an instinct-driven beast and an enlightened person. To "crawl along the edge of a straight razor". I was asking whether we are 'damaged' by the erosion of morality or by its imposition over our natural state.
"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't let them write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene." That's my favorite quote from the film. It shows you how ludicrous and hypocritical war is. Also, once you see the image of Martin Sheen's head emerging from a swamp, you'll notice thereafter how frequently that iconic shot is emulated in so many other films.
I used to quote this movie in the classroom during my highschool years. Even funnier there was a kid there called Kurtz. He graduated from the whole f'en program. 😅
The making of Apocalypse Now was famously a nightmare for Francis Ford Coppola. Long delays from the rainy season, Harvey Keitel getting fired, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, Marlon Brando playing a super fit special forces officer and turning up on set massively overweight. The documentary Heart of Darkness shows the insanity really bled into the real life production of the movie
A Special Forces Colonel...who is also supposed to be dying of malaria. I’d love to see the look on Coppola’s face when they carried a 300lb Brando off the plane on a litter.
Cassie's empathy is the #1 reason why her videos are always at the top of my watch cue. I love that she is willing to watch something she doesn't think she will enjoy, for the experience and with the motivation of keeping an open mind.
Peoples unfortunately take Apocalypse Now seriously. It is a great work of art but its still a work of fiction while many perfectly know that some do not. And real war crimes and violence on a massive scale do not look this beautiful with such an epic soundtrack blasting. That is always a problem with the big war movies or films touching difficult topics. Even Hotel Ruanda or Schindlers List are still way too beautiful in their cinematography and Apocalypse Now is certainly not approaching even that its more in the Full Metal Jacket territory mixing cool looks with great sounding one liners. Its a masterpiece of a movie put there is a problem with some part of the public thinking its history when its pop culture instead.
my old colleagues uncle was shot by a random passing helicopter while tending the field. They emigrated to Australia just in time to escape the north. You could die by your allies bullets. Devils advocate though, how the fuk do you tell the difference between north and south? war sux balls. major sweaty balls. we are so dumb
There's a documentary about the making of this film called "Hearts of Darkness". It was one of the most grueling and crazy shoots ever (IIRC, Sheen had a heart attack close to filming and Brando was massively overweight). It's amazing they made the film they did.
There is a documentary about the making of this movie. Coppola's wife says in an interview that it was like the story. "We went into the jungle and slowly went mad."
He wasn't insane, he took war to its maximum conclusion. No remorse, no fear, no moral high ground, because no such things exist, it is a creation of leaders who justify evil to make war chivalrous. This was an antiwar movie.
After watching the movie you said you never wanted to watch it again. Willard says they were sending him on a mission and, when it was over, he'd never want another one. The horror.
You (and she) think that watching a movie while cocooned in your sheltered, comfortable life equates to being Willard? "The horror" does not refer to the movie genre or Willard's mission. Nor is it the desolation and annihilation of war. It is the haunting nightmare of any human who is willing to explore the duality of human nature.
The people that put on shows were absolute heroes. Leaving their comfortable careers back home to spend months going from base to base to entertain the troops. If they were with the USO tours, it was a high-end show with great support. But thousands of people were non-USO performers, putting on independent shows or booked by military clubs, often responsible for their own protection. Several of them died. Maybe the most famous was Martha Raye. At home she was labeled a warmonger for going to Vietnam so many times, often at her own expense. When not putting on shows she worked as a volunteer nurse. She was wounded twice during these tours but kept going back. In 1994 she became the only civilian to be buried at Fort Bragg, home of the US Army Special Forces.
@@autodex2000 I find people strutting around with an (unearned in my opinion) air of moral superiority hilarious. What's your biggest success in life? Besides the day your kindergarten teacher gave everyone who showed up a participation ribbon?
There is no moral question. What I may have "achieved" in my life is irrelvelant. Real time reaction videos are lazy and her supposed insights are idiotic
Its impressive how this movie starts off already crazy and gets more and more insane the farther the Boats gets upriver to the point that Kurtz' compound just _feels_ like *Hell*.
"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end. It hurts to set you free. But you'll never follow me. The end of laughter and soft lies. The end of nights we tried to die. This is the end..."
Not many recognize Laurence as he is so thin and young looking. I did not know he was only14 years old, but that explains a lot. Amazing, I first saw this when I was working in a Movie City 10 at age 16 (saw it in pieces more than 10 times) a long time ago. I may have been older than him then, wow.
I think it's funny how Cassie doesn't want to watch Nightmare on Elm Street, but she watches Seven, Zodiac, Apocalypse Now and in comparison, Nightmare on Elm Street is a straight up comedy lol
She has reacted to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Perhaps you meant The Exorcist, which I know she doesn't want to react to. Personally, I think Apocalypse Now is actually more disturbing thematically than The Exorcist, because it deals with the real "dark side" that exist in the human soul and people can reach under extreme circumstances. I never felt that The Exorcist was anything more than a horror fantasy.
@@brobbus0-dl6vl I would say she's more afraid of the Exorcist because of her religion. Religion aint got shit to do with Vietnam, hence, why I think it's less intimidating.
The villainy of the US Army in the Vietnam War is so well portrayed here. The 'routine check' of the riverboat scene is one of my favorite moments of the film and the underlining of the grotesque *lie* of it all ("cutting a man in half with a machine gun and then giving them a bandaid") is what makes Kurtz such a horrifying monster at the end of the journey. Because he's right. And that's why the brass wants him gone - Kurtz has dropped the facade of righteousness and justification that the military is deluding itself with, and reveals the primal horror of what we were actually there to do.
So in this movie where the Vietnamese lady throws the grenade in the helicopter in her hat, that particular scene gave my grandfather flashbacks, he yelled out grenade and doe for cover beside his chair, and that’s the furthest he’s ever gotten into that movie he has since passed away, but it was still a scary moment
That movie where Martin Sheen got ridiculously hammered in the hotel room, but Francis Ford Coppola said, "Let's just go with it", and Dennis Hopper was so high during the entire shoot he said years later he had no memory about making this movie. I guess there's no smell quite like coke in the morning.
And it's a personal film for me , cause I worked with two women who were Cambodian, they lived through what the killing fields portrayed , they were young girls when it happened, one had tattoos on her shoulder that told the story of her father, the other told me about the escape as a little girl and after getting over the barbed wire, having to pull and wipe pieces of her cousin and best friend off of herself , there were tears in her eyes. She didn't cry much , she laughed at thing one normally doesn't, I realized at one point her laughter was a defense mechanism against her personal pain 😢 war truly is hell and a hell that never should have been created by man .
I honestly never met anyone who had been in that War who wasn't dodgy. I knew VVAW (VN Vets Against War) guys who all had the most terrible stories to tell and were committed to ending it.
In the late 1990s I employed two Cambodian women who were refugees from Pol Pot era. Very hard workers, the best I had (manufacturing), if they ran out of work, they would come and pester me for more work!
Honestly, Cassie, the reason I continue to return to your channel is because you get so deeply involved with what you're watching. It's refreshing to see someone with so much humanity and sweetness react to all the good, bad, light, and dark things you see in these movies---it's a completely different experience from watching movies with my family or friends or on my own. And your reactions sometimes affect me, as well. There's plenty of ugliness in the world we live in and it's easy to become cynical about our increasing lack of humanity, to think that recovering our decency, compassion, and morality is a lost cause in modern society as we grow increasingly distant to each other. But you and Carly are a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who haven't fallen victim to the cold and ugly bitterness that has swallowed so many people these days. It's refreshing and hopeful. So thank you for getting so emotionally involved while watching these movies. Thank you for sharing your reactions and being sincere with them. Thank you for inviting Carly to share in some of the viewing experiences with you, because you two make a great team! It's a nice change, seeing your sincerity, especially in a vidscape of staged reactions; and it's also interesting, fun, and telling how you process information, what you pick up and miss, what bothers you and why, and how you try to discern what's coming next. You are a relatable person. After having watching "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket", I would have thought "Apocalypse Now" would be an easier watch for you, but it goes to show how you don't take for granted the horrors and waste of war, even if it is presented as a piece of entertainment; and your confusion, frustration, and the wretchedness you felt truly sum up the pointlessness of the Vietnam war and the macabre atrocities it produced. Thank you again for being you and for sharing your cinematic journeys with us! And thanks for bringing Carly on the road with you! Love you both!
I believe that Martin Sheen actually had a heart attack during the filming. Also, the local village was in the process of sacrificing the water buffalo, so Coppola asked if they could film it, and they agreed.
Martin Sheen did indeed suffer a heart attack. He was chain smoking two packs a day. He really punched the mirror. All this right after Harvey Keitel had been fired from the lead role. Good times in the jungle
@@onemancinema4642 "All this right after Harvey Keitel had been fired from the lead role" Didn't know about that. That would have made the 2nd Joseph Conrad adaptation he starred in after The Duellists in 1977. If you haven't seen The Duellists I highly recommend it - apart from being an overall great film, it was also Ridley Scott's first motion picture, and Pete Postlethwaite's debut acting role as an extra. Watching a screening of The Duellists at the Cannes film festival is what prompted the producers of Alien to hire Ridley as director, rather than the original plan for Roger Corman to direct it. Also the general look of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is based on the cinematography of The Duellists.
then there was the time the prop corpses turned out to be real , if i remember right they found out before shooting the scene and didn't use them the making of this movie was just as insane as the war
@@onemancinema4642 not only did Sheen have a heart attack but he did have an honest to God mental episode during the scene in his Saigon hotel room. You gotta remember the movie was not filmed in the same sequence as it appears on the screen. His hotel room breakdown occurred long after filming started and was delayed. He and the rest of the crew were all at wits end. Sheen cracked. Coopola saw the power of that and he was egging Sheen on from behind the camera. Yes, Sheen really did break the mirror and really sliced his hand open....that's real blood on the sheets
My oldest cousins were both in Vietnam, the oldest one told me that this movie was the closest representation of what he remembered. The younger one was a door gunner (Chinook) naturally his experiences were different. He told me "you have to remember that this is just a movie, the real thing was much worse." When they both left they were only 6 and 4 yrs. older than me. When they came back it seemed like a generation. Vietnam changed everybody's life. I never realised how much till I started getting old. I didn't have to go, lucky lottery.
"not the civilians". that was the problem in Vietnam my dear. That is the problem in any war. There are ALWAYS civilians "in the way". Civilians usually pay the biggest price in any war.
