Apocalypse Now

I never was the same after truly SEEING this movie. It was a late evening, no one else around, all the lights off, phone turned off as well, watching the film on a big television with a 5.1 system. What a night! I wouldn't even call this a film, it's an experience - a meditation on humanity, on moral, on values. Equipped with some of the finest actors active at the time, a fantastic literary source material, a great director amd some of my favorite 60s tunes, what can go wrong? My absolutely favorite war movie

 

Well, in a weird way, Morrison WAS responsible for re-launching the war.

 

His dad?

 

Yes the ending of that version is awesome. To me the worst part of the movie are the scenes with Brando

 

Who will be the new Milius? AN and Jeremiah Johnson are probably the two films, other than Marx Br. movies, that I've watched most times. Milius was big in both.

 

When I saw it in the theater back then the Blow em up ending was the one showed. I prefer it.

 

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It was never Coppola's intention to suggest that things were blown up. He was just using the footage under the credits. He didn't realize until later that it suggested that happened when he wanted to keep it unresolved.

 

I enjoyed starting acid trips with a visit to the movies (the best part was when you went outside after the film and reality "appeared"), but I would not have chosen "Apocalypse Now".

 

I've mentioned this story in several Lords or Dead Boys threads in the past in the music forum but anyway....

Dead Boys and later Lords Of The New Church front man Stiv Bators was a huge Jim Morrison/Apocalypse Now fan. My friend and I were big Lords fans and saw probably 20+ shows when they played SoCal venues and bars between '83-'87 and those last couple years, met the band several times before or after shows. Stiv was unquestionably the most approachable and after a few shows, knew us by name. When they were dropped from IRS Records in '85 and lost their bass player, they played pretty much every local dive 2-3 times a year to make ends meet.

One show they did in a small dive bar in Long Beach in '86 near the old Tower Records store on PCH drew maybe 20 people and most of the band was sick or hungover and they played a pretty short set but they did snippet a bit of The Doors "The End" mixed into their own song "New Church." After the show, Stiv was hanging out at the bar and a couple of us were talking with him and the subject of The Doors and Apocalypse Now came up and I mentioned that I had the (full frame, lol!) laserdisc of the movie. So a few of us along with Stiv and his roadie drove the few miles to my apartment and we watched the movie into the wee hours of the morning (I passed out before the ending). Before leaving, Stiv signed the LD sleeve ("Jim Lives, Stiv Bator"):

 

I did that before seeing Eraser Head big mistake LOL

 

Does this explanation really seem plausible? Coppola just missing the implication of the credit explosions when many people at the theater (myself included) assumed it was the strike called by Willard? I don't buy it.

 

Very cool!

I once had a ticket to the the Lords, around the time of the first album, turned up at the venue but it was cancelled as someone was ill or had injured something. Shame as that first album is brilliant.

 

Other UK music fans:



A very famous UK hardocre package tour was called the Apocalypse Now! Tour

And the Bunnymen were big fans and for a while dressed up in army gear and decorated the stage in camouflage, as can be seen in the Shine So Hard film.



Bob Stanley also attributed a change in their direction to another influence: “They saw ‘Apocalypse Now’ and never recovered; their pretty tousled-haired singer Ian McCulloch now believed himself to be the next in line to Brando and Jim Morrison. This new psychedelia and intense self-belief led to one of 1981’s best albums Heaven Up Here, which hummed ominously throughout, like a distant overhead helicopter.” Ian McCulloch | If You Were There

 

Cowboy Curtis manned a mean machine gun

 

I don't agree. It was quite obviously the Kurtz's encampment that was being blown up. I do remember he was not certain which ending he wanted to go with at first and that both were shown in theaters.

 

A Clockwork Orange. Same.

 

Take it up with Coppola. He never indicated that he wasn’t sure which ending he wanted to go with after the film was completed and kept it deliberately open. It’s on his commentary track. While the film didn’t have an ending when they began shooting he never intended for the alternate footage of the Kurtz explosions to suggest that the Kurtz compound was blown up. He decided against that ending (hence the reason that the 70mm played without ANY credits at beginning or end) but felt he needed closing credits for the mass distribution and didn’t want to waste that footage.

In fact, the ending was meant to suggest that Willard was indecisive about killing them or that he was considering leading them (again, listen to ththe commentary track on the DVD or blu Ray). On the 70mm version in theaters when it premiered there WAS no explosion because he didn’t have ending credits. He did shoot the explosion sequence for the film but ultimately elected not to use it for an ending and, in fact, the opening sequence is the footage he intended to use for the destruction of the Kurtz compound as he didn’t want to waste it and wanted to open the film with destruction as he felt it would startle audiences at the time.

It wasn’t an indecisiveness about the ending at all. It didn’t occur to him that the footage shot of explosions would be seen as an “ending. The explosions were only on the mass distributed 35mm prints and the 70mm prints were never altered always closing without credits (and again no traditional “starring” styled credits, etc. Because Coppola couldn’t print up the booklets with credits for all the 35mm versions and he was going to have to add credits, he made the decisions he did. All of my info comes from one of Coppola’s commentary tracks on the film. Can’t wait to see this in4k.

 

I remember what he said back then about the ending and showing both versions but he didn't go into much detail other than he ultimately decided on the explosion-less ending. 4k will be incredible!

 

There’s a comment in the commentary sections towards the end as I recall where he states the circumstances about not having a written ending, deciding not to use the explosion at the end because he wanted to leave it open to interpretation. I think that Coppola was in such a state of what he referred to as “temporary insanity” which would make sense considering he had an affair right 7nder his wife’s nose while she was working on the doc the film. There’s so many ways that film could have been cut (redux being an example and the 30 minutes he later cut after previews).

 

I've come to regard it like Peckinpah's 'Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid', several relatively legitimate versions that each have their merits. None are absolutely perfect, but all are powerful.

 

I only saw a part of redux, and I remember feeling it didn't really fit the film and quit watching. Sometime I'll have to watch the whole thing. I just checked my old DVD and it has a Coppolla commentary on the destruction of the village. Gonna watch that because I don't remember it or remember it wrongly!

 

Willard tells Chef to call in the airstrike if he is not back by a certain time. So seeing the explosions might lead one to assume that is what happened.

I was always vaguely aware there were alternate closings, so I simply tag it as murky.

 

Another favorite here. I saw it in the theater as a kid, now have the Directors cut, and have seen a longer cut with sex and nude scenes with Pat Garret and a few hookers in a brothel. I like the directors cut the best. The timeline with some scenes rearranged seems to flow better.

Another favorite, Little Big Man. I saw it in the theater as well, and the DVD issued years back had a few seconds of nudity cut, which seems somewhat odd because usually theatrical scenes aren't cut out but cut scenes are added. I probably only noticed it because as a randy kid I was quite impressed with it.

 

Coppola did a great version of "Dracula", aside from the Winona Ryder and Keanu Reeves casting. Gary O was fabulous as Vlad.
Milius will always be remembered for "Conan the Barbarian", sadly Hollywood can't make a decent action film anymore. No directors with balls.

Aside from Harrison Ford , R.Lee Ermey and Scott Glenn make cameos.
I saw this in 70mm the day of release. No other film even gets close to what Vietnam was like. Top 10 for me. So Coppola owns 3 of my top 10 films of all time. Not a bad record.

 

That was me with Redux. I enjoyed the extra depth and exposition in the comfort of my own cinema seat/couch.