let us now praise ... apocalypse now

Once Brando takes up the screen, utter aimlessness.

When I watched it as a teen, I found the young Martin Sheen gorgeous.

As an Ultimate Fangirl, I appreciate the scene where Sheen's character emerges from the water and you can see how his facial warpaint is perfectly preserved. (Those of you who don't realize how I could appreciate it -- get a neighbor to explain it for you, thanks.)

the redux version is not essential, but worth watching at least once.

turning into an insomniac is the worst EVAH. (though night time IS the right time.)

i suppose you're right, aren't you?

*puts gun to own imaginary skull*

See also: Film Four Trailers. God.

We bring you - Trainspotting! Reservoir Dogs! And Something With Nic Cage acting a twat! Every Night!

Well I'm not much keen on films that "critique" anything in any sort of explicit or tokenistic way. From the portrayal of masculiinity in Raging Bull you can draw your own conclusions easily enough.

There may be valid criticisms that Copolla’s scope was too narrow, focussing on the US troops, but I mean, he had to reign it all in somewhere, and even centred on Sheen, the film is messy and sprawling enough as it stands. I also don’t think he really had much room for manoeuvre when it came to expanding the role of women in the war, and his concerns with the piece seem rather about investigating the mindless brutality and crazy cold logic (embodied by Kurtz) of organised conflict, historically a largely male orientated futility, I would venture to suggest. Through the film he slowly strips the layers of the war, the reasoning and the prerogatives, the objectives and intentions, down to basic muscle flexing and deluded rhetoric – until only horror and death remain. As Hopper rips Eliot; "This is the way the fucking world ends. Look at this fucking shit we’re in, man. Not with a bang, but with a whimper, and with a whimper, I’m fucking splitting, Jack."

Oh, and the look of the piece too, I mean it is stunning. The film smears across the screen like a rouge gash, loaded with deep lush shots, blood, mud, vegetation, sun bleached and jaded, in places you can almost smell the swamps and damp steam rising from the jungle. It almost feels like the bloodied prints of the director are visible on the edges of the rolls.

Nitrous-oxide, 14 year-old-girls = fave party accessories of the Hollywood set circa 1974.

Ultimately, though, I find myself being able to distance myself from the sexual/social politics of a film or book, if the work itself is strong and interesting enough. I'm just basically not too interested in art as political critique, but maybe that's just me. Evelyn Waugh is a brilliant novelist, but the politics of "Black Mischief" is dodgy to say the least, even for the time.

that's an incredibly stupid statement, but it does encapsulate what's good and bad about Apocalypse Now - that it's a movie that tries to be more than a movie. it's very wrongheaded in any number of ways, but i can't think of a major Hollywood film with anywhere near its scope or ambition that's been made since.

I always feel a little weird about liking something after I realize it's been adopted into the Uncut canon.

Huh, that's weird -- in the book Final Cut by Steven Bach, ostensibly about Heaven's Gate but also a study of United Artists from the boardroom view in the late seventies/early eighties, Raging Bull is discussed quite a bit and there's a fascinating section where Scorcese and de Niro essentially face down UA reps about making the film. I'd have to reread it but if Scorcese says he didn't care much, I'm guessing it's mostly de Niro's conceptual baby in ways, then (turns out he apparently made a final script revision as well).

raging bull does seem like more of an idea for a movie than a movie sometimes

i think thats why some people really appreciated the thin red line--as a kind of return to the studio-sponsored ambitious personal filmmaking that in the intervening years had become part of a mythology of hollywood in the 60s and 70s

Ditto.

xpost: Totally explicable, maria---losing puppies is sad. cry cry cry.

I saw it again recently, in the director's cut, and I still thought it was really great except for all the bits added in the director's cut.

2001: a space odyssey is this thing also

also dawn to dusk

I don't know if there's a term for it but it's something I've noticed often happens in my favourite films. "Performance" is like that too: starts off as a gangster movie and then spins off into somewhere completely different.

i wd like to see a trippy sword-and-sorcery epic that you suddenly realised that turned into a gritty police procedural

law and order: special RINGS TO RULE THEM ALL unit

performance really is escaping i think
ditto if....

Of all movies, how can this one bare multiple, multiple viewings?

I used to drink with this guy who would go home each night to drink the rest of his thirty-pack and watch Apocalypse Now. At one point, his streak was at 140 nights in a row. I could only imagine this guy waking up each morning with a horrible hangover, ceiling fan circling above his head as he starts talking to himself and shadow-punching with the mirror.

I just saw this for the first time in my film class. It was one of those movies that I'd known I had to see for years, but I'd put it off every time I went to the video store: "lemme just finish up this samurai obsession i've got going on...damn I'm in the mood for a comedy...ok let me finish watching all these Jean-Pierre Melville movies first..."

We paired it up with the Heart of Darkness doc; watching the two together was pretty fuckin illuminating. I don't really understand all the complaints about the ending. I can't imagine it ending any other way.