Others have probably already noted this, but two Martin Sheen facts - he suffered a massive heart attack during filming and almost died, and in that scene at the beginning where he punches the mirror and his hand bleeds? That was no acting - he seriously cut his hand and was bleeding badly, but the cameras kept rolling and he went with it.
This is one of the movies where people dont generally call the trivia “fun facts”. Fun Fact: Martin Sheen had a heart attack during filming. 😆 It’s just so wrong! I’m glad you didn’t. “Fun fact” is such a dumb cliche for any film trivia. Salud!
Hope took USO shows to Vietnam on quite a few occasions, and Raquel Welch was one of the stars that accompanied him. IIRC, two of the Bunnies in that scene were the actual Bunnies, and were re-creating the show they took part in - even wore the same outfits!
D. Anderson, USMC, Hotel Company, 2dBn, 9th Marines, 3d MarDiv, 2/9/3, 68-69 Operation Dewey Canyon. In memory of 58,281 men including 8 women, all nurses, 16 clergy members and 160 Medal of Honor recipients who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice.
I spent a year in USA as an exchange student and my "dad" took me to Washington DC. In 2 days we visited all the Monuments, Capitoll hill and lastly The black granite wall of Men lost in Vietnam. He showed me his schoolfriends names and said only college saved him and war ended.
Listening to that tape playing of his mother when he was shot and killed on Mother's Day, hits a little harder. What an amazing masterpiece of a film. Still shocks. Still amazes.
Since this film touched upon Cambodia, I would strongly recommend The Killing Fields (1984) starring a young Sam Waterston and the extraordinary Dr. Haing S. Ngor, an actual survivor of the Cambodian genocide depicted in the film. Another overlooked film related to the Vietnam War is Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" (2006) and Herzog's documentary of the same subject, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997). I always enjoy and appreciate your reactions, Cassie!
There are two reasons Brando was shot primarily in shadow: 1. It's ten times creepier, as you yourself experienced. 2. Marlon Brando did not even attempt to get into anything resembling military-level shape (reports that he was 300 lbs are probably exaggerated, but he clearly did not look like an Army Special Forces colonel).
@@artistamisto It may've been to hide his gut, but Brando's size was not a surprise to Francis, he was that big when he cast him for the part. It's not like he had the body of a special forces officer when he was cast and suddenly ballooned up. Lol
I've seen a lot of on-set photos, and Brando wasn't overweight at all. He was a big guy, and was about the right weight given his size at that particular age in life. :0)
"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end. Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end. No safety or surprise, the end. I'll never look into your eyes, again."
As you mentioned Cassie the movie is based loosely on Heart of Darkness. So, it is a critique of American expansionism rather than the original colonialism. So, don't assume what you're watching is the experience of soldiers in Vietnam. It is an allegory of so many themes of war and Vietnam: strangers in a strange land, hypocrisy, senseless killing, etc. It would be like reading the Iliad and assuming its about the Trojan War. Homer was writing about the folly of man and his desires. So too for Coppola.
To give you some idea of how insane the Vietnam war was: a close family friend was in the Army and because he was the tallest in his unit he was always told to take point (walk in front.) On a patrol he came around a group of trees and bushes and came face to face with the enemy. The only thing that saved his life was he fired first. However, when he shot the other person he hit a grenade and blew the other guy up and took a bunch of shrapnel. He also has a fear of flying because every helicopter he was ever on in the war was shot down. The last time he was riding on one it started to take fire and was shot down, the only thing that saved his life was he had enough of being shot down so as soon as it started taking fire he jumped out, every one else on board died. A last aside, they hated the Air Force because whenever they were called in they would drop the bombs on them instead of the enemy. He loved the Navy because their deck guns were far more accurate. Needless to say he has severe PTSD.
My dad joined the Navy the day he got his Army draft notice. All he's ever said about his duty there was he loaded body bags for transport home, and hosed the blood and guts out of those riverboats.
John Milius wrote the best script of all time with this movie. His military consultant for the screenplay was his good friend named Fred Rexer. He was involved with Operation Phoenix and had also personally experienced the story that Brando tells about the special forces and the vaccines. Milius based both the Willard character and the Kurtz character on Fred Rexer. Also taking influence from a guy tamed Anthony Poshepny, he was also in the Phoenix project, he worked under Ted Shackley and eventually went rogue and was notorious for collecting V.C ears and wearing them as a necklace. I think the main theme of this script that John was getting at was the insane and pointless nature of war, also the fact that the war in Vietnam (like all other wars) was never meant to be won. It was meant to be prolonged, remember, the first American military casualty in Vietnam was Peter Dewey of the OSS in 1945. The American military had a presence in Vietnam less than a month after the Japanese surrender in WW2. A major part of the war of course being profits from defense contracting and the weapons manufacturing that feeds the militarized economy that Eisenhower eventually would warn of in 1961. But, more importantly, the drug trade, the golden triangle was the most rich area for poppy fields. The CIA was smuggling massive amounts of heroin in through Vang Pao and using Batista’s Cuba and mob figures like Santos Trafficante as the liaison to bring it in into the United States. This explains the hatred for Fidel Castro, after his 1959 revolution he shut down not only the drug trade but also the casinos and houses of prostitution. We see this same trend of drug smuggling with the prolonged Afghanistan war. That area, known as the golden crescent, was also a rich poppy growing region. After the American invasion and occupation the opium production skyrocketed. Not to mention that Fox News segment with Geraldo Rivera where he literally interviews the marines who are protecting the poppy fields and say words to the effect of, “well we can’t let the Taliban profit off of the poppy fields.” So they bought up all the local sap scraping tools to make sure nobody else could collect the sap. But, I digress, this movie is absolutely amazing and filled with truth, the DOD refused to give any equipment or support to Coppola basically because of the fact that Milius used a real term “Terminate with Extreme Prejudice” which is just another way of saying assassinate and portrayed a real example of the CIA’s Phoenix program. The Phoenix program of course being the assassination, terrorism, torture, sabotage campaign run by Bill Colby and Ted Shackley that was specifically targeted at CIVILIANS, not military personnel, it started in 1967 and was responsible for killing 100,000+ civilians all throughout Indochina.
"I think the main theme of this script that john was getting at was the insane and pointless nature of war" Milius was openly pro-war. Why do you think he had all those military friends in the first place?
Milius said, "I see this as an anti-war movie in the sense that if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn't have to happen. I think it would be good for Americans to see what a war would be like. The film isn't even that violent - the war shows none of the horrors that could happen in World War III. In fact, everything that happened in the movie happened in World War II."
@@wejw14 yep! You can see his love of war in an interview where he said that he got the name "apocalypse now!" from seeing some hippies wearing "Nirvana Now!" buttons and the first thing that came into his head was something like "No. Apocalypse Now!" 😂 It's hilarious that the character of Walter Sobchack in "The Big Lebowski" was based on Milius, right down to the shooting glasses.
The classical music piece the helicopters played on the loud speakers as they attacked, was *"Ride Of The Valkyries"* (first performed in 1870) from german composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner. *as per a quick Google search~* "This was originally used by Wagner to illustrate the majesty of a heavenward ascent. However, it appears in the film as an ominous precursor of destruction, “death from above,” a battle cry that will only be heard by the unsuspecting Vietnamese villagers when it's already too late."
And of course the Valkyries took soldiers who died on the battlefield to Valhalla. Not too long after the publication of his book "Wagnerism," New Yorker music critic Alex Ross put out an interesting video essay that talks about the multilayered significance of Ride of the Valkyries being used in Apocalypse Now. As he says chillingly, "the German will to power gives way to God bless America imperialism."
I'm English from Liverpool, whilst on vacation in Sicily I was speaking to a Vietnam veteran, he said he watched the movie many years ago and it brought it all back, so he won't watch it anymore, think that is really a tribute to the makers and actors, he also said the UK did well in refusing to take part.
The Playboy bunnies were part of the USO who provides entertainment to the troops during wartime. Bob Hope, Robin Williams and many others put on shows for the troops. I got to see Susanne Summers in S Korea. They're a big hit with the troops.
There is so much to unpack from this film. That copious amounts of drugs were being taken during filming; that Brando was so out of shape that Coppola had to completely change how he shot Kurtz' part, deliberately using dark shadows and minimal lighting; that even after the release Coppola wasn't happy, hence the extended director's cut that exists; that filming was scheduled originally for 6 weeks, but instead took 16 months; the opening scene was unscripted, Sheen was drunk for real, and did cut himself for real on the mirror.
'I am aware of the charges against me but I am not concerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality and so I am beyond caring." Masterpiece of filmmaking in every detail !!
“Charlie Don’t surf!” The Clash like it and named one of the songs on the Sandinista (1980) record after this quote from the movie. “Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger momma, Charlie’s gonna be a napalm star” sings Joe Strummer. Great song, great record, this movie’s a masterpiece. One of the best anti-war movies ever.
i'm 77 and did almost 2 tours before i was sent back to the world. i still carry the scar across my face and left eye that was my ticket home. i still carry the nightmares in my head.
No war movie probably could come close to what you experienced in that unnecessary conflict. If any did Full Metal Jacket possibly or We were soldiers, but no one should have gone to Vietnam
Don't patronize the guy with that 'war is icky' crap. What the fuck would you know about it? He did a year of that shit and went back for more, so it's fair to say his feelings are complicated. Plenty of Americans believed in what they were doing, at least in principle; pathetic and naive zoomers using vets' traumas to fucking soapbox totally ignorant notions of history is just fucking narcissistic. Be better.
Sheen was intentionally drunk in the hotel room scene and he urged the camera crew to keep rolling regardless of what he did or said. At the time, he was actually battling personal demons including alcoholism, and despite the camera crew's unease Sheen insisted on pushing forward to confront his own struggles.
Not drunk....psychotic break. Sheen was out of it. Coppola was egging him on from behind the camera. Sheen was just temp nutz. Really broke the mirror and sliced his hand open. No acting. Real life
The pilot of their chopper during the Ride of the Valkyries sequence was R. Lee Ermey who played Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket. Also "I didn't get out of the goddamn eighth grade for this kinda shit." just might be my favorite line of all time.
