Apocalypse Now

Apocalypse Now


This hallucinatory,
Wagnerian project resembles
no other film ever made,

THIS IS THE END.....
''Apocalypse Now,'' is a great movie. It grows richer and stranger with each viewing, and the
restoration of scenes left in the cutting room has only added to its sublimity.






KILGORE

I love the smell of napalm in
the morning.

One time we had a hill bombed
for 12 hours. I walked up it
when it was all over; we didn't
find one of 'em ... not one
stinking gook body. They
slipped out in the night -- but
the smell -- that gasoline smell
-- the whole hill -- it smelled
like ...

victory.








Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now adapts the Joseph
Conrad novella Heart of Darkness to depict the war as a
descent into primal madness. Capt. Willard (Martin Sheen),
already on the edge,
is assigned to find and deal with AWOL Col. Kurtz (Marlon Brando),
rumored to have set himself up in the Cambodian jungle as a local,
lethal godhead. Along the way Willard encounters napalm enthusiast
Col. Kilgore (Robert Duvall), and a jumpy photographer
(Dennis Hopper) telling wild, reverent tales about Kurtz.


By the time Willard sees the heads
mounted on stakes near Kurtz's compound, he knows Kurtz has gone over
the deep end, but it is uncertain whether Willard himself now agrees with
Kurtz's insane dictum to "Drop the Bomb. Exterminate them all." Coppola
himself was not certain either, and he tried several different endings between
the film's early rough-cut screenings for the press, the Palme d'Or-winning "work-in-progress"
shown at Cannes, and the final 35 mm U.S. release (also the ending on the video cassette).
The chaotic production also experienced shut-downs when a typhoon destroyed the set and
star Sheen suffered a heart attack; the budget ballooned and Coppola covered the overages
himself. These production headaches, which Coppola characterized as being like the Vietnam
War itself, have been superbly captured in the documentary, Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse.
Despite the studio's fears and mixed reviews of the film's ending, Apocalypse Now became a substantial hit
and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting
Actor for Duvall's psychotic Kilgore, and Best Screenplay. It won Oscars for sound (Music by the Doors)
and for cinematography. This hallucinatory, Wagnerian project has produced admirers and detractors of equal ardor;
it resembles no other film ever made, and its nightmarish aura and polarized reception aptly reflect the tensions
and confusions of the Vietnam era. ~ Lucia Bozzola, All Movie Guide


KILGORE
(to Willard)
We'll come in low out of the rising
sun -- We'll put on the music about
a mile out.

WILLARD
Music?

KILGORE
Yeah. Classical stuff -- scares
the hell out of the slopes -- the
boys love it.


KILGORE
Big Duke Six to Hell's Angels --
Goddamit, I want that treeline
bombed -- yeah -- napalm --
gimme some napalm -- son of a
bitch -- yeah, I'll take H.Z.
or C.B.U.'s if you got any of
them -- just bomb 'em into the
Stone Age, boy.
................


93 FULL SHOT - PHANTOMS - MONTAGE

Phantoms RAKE the trees with 20 mm CANNONS -- FIRE five
inch ROCKETS in salvo -- "Bull Pup" MISSILES -- drop
H.E. (high explosives) and C.B.U's (Cluster Bomb Units)
and finally an immense amount of NAPALM.



Kilgore FIRES another clip at the tree line, and then
strides back without looking at them.

KILGORE
(almost to himself)
You smell that.
(louder)
You smell that?

LANCE
What?

KILGORE
Napalm, boy -- nothing else in
the world smells like that --

They reflect the glow from the burning trees.

KILGORE
(continuing; nostalgically)
I love the smell of napalm in
the morning.

One time we had a hill bombed
for 12 hours. I walked up it
when it was all over; we didn't
find one of 'em ... not one
stinking gook body. They
slipped out in the night -- but
the smell -- that gasoline smell
-- the whole hill -- it smelled
like ...
(pause)
victory...

He looks off nostalgically.


You know, some day this war's
gonna end..




The opening credits sequence of
drunken Captain Willard (Martin Sheen) in his Saigon hotel room with spinning
ceiling fan (and his opening line: "Saigon. Shit. Still in Saigon"),
the compelling depiction of the horrors of war in the symbolic and surrealistic
Navy patrol boat journey taking Captain Willard on an assassination mission,
including surf-loving, flamboyant and gung-ho fearless Lieutenant Colonel
Kilgore's (Robert Duvall) famous speech amidst blowing yellow smoke: "I
love the smell of napalm in the morning...smelled like...victory," (and
"Charlie don't surf"), and his dawn, choreographed Air Cavalry
and its swarming and swooping helicopter attack on a coastal Vietnamese
village with Wagner's Ride of the Valkyries blaring over loudspeakers,
the arrival at an isolated US base supply depot at Hau Phat in a surreal
nighttime scene brilliantly lit by floodlights, the Playboy Bunnies USO-style
show for sex-starved soldiers, the scene in which the panicky crew senselessly
massacres all the innocent Vietnamese peasants in a sampan, the bizarre
night battle for the besieged, psychedically-lit, temporary Do Lung bridge,
their arrival at the mad renegade Colonel Kurtz's (Marlon Brando) compound,
and the dark, shadowy confrontation between Willard and an incoherently-mumbling
Kurtz, the emergence of Willard from the jungle water, and the execution
of Kurtz ("the horror") interspersed with the ritualistic killing
of the water buffalo


(note; find still of steer brought in for barbeque by helicoptor)



PRIMEVAL SWAMP - EARLY DAWN It is very early in the dawn - blue light filters through the jungle and across a foul swamp. A mist clings to the trees. This could be the jungle of a million years ago. Our VIEW MOVES CLOSER, through the mist, TILTING DOWN to the tepid water. A small bubble rises to the surface; then another. Suddenly, but quietly, a form begins to emerge; a helmet. Water and mud pour off revealing a set of beady eyes just above the mud. Printed on a helmet, in a psychedelic hand, are the words: "Gook Killer." The head emerges revealing that the tough-looking soldier beneath has exceptionally long hair and beard; he has no shirt on, only bandoliers of ammunition - his body is painted in an odd camouflage pattern. He looks to the right; he looks to the left; he looks INTO CAMERA, and slowly sinks back into the swamp, disapperaring completely.

Starring Marlon Brando, Frederic Forrest, Robert Duvall, Dennis Hopper, Martin Sheen.
Directed by Francis Ford Coppola. (R, 153 minutes).
Martin Sheen - (narrator)
Marlon Brando - Colonel Kurtz
Robert Duvall - Lt. Col. Kilgore
Frederic Forrest - Chef
Dennis Hopper - Photo Journalist
Samuel Bottoms
Laurence Fishburne -(debut)
Harrison Ford - Colonel
G.D. Spradlin - General
Bill Graham - ( debut and only film appearance)
MUSIC BY THE DOORS, WALTER CARLOS AND RICHARD WAGNER