We wait the Father alone.

This film is considered by many on the Internet, which is, as we all though, the most important and verifiably best place to get your information, as the magnum opus of Francis Ford Coppola.

I guess no one has seen Megalopolis, which I would assume is his own magnum opus, or it's at least mister Holland's opus, because I don't know how many people saw Megalopolis for any reason other than to joke about it after the fact.

But there's no joking about Apocalypse.

Now.

There's nothing funny about this movie.

This movie is not a comedy.

It's not funny at all.

Oh I disagree.

I'm being facetious.

This movie is not a film about Vietnam.

It's Vietnam as a film.

That's what Copola said.

Okay, that's what No, no, no, it is Vietnam.

Oh yeah, right, Sorry, it's just a fucking movie.

Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.

It is a movie, but it's not.

I mean, like, I like, look, Copola is Copola is giving himself a big head, which is fine.

He's one of those directors he's kind of always been.

Well, you know what, it's well deserved for what for this?

Yeah, for this movie.

Yeah, at the end of the seventies, after that fucking run of not just The Godfather, but like the conversation as well, like to tap the decade off with this good god Man.

I know and what I don't know?

So I calling your shot?

I don't know.

I always have a hard time with someone who calls their shot.

I guess he.

Already did it.

There's no calling the shot.

It was done.

They already went through Vietnam.

He already lost his mind.

His fucking star had a heart attack and nearly died.

Every they took the helicopters away, everything went wrong.

Marlon Brando showed up three hundred pounds like they and he and the genius is on screen.

But but this isn't Vietnam.

Just because they made a film and the Jungle doesn't mean they made him.

I don't know they made they They went through the cinematic equivalent of Vietnam in the production of the film.

If if you if I'm looking, I'm not comparing to do it.

I'm down all of us stolen, the collar people and all that bullshit.

Us.

But the fact, the fact of the fucking matter is and Copola, I'm sure thinks this way.

Cropol is a fucking artist first and foremost, I'm sure in every aspect of the fucking guy's life, and so he would tell you what they went through as opposed to nearly every other, like film production.

Maybe FITZGERALDO.

I was about to say, thank you, babe, You fucking you fucking put the nail on the head right there before I could get to it.

Yes, Fitzgerald, I think it's or.

Or any production of Terry Gilliams, and that's all his fault.

But uh, other than that, I think that this was you know, look, he's speaking in hyperbole, and he's at the can Film Festival, and you know, this was how many years of his life and he's so strung out and he can't even believe that there's fucking movie to be put up on screen and it's as good as it is.

So yeah, he gets to say this was Vietnam.

I might interject here.

I was like thirteen or something when Hearts and Darkness came out, and I was in that point where like, what do I want to be when I grow up?

Watch that movie and him be just adventurous up his ass brilliant, hurt, vulnerable, all of those things to a kid who maybe wanted to be a movie director.

That really cemented it.

For me at that age, I'm like, Okay, I get it, he's crazy, but this is cool.

And you know, I was obsessed with Apocalypse Now in high school, as I watch it as an adult, I'm like, Okay, it's a little up its own ass.

But he's allowed, you know, he's not.

He's not krisonal and he's not you know, Vining you or whoever.

I mean, he is, but I mean he is though, but he is his but he is and like he's he's he was them before they were then Like that's a look, I think, to both of your points and look again, like feelings on Copola side, that's not why we're talking about this movie.

We're actually talking about this movie because of John Millius, which I think is much more interesting.

Anyways, he has much more interesting things to say about Vietnam than Copola does.

I think, well, yeah, he was there right right, which I think for me is much more interesting than the guy who's just like my my recollections on Vietnam through the lens of the media.

Okay, cool, fine, but I do care more about the guy who was there.

I think inherently John Millius had asthma.

He had he went through film school and they kicked him out with the full intention of joining the military and going to Vietnam and dying in Vietnam, and applied and found out he had They found out he had asthma, and then they kicked him out, And it was at that point he went, Okay, well, I guess, so I will concentrate fully on film.

So I guess.

The question then becomes, does the person who is inherently right leaning and more of a self proclaimed anarchist have a more interesting take on Vietnam than someone who is Again, I think Coppola comes at it from a very different direction, a much more obvious direction than the direction Millius comes at it.

First, Well, copl as a stoneer San Francisco hippie, I mean, like.

I know, but Milius is literally just the inverse of that, like, yeah, the almost the And again I think to the last episode's point with Magnum Force, it was almost Milius his intent to be that way.

It is his intent to be the exact opposite of all of his film school buddies.

I mean, you know, when you're your friend, when your friends call these people like, what do you expect?

John Millius was a fucking southern California surfer kid and then up until that was what he was doing.

And then his parents, concerned that he was just going to waste his life surfing, sent him to Colorado to like a boarding school which was in the mountains of Colorado.

So then he became a mountain man.

Then he started, you know, living off the mountain.

And you know what I'm I feel less fear when I have my rifle with me, so I will leave the rifle behind this time.

That's that's the kind of guy John Millius is well, and that for.

Me, I think is a much more interesting direction to come at the Vietnam experience from than Coppola.