I watched this with my dad a couple years after it came out. He was a USMC Vietnam Veteran. Growing up I never knew he did anything other than administrative duties. But when they were at bridge scene and the Captain left the boat to find the commanding officer, and the black soldier with cammo paint on his face fired a weapon in the air, my dad pointed it out to me and said “that’s what I carried over there!” It was the M-79 grenade launcher. I said that I thought he carried a pencil over there. He had a laugh at that and told me that he went out on long patrols. I later found out that he was Marine Force Recon before I was born
There was VERY little acting in this movie. Almost everything you see in this film was real and it took a huge toll on the cast and crew. The emotions were real. The injuries were real (Martin Sheen really did cut his hand open when he punched the mirror). Sam Bottoms was high out of his mind throughout the shoot. Lawrence Fishburne was only 14 when he started filming. Coppola very nearly committed suicide halfway through filming and was talked out of it by his wife. Sheen had a near-fatal heart attack. No one escaped this movie unscathed. I would highly recommend you watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness soon, as it goes into horrifying detail about how difficult Apocalypse Now was to make.
As Franz Kafka wrote once to a friend about books: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.” This movie is the the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I’m just glad that Cassie waited this long for this movie, because it obviously affected her deeply and had it been one of the earlier movies on the channel she may have never recovered. Before I even watched the reaction I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. I hope she knows how much the fans of this channel appreciate her enduring these tough watches.
Lawrence Fishbourne was only 15. Dennis Hopper was high as a kite. Marlan Brando was in shadows because he gained so much weight before shooting they had to hide it somehow. What a trip
This movie is a tough pill to swallow. 9:57 The man on the far left of the screen is Francis Ford Coppola. 19:58 This is the perfect definition of the Vietnam War, and later in time it was known that this definition in this movie stung important Pentagon officials. In fact, the movie is a perfect compilation of what Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf (a veteran of Vietnam) defined as "Vietnam mistakes". The horror, the horror...
The "montagnards" is what the French nicknamed the various small tribes that live in the mountains of mostly modern day Cambodia. They often ended up organizing into militias and working with US assistance to keep the North Vietnamese Army from using their land as supply routes on their way to South Vietnam where the war was.
They were mostly Hmong people, and among our most faithful and effective allies in the war. They hated the North Vietnamese AND the Khmer with a passion, and wanted only to be left alone. The way we treated them, once we left Southeast Asia, was disgraceful, as disgraceful as the way in which we treated our Iraqi and Afghan interpreters five decades later.
@@StuartKoehl Thats what super powers like the US do, wipe their arses with ppl that lost their purpose for them. It will be the same with the Ukrainians if Russia wins...
I remember in 1984, my senior year in high school, this was a required watch in my Sociology class. Our teacher was a Vietnam vet and told us it was the best representation of what it was like there. It took 3 whole classes to watch and discuss what the war had done to the country. Something I will never forget.
The opening scene in the hotel room where Martin Sheen gets drunk, has a crisis and punches the mirror and cut his hand was real... Coppola just kept filming and kept it in the movie.
That sound was made in a sound FX studio with a Moog modular, an old (and legendary) analog synthesizer. At the time they couldn't accurately capture the sound of an actual helicopter, because the noise would overload the recording equipment. Story told by synth expert Anthony Marinelli, who was in the studio when they made the sound. Check out his channel on youtube if you are interested in this kind of stuff.
My favorite fun(?) fact about this movie is that some of the narration is spoken by Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Estevez who has a very similar, almost identical voice to him. When he had problems reading the script, that's when he realized his drinking became a problem. He's a very prolific actor, he probably had more roles than Martin Sheen.
@@SeenGodRollergator is absolutely without question the worst movie Ive ever seen. Sitting through it is as close to madness as you can experience without going fullout, padded walls insane. Even with the boys from MST3K riffing it...its beyond brutal.
Colonel Kurtz isn’t a villain, he is an antihero. The thing is, in war, there are times when there is no place for one’s own humanity. A necessary insanity, savagery, and free from one’s own judgment in order to achieve the objective. Not always, but there are times. Kurtz and Willard know how primal and ruthless they are but they dislike it, they only do what they do because it had to happen. Unlike Colonel Kilgore who is dressed up as a hero yet enjoys the war, wipes out a village so he go surfing, and reminisces about the smell of ‘victory.’ He is the true villain. This is the point of the film, to show the hypocrisy in how America fought the Vietnam War, the effect it had on their conscripts, and how they were doomed to fail.
My first date with a girl was the 2 and 1/2 hour cut of "Heaven's Gate" that was only out for a couple of weeks. People booed and hissed and walked out of the theater during the awful scene with Isabelle Hubert. After it ended, my date said to me hopefully, "Well, it wasn't as bad as I've heard it would be." I married that girl.
You'll always be one of my favourite people to do a watch-a-long with ('reaction' / 'reactor' is ridiculous nomenclature). It's satisfying to watch a grownup watching a grownup film. Thank you for your content.
The Cambodians didn't want the North Vietnamese using their country as a supply line into South Vietnam (called the Ho-Chi-Minh Trail), which is why they were so willing to become soldiers for Col. Kurtz.
@@tileux Of course the story is fiction, but the underlying history of Cambodia's use as a supply route outside Vietnam isn't. US carpet bombing of Cambodia ultimately being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
@@tileux Yes, I'm well aware of that. But Conrad's story was set in Africa, and Francis Ford Coppola relocated the story to the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Cambodia by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong that precipitated the Cambodian Civil War is what more than likely would have convinced Cambodians to swear allegiance to Col. Kurtz, who was fighting the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
Those weren’t Cambodians. Those were Montagnards. The hill people of Vietnam. They were organized into Militias and lead by Green Beret teams. Kurtz was in command of a network of montagnard villages and militias which formed his army in the Vietnamese highlands BEFORE he slipped into Cambodia. Cambodia was a neutral country, although the South Vietnamese insurgents used the many roads and paths as supply lines. The was called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, named after North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh. There were a lot of illegal incursions and bombing inside of Cambodia along the border, trying to interdict the trail. Of course the NVA and the Viet Cong were also using the Cambodian side of the border illegally in the first place. So 🤷🏻♀️. Kurtz was operating along the border, hit and run missions, crossing back and forth.
"I feel it was so hard o make that movie." My friend, you have no idea. There have been documentaries made about how hard that movie was to make. It is an epic tale. If you read the wikipedia page about this movie, you will not believe it.
10:47 "Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen any day!" Now that's a leader. 12:01 Yep. That's Robert Duvall.
@@PHDiaz-vv7yo Yep. It's also worth to mention that you definitely should NOT give a water to a person who is wounded in the stomach. It causes terrible pain and almost certainly leads to death. Every soldier knows that.
Fun fact: Platoon and this movie were about Vietnam war but both films were filmed here in the Philippines. Probably there were some controversies that's why they weren't filmed in Vietnam?
MACV-SOG was one of a few secretive units that operated during Vietnam. The Phoenix Project was a counterintelligence program that operated via assassination. Other elite units that operated were Mike Force, Tiger Force was another. Many of these were early forerunners to what would eventually become Delta Force.
One of the helicopter pilots in Col. Kilgore's 1st Air Cavalry Division is played by real life former Marine Corps staff sergeant R. Lee Ermey, who would later go on to play Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
An interesting fact about the ending of Apocalypse Now was one shot with Capt. Willard and Lance silently walking to the PBR boat (not calling in the air strike) and the Kurtz Army lays down their weapons in silence, and the PBR leaves and the big stone idol is superimposed over the black screen. The second ending, which persisted through 1980's and early 90's (the era I first watched this movie), showed the PBR and then the whole place and even possibly the PBR gets hit with an airstrike. No one is seen visually getting hit with bombs to emphasise that everything and everyone in the area was completely annihilated. Coppola changed it at some point because it's been changed to credits over black screen. On another note there is a uncut versions with edited back in deleted scenes called Apocalypse Now Redux. This helps a lot to fill in some of the gaps that explain better the conflict down the river and even it's history with the French.
I hate that Coppola claims the alternate closing credits were footage of the set being detonated and not intended to depict that Willard called an airstrike on the village after leaving. In the theater, when I saw the film, that was 100% the ending that was being shown, and even in the now "alternate" ending footage which can be found on yo..tube, it is clear that shells are being dropped from the sky before the village bursts into flames bringing the film full circle to the napalm bursts in the beginning when Willard was drunk in Saigon waiting for this mission. In my mind, he always called in the strike on the village, and will always go back to that place of destruction in his mind after each mission like it's his own endless circle of hell. I loved every second of this film, it is a one of a kind experience.
First time I saw this movie I was 12 years old (I'm 40 now) and I was supposed to be asleep in bed as it was a school night. It was shown late at night on BBC2 (I'm from the UK). I sneakily stayed up and watched it with the lights off and the volume down low, I was absolutely mesmerised. That version they showed on TV back then had the ending with the explosions going off as the credits rolled as if Willard had called in the airstrike after all like you said. Still in my top 5 movies of all time.
It opened your eyes, didn't it? sure it did, and I was a senior in high school when America pulled out of Vietnam, and I joined the Navy 1982 to 1988 AZ2 VS-41 and VS-33 two west pacs and my cousin Ray Caryl was a birddog pilot with a spotter in the back seat with only his side arm and a ak-47 for defense..I have the utmost respect for all of the Vietnam Veterans they are a special group you never mess with...even today you don't mess with them.
I love how people told you this movie is based on Heart of Darkness. While thats true of the plot, in fact, this movie owes more to the book, Dispatches by Micheal Herr. Widely regarded as THE best book on the experience of the vietnam war. Herr wrote Dispatches in a haze of mental collapse reinforced with drugs, so although Dispatches is a memoir he always called it a novel. Herr co-wrote the screenplay for apocalypse now, and all the great parts- including Willard’s monologues - were written by Herr. On top of that, most of the best scenes come from Dispatches. My favourite is the guy with the bloop gun, which i think you only meet in Redux Also the Redux version is the version that Coppolla wanted audiences to see: the filming of apocalypse now was famously a disaster, the production was in the Phillipines and hit by a hurricane. Coppolla’s wife made a ‘filming of apocalypse now’ documentary - which Tropic thunder famously satirises, although few people realise it. But the result was coppolla could only afford to release the movie he wanted people to see when he finally put Redux together. I think you have met Dispatches before. Stanley kubrick used it to make the movie Full Metal Jacket. Except Dispatches is a series of separate reports and not a full story so kubrick stitched the reports in Dispatches together in a way that didnt work. But, worse, all the best bits of Dispatches were already In Apocalypse Now, and those couldnt go into Full Metal Jacket. Which is why Apocalypse Now will always be the superior movie about the Vietnam war. When i was a young soldier, all of the senior guys around us were vietnam vets. Apocalypse Now was kind of a bible and most of us could recite long passages from the movie (something that, much to my delight, is accurately portrayed in the book and movie Jarhead, which is a memoir of Desert Shield/ Desert Storm). It saddens me that two of the most iconic movies about the vietnam war experience are based on the late michael herr’s book, Dispatches, and almost no-one now is aware of that. Ps many people comment about how young Laurance Fishburne - Mr Clean - was when this movie was made. That was actually a deliberate decision. One of the - many - famous lines in Dispatches goes ‘How do you feel when a 19 year old kid tells you that he’s gotten too old for this kind of sh.t?… they’d be looking back at you over a distance you knew you would never be able to cross’.