"I swallowed a bug."

i just had to re-read Heart of Darkness since im assigned to teach it in the fall, id like to re-watch this for comparison's sake.

used to be my favorite movie, but im liable to still say it's "willful and tedious"--not sure Kurtz can be dramatized effectively, and the comic image of a bloated, bloviating Brando can hardly be said to even come close.

Oh come on, Kurtz is badass in this movie.

Every time I watch it I expect Brando to recite "The Hollow Men" in the voice of Vito Corleone.

just saw redux for the first time this weekend actually. really liked it for the heated dinner conversation at the french plantation -- that made it all worthwhile. though all the cuts were ultimately warranted and I certainly wouldn't advise anyone to see that version first, this is the kind of movie you watch more than a few times.

the 20 minute documentary on walter murch's sound design & the five synthethists all competing to get their ideas in, all fantastic. pat gleeson and bernie krause, voted down! there's a great scene of murch and coppola arguing about the use of a huge 70 person choir singing ritual music which was apparently recorded specifically for the film -- murch mixed it at near ambient whispery levels, quieter than the mosquitos. coppola was arguing to have it be the loudest thing in the mix, so people could be _blown away_, and murch shooting back 'we've heard exactly this kind of music used this way in a hundred other films, this film is going to be different'. murch was right.

always unsure about the effectiveness of the ending, there's too much build up for a quiet trailing off like that to gel. and this film does not ever transport me, it's never transparent, it remains a total fantasy construction, but a construction in which so much unbelievable work has gone in that it becomes a marvel, you almost can't believe it was physically accomplished, it's that kind of masterpiece

sorry to gush, but while watching I was trying to think of recent films on this level of scale and ambition, we could use a film like this right now. and it doesn't look like we're going to get one.

Wait, I have that redux set and I've completely forgotten to watch that Murch doc despite being a big Murch fan. Now I know my weekend plan.

i don't think it's quite that long.

what really impressed me abt the movie is knowing what sort of behind the scene nonsense was going on with brando etc and they still pulled it off flawlessly!

i wd like to see a trippy sword-and-sorcery epic that you suddenly realised that turned into a gritty police procedural

Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

I prefer the non-redux version but the dinner conversation in the French plantation house is really tense, maybe more tense than a lot of the guns-a-shootin stuff.

I am boggled that anyone could find this film "flawless" -- I didn't even fall for that hype as a teen in '79. It's close to great up through Duvall's departure, a very mixed bag after that, and mostly a disaster once Brando waddles on. The French plantation addition is atrocious; and people accuse Spielberg of being sledgehammer-obvious? Also, re the ending -- which one?

The doc to see on its making is Hearts of Darkness, which is a better film than any version of AN.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102015/

i liked the french stuff too!

The doc to see on its making is Hearts of Darkness, which is a better film than any version of AN.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0102015/

-- Dr Morbius, Friday, 8 June 2007 20:03 (3 hours ago)

Having seen both (and really liking Hearts of Darkness!) I believe that you and the others upthread who suggest this are utterly and completely wrong.

Coppola shouting at drunk, wailing, bleeding Sheen going "YOU'RE THOUSANDS OF MILES FROM HOME, HOW DOES THAT MAKE YOU FEEEEEEEL??" was pretty incredible.

and people accuse Spielberg of being sledgehammer-obvious?

When they were running Redux on IFC or Sundance, I always ran into it right at the Playmate-helicopter-fucking scene. Was that in the original? Cuz it was weird and awful.

No.

(it was not in the original, yes it is weird and awful)

milo, it's easy to be hard.

It's close to great up through Duvall's departure, a very mixed bag after that, and mostly a disaster once Brando waddles on. The French plantation addition is atrocious; and people accuse Spielberg of being sledgehammer-obvious

otm, the Reflux version is horrible

harrison!

i know!

right?

man sees work print:

Marlon Brando's Colonel Kurtz has three extra scenes, which more than quadruple the size of his part. In one, Brando reads from Time magazine to an imprisoned Martin Sheen. In another he delivers a monologue to Sheen about the "master liars" in Washington who "want to win, but can't stand to be thought of as cruel". In a third, he reads TS Eliot's The Hollow Men, while Dennis Hopper gets excited and says "man" a lot.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2008/oct/17/1

workprint been's available on vhs/dvd for years

workprint's been yadda yadda

"holy grail"

haha try checking ebay dude

or, y'know, download it

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22apocalypse+now%22+workprint

well, he's British.

last thing the world needs is more of that fucking movie.

I get the feeling gordon coates thinks a torrent is a rushing flow of water

maybe I can survive the economic collapse by selling widely available
"collectibles" to british film critics

dear gordon coates,

I possess a copy of kubrick's highly coveted first film, fear and desire. only 500 GBP and it's yours. can you pick up shipping?

cheers,
E3

Sam Bottoms, Film and TV Actor, Dies at 53
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

Sam Bottoms, a film and television actor who was the third in a family of four acting brothers, died on Tuesday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 53.

The cause was a brain tumor, his sister-in-law Emily Lansbury said.