But I think because of the way this movie ends up being other than I think one glaring thing that I'm sure we will talk about and maybe even the labor, I think they balance each other out.

I think is the more important thing with this movie, because I think Tonio to your point and Father Malone to your point, this movie is a masterpiece.

I think it's a flawed masterpiece.

But I don't think that there are very many masterpieces that don't have some maybe skewed aspect to them.

And I think the bias of this movie and the storyteller's intent can can sometimes get in the way of a perfect story because the storyteller wants to tell a certain ending and which doesn't jive with literally ninety nine percent of the rest of the movie.

And I think that this movie, for me, is one of those examples.

But I think self mythologizing, which John Millius did, which Francis Ford Coppola did as well, which we would see with Something with Megalopolis, which is literally about him, that self mythologizing is, I don't know, Like you guys have said, you can either you either pull it off or you seem like a conceited asshole.

And I think that there are some people who don't care about seeming like conceited assholes, and I think that they pull it off and can support it because look at their body of work.

If you were Francis Ford Cope, if you directed just The Godfather and that was it, not even two or three di menitioning returns in effect, you'd be like, I don't ever have to direct anything else, but he directed this Apocalypse, He directed Godfather Apocalypse.

Now the conversation Megalopolis Club, Tracula, Yeah, I.

Mean Tucker Man in his Dream.

I mean Bram Stoker's Dracula is an amazing film.

It is.

Yeah, it is like I still don't understand why the movie got drug when it came out, other than I mean, Keano is not great, but.

People people were not People were not ready at that moment for it.

That for all the Asian influence on it and all the sort of operatic we were used to.

The in camera work that was done, that was wasted on people in the nineties, apparently this movie's boring.

Wow, well fuck you, I guess, like.

All my high school friends adored it.

I went with I remember going with theater kids from high school and it was just this is the coolest movie ever made.

So maybe it hit the right notes at least for the right people, I guess.

But yeah, it did get dragged.

It was it was considered a little too weird fucking Dracula.

Yeah, but too weird for Dracula, I don't know.

Yeah, what does that look like?

Uh So, all that to say on this episode of the Culture cast.

I am still your host, Christashu, much to the chagrin of many, and I am joined by my two good friends.

He programmed this month Your Friend and Mine, father and Malone all the way from Midnight Viewing where he hosts that podcast A Popsicle Now and his good friend.

And he's been on the show I think one other time, correct talking about venom Yes.

Yes, that's correct.

I is here for venom.

Uh from Swamp Media Group.

Antonio lapourt lapour in.

English, and if you're speaking of Spanish, you're gonna go Antonio.

Yeah.

I mean, I unfortunately took three years of Spanish in high school, so I almost defer to that.

And then I'm like, should I not do that?

It's like ordering it taco bell and being like saying grassiest at the end, like oh my go.

In Cuba it was obviously upwood.

But when we got here, you know, my family got here, they just started saying lap war is to feel more.

Allow the white people say also allow the white people do not have to trill there else.

Yes, And they still murdered it.

They still murdered it.

When I was a kid, I would get la lapin laper lapure and I'm like, is it really that hard?

I mean, I've heard them all as well, so I guess yes, I can imagine.

Yeah, yeah, yeah you can.

On this episode of the Culture Cast, we are still talking about films that Father Malone picked, but you're John Millius film and so we are continuing with a look at a film that I would say is much more high profile than the last one.

And again we've kind of belabored the point already that it may in fact be a masterpiece and probably is.

Talking about nineteen seventy nine's war epic Apocalypse now So, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, written by John Millius and Francis Ford Coppola.

It stars Marlon Brando, Robert Duval, but more importantly, Martin Sheen.

And not Harvey kit Tell.

Not Harvey kite Tell, that's right.

It stars Martin Sheen as Benjamin Willard, a man sent upstream to find an American colonel gone rogue.

That American colonel gone rogue is played by Marlon Brando.

It is hard, it is it's a lot of things.

It's possibly Copola's best film, depending on your thoughts on things.

It's also a loose adaptation of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

It's also possibly Vietnam in a film, but it is definitely a technical masterpiece if it is anything at all your feelings on the plot of the film aside, it is a technically impressive film in a way that film films don't get made like this anymore for a lot of reasons, because this shit's expensive and it costs a lot of time to do these things.

Just the helicopter shots in this movie alone.

So fatherm alone, I will turn it over to you first, Why Apocalypse Now?

We've already talked about it a little bit, But why the John Millius of it all, with this movie, with all the other Millius films to pick?

Why Apocalypse Now?

And then all the other usual questions apply.

Before we go further in that direction, we should mention Paul Hirsch, the editor of this film, the actual true genius in the mix here, who took all of that mad put him out of the showdage.

Of a couple of predations like games, the helicopters looking.

This is a Brancis for presents Harland Brenda in the most legally awaited motion picture of all time, Apocalypse Now Homes rated off about warfare now to Tom especial acadelic war.

So it's perfect for him to adapt.

And it's my understanding that when he was denied entrance into the military and decided to go a whole full bore h into screenwriting, his professor was Erwin Blacker at usc Erwin Blacker has a book called Elements of Screenwriting if anyone is interested in screenwriting, and I'll read that book.

