I was watching Apocalypse Now lately, and I am struck at how trite it was. I knew since the 80s that it was tedious, but now, I can only feel embarrassed for the actors, directors, etc…
Now, though, to the main: That strange ritualistic movement that Martin Sheen did in the hotel room, that looked like a drunken Appalachian inbred trying karate-was that supposed to be Sheen’s character doing some Tai Chi warm up, or was it something that was brought on by his drinking/drugs whatever?
I have taken some karate, and Sheen’s moves seem to me not something that I have **ever **seen **any **martial artist do. Naturally, I know that there are about 10 jillion forms, techniques, styles, etc… that I am unfamiliar with, but these moves seem totally spur of the moment made up by Clark Griswold or somebody. I have a few friends that are substantially versed in martial arts, but they aren’t speaking to me right now, so even if they were, I couldn’t trust their answers, so I am asking you cool Dopers if you can give me light on Sheen’s spasmodic movements.
thanks,
hh
That being the case, your ability to dwell on thirty-year-old movie trivia is impressive. Had I ticked off every martial artist I know, I’d be thinking about other things. Be that as it may:
In the scene you described, the movements (which always seemed graceful enough to me, authentic or not) in the exercise are not, strictly speaking, a martial art at all. They are part of an older and gentler set of techniques meant to redirect and harmonize the turbulent and conflicting energies (*chi * and sha) present in a confined space (such as a hotel room), a discipline called Feng Sheen.
Over three thousand years ago, Chinese scholars realized that proper alignment of natural and constructed objects with respect to Martin Sheen (or, to a lesser extent, any other Sheen) was vital to a harmonic balance of man and nature. For centuries this knowledge was locked within the boundaries of Asia, which, having no Martin Sheens to speak of, had little use for it. In the 1970s, however, in the aftermath of Nixon’s historic visit to the PRC, when interest in everything from pandas to ping-pong was at its height, the science crossed the Pacific and landed in California.
It did so not a second too soon. As Southern California at the time had by far the greatest number of Martin Sheens in the world (one), both on an absolute and a per-capita basis, it had the most to gain or lose from the interaction of its Martin Sheen with the surrounding environment. In fact it is now suspected that several of the key disasters forming the state’s recent history (earthquakes, Altamont, the Manson family, Disneyland, pretty much every gubernatorial election since Earl Warren) were the result of western ignorance of basic feng sheen principles.
By the time Apocalypse Now was being filmed in 1976, Francis Ford Coppola was a feng sheen devotee, believing that he had once prevented his own house from sliding off a cliff in a mudslide by inviting Martin Sheen to a party and placing him, facing north, underneath an occasional table. When things on the set began to go badly wrong from the outset (weather, Brando), Coppola fired his original lead (Harvey Keitel – fine actor, but, supernaturally speaking, strictly for voodoo rituals) and replaced him with Sheen. The rest is history.
The best examples of Feng Sheen recently are to be found on the TV series The West Wing, where you can often see Allison Janney or Rob Lowe take Martin Sheen by the elbow and rotate him a few degrees with respect to a nearby doorway or mirror. It’s become a popular drinking game in some quarters: remember, when they stand him on his head in each episode, everybody does a shot!
The trivia section of the imdb listing for Apocalypse Now provides some additional insights into why that scene looks the way it does.
Bravo!
Okay, that was fucking hilarious.
IIRC from watching Hearts of Darkness, a documentary film on the making of Apocalypse Now, Sheen was pretty drunk at the time and he really did cut the shit out of his hand when he broke a mirror but they kept rolliing and went with it.
AFAIK, Sheen doesn’t know any martial arts. I do remember reading many times over the years that he is a devoted hatha yoga practitioner.
The way I heard it, Coppola said “cut”, but Sheen told them to keep shooting.
Why do you keep watching it then? I’ve never actually seen the movie but I know if I found something tedious I wouldn’t rewatch it to pick out weird flaws in it.
Sorry, Martin I didn’t know you were on the board.
hh
Yeah, you have to watch the whole scene in “Hearts of Darkness” to understand what’s going on. Sheen wasn’t doing kata, he was having a very, very drunken emotional breakdown while being filmed. The scene where he punches the mirror and starts screaming, he actually is punching a mirror and actually does start screaming, at Coppola, about what a bastard he (Coppola) is and how his (Sheen’s) heart is broken. I could be remembering wrong, but I think on top of all the stress he was under, his wife had recently left him as well. He had a heart attack a week or two later.
In that famous scene, Sheen actually attacks Coppola. Rather dysfunctional day on the set, no?
The way I heard it, it was a drug-induced frenzy that was fueled on Actual Drugs™.
I always thought that it was a joke when Cornfed found that Duckman’s Vietnam flashbacks actually were *Vietnam movie * flashbacks. Now I wonder.
