I think this was resolved before: there’s NO WAY there was a river long enough, even if it flowed into Cambodia, to take as long as it did for Willard to get to Col Kurtz. Vietnam is a very narrow country. I am pretty sure the river name was totally made up.
I’ve seen and listened to the legends about Marlon Brando showing to the movie set overweight, unprepared, didn’t know his lines and despite what the director wanted, shaved bald, and because of that the end of the movie was murky.
Watching it once again in 2019 I don’t see that. The entire movie is a buildup between Willard and a totally insane Kurtz aka Marlon. Brando who in 1979 was a VERY big deal. The ultimate method actor Brando to me scored a home run and might have done all of the above intentionally as the Kurtz character is indeed a broken, confused, insane man- as I imagine Brando being at this time.
His brief performance is BRILLIANT (just watch the Inoculation scene) and I can’t imagine how phony and staged it would have been had he just showed up prepared with his hair and stayed on script. He probably did the movie a favor showing up fucked up.
Is there any official follows ups to the movie? For instance, I’d love to know an origin story about Col Kurtz; an after story about Willard…
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Have you seen Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker’s Apocalypse, filmed by Coppola’s wife Eleanor during the making of the film? These facts are hardly “legends.” Coppola talks about his enormous problems with Brando and his despair when he saw how he showed up.
I never really understood what was up with Marlon Brando. He seemed to want to act, but was also super lazy and self-centered. I guess that is all there is, but I sometimes wonder if he had some kind of anti-social personality or something else.
I’m pretty sure he showed up unprepared, tried to take the money without doing the job, and all the other things he is known for in that movie.
“The only reason I’m in Hollywood is that I don’t have the moral courage to refuse the money.”
Marlon Brando
That, among other things he said, gave me the impression that Brando didn’t really enjoy acting and that he just liked the money. His bizarre behaviors on the sets of some of his later movies I attribute to simple enjoyment of trolling. He wanted to see how fucked up he could act before a director would finally say “You know what Marlon? No. We aren’t going to do that.” Some never did say it, and we films where Marlon wears a champagne bucket on his head or other foolishness as a result.
The original was properly edited and so much should have been left on the cutting room floor. Sex with the bunnies, the surfboard chase, sex with the French girl- none of that worked for me.
There is an interesting scene- don’t know if it even made it into the Redux- where the French force the Americans to hand over half their ammo and supplies, except Willard snuck out of the girl’s room during the night, silently killed all the guards, and switched the supplies with rocks and dead bodies:
Thanks for succinctly nailing what I felt after seeing Redux.
The French plantation scene just felt unbelieveable. These people are running a plantation, way the hell upriver, with a war going on around them, and they’re acting as if the French were still in charge of things? Fine food, a well-stocked wine cellar, and the intent to stay where they are? Had they been farther downriver (say, near the USO show site), it might have been somewhat believable, but as they are so far upriver, it just boggles. It does belong in another movie.
I thought that the plantation scene was supposed to be a representation of the ghosts of the former French rule. It was somehow supposed to be a warning to the Americans about trying to control the area. It does not work in the movie and was rightfully left on the cutting room floor. Note that I only saw Redux once, since it is a horrible mess. Fun fact though: if you look closely in the original Apocalypse Now, you can see the surfboard that they stole from Kilgore in Redux in the PBR.
Well fuck. I just spent a good 10 minutes writing about Brando, and Coppola, and the film. And my stupid computer screws me up and goes into that “These pages are becoming unresponsive, wait or kill” message. And I intermittedly for a half an hour keep hitting “wait”. I did other things in the meantime, like making butter chicken in the Instant Pot, but in the end my thoughts about the film were lost to the cloud.
When this happens, usually it is me fucking up, like hitting CTRL A (instead of SHIFT A) and the space bar, deleting everything I’ve just written, I simply cannot go back and rewrite it all.
Suffice to say, Brando showed up overweight and did not know his lines. Coppola worked with what he had and made a goddamn brilliant film.
BTW, Denis Hopper showed up, trim and fit, and didn’t know his lines either. He wanted to improvise. Coppola told him, “You have to know your lines before you can forget them”
If you accidentally delete everything, try a CTRL-Z. Should put it back word (or phrase) by word. CTRL-Y goes the other way. Experiment with it. Didn’t know about this myself for years.
Last time I watched the film, not long after re-reading Heart of Darkness, I remember thinking that Hopper’s character was surprisingly similar to the equivalent character in the book.