It's the best fucking screenwriting book you're ever gonna you're ever gonna read.

And Erwin Blacker was a mean, old prick of a professor who like got really down on on Mimillius because he knew he had talent.

It was one of those situations, and told him that no, no screenwriter had ever conquered Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.

It had, it had foiled Orson Wells, it had foiled Ben Hecked, you know, and a dozen others.

So Milius took that as personal challenge.

And because he couldn't go to Vietnam, then he would he would make the ultimate statement about Vietnam and said Heart of Darkness against it.

Now, the heart of Darkness is the most sort of obvious reference there.

But Millius himself will admit that he read Joseph Conna's Heart of Darkness at age seventeen, and now at age like twenty four or five or six, he chose not to reread it and thought it would be better just to get the feeling what he remembered it to be.

And so your remembrances of Hearts of Darkness, it's talk about some next level artistic bullshit.

It's my remembrances of say that.

I'm just asking who else gets away with it, who else can say it?

I know, well, I mean, it's not like they give a credit to the to Joseph Conna's Heart of Darkness in the movie or anything.

It's not like a directly thing.

You know, we all know it is, basicularly after that documentary was called Hearts of Darkness.

But I would say, I would say that as much as the framework of Hearts of Darkness is in here about you know, Willard traveling up river to find kurts Uh, it's as much Homer's the Odyssey as anything.

You know, kil Gore is nothing if not the Cyclops, and like the Playboy Bunnies are nothing if not the sirens Uh, it's so it becomes even better to me because Millius is now confusing warfare myths and turning it into this crazy thing that takes place in the jungle.

And if you've ever read his original script, you know this movie Who's supposed to end with with Willard joining Kurtz's army and then fighting the the actual Americans as they as they sort of came in to exterminate them, And it was supposed to be this big, brutal like orgy of violence at the end of the movie, which which would.

Have worked way better than what we got at the end of the movie.

Oh, I don't know.

I you know, I like that.

I do like the ending we got, but it's it's way more impactful.

Basically, it's it's whether or not you think Willard would would follow through with the orders or whether he would go fully native.

The movie makes it clear that he was going full native, and then Daius X mocking enough for no reason.

Leave.

I have a hard time, Antonio, I want to hear your thoughts.

Well, no, it's was he gonna go?

Yeah, he was going that way, but then you know, the chef got his head cut off.

I think that probably is like, oh wait, no, I got a job.

I gotta you know, I gotta follow through on miss it is.

It's a reverse of the odyssey.

Instead of going home, it's going away and kind of like finding yourself on on the journey.

It's and for all the movies trappings, it's a pretty straightforward Joseph Campbell Heroes journey.

I mean like it's it hits all the marks pretty much.

You know, it's like it's got the call to adventure and the whole thing.

Here's the mission, get your team together, go on the mission.

Here are your stops along the way.

Like, it's pretty straightforward.

For as bizarre as the movie is, it's a straightforward Hollywood adventure.

And I think that was the key to cracking Hearts of Darkness was just you know, making as traditional as the structure as possible, because it's not jumping around in top I'm it's pretty straightforward ABCD, you know, like it's a you know, it's a road movie, so it hits.

All the points.

I think this ending works a little better than a big exciting ending.

I think this makes it personal for both of these two guys.

It demystifies Colonel Kurtz too a little bit, because Colonel Kurtz supposed to be this grandiose figure and then it's just this fat guy dying from malaria, sweating his balls off.

And being weird as hell.

And I think a big action and the thing would have I don't know, I don't think it would have played as well for me now anyways, at fifteen probably different.

I'm not sure I wanted some big action set piece.

I just think I wanted the logical mixed step for the narrative to take that it had set itself up for.

I mean, it's it sets itself up to have Martin Sheen's character walk away from everything at the end.

It's not a happy ending, but what move?

Why does this movie need a happy ending?

Or again for as happy as an ending as this movie could get, don't I don't know, I think, you know, to maybe belabor the point, I really enjoy this movie.

I hadn't seen this movie in the longest time, probably ten years at least, maybe more, probably closer to fifteen and rewatching it.

I mean, everything about it is just so impressive, even making the best of a bad situation with Marlon Brando showing up overweight, not being prepared as Marlon Brando is wanting to do, you know, Martin Sheen having a heart attack, like on all these things, it's like this is the stuff of legend.

At this point, this movie kind of sits in its own broth in a lot of ways, like it's it's like it's you know something like Tropic Thunder is a great interpretation of this movie's interpretation of itself, like the the on the noseness of Tropic Thunder, Like there's so much like I forgot how much of Tropic Thunder is in this movie, like or vice versa, how much of this movie's in Tropic Thunder?

Like they rip shit out of this movie whole cloth in Tropic Thunder, but they play it in a completely different direction.

And I really appreciate that about both this movie and that movie because Trumpic Thunder almost feels like a companion piece to this movie.

And it's like, you know what you know to your point, father Malone, what if these people believe their own bullshit of like making a movie in the jungle was like going to Vietnam, Like that's what is Tropic Thunder if not like that?