While this adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" novel is a fictional story set during the Vietnam War, it does recreate the madness of war masterfully. The horror... the horror.
"I feel like this whole room that I am sitting in now is just like filled with this uncomfortable 'ick' that I can't get out of the pit of my stomach." Cassie is just now realizing that she is on the her own path to the heart of darkness, sitting in her stronghold with her trophies on her wall, surrounded by her own loyal horde of "kernels" (Colonel Kurtz?) as she documents her thoughts and musings for her enraptured audience. How long before she appears in a video with a camo face paint and a raspberry beret?
@@ct6852 Well, I think Carly would be her hype-woman (filling the Dennis Hopper role) by continually plugging Cassie's socials (Patreon, Instagram, Like, Subscribe, etc.) while also offering her rambling introspections...
Martin Sheen's character, Captain Willard, was a member of the US Army Special Forces assigned to MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group. Established on January 24th, 1964, it conducted strategic reconnaissance missions in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia; took enemy prisoners, rescued downed pilots, conducted rescue operations to retrieve prisoners of war throughout Southeast Asia, and conducted clandestine agent team activities and psychological operations.
18:54 The man introducing the Playboy Bunnies here is the legendary Bill Graham, who was best known for being a rock & roll impresario and concert promoter, and who helped to establish bands like The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and The Holding Company (whose vocalist was Janis Joplin), Santana, and many others who were based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
When I lived in the Bay Area, one night the lights flickered on and off several times. Soon after, we learned that was Graham's helicopter hitting some nearby high tension wires with all aboard lost. Kinda creepy. RIP.
0:52 It's not silly to deeply feel a movie. That's actually the entire point of movies. Whether it's joy, sadness, hope, or terror, a good movie will make you feel it.
The fact that you were able to edit that down to under 40 minutes and still maintain much of the context, was a massive achievement on its own. Well done and thanks for this.
Agree. A damn good editing. The only thing is I wish "The horror" would have been the original "The horror ... the horror" without editing out the second "the horror"
Welp, probably cut down a lot more since it was taken down.
Yeah, seriously good editing in this. Covered pretty much every major beat.
Better than Coppola.....
the only movie I have seen in a theatre that, when it was over, the entire audience walked out in compete silence. Not a word uttered. Not even a whisper.
Saw the movie in theater in 1979. Four months short of going into the USAF. When I walked out of the theater, I stopped at the edge of the sidewalk. I had just walked out of the jungle and wasn't sure what to do next.
I saw this in the theater with my dad. I was 11 years old & needless to say, it left an impression on me.
that was my experience
when I walked out of the theater I felt like I was in some weird dream state
Interstellar was a similar reaction from the audience when I went.
Same thing with American Sniper. Most were wiping tears, too.
Robert Englund tells a story about auditioning for this movie (he wanted to play Lance, the surfer). Coppola's casting director told him they were no longer looking for someone for that role, but he might fit for the space fantasy George Lucas was casting across the hall. And that was how Freddy Krueger auditioned to play Luke Skywalker.
He didn't get the part, but he did go home to his roommate, Mark Hamill, and suggest that he have his agent set up an audition.
So basically Robert Englund is responsible for both LucasFilm and NewLine lol
Your ability to empathize is your biggest asset. Never feel like you have to justify your sensitivity. It's a beautiful thing.
Case and point: I've seen this film several times, and when she said "Those are little kids" around 10:21 It was the first time I'd noticed them as anything other than "background" or "enemy soldiers". An assumption that I will not soon forget making, as it mirrors the commanders as well.
@@guacmoleronin that's such a deep and interesting point you make
And exactly why we love this channel. ❤
And so rare these days. I'm pretty sure she and I are close to the same age, yet I see the world in such a harsher light. Her innocence and sweetness are to be treasured, for sure. I only hope she doesn't lose it as she ages.
@@ReneeOfTheFae So wish we all for those we treasure. That the changes that befall them will not dim their light. Wild to see one who actually made it though! It's refreshing.
To quote Francis Ford Coppola at Cannes in 1979: "My film is not a movie. My film is not about Vietnam. It is Vietnam. It's what it was really like. It was crazy. And the way we made it was very much like the way the Americans were in Vietnam. We were in the jungle. There were too many of us. We had access to too much money, too much equipment, and little by little, we went insane."
Hollywood didn't want America to fight communism. That's why this movie was made. Same with pretty much every Vietnam War movie except "The Green Berets"
@mikect500 check out Rob ager's video essay "Killing Private Kraut" its an interesting essay on how Americans make war movies.
@@mikect500you can say what you want about communism.. You talk to a lot of vets from that war.. And you have to ask yourself.. "At what cost?" To stop communism.
@mikect500 But Apocalypse Now is anti-communist. John Milius hated communists, same guy who made Red Dawn. Copola didn't like them either, but his friends George Lucas and Stephen Spielberg loved communism.
Funny thing for Copolla to say, considering -
"The screenplay, co-written by Coppola, John Milius, and Michael Herr, is loosely based on the 1899 novella Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, with the setting changed from late 19th-century Congo to the Vietnam War."
Robert Duvall is the G.O.A.T.
CHARLIE DON'T SURF
I love the smell of napalm in the morning!!!
@@Drax514 'I use Wagner...scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys LOVE IT!'
One of these days this war is gonna end…
I love the smell of napalm in the morning.
My brother was a movie theater manager and his theater showed this when it came out (back when many theaters had only one screen). He told me some Vietnam vets would come to see it but as soon it started, with the helicopters flying by is slow motions with the altered propeller sounds, a few would go back to the box office and ask for their money back because those images instantly brought back terrible memories. He always gave them a refund.
I’ve read about this happening mostly with this film and The Deer Hunter. Both films were before my time, but even after this in the 80s into the 90s it was pretty easy to end up at a movie theater not fully knowing what you might be in for. Glad to know if they understandanly didn’t want to be there they at least got their $ back.
I knew a few vets, they watched as long as they could, but they ended up leaving and drank and what not for several days to get the smoke out of their heads.
When Willard, talking about home says "...I'd been there and it doesn't exist." This is some brilliant writing, he is describing the effect war has on the men sent to fight and how the horrors they experience changes them, that they can't relate to normal life despite it being all they desperately want. Home is now in the past, they are a very different person now - damaged by what they have seen, the innocence they once had has been stolen so going home can never feel the same.
This is also a theme in Tolkiens work and the Lord of The Rings, he fought in WW1. Everything you fight for and even if you win, the cost of winning is so hard and takes so much - so finally when you get home, the thing you were fighting for no longer exists.
Emphasized in "The Deer Hunter" as well...
"damaged by what they have seen" or enlightened by it depends on the individual, perspective and opinion.
They may be considered 'damaged' because they no longer surrender their freedom to society's norms. But is it the acquisition of knowledge that is damaging, or has society damaged us so that we cannot face the truth about ourselves?
@@mimikurtz2162 do you mean in terms of on the one hand training men to kill and turning them into brutal warriors with orders to kill but at the same time trying to then enforce rules and laws of morality on those same men? Ie ‘charging someone with murder here, is like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500’ ? If you want soldiers to kill and win in war and train them to do so any ideas of morality are hypocritical as is punishing them for doing so, so like Kurtz you may as well ‘go all the way’. - yes i think that is part of it too.
@@55tranquility All that is true but my point is less specific and underpins it.
We are all born to be predatory, avaricious warriors, but society teaches us morals enforced by rules. We become 'civilised'. Our instincts are buried but they are not eradicated.
Under stress such as in war the confinements of civilisation are loosened and our primal instincts are encouraged to re-emerge.
That is "the horror" of the human condition as exemplified in Kurtz: to be simultaneously an instinct-driven beast and an enlightened person. To "crawl along the edge of a straight razor".
I was asking whether we are 'damaged' by the erosion of morality or by its imposition over our natural state.
@@mimikurtz2162 ah yes I see what you mean, yes that makes sense -thanks
"We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't let them write fuck on their airplanes because it's obscene." That's my favorite quote from the film. It shows you how ludicrous and hypocritical war is.
Also, once you see the image of Martin Sheen's head emerging from a swamp, you'll notice thereafter how frequently that iconic shot is emulated in so many other films.
"Charging a man for murder here was like giving speeding tickets at the Indie 500"
,, language, please! 🥳🤣
It kinda show how ludicrous CZcams is, that they're happy with the severed heads, but Cassie had to bleep the F-word out of that clip.
I used to quote this movie in the classroom during my highschool years. Even funnier there was a kid there called Kurtz. He graduated from the whole f'en program. 😅
This is a very hard movie. Totally not for Cassie. It’s a masterpiece, but so not her thing.
The making of Apocalypse Now was famously a nightmare for Francis Ford Coppola. Long delays from the rainy season, Harvey Keitel getting fired, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, Marlon Brando playing a super fit special forces officer and turning up on set massively overweight. The documentary Heart of Darkness shows the insanity really bled into the real life production of the movie
A Special Forces Colonel...who is also supposed to be dying of malaria. I’d love to see the look on Coppola’s face when they carried a 300lb Brando off the plane on a litter.
this is the greatest horror film ever made. the constant sense of dread just wares you down and then it actually shows you real horror
This isn’t a horror film
It’s a documentary
The horror...
Cassie's empathy is the #1 reason why her videos are always at the top of my watch cue. I love that she is willing to watch something she doesn't think she will enjoy, for the experience and with the motivation of keeping an open mind.
"Are they supposed to be doing this?" That's basically the question of the entire Vietnam war.
Because, yes, the USSR was supposed to be rolling over Hungary, Czechoslovakia, etc. That's considered 'okay' today.
😂 Good one! And true.
Peoples unfortunately take Apocalypse Now seriously.
It is a great work of art but its still a work of fiction while many perfectly know that some do not.