With his older brothers Timothy and Joseph and his younger brother, Ben, Mr. Bottoms was a regular presence on the large and small screens in the 1970s and afterward. He was perhaps best known for his performance as Lance Johnson, the surfer turned Vietnam patrol-boat gunner in “Apocalypse Now” (1979), directed by Francis Ford Coppola.

Mr. Bottoms’s other films include “The Outlaw Josey Wales” (1976) and “Bronco Billy” (1980), both directed by Clint Eastwood; “Gardens of Stone” (1987), directed by Mr. Coppola; and “Seabiscuit” (2003), directed by Gary Ross, in which he played an assistant trainer. He also appeared on television in the mini-series “East of Eden” (1981) and in numerous shows and commercials.

Samuel John Bottoms was born in Santa Barbara, Calif., on Oct. 17, 1955. At 15 he was cast in his first film, “The Last Picture Show” (1971), after he visited his brother Timothy on the set and was spotted by the director, Peter Bogdanovich. Mr. Bogdanovich gave him the role of Billy, the retarded boy who sweeps the streets of his dusty Texas town.

Mr. Bottoms’s first marriage, to Susan Arnold, ended in divorce. Besides his brothers, he is survived by his parents, James and Elizabeth Chapman Bottoms; his second wife, Laura Condé Bickford, a film producer; and two daughters from his first marriage, Clara and Io.

RIP lance

"Zap em with ya siren!"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wCkqGABxVOE

i was reading eleanor's 'notes' book 2day -- this is good from the day marty sheen cut his hand for real while drunk

Yesterday Francis shot the scene in the hotel room. He let Marty get a little drunk, as the character is really supposed to be. He and Marty both knew they were taking a chance. The first layer of the character Marty played was the mystic, the saint, the Christlike version of Willard. Francis pushed him with a few words and he became the theatrical performer, Willard as the Shakespearean actor. Francis prodded him again and he moved to a street tough, a feisty street fighter who has been at the bottom, but is smart, knows some judo, is used to a scrap. At this point, Francis asked him to go to the mirror and look at himself and admire his beautiful hair, his mouth. Marty began this incredible scene. He hit the mirror with his fist. Maybe he didn't mean to. Perhaps he overshot a judo stance. His hand started bleeding. Francis said his impulse was to cut the scene and call the nurse, but Marty was doing the scene. He had gotten to the place where some part of him and Williard merged. Francis has a moment of not wanting to be a vampire, sucking Marty's blood for the camera, and not wanting to turn off the camera when Marty was Willard. He left it running. He talked Marty through the scene. Two cameras were going.

I was outside in the street, shooting. When I went back to the set, Enrico, Vittorio and the people who had been inside during the scene were coming out, visibly shaken. Silent and disturbed, emotionally affected by the power of Marty/Willard baring his guts in the room.

I waited for Francis to come outside after the wrap. He never came. Finally, I went into the set. Francis and Marty were alone. Marty was lying on the bed, really drunk, talking about God. He was singing an old hymn called "Amazing Grace" and trying to get Francis and me to sing with him, holding our hands and crying. He was strong and wiry like a boxer. Francis was trying to be with him and see that he didn't hurt himself. His cut finger had been bandaged. It started to bleed again because he was squeezing our hands, hard and sometimes hitting edges of the bed. The nurse came in and I helped hold his arm, so she could put a fresh dressing on the cut and try to stop the bleeding. The cut was not deep, but it was right on the knuckle and he kept beding it. Marty asked the nurse to pray and sing and I could see she was praying dead seriously. I thought I should go home and get some espresso coffee in a thermos, but when I started to get up, Marty would take my hand and I couldn't leave.

hey thanks for posting that, johnny, that is a good read. i always saw this book around & never picked it up, despite really feeling hearts of darkness; how is it?

im like 1/2 way thru it, would def recommend but not if u want it to be too revelatory abt the production; it is v much like reading her journal + she's p candid abt her insecurities and just the mundane but interesting aspects of living in the phillipines w/ her young kids while her husb is working 20 hr days and stressed out of his mind

yeah that works for me; it is probably some classic model for contrarian opinions but i'm way more interested in her film than in apocalypse now, found the weird fitzcarraldo-y human drama side of it more interesting, &c.

so ponderous and boring and ultimately pointless. it has nothing to say

https://www.tribecafilm.com/stories/tribeca-2019-closing-night-galas-anniversaries

'Final' Cut in 4K. So.. a new cut?? Hopefully the copping off with playboy bunnies/plantation bits are gone.

I posted about this in the OCatC thread but I really had no idea about this fascinating bit of trivia:

Because Martin Sheen was, first, in recovery for his heart attack, then later due to a conflict with FFC... FFC then flew Martin Sheen's brother Joe Estevez to perform all of the narration for Willard in Apocalypse Now. Their voices are nearly identical, and FFC denied Joe a credit in the film.

This book of Murch's sounds really good.

https://www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v47/n19/john-lahr/every-blink