Like what if these people actually believe their fart, stink ero and smell like roses like.

Well, you know.

The funny thing about that is Troumpic Thunder actually seems to be the movie that was originally conceived because before Millius took it on and just decided I'm gonna go full hog and do my own screenplay here, he had been having conversations with George Lucas.

The idea of Apocalypse Now actually originates with George Lucas, who didn't necessarily want to do a Hearts of Darkness or an honesty thing.

His idea was, let's take you and me, John and a cameraman and a sound guy, and we're gonna go to Vietnam and we're gonna be in Vietnam with a couple of actors and we're gonna do some know, crazy thing and we'll probably die.

Like that.

That was the conception, and that's what Tropic Thunder actually is.

Like when they're running through the jungle in Tropic Thunder, they're like, oh, yeah, no, there are cameras where you know, we got us do the scene.

Do the scene like that's what they were gonna do, right, And imagine that Milius was the cooler head and said no, I'll just write this as a movie.

We don't need to go and die.

That's was all about posturing.

Yeah, that's because he's a he's a self mythologizer.

He's an anarchist up unto a point.

Uh, you know what, you're absolutely one hundred percent wrong.

I think John Millius walked it and talked it.

Man if if if George was because nobody gave them the money to do that, that's ultimately the reason.

That's fair.

I mean, okay, that's fair.

Because I guarantee you the guy who had planned to finish film school, join the army and die in Vietnam would not have had a problem going to fucking make a movie and die making the movie.

He would have probably enjoyed it even more.

Again, that's was George Lucas's initial style too, was he wanted to do documentaries, and stuff has a very documentary feel to it.

DHX one one three eight is you know, very documentary.

You know, it's got that feel to it.

So does.

American Graffiti is almost.

As any You know what, if you want to see Lucas's conception of Vietnam, watch more American Graffiti.

There's a whole Vietnam sequence in it, and it's all handheld documentary style, and you know exactly the way his Apocalypse Now would have.

Looked, And the Star Wars movies have that kind of feel to it.

It's very very small, you know.

It's more evident in the prequels and the fight scenes that are very all kind of handheldy and stuff.

But Star Wars movies tend to have to have that kind of everything is objective.

The perspective is all very objective.

There's no flashbacks, there's no interior monologues or anything like that.

Everything is told from an outside perspective rather than through the audience.

The newer movies don't kind of do that, so.

Well, you know what a bunch George Lucas in Attack of the Clones that was the very first time that it actually did start to get the documentary style with the effects where where the camera would oom in suddenly you know, or you know, and that kind of became everything after that.

Battlestar Galactic, the entire series seems to be based on that, you know, those couple of shots from Attack of the Clones where it became documentary estyle.

So yeah, I think Lucas definitely would have made to pock cups now one percent hand held.

It would have been interesting.

It would have been very very grounded and very almost you know, yeah, very grounded, very real, very stuma, veryte, although with some wipes and you know, irises, but still.

Millius is such a provocate But I find what Copola brings to this movie as like kind of not taking it away but grounding it, grounding being a provocateur.

I feel like again in that and you guys have already mentioned it a little bit.

The the I guess the tenants of not saying that Milius wasn't interested in that, but I think Copola brings it back to this kind of again heightened realism that the movie operates within, which I think helps this movie's kind of epic feel.

Is this heightened sense of reality because I mean, again, like there's stuff going on in this movie that again it just it doesn't feel like reality, and it doesn't feel like not reality.

It just feels like a heightened reality.

Like again, you have this opera, like all of Copla stuff.

That's what Copla brings to every fucking production is opera.

Yeah, and I appreciate that about this movie you have a scene where they're like, you know, we we spend every day rebuilding this bridge, so at night the Vietcong can tear it down.

And then of course the scene ends with the bridge being blown up, like okay, like of course, like we see it, of course, and it's at the end of the scene, and it's shot in this very like specific kind of way as they're leaving and you see it from behind, and it's just like shown, it's shown but not told.

I don't know, like there's something.

So I appreciate the use of the filmic language so much, and that's a lost art and I think that's what Copola brings to everything he works on.

And that's the thing that me is the most important thing about this movie is turn the dialogue of this movie off and still more or less get everything that's going on, because it's it's shot in such a way where I don't know, it's a vibe.

I mean, you guys have said it's like a poem, it's like a vibe of a movie.

It really is, like put this movie on in the background and just kind of have it on.

It's two and a half hours, like it's a long movie, but I also think like it washes over you at some point and you're just kind of experiencing it less kind of watching it.

He does that a lot with most of his pictures.

He takes these genre movies and then kind of turns them on edge.

And I think with Apocalypse Now, it's an adventure film.

Like I said, it's a pretty straightforward adventure film that's suddenly very surrealistic.

He took this whole kind of classic World War two movie type idea where the you know, the agent has to go on an adventure to do whatever, and then he made this just madness.

But again it's mad as you can follow.

And I think that's pretty cool.

I think it's an accessible art film, which I think is something that he does he does quite well.

And like I said, he did it with Dracula, does it with The Godfather?

To a B movie like The Godfather?

Isn't that what the brats were doing?

In general?