And real war crimes and violence on a massive scale do not look this beautiful with such an epic soundtrack blasting. That is always a problem with the big war movies or films touching difficult topics. Even Hotel Ruanda or Schindlers List are still way too beautiful in their cinematography and Apocalypse Now is certainly not approaching even that its more in the Full Metal Jacket territory mixing cool looks with great sounding one liners.
Its a masterpiece of a movie put there is a problem with some part of the public thinking its history when its pop culture instead.
my old colleagues uncle was shot by a random passing helicopter while tending the field. They emigrated to Australia just in time to escape the north. You could die by your allies bullets. Devils advocate though, how the fuk do you tell the difference between north and south? war sux balls. major sweaty balls. we are so dumb
of any war.
There's a documentary about the making of this film called "Hearts of Darkness". It was one of the most grueling and crazy shoots ever (IIRC, Sheen had a heart attack close to filming and Brando was massively overweight). It's amazing they made the film they did.
Amazing doc.
It’s why the ending of Tropic Thunder is so much fun as well!🤣
Yeah man and I can describe it as "hell". It was hell.
Saw it too Footage of the making of the film was by Francis' wife Eleanor Coppola, who passed away just last month.
yeah, excellent documentary.
There is a documentary about the making of this movie. Coppola's wife says in an interview that it was like the story. "We went into the jungle and slowly went mad."
Hearts of Darkness. A Filmmakers Apocalypse.
He wasn't insane, he took war to its maximum conclusion. No remorse, no fear, no moral high ground, because no such things exist, it is a creation of leaders who justify evil to make war chivalrous. This was an antiwar movie.
Its not an anti-war film. It doesn't speak against war or in favor of It. It lets viewers decide for themselfs.
After watching the movie you said you never wanted to watch it again. Willard says they were sending him on a mission and, when it was over, he'd never want another one. The horror.
You (and she) think that watching a movie while cocooned in your sheltered, comfortable life equates to being Willard?
"The horror" does not refer to the movie genre or Willard's mission. Nor is it the desolation and annihilation of war. It is the haunting nightmare of any human who is willing to explore the duality of human nature.
The people that put on shows were absolute heroes. Leaving their comfortable careers back home to spend months going from base to base to entertain the troops. If they were with the USO tours, it was a high-end show with great support. But thousands of people were non-USO performers, putting on independent shows or booked by military clubs, often responsible for their own protection. Several of them died.
Maybe the most famous was Martha Raye. At home she was labeled a warmonger for going to Vietnam so many times, often at her own expense. When not putting on shows she worked as a volunteer nurse. She was wounded twice during these tours but kept going back. In 1994 she became the only civilian to be buried at Fort Bragg, home of the US Army Special Forces.
Reaction videos are the lowest form of entertainment
@@autodex2000troll
@@autodex2000 I find people strutting around with an (unearned in my opinion) air of moral superiority hilarious. What's your biggest success in life? Besides the day your kindergarten teacher gave everyone who showed up a participation ribbon?
All that incoherent rambling has nothing to do with my point. Reaction videos are moronic.
There is no moral question. What I may have "achieved" in my life is irrelvelant. Real time reaction videos are lazy and her supposed insights are idiotic
Its impressive how this movie starts off already crazy and gets more and more insane the farther the Boats gets upriver to the point that Kurtz' compound just _feels_ like *Hell*.
That was the exact intended effect.
"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end.
It hurts to set you free. But you'll never follow me.
The end of laughter and soft lies. The end of nights we tried to die.
This is the end..."
the young black 17years old kid on the boat, was (the 14 years old in reality) Laurence Fishburne (Morpheus from the Matrix)
And one of the helicopter pilots is R. Lee Ermey, the Gunnery Sergeant from Full Metal Jacket.
@@kevinquinn7645Oliver Stone is in the movie also as a LOCH pilot.
Im glad you mentioned this before the fourteen thousand others do 🎉
Not many recognize Laurence as he is so thin and young looking. I did not know he was only14 years old, but that explains a lot. Amazing, I first saw this when I was working in a Movie City 10 at age 16 (saw it in pieces more than 10 times) a long time ago. I may have been older than him then, wow.
How did nobody get arrested for hiring a minor? Man, Hollywood really has "their ways"....
I think it's funny how Cassie doesn't want to watch Nightmare on Elm Street, but she watches Seven, Zodiac, Apocalypse Now and in comparison, Nightmare on Elm Street is a straight up comedy lol
She has seen A Nightmare on Elm Street.
She has reacted to A Nightmare on Elm Street. Perhaps you meant The Exorcist, which I know she doesn't want to react to.
Personally, I think Apocalypse Now is actually more disturbing thematically than The Exorcist, because it deals with the real "dark side" that exist in the human soul and people can reach under extreme circumstances. I never felt that The Exorcist was anything more than a horror fantasy.
She should watch Jennifer Kent’s “The Nightingale”
Unsettling but worth the one viewing female rage revenge thriller
@@catelynstark9883 No she should not because she will get nothing out of it.
@@brobbus0-dl6vl I would say she's more afraid of the Exorcist because of her religion. Religion aint got shit to do with Vietnam, hence, why I think it's less intimidating.
The villainy of the US Army in the Vietnam War is so well portrayed here. The 'routine check' of the riverboat scene is one of my favorite moments of the film and the underlining of the grotesque *lie* of it all ("cutting a man in half with a machine gun and then giving them a bandaid") is what makes Kurtz such a horrifying monster at the end of the journey.
Because he's right.
And that's why the brass wants him gone - Kurtz has dropped the facade of righteousness and justification that the military is deluding itself with, and reveals the primal horror of what we were actually there to do.
So in this movie where the Vietnamese lady throws the grenade in the helicopter in her hat, that particular scene gave my grandfather flashbacks, he yelled out grenade and doe for cover beside his chair, and that’s the furthest he’s ever gotten into that movie he has since passed away, but it was still a scary moment
Dennis Hopper (the photographer/journalist) has always been very good at playing odd and/or insane characters in my small opinion.
Brando hated Hopper during the shooting and referred to him as a mutt.
I think he didn't have to try that hard!
He was also off chops
Blue Velvet
Not a small opinion, and a right on the mark observation. I think she should watch Blue Velvet.
That movie where Martin Sheen got ridiculously hammered in the hotel room, but Francis Ford Coppola said, "Let's just go with it", and Dennis Hopper was so high during the entire shoot he said years later he had no memory about making this movie. I guess there's no smell quite like coke in the morning.
And yet his performance is the pure distilled essence of Dennis Hopper, and absolutely perfect for the film.
@@dmwalker24definitely distilled
Weirdly appropriate for this movie though. He nailed that part.
That's Robert Duvall, not Dennis Hopper.
@@ga7654 Dennis Hopper was the photographer at the end.
"He's on acid, with a machine gun, ...which makes me a little nervous." Blessed be those who understate.
And it's a personal film for me , cause I worked with two women who were Cambodian, they lived through what the killing fields portrayed , they were young girls when it happened, one had tattoos on her shoulder that told the story of her father, the other told me about the escape as a little girl and after getting over the barbed wire, having to pull and wipe pieces of her cousin and best friend off of herself , there were tears in her eyes.
She didn't cry much , she laughed at thing one normally doesn't, I realized at one point her laughter was a defense mechanism against her personal pain 😢 war truly is hell and a hell that never should have been created by man .
I honestly never met anyone who had been in that War who wasn't dodgy. I knew VVAW (VN Vets Against War) guys who all had the most terrible stories to tell and were committed to ending it.
In the late 1990s I employed two Cambodian women who were refugees from Pol Pot era. Very hard workers, the best I had (manufacturing), if they ran out of work, they would come and pester me for more work!
Honestly, Cassie, the reason I continue to return to your channel is because you get so deeply involved with what you're watching. It's refreshing to see someone with so much humanity and sweetness react to all the good, bad, light, and dark things you see in these movies---it's a completely different experience from watching movies with my family or friends or on my own. And your reactions sometimes affect me, as well.
There's plenty of ugliness in the world we live in and it's easy to become cynical about our increasing lack of humanity, to think that recovering our decency, compassion, and morality is a lost cause in modern society as we grow increasingly distant to each other. But you and Carly are a reminder that there are plenty of people out there who haven't fallen victim to the cold and ugly bitterness that has swallowed so many people these days. It's refreshing and hopeful.
So thank you for getting so emotionally involved while watching these movies. Thank you for sharing your reactions and being sincere with them. Thank you for inviting Carly to share in some of the viewing experiences with you, because you two make a great team! It's a nice change, seeing your sincerity, especially in a vidscape of staged reactions; and it's also interesting, fun, and telling how you process information, what you pick up and miss, what bothers you and why, and how you try to discern what's coming next. You are a relatable person.
After having watching "Platoon" and "Full Metal Jacket", I would have thought "Apocalypse Now" would be an easier watch for you, but it goes to show how you don't take for granted the horrors and waste of war, even if it is presented as a piece of entertainment; and your confusion, frustration, and the wretchedness you felt truly sum up the pointlessness of the Vietnam war and the macabre atrocities it produced.
Thank you again for being you and for sharing your cinematic journeys with us! And thanks for bringing Carly on the road with you! Love you both!
Same
The same.
Brilliantly articulated. Kudos 🙏🏼🔥💪🏼
You return because you're a simp
She's like a young adult when it comes to reality. But the more and more she watches movies like these, she becomes more like a seasoned veteran.
I believe that Martin Sheen actually had a heart attack during the filming. Also, the local village was in the process of sacrificing the water buffalo, so Coppola asked if they could film it, and they agreed.
Martin Sheen did indeed suffer a heart attack. He was chain smoking two packs a day. He really punched the mirror. All this right after Harvey Keitel had been fired from the lead role. Good times in the jungle
Some of the crew have since admitted they asked the villagers to kill the buffalo and paid them for it.
@@onemancinema4642
"All this right after Harvey Keitel had been fired from the lead role"
Didn't know about that.
That would have made the 2nd Joseph Conrad adaptation he starred in after The Duellists in 1977.
If you haven't seen The Duellists I highly recommend it - apart from being an overall great film, it was also Ridley Scott's first motion picture, and Pete Postlethwaite's debut acting role as an extra.
Watching a screening of The Duellists at the Cannes film festival is what prompted the producers of Alien to hire Ridley as director, rather than the original plan for Roger Corman to direct it.
Also the general look of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is based on the cinematography of The Duellists.
then there was the time the prop corpses turned out to be real , if i remember right they found out before shooting the scene and didn't use them the making of this movie was just as insane as the war
@@onemancinema4642 not only did Sheen have a heart attack but he did have an honest to God mental episode during the scene in his Saigon hotel room.
You gotta remember the movie was not filmed in the same sequence as it appears on the screen. His hotel room breakdown occurred long after filming started and was delayed. He and the rest of the crew were all at wits end.
Sheen cracked. Coopola saw the power of that and he was egging Sheen on from behind the camera.
Yes, Sheen really did break the mirror and really sliced his hand open....that's real blood on the sheets
My oldest cousins were both in Vietnam, the oldest one told me that this movie was the closest representation of what he remembered. The younger one was a door gunner (Chinook) naturally his experiences were different. He told me "you have to remember that this is just a movie, the real thing was much worse." When they both left they were only 6 and 4 yrs. older than me. When they came back it seemed like a generation. Vietnam changed everybody's life. I never realised how much till I started getting old. I didn't have to go, lucky lottery.
"not the civilians". that was the problem in Vietnam my dear. That is the problem in any war. There are ALWAYS civilians "in the way". Civilians usually pay the biggest price in any war.
They always have and sadly, always will.
Others have probably already noted this, but two Martin Sheen facts - he suffered a massive heart attack during filming and almost died, and in that scene at the beginning where he punches the mirror and his hand bleeds? That was no acting - he seriously cut his hand and was bleeding badly, but the cameras kept rolling and he went with it.
This is one of the movies where people dont generally call the trivia “fun facts”. Fun Fact: Martin Sheen had a heart attack during filming. 😆 It’s just so wrong!
I’m glad you didn’t. “Fun fact” is such a dumb cliche for any film trivia. Salud!
And he was actually drunk.
That scene was on his birthday, too
Um I think the heart thing was already mentioned at least 4 times! One negative about youtube comments is everyone repeating the same thing. 🤡🤡🤡
The girls dancing was a USO show to entertain the troops, Bob Hope made the USO shows famous during world war two
That was Bill Graham in the film with a knock-off Creedence!
Hope took USO shows to Vietnam on quite a few occasions, and Raquel Welch was one of the stars that accompanied him.
IIRC, two of the Bunnies in that scene were the actual Bunnies, and were re-creating the show they took part in - even wore the same outfits!
Yes - and I'm pretty sure the guy on stage with the dark hair was supposed to be Hugh Hefner.
Mmm… Colleen Camp 😍. She was on that stage too.
Cassie, you need to see Apocalypse Pooh. It's on CZcams
D. Anderson, USMC, Hotel Company, 2dBn, 9th Marines, 3d MarDiv, 2/9/3, 68-69 Operation Dewey Canyon. In memory of 58,281 men including 8 women, all nurses, 16 clergy members and 160 Medal of Honor recipients who served in the Vietnam War and later died as a result of their service. We honor and remember their sacrifice.
I spent a year in USA as an exchange student and my "dad" took me to Washington DC. In 2 days we visited all the Monuments, Capitoll hill and lastly The black granite wall of Men lost in Vietnam. He showed me his schoolfriends names and said only college saved him and war ended.
Listening to that tape playing of his mother when he was shot and killed on Mother's Day, hits a little harder. What an amazing masterpiece of a film. Still shocks. Still amazes.
Props to chief in that scene. Real genuine look of horror
That's probably the hardest scene for me. A close second is the killing of the civilians in the boat.
Since this film touched upon Cambodia, I would strongly recommend The Killing Fields (1984) starring a young Sam Waterston and the extraordinary Dr. Haing S. Ngor, an actual survivor of the Cambodian genocide depicted in the film. Another overlooked film related to the Vietnam War is Werner Herzog's "Rescue Dawn" (2006) and Herzog's documentary of the same subject, "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997). I always enjoy and appreciate your reactions, Cassie!
Ditto
There are two reasons Brando was shot primarily in shadow:
1. It's ten times creepier, as you yourself experienced.
2. Marlon Brando did not even attempt to get into anything resembling military-level shape (reports that he was 300 lbs are probably exaggerated, but he clearly did not look like an Army Special Forces colonel).
Nah I don't think it was because it was creepy. Francis wanted to hide his huge belly.
@@artistamisto It may've been to hide his gut, but Brando's size was not a surprise to Francis, he was that big when he cast him for the part. It's not like he had the body of a special forces officer when he was cast and suddenly ballooned up. Lol
Agree, but then who is to say that a special forces colonel who's lost his mind wouldn't put on a few pounds and yet still be dangerous? :D
@@tristan7586 Exactly, it works.
I've seen a lot of on-set photos, and Brando wasn't overweight at all. He was a big guy, and was about the right weight given his size at that particular age in life. :0)
The fact that you can cry makes me feel that you are a beautiful person. Be proud of your tears!
"This is the end, beautiful friend. This is the end, my only friend, the end.
Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end.
No safety or surprise, the end. I'll never look into your eyes, again."
The Doors forever!
As you mentioned Cassie the movie is based loosely on Heart of Darkness. So, it is a critique of American expansionism rather than the original colonialism. So, don't assume what you're watching is the experience of soldiers in Vietnam. It is an allegory of so many themes of war and Vietnam: strangers in a strange land, hypocrisy, senseless killing, etc. It would be like reading the Iliad and assuming its about the Trojan War. Homer was writing about the folly of man and his desires. So too for Coppola.
There's a lot of allegories to the Odyssey in this film as well. Willard's journey has parallels with Odyssey's journey home.
To give you some idea of how insane the Vietnam war was: a close family friend was in the Army and because he was the tallest in his unit he was always told to take point (walk in front.) On a patrol he came around a group of trees and bushes and came face to face with the enemy. The only thing that saved his life was he fired first. However, when he shot the other person he hit a grenade and blew the other guy up and took a bunch of shrapnel. He also has a fear of flying because every helicopter he was ever on in the war was shot down. The last time he was riding on one it started to take fire and was shot down, the only thing that saved his life was he had enough of being shot down so as soon as it started taking fire he jumped out, every one else on board died. A last aside, they hated the Air Force because whenever they were called in they would drop the bombs on them instead of the enemy. He loved the Navy because their deck guns were far more accurate. Needless to say he has severe PTSD.
my dad was in the navy during that time 68-72, and he said they get called out and all he did was shot at trees
Jeez
My dad joined the Navy the day he got his Army draft notice.
All he's ever said about his duty there was he loaded body bags for transport home, and hosed the blood and guts out of those riverboats.
John Milius wrote the best script of all time with this movie. His military consultant for the screenplay was his good friend named Fred Rexer. He was involved with Operation Phoenix and had also personally experienced the story that Brando tells about the special forces and the vaccines. Milius based both the Willard character and the Kurtz character on Fred Rexer. Also taking influence from a guy tamed Anthony Poshepny, he was also in the Phoenix project, he worked under Ted Shackley and eventually went rogue and was notorious for collecting V.C ears and wearing them as a necklace. I think the main theme of this script that John was getting at was the insane and pointless nature of war, also the fact that the war in Vietnam (like all other wars) was never meant to be won. It was meant to be prolonged, remember, the first American military casualty in Vietnam was Peter Dewey of the OSS in 1945. The American military had a presence in Vietnam less than a month after the Japanese surrender in WW2. A major part of the war of course being profits from defense contracting and the weapons manufacturing that feeds the militarized economy that Eisenhower eventually would warn of in 1961. But, more importantly, the drug trade, the golden triangle was the most rich area for poppy fields. The CIA was smuggling massive amounts of heroin in through Vang Pao and using Batista’s Cuba and mob figures like Santos Trafficante as the liaison to bring it in into the United States. This explains the hatred for Fidel Castro, after his 1959 revolution he shut down not only the drug trade but also the casinos and houses of prostitution. We see this same trend of drug smuggling with the prolonged Afghanistan war. That area, known as the golden crescent, was also a rich poppy growing region. After the American invasion and occupation the opium production skyrocketed. Not to mention that Fox News segment with Geraldo Rivera where he literally interviews the marines who are protecting the poppy fields and say words to the effect of, “well we can’t let the Taliban profit off of the poppy fields.” So they bought up all the local sap scraping tools to make sure nobody else could collect the sap. But, I digress, this movie is absolutely amazing and filled with truth, the DOD refused to give any equipment or support to Coppola basically because of the fact that Milius used a real term “Terminate with Extreme Prejudice” which is just another way of saying assassinate and portrayed a real example of the CIA’s Phoenix program. The Phoenix program of course being the assassination, terrorism, torture, sabotage campaign run by Bill Colby and Ted Shackley that was specifically targeted at CIVILIANS, not military personnel, it started in 1967 and was responsible for killing 100,000+ civilians all throughout Indochina.
"I think the main theme of this script that john was getting at was the insane and pointless nature of war"
Milius was openly pro-war. Why do you think he had all those military friends in the first place?
@@wejw14 Really, why does he explicitly say his film Red Dawn is an Anti-War film then?
Milius said, "I see this as an anti-war movie in the sense that if both sides could see this, maybe it wouldn't have to happen. I think it would be good for Americans to see what a war would be like. The film isn't even that violent - the war shows none of the horrors that could happen in World War III. In fact, everything that happened in the movie happened in World War II."
@@wejw14 yep! You can see his love of war in an interview where he said that he got the name "apocalypse now!" from seeing some hippies wearing "Nirvana Now!" buttons and the first thing that came into his head was something like "No. Apocalypse Now!" 😂 It's hilarious that the character of Walter Sobchack in "The Big Lebowski" was based on Milius, right down to the shooting glasses.
The classical music piece the helicopters played on the loud speakers as they attacked, was *"Ride Of The Valkyries"* (first performed in 1870) from german composer Wilhelm Richard Wagner.
*as per a quick Google search~*
"This was originally used by Wagner to illustrate the majesty of a heavenward ascent. However, it appears in the film as an ominous precursor of destruction, “death from above,” a battle cry that will only be heard by the unsuspecting Vietnamese villagers when it's already too late."
And of course the Valkyries took soldiers who died on the battlefield to Valhalla.
Not too long after the publication of his book "Wagnerism," New Yorker music critic Alex Ross put out an interesting video essay that talks about the multilayered significance of Ride of the Valkyries being used in Apocalypse Now. As he says chillingly, "the German will to power gives way to God bless America imperialism."
I'm English from Liverpool, whilst on vacation in Sicily I was speaking to a Vietnam veteran, he said he watched the movie many years ago and it brought it all back, so he won't watch it anymore, think that is really a tribute to the makers and actors, he also said the UK did well in refusing to take part.