The film brats, the film school generation, Spielberg and Lucas.

I mean, you know, let's take all the B movies and turn them into a pictures.

That's what made it new Hollywood, right, I mean that's just their interpretation of I don't know, like that's the thing with this movie is like Antonio, like you said, like there's nothing to this movie, and I think that's I think again, like there's this I don't know, there's this idea of you either have the restaurant that makes the one thing really well and it's just one thing, but they make it really well, and in making that one thing really well, they elevate that one thing beyond a place that most places ever elevate most of the things.

Or you have a restaurant that makes a bunch of really complimentary things really well and they're very or.

You get the cheesecake Factory.

They make everything, man.

And they make it all poorly, and that's not what we're talking about.

I don't know, like like a restaurant that again like it does you know, like a couple things really well.

Like this is a movie that I think does like one thing really which is a Vietnam movie with psychedelia, which seems weird to me that this wasn't a thing that people were really like, why don't we do that?

It's like, it's weird to me that that wasn't a thing that people were thinking.

More about is injecting psychedelia into a war that most of the needle drops around the war have to do with psychedelia.

Like again, like a lot of music at the time is psychedelia adjacent, if not some of the best psychedelia music we ever get.

Like, I just it's weird to me, but at the same time, it makes so much sense.

It makes way more.

It's like putting honey on a peanut butter sandwich, Like oh, okay, like it makes sense.

I've never had it before, but it makes sense.

Like it's weird to me that someone wasn't doing this before this, because now it just seems like the most obvious interpretation of Vietnam.

You know, it does seem that way.

But can you name another movie that does psychedelic Vietnam.

It's weird that it's not.

I mean, I've seen it in comic books and novels and short stories and stuff, but cinematically, like this is the only accounting of you know, people taking an acid and lighting up the signal.

Flares surfing in Vietnam.

Yeah, man, I.

Guess the thing is, like, is there much else to say after this movie?

Is this movie definitive enough that there's nothing else to say?

In a lot of ways, it kind of feels like it.

No I No, I disagree with that because I'm talking about like.

This certain kind of Vietnam movie.

Like there's plenty to say about Vietnam broadly.

I just still like, I don't know if there's much else to say in terms of this kind of Vietnam.

Like that's probably why there really isn't another one done like this.

Specifically, as far as summing up twentieth century warfare, I think this is it.

Yeah, I mean, that's where we that's where we went to, you know what I mean, like even you know, now great nations are just bombing the fuck out of each other.

What's left it's it's it's the jungle, that's what's left.

It's killing each other, it's killing each you know, killing our own minds, it's killing everything.

Like trying to recreate home in the middle of fucking a war one.

It's total insanity, I think, And that's what all war is.

So, but add mechanization and psychedelia and apocolypse.

Now I think the bridge the bridge sequence sums it up really well.

Or like it's like, you know, we we keep rebuilding it and they keep lowing it up, and we keep rebuilding it just so they can say the road is still open.

Like there's just no sense to it whatsoever.

And and the absurdity of.

Yeah, I know, you know, there are so many versions of the film at this point, but.

Yeah, couple of loves that.

Couple of loves to release multiple content versions of every where's that?

Where's that version of Dracula?

We released Dracula?

Oh no, wait he has he's I think there's like there's like a there's a definitely a different version of Dracula with a longer intro.

Oh my, I see that.

I love that intro.

I've seen this movie so many times in theaters, like there was a sort of a revival when I first moved to Los Angeles of the film, so I saw this at the Cineramadome.

I've seen this just in little revival houses all around around the place, Like it's it is definitely worth seeing on a big screen, and it's cinematic.

Like I hate when people say that sometimes like you really ought to see it on the big screen, but you really ought to see this on the big screen just for the sound design alone, Like the I mentioned Paul Hirsch the opening of this movie up until they pull him into the shower, Willard into the shower, that whole sequence, the Doors, the end, the Sigon.

I'm still in Sigon, Like that sequence is I don't need the rest of the movie, honestly, Like it's it's so fucking technically beautiful and perfect.

I don't know.

I love how we were able to get yet another injection of the Doors into this podcast for them alone.

Oh yeah, right, like the.

Second best use of the doors outside of the movie The Doors.

And you know what, this is actually better than the use of the movie The Doors, because we were all so used to that one version of the song that now we get the unedited version of the song, which is so much darker and fucked up and like perfectly paired with the images.

You know.

Ray Man Xeric criticized the use of the song in the in this movie.

He thought it was he thought it was inappropriately used.

Sit down, Ray Ray sounds like a real fun guy, as they would say.

Well, I mean he doesn't.

I mean even in Kyle McLaughlin playing uh ray Man Zeric in that movie is just a bundle of joy too.

I mean it's just interviews with him seem like he's a real dude that everybody had a great time hanging around with.

Yeah, speaking of the doors, the monkey sampan uh deleted scene, I really has the light light my fire by the doors they is used pretty significantly in that scene.

I think that.

I think at one point they were attempting to score the entire movie with the doors.

I believe it.

Yeah, I really like that scene because that again, like there are those scenes in this movie that just feel like a distillation of what they're trying to say about the war.