Cassie, if Bob Duvall says it's safe to surf that beach, fhen it's safe to surf that beach!
"What...is...going...on?" is an excellent way to describe this great movie.
The Playboy bunnies were part of the USO who provides entertainment to the troops during wartime. Bob Hope, Robin Williams and many others put on shows for the troops. I got to see Susanne Summers in S Korea. They're a big hit with the troops.
There is so much to unpack from this film. That copious amounts of drugs were being taken during filming; that Brando was so out of shape that Coppola had to completely change how he shot Kurtz' part, deliberately using dark shadows and minimal lighting; that even after the release Coppola wasn't happy, hence the extended director's cut that exists; that filming was scheduled originally for 6 weeks, but instead took 16 months; the opening scene was unscripted, Sheen was drunk for real, and did cut himself for real on the mirror.
And don't forget, Sheen nearly died from a heart attack making this film.
I think it kind of works that Brando was fat and all the locals surrounding him and the rest of the cast were thin. Fits somehow.
@@thomast8539 And Sheen was a replacement for Harvey Keitel.
they said Sheen was having a nervous breakdown during that seen in the beginning
@@MarcosElMalo2 harvey would have not been able to top Sheen
'I am aware of the charges against me but I am not concerned. I am beyond their timid, lying morality and so I am beyond caring."
Masterpiece of filmmaking in every detail !!
You’ve summoned it up perfectly. I saw this film at the cinema when I was seventeen and it changed the way I saw life for the better.
“Charlie Don’t surf!” The Clash like it and named one of the songs on the Sandinista (1980) record after this quote from the movie. “Charlie don’t surf for his hamburger momma, Charlie’s gonna be a napalm star” sings Joe Strummer. Great song, great record, this movie’s a masterpiece. One of the best anti-war movies ever.
i'm 77 and did almost 2 tours before i was sent back to the world. i still carry the scar across my face and left eye that was my ticket home. i still carry the nightmares in my head.
No war movie probably could come close to what you experienced in that unnecessary conflict. If any did Full Metal Jacket possibly or We were soldiers, but no one should have gone to Vietnam
I’m glad you came home and I truly hope you’ve had a peaceful life since. I know that’s beyond generic to say but it comes from the heart.
The US regime is still at it…
Thank you, I’m sorry
Don't patronize the guy with that 'war is icky' crap. What the fuck would you know about it?
He did a year of that shit and went back for more, so it's fair to say his feelings are complicated. Plenty of Americans believed in what they were doing, at least in principle; pathetic and naive zoomers using vets' traumas to fucking soapbox totally ignorant notions of history is just fucking narcissistic. Be better.
That's Robert Duvall "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning"😂😂😂
No, it's "I love the smell of poontang in the morning."
Sheen was intentionally drunk in the hotel room scene and he urged the camera crew to keep rolling regardless of what he did or said. At the time, he was actually battling personal demons including alcoholism, and despite the camera crew's unease Sheen insisted on pushing forward to confront his own struggles.
Not drunk....psychotic break.
Sheen was out of it. Coppola was egging him on from behind the camera.
Sheen was just temp nutz. Really broke the mirror and sliced his hand open.
No acting. Real life
The pilot of their chopper during the Ride of the Valkyries sequence was R. Lee Ermey who played Sgt. Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
Also "I didn't get out of the goddamn eighth grade for this kinda shit." just might be my favorite line of all time.
The depth of feeling you have when you react to these difficult movies is the reason we watch.
I watched this with my dad a couple years after it came out. He was a USMC Vietnam Veteran. Growing up I never knew he did anything other than administrative duties. But when they were at bridge scene and the Captain left the boat to find the commanding officer, and the black soldier with cammo paint on his face fired a weapon in the air, my dad pointed it out to me and said “that’s what I carried over there!” It was the M-79 grenade launcher. I said that I thought he carried a pencil over there. He had a laugh at that and told me that he went out on long patrols. I later found out that he was Marine Force Recon before I was born
There was VERY little acting in this movie. Almost everything you see in this film was real and it took a huge toll on the cast and crew. The emotions were real. The injuries were real (Martin Sheen really did cut his hand open when he punched the mirror). Sam Bottoms was high out of his mind throughout the shoot. Lawrence Fishburne was only 14 when he started filming. Coppola very nearly committed suicide halfway through filming and was talked out of it by his wife. Sheen had a near-fatal heart attack. No one escaped this movie unscathed. I would highly recommend you watch the documentary Hearts of Darkness soon, as it goes into horrifying detail about how difficult Apocalypse Now was to make.
As Franz Kafka wrote once to a friend about books: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we're reading doesn't wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? So that it will make us happy, as you write? Good Lord, we would be happy precisely if we had no books, and the kind of books that make us happy are the kind we could write ourselves if we had to. But we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone, like a suicide. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us. That is my belief.”
This movie is the the axe for the frozen sea within us.
I’m just glad that Cassie waited this long for this movie, because it obviously affected her deeply and had it been one of the earlier movies on the channel she may have never recovered. Before I even watched the reaction I felt sorry for her, but I couldn’t wait to see her reaction. I hope she knows how much the fans of this channel appreciate her enduring these tough watches.
Lawrence Fishbourne was only 15. Dennis Hopper was high as a kite. Marlan Brando was in shadows because he gained so much weight before shooting they had to hide it somehow. What a trip
Her: "He's... been brainwashed?"
Me: "No....he's Dennis Hopper". 🤣
Well, I think Dennis Hopper has chemically washed his own brains many times.
This movie is a tough pill to swallow.
9:57 The man on the far left of the screen is Francis Ford Coppola.
19:58 This is the perfect definition of the Vietnam War, and later in time it was known that this definition in this movie stung important Pentagon officials.
In fact, the movie is a perfect compilation of what Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf (a veteran of Vietnam) defined as "Vietnam mistakes".
The horror, the horror...
Kurtz is such a fascinating character to me. He is a man who truly understands war, and it completely ripped his soul apart.
I think he's a fruitcake.
The "montagnards" is what the French nicknamed the various small tribes that live in the mountains of mostly modern day Cambodia. They often ended up organizing into militias and working with US assistance to keep the North Vietnamese Army from using their land as supply routes on their way to South Vietnam where the war was.
They were mostly Hmong people, and among our most faithful and effective allies in the war. They hated the North Vietnamese AND the Khmer with a passion, and wanted only to be left alone. The way we treated them, once we left Southeast Asia, was disgraceful, as disgraceful as the way in which we treated our Iraqi and Afghan interpreters five decades later.
@@StuartKoehl Thats what super powers like the US do, wipe their arses with ppl that lost their purpose for them. It will be the same with the Ukrainians if Russia wins...
I remember in 1984, my senior year in high school, this was a required watch in my Sociology class. Our teacher was a Vietnam vet and told us it was the best representation of what it was like there. It took 3 whole classes to watch and discuss what the war had done to the country. Something I will never forget.
The opening scene in the hotel room where Martin Sheen gets drunk, has a crisis and punches the mirror and cut his hand was real... Coppola just kept filming and kept it in the movie.
Anyone who has ever flown on a Huey will never forget the sound of those rotor blades at the beginning of this movie 🚁
Still.....haunting after 50+ years.
Whoop whoop whoop
That sound was made in a sound FX studio with a Moog modular, an old (and legendary) analog synthesizer.
At the time they couldn't accurately capture the sound of an actual helicopter, because the noise would overload the recording equipment.
Story told by synth expert Anthony Marinelli, who was in the studio when they made the sound.
Check out his channel on youtube if you are interested in this kind of stuff.
My favorite fun(?) fact about this movie is that some of the narration is spoken by Martin Sheen's brother, Joe Estevez who has a very similar, almost identical voice to him. When he had problems reading the script, that's when he realized his drinking became a problem. He's a very prolific actor, he probably had more roles than Martin Sheen.
he was in Rollergator.. nuff said 🤘😂
@@SeenGodRollergator is absolutely without question the worst movie Ive ever seen. Sitting through it is as close to madness as you can experience without going fullout, padded walls insane. Even with the boys from MST3K riffing it...its beyond brutal.
Colonel Kurtz isn’t a villain, he is an antihero. The thing is, in war, there are times when there is no place for one’s own humanity. A necessary insanity, savagery, and free from one’s own judgment in order to achieve the objective. Not always, but there are times. Kurtz and Willard know how primal and ruthless they are but they dislike it, they only do what they do because it had to happen. Unlike Colonel Kilgore who is dressed up as a hero yet enjoys the war, wipes out a village so he go surfing, and reminisces about the smell of ‘victory.’ He is the true villain.
This is the point of the film, to show the hypocrisy in how America fought the Vietnam War, the effect it had on their conscripts, and how they were doomed to fail.
"Is this put on by like ..themselves? Or is this like ..em.. from the President?" hahaha
One of the most beautiful nightmares ever put to film. Mad genius filmmaking.
When my dad took my mom out on their first date he took her to see Apocalypse Now, which was an insane decision
Worked though 🤷♂️💁♂️
Lol. They are your parents though. So...mission accomplished?
I took a girl to see A Clockwork Orange for a first date. That was not one of my more brilliant decisions.
@@t0dd000 Yeah that sounds questionable. But you never know. If she's a movie-aficionado or Kubrick fan it could be great.
My first date with a girl was the 2 and 1/2 hour cut of "Heaven's Gate" that was only out for a couple of weeks. People booed and hissed and walked out of the theater during the awful scene with Isabelle Hubert. After it ended, my date said to me hopefully, "Well, it wasn't as bad as I've heard it would be." I married that girl.
"You can't judge me"
"Kill without judgment"
and our Hero's eyes widen.
You'll always be one of my favourite people to do a watch-a-long with ('reaction' / 'reactor' is ridiculous nomenclature).
It's satisfying to watch a grownup watching a grownup film.
Thank you for your content.
The Cambodians didn't want the North Vietnamese using their country as a supply line into South Vietnam (called the Ho-Chi-Minh Trail), which is why they were so willing to become soldiers for Col. Kurtz.
You know the story itself is fiction, right? Based on joseph conrad’s famous story about the savage craziness that the belgian congo turned into.
@@tileux Of course the story is fiction, but the underlying history of Cambodia's use as a supply route outside Vietnam isn't. US carpet bombing of Cambodia ultimately being responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands.
@@tileux Yes, I'm well aware of that. But Conrad's story was set in Africa, and Francis Ford Coppola relocated the story to the Vietnam War, and the invasion of Cambodia by the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong that precipitated the Cambodian Civil War is what more than likely would have convinced Cambodians to swear allegiance to Col. Kurtz, who was fighting the North Vietnamese and the Viet Cong.
Those weren’t Cambodians. Those were Montagnards. The hill people of Vietnam. They were organized into Militias and lead by Green Beret teams.
Kurtz was in command of a network of montagnard villages and militias which formed his army in the Vietnamese highlands BEFORE he slipped into Cambodia.
Cambodia was a neutral country, although the South Vietnamese insurgents used the many roads and paths as supply lines. The was called the Ho Chi Minh Trail, named after North Vietnamese leader Ho Chi Minh.
There were a lot of illegal incursions and bombing inside of Cambodia along the border, trying to interdict the trail. Of course the NVA and the Viet Cong were also using the Cambodian side of the border illegally in the first place. So 🤷🏻♀️.
Kurtz was operating along the border, hit and run missions, crossing back and forth.
@@MarcosElMalo2 Thanks for the information.
Watching a compassionate person like her almost tear her heart out watching this film is as gut wrenching as the film.
"I feel it was so hard o make that movie." My friend, you have no idea. There have been documentaries made about how hard that movie was to make. It is an epic tale. If you read the wikipedia page about this movie, you will not believe it.
29:56 "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life." :)
I wish I could feel the intensity Cassie feels when she watches movies. It reminds me of how I felt when I watched them when I was very young.
10:47 "Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen any day!" Now that's a leader.
12:01 Yep. That's Robert Duvall.
But the moment he hears that’s Lance Johnson the famous surfer and walks off with that canteen… I still laugh my guts out (bad choice of words- sorry)
@@PHDiaz-vv7yo Yep. It's also worth to mention that you definitely should NOT give a water to a person who is wounded in the stomach. It causes terrible pain and almost certainly leads to death. Every soldier knows that.
@@x-wing8785 Depends. You trying to help him drink it or are you cleaning his wound?
@@Robert_Douglass Given the context, I thought it was obvious that I was talking about drinking.
@@x-wing8785 Yeah, I figured that. I just felt I needed to point out the options.
Fun fact: Platoon and this movie were about Vietnam war but both films were filmed here in the Philippines. Probably there were some controversies that's why they weren't filmed in Vietnam?
27:10 This film is amazing but it's wild how iconic that moment is for me personally
MACV-SOG was one of a few secretive units that operated during Vietnam. The Phoenix Project was a counterintelligence program that operated via assassination.
Other elite units that operated were Mike Force, Tiger Force was another. Many of these were early forerunners to what would eventually become Delta Force.
One of the helicopter pilots in Col. Kilgore's 1st Air Cavalry Division is played by real life former Marine Corps staff sergeant R. Lee Ermey, who would later go on to play Gunnery Sergeant Hartman in Full Metal Jacket.
Cassie deserves a medal for making it through this movie.
An interesting fact about the ending of Apocalypse Now was one shot with Capt. Willard and Lance silently walking to the PBR boat (not calling in the air strike) and the Kurtz Army lays down their weapons in silence, and the PBR leaves and the big stone idol is superimposed over the black screen. The second ending, which persisted through 1980's and early 90's (the era I first watched this movie), showed the PBR and then the whole place and even possibly the PBR gets hit with an airstrike. No one is seen visually getting hit with bombs to emphasise that everything and everyone in the area was completely annihilated. Coppola changed it at some point because it's been changed to credits over black screen.
On another note there is a uncut versions with edited back in deleted scenes called Apocalypse Now Redux. This helps a lot to fill in some of the gaps that explain better the conflict down the river and even it's history with the French.
Bleak. Stark. Harsh.
And yet moving and somewhat beautiful.
It's not a true depiction of "the war" but it is art in cinema.
A classic.
It's an over-the-top representation of it. Like if you took the whole war, and synthesized a scenario composed of all the varieties of horror.
Yeah definitely not a typical war movie. More of an art film. Literary. Godfather was it's own Heart of Darkness in a way too.
So what green 🟢d is saying,,, if take war,,, and imitate a idea of war,,, you can make a war movie 🍿🎥 I think 🧐 Ya. Maybe? ☮️
It captures the essence of war.
I hate that Coppola claims the alternate closing credits were footage of the set being detonated and not intended to depict that Willard called an airstrike on the village after leaving. In the theater, when I saw the film, that was 100% the ending that was being shown, and even in the now "alternate" ending footage which can be found on yo..tube, it is clear that shells are being dropped from the sky before the village bursts into flames bringing the film full circle to the napalm bursts in the beginning when Willard was drunk in Saigon waiting for this mission. In my mind, he always called in the strike on the village, and will always go back to that place of destruction in his mind after each mission like it's his own endless circle of hell. I loved every second of this film, it is a one of a kind experience.
First time I saw this movie I was 12 years old (I'm 40 now) and I was supposed to be asleep in bed as it was a school night. It was shown late at night on BBC2 (I'm from the UK). I sneakily stayed up and watched it with the lights off and the volume down low, I was absolutely mesmerised. That version they showed on TV back then had the ending with the explosions going off as the credits rolled as if Willard had called in the airstrike after all like you said. Still in my top 5 movies of all time.
The Cinema Tyler channel's still-ongoing multi-year series about the making of Apocalypse Now is likely that best thing in CZcams history.
It opened your eyes, didn't it? sure it did, and I was a senior in high school when America pulled out of Vietnam, and I joined the Navy 1982 to 1988 AZ2 VS-41 and VS-33 two west pacs and my cousin Ray Caryl was a birddog pilot with a spotter in the back seat with only his side arm and a ak-47 for defense..I have the utmost respect for all of the Vietnam Veterans they are a special group you never mess with...even today you don't mess with them.
I love how people told you this movie is based on Heart of Darkness. While thats true of the plot, in fact, this movie owes more to the book, Dispatches by Micheal Herr. Widely regarded as THE best book on the experience of the vietnam war. Herr wrote Dispatches in a haze of mental collapse reinforced with drugs, so although Dispatches is a memoir he always called it a novel.
Herr co-wrote the screenplay for apocalypse now, and all the great parts- including Willard’s monologues - were written by Herr. On top of that, most of the best scenes come from Dispatches. My favourite is the guy with the bloop gun, which i think you only meet in Redux
Also the Redux version is the version that Coppolla wanted audiences to see: the filming of apocalypse now was famously a disaster, the production was in the Phillipines and hit by a hurricane. Coppolla’s wife made a ‘filming of apocalypse now’ documentary - which Tropic thunder famously satirises, although few people realise it. But the result was coppolla could only afford to release the movie he wanted people to see when he finally put Redux together.
I think you have met Dispatches before. Stanley kubrick used it to make the movie Full Metal Jacket. Except Dispatches is a series of separate reports and not a full story so kubrick stitched the reports in Dispatches together in a way that didnt work. But, worse, all the best bits of Dispatches were already In Apocalypse Now, and those couldnt go into Full Metal Jacket. Which is why Apocalypse Now will always be the superior movie about the Vietnam war.
When i was a young soldier, all of the senior guys around us were vietnam vets. Apocalypse Now was kind of a bible and most of us could recite long passages from the movie (something that, much to my delight, is accurately portrayed in the book and movie Jarhead, which is a memoir of Desert Shield/ Desert Storm). It saddens me that two of the most iconic movies about the vietnam war experience are based on the late michael herr’s book, Dispatches, and almost no-one now is aware of that.
Ps many people comment about how young Laurance Fishburne - Mr Clean - was when this movie was made. That was actually a deliberate decision. One of the - many - famous lines in Dispatches goes ‘How do you feel when a 19 year old kid tells you that he’s gotten too old for this kind of sh.t?… they’d be looking back at you over a distance you knew you would never be able to cross’.
While this adaptation of Joseph Conrad's classic "Heart of Darkness" novel is a fictional story set during the Vietnam War, it does recreate the madness of war masterfully. The horror... the horror.
Ah, the two things that keep this war veteran awake at night; the duality of man and (what my wife likes to call) spicy memories.
This movie was blend of Heart of Darkness and The Odyssey. The crew faces several challenges along their journey
The heart of darkness is not about Vietnam
@@jonhenry8268 I know, I was saying that this film adaptation takes place during the Vietnam War, not that the book does.
@@jonhenry8268 The movie draws its inspiration from the book, however.
"I feel like this whole room that I am sitting in now is just like filled with this uncomfortable 'ick' that I can't get out of the pit of my stomach."
Cassie is just now realizing that she is on the her own path to the heart of darkness, sitting in her stronghold with her trophies on her wall, surrounded by her own loyal horde of "kernels" (Colonel Kurtz?) as she documents her thoughts and musings for her enraptured audience. How long before she appears in a video with a camo face paint and a raspberry beret?
Baby Yoda will be her fist in command.
@@ct6852 Well, I think Carly would be her hype-woman (filling the Dennis Hopper role) by continually plugging Cassie's socials (Patreon, Instagram, Like, Subscribe, etc.) while also offering her rambling introspections...
@@crossbones13 Carly is nothing if not practical. Lol. This cracked me up.
Command knew that Willard had lost this mind. They had to send a mad man to kill a mad man.
Martin Sheen's character, Captain Willard, was a member of the US Army Special Forces assigned to MACV-SOG, or Military Assistance Command, Vietnam - Studies and Observations Group. Established on January 24th, 1964, it conducted strategic reconnaissance missions in the Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam), the Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam), Laos, and Cambodia; took enemy prisoners, rescued downed pilots, conducted rescue operations to retrieve prisoners of war throughout Southeast Asia, and conducted clandestine agent team activities and psychological operations.
And gave 'half a helicopter ride' to enemy POWs that refused to talk. After seeing that the other POWs usually talked.
18:54 The man introducing the Playboy Bunnies here is the legendary Bill Graham, who was best known for being a rock & roll impresario and concert promoter, and who helped to establish bands like The Grateful Dead, The Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother and The Holding Company (whose vocalist was Janis Joplin), Santana, and many others who were based in the San Francisco Bay Area in California during the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Wow. I never knew that - thanks for the tip!
When I lived in the Bay Area, one night the lights flickered on and off several times. Soon after, we learned that was Graham's helicopter hitting some nearby high tension wires with all aboard lost. Kinda creepy. RIP.
0:52 It's not silly to deeply feel a movie. That's actually the entire point of movies. Whether it's joy, sadness, hope, or terror, a good movie will make you feel it.
"Hi tiger, Bye tiger. My favorite line loll