And a bunch of monkeys driving a boat with acong nailed to the back of it is pretty much like a great distillation of the entire war, I think.

And it's I don't know, it's weird to me.

Some of the stuff that they take out of the movie is weird to me, because the French plantation scene, I think, to your point, Antonio, like I really like it.

I don't.

I don't know.

When your movie's two and a half hours long, it's like, I the fucking just make it three hours?

Who fucking cares?

Like I get it, But at that point, like this movie's already epic in tone and scope, Like really like really, I just I don't know, like you know, they don't.

Stanley Kubrick with Barry Lindon didn't show that much restraint.

Does Copola really need to show that much restraint when the movie's already going past the two and a half hour mark.

Come on as it is now?

They get maybe what for screenings a day?

I think if you go to the three hours you get too maybe.

Yeah.

So no, so no, he owed them a He owed them a movie that they could show and try and make some money back on.

I guess I don't know the I guess.

I think there's plenty of the reality on display without without a trape through the history of Vietnam, with the with the French.

Yeah, but if you're going to make a movie that's about Vietnam broadly, it almost feels like a shame to leave something like that out.

Yeah, but you know.

What, this is part of it, It's part of it.

But this is also you know, this is also a a an interpretation of Hearts of Heart of Darkness by a man who basically miss it, is misremembering it from twenty from ten years earlier, and.

My remembrances of yes, we know what you see the French plantation scene is the Tom Bombadill of this franchise.

Oh absolutely, what does it get?

What does they give you other than you know, they bury clean.

Other than that, it doesn't really move the plot along at all, other than just more absurdity.

Do the things in this movie don't move in the fu along?

I mean, like, holy shit, if we're gonna talk about this movie and moving things along, this movie ain't exactly about.

So little in this movie really happened, like you know, like a lot happens, but a lot doesn't happen at the same time.

Like I again, there's more of a tone and a vibe to this movie, which is less about the plot and more about the feeling the movie gives you by the settings and the I don't know, the you know, the cinematography.

There is an interesting point though about the French plantation scene is because Warehouse I didn't know the French were that involved in Vietnam when I was you know, That's what I'm saying.

Most of it.

It doesn't dress.

Yeah, it doesn't dress an interesting historical thing.

So that's that there's there's a good point for it.

It's we we as Americans helped create the Viet Cong, just like we helped create the fucking Taliban.

So you know, there's something to be said for arming the people in the and then going and being like we we actually want to fight you guys now, Like what the fuck?

But I get it.

I mean like it's a history lesson in the middle of a movie.

But at the same time, like Coppola gets away with like everything else in it, Like he gets away with pondering and posturing and injecting a Vietnam movie with his inherent like biases as well as Millius his biases, and like he gets away with all of it.

So as far as I'm concerned, like you want to load your movie up with stuff, be my guest.

And forty nine minutes is what they reintroduce to the film in the Apocalypse Now Redo it's too much, I said, I don't know it, Like I said, the movie's long enough, Like it just does that big of a deal.

Really Listen, If they want to add an additional hour and that hour contains more with Harrison Ford, well then okay.

Harrison Ford.

Yeah, the unsung hero Apocalypse Now Harrison I can't take my eyes off of him.

He's such a fucking distraction.

He's such a distraction, Like not in a bad way, but in the way where it's like in and again I everybody's favorite film.

It's like in Tusk when you realize it's Johnny Depp, You're just like, I can't unsee it.

It's like you can't unsee the fact that it's Harrison Ford, like right around him becoming the Harrison Ford that I think most everybody who has a filmic reference point for him know him for, which is either Indiana Jones or Han Solo, which is right in this corridor of time.

But he shot this first though before Star Wars, right, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, But I mean again, you can't can't take hindsight away.

You can't be like, who's that actor in Apocalypse that?

Did he ever do anything else?

Like he ended up just being one of the biggest actors of all time.

Like ever, Oh, I agree, it's during the first time you see it, But now he's just another He's just another guy.

Yeah, it's I mean, I think it's interesting that such an iconic American actor is in the quintessential Vietnam film in a villain.

Yeah.

I was about to say, as part of like the fucking the villains, the the the US machine.

Yeah, the US government as it word broadly.

Which is weird for Harrison Ford too, because he's usually a very outside the system kind of guy.

To us.

He's playing the Red Hulk, right, Oh, Marvel, they were like, we want you to play your character from Apocalypse Now.

It's what's his character's name here in Apocalypse Now, George Lucas.

It's George Lucas.

Oh it is.

Yeah, It's sure, that's right because it says Lucas, all wow, that's right.

Loves he they love the self pathologizing baby.

Hey man, he names it after your friends.

That's fine.

It's the original drafts, one of the original one of the original drafts of that fucking Deep Blue Sea movie.

The character that ends up in the the surgical bed that the shark uses to smash open the uh, the entire facility.

That character was originally named Wallace after me, so.

They changed it.

Yeah, So go ahead and fucking name any character you want after anybody.

Now you sound like John cusecond Ie Fidelity.

I just want to be in the liner notes.

I I name I named so many characters after kids.

I went to Great school with amazing.

I mean, look, GD Spradlin's characters are Corman, which you know, come on, yeah, I mean I mean again like given paying lip service to the man.

I mean I get it, Like again, this is calling their shot super early, like Harrison Ford played g lucas Jesus Christ.

You know what.

GD.

Spradland's great there, But now that you sent it, Roger mccorman also would have been great there.

Yeah, he could have like yeah, like Corman's great.

Corman's kind of a great.

That officious kind of thing like, and his aloofness would have added to another whole like level of weirdness to the movie.

Honestly, I you know, for as many times as I've seen this movie before this time, I forgot that Dennis Hopper was in this movie.

Well that's because this movie is so fucking sprawling an episodic, you can kind of forget all all of the elements.

It's always a nice surprise.

Actually, I agree with you, because I forget he's in it too, and then he pops up and I'm like, oh, yeah, this crazy fucker.

Yeah, and he's not like he's in it but not even in it enough.

You're almost like, where is the crazy guy.

But it's it's almost like if there was more of him, it probably would be overwhelming in way too much because he's such like an acolyte of Kurts that you're just like, shut the fuck up and let's get to Kurtz.

I don't want to hear from you anymore.

But I love this like weird kind of like through a lens of somebody else's their interpretation of this, like deification of Kurtz where he's like he's a god man and it's like whatever, dude, whatever, man, whatever, and.

It's all just carboys, not like how much of these characters are just high?

Like a how much have ever just stoned out of their fucking minds?

Most of them is what it be?

How else are you dealing with?

That's the question that I have, Like how are they not fucking out of their minds stoned all the time?

Like how else are you going into the bush?

And just that scene for the like who's in charge here?

Like that's my favorite scene in the whole fucking movie, Like this, I can hear it.

Man, He's just sitting out there looking with the grenade launcher.

The roach.

Yeah, yeah, I get the broach.

I love that whole scene because it's just like it's a personification of what my belief is a Vietnam which is just like a put two people in the jungles shooting it shit and they can't even see it.

And there's like we killed it poor women and children that we may have killed in the at the same time it's collateral damage, but we killed the viet Cong that were screaming at us in the jungles, that were screaming at us about being in their country.

It's fine for me.

It's the it's that uh when they come across the boat with the hiding the puppy and and Willard just shoots the lady.

He's just's dying, but he just puts her out of her misery right there, And you're like, oh, yeah, irredeemable.

The only two decent people in the movie seem like are are Are Clean and the skipper.

I mean, I guess le chef.

Clean kills everybody in that boat.

Yeah, but Clean is fourteen years old, you know what I mean, Like he's a little boy.

He mudn't say about the guy who wants to be in Vietnam at fourteen though.

Point taking well, you know what, all the all the heat and the sun put the nap on his head.

Yeah, they're all fucked up.

I guess the only decent guy there was a skipper.

Actually, the only decent guy in the entire movie is Colonel Kilgar Ha what you know, that's a man of conviction.

Don't you worry.

We'll pick your little boat up there, right down where you want it.

They take so they take so much away from him by not having him save that woman or the baby or whatever it is that new Ball gets all bent out his shape about It's like the complexity of my character, Like, I mean.

We you know what, I know that that guy's a decent guy.

It's it's so clear and obvious the way he acts, Like in that scene, I mean, other than the back then there's a really comedic moment where they're like, what the surfer guy is here?

Like, fuck the guy who's holding his guts in, We're just gonna walk away from him.

Like there's there's a very comedic beat there where they're talking to the guy who like they're talking about the guy he's like, Hey, I don't a man who would hold his guts in with his helmet, like that's a real like soldier.

And then the moment hears about the surfer, they just like later like that shit was hilarious, either intentionally or unintentionally.

But yeah, I don't think I need to see him like saving a Vietnamese child to know that he's not a terrible person.

Skil Gore is the personification of what Conan the Barbarian will let us know is what's best in life, which is to crush your enemy, see them driven before you and hear the lamentation of the women.

Kil Gore takes it a step further.

He surfs their waves.

He takes their entertainment and fun away, Milius being a surfer kid.

That'll explains Lance being the only one who survives the whole thing.

Yeah, and you know, and you know that's inexplicably too, by the way.

Survives.

Yeah, he's just always survived.

Because he's just so high that he just doesn't have anything to say to anybody.

So he's just like, I'm just a lovable white guy in the back here, just smoking this joint and frying on whatever I'm frying on.

Lance is living in the moment more than any other character at that point, So there's no question he would survive.

Is Lance one of the characters from Big Wednesday that kind of made it out of that movie and slunk into this one.

You mean the one where George Locus and John Millius traded points.

I'll give you points on my Surfer movie.

You give me points on your space movie.

Your Little Space Opera.

Yeah, okay, I'll take it.

Take two points in the back end of Star Wars, who wouldn't star?

Have you ever heard of action figures?

Yeah, Kenner, I hear they're making great plastic toys and injected models.

I really.

I think for me, I resonated the most with Sam Bottoms's character in the movie because it's just like, you know, if I were there, I'm not sure I'd be having a great time.

It's either him or Chef.

I mean Chef is obviously.

Oh my god, again, I forgot where the I was as Saucia in New Orleans.

Shit came from Junior in Tropic Thunder.

It is a recitation of more or less that entire scene I get back before WHOA.

I was asia like, it's just Robert Downe Junior doing blackface, which I mean again, I love it.

It's it is the greatest use of blackface in cinema because it is the only way to get away with it, which is to make fun of the people who's I think it's okay to do it on ironically.

And I love that this movie has so much mythology around it that you can make movies about the things in this movie that are kind of again wild and weird, because this movie again lives in its own mythology.

Like again, Martin Sheen, like you mentioned one being drunk at the beginning of the movie for real and punching a mirror for real and bleeding for real and him apparently no longer being an alcoholic anymore after it, Like sure, all right, a great sequence, right, yeah, exact without the story, without the story, it's a great sequence.

It's like again, I hate to mention this movie, but like in Django and Chaine, the scene with Leonardo DiCaprio at the table where he supposedly actually smashed his hand for real and like cut his hand and rubbing blood on Kerry Washington, Like, great scene.

Do I need this like amped up story behind it?

No?

But does it make it better?

I don't know.

It makes it more interesting, I guess Well.

Here's the thing I mentioned earlier about you know, we were talking about this movie as Vietnam, and I mentioned that Vietnam.

Yeah, but the difficulty of making this movie can only really be paralleled by Fitzgaraldo.

In both cases, the stories behind the making of these movies is fucking fascinating.

The difference is Apocalypse Now is a great movie and fitzgeraldo is boring.

Yes, but did you do not have klaus Kinski trying to murder you as the whole time of the production.

That movie should have been better because of it.

Guys.

I just remember how Werner Herzog is in Fucking the Mandalorian, and he was and introduces the world baby Yoda, wild wild times folks.

Then he ate his shoe.

He ate his shoe at one point.

I saw that movie.

It's a good movie.

He just just narrate the world.

I know.

I love Werner Herzog.

Yeah, he's the narrator for Conan O'Brien Must Go his Conan O'Brien's travel show.

Oh, I had to watch that now right now, I'm gonna watch it.

Yeah, Warner everything he did, I mean a again, like he he is a similar director who I like, you watch his stuff and you're like, whatever as on screen is probably half as interesting as the stuff that was happening off screen, Like a documentary about the making of Grizzly Man would be I think as interesting as Grizzly Man is, because again, like just I don't know, like these there are some directors who you get the distinct feeling and then it's like more or less confirmed that they're They're a lot to deal with, and making movies with them is the way making movies is meant to be.

Fucking Hercule intask Apparently it is thing is, but it isn't Hercule Intasque.

From experience, It's maddening.

It is absolutely maddening.

You know.

The thing is that you know when I say like that, you know, without without the story behind Fitzgaral, though there is no story Fitzkarala, it would be just a movie.

It would just be this movie.

And as much as I love all of the behind the scenes stories, here in Apocalypse Now, there's a fucking movie you can watch and know every little bit of it.

Those are great.

I don't care.

Before before I knew any of that shit, I saw Apocalypse Now and completely responded it to it as a piece of cinema, well without knowing.

I mean, I knew who Coppola was, I knew who the players were and everything.

I didn't know any of the backstory.

I didn't know the fucking trouble they went through didn't matter to me.

I think the movie stands up.

I agree, it's just I mean, yeah, I think in terms of the kinds of movies I just mentioned versus this movie, Yeah, this movie is a much better movie.

Fitzgeraldo's fine.

It's not even the most interesting her Zog film, at least not with.

Those No, not even been close.

Well, definitely not with Kinsky and her Zog.

I think if you're talking Kinsky and Herzog in a wild movie that was actually crazy in terms of the way it was made and what ends up on screen and it being entertaining agire or party aguire, Wrath of God, I think is much more entertaining, much more interesting, and a much more again a wild film in terms of what we get on screen versus what was going on behind the scene.

But yeah, FITZGERALDO is like the close comparison.

But FITZGERALDO is not.

It's kind of a boring movie.

It is, which is unfortunate because the documentary about it is not boring at all.

Basically, don't go make a movie in a jungle.

How did William Fried can get away so scott free when he made fucking Sorcerer?

I don't know, look about.

Fucking Predator for fuck's sake, Like, talk about a movie that sounds like a complete nightmare to go and make.

Like they were just in Mexico.

Who cares.

The Mexican jungle man?

Eh, there are twenty minutes from fanddamn quit it was so bad.

Well he just quit because he's a pussy.

He didn't want to wear that orange suit.

I don't blame him.

I love that orange suit.

I wanted to see that Predator.

I mean it showed back up in the Shane Boy movie.

Remember like Mega Godzilla.

The Predator what a great which you know what Apocalypse Now or the Predator?

What do you think which one's better?

Oh?

Well, the Predator does?

The Predator does have Jesse the buddy in trud Oh.

That'sator, big, Yeah, that's not the Predator.

The Seat better Black movie?

Oh yeah, you know which one's better?

Now?

God?

But you know what the think about Blacklist now?

You say, you know how how Copola gets away with a lot of suff He's just a really good storyteller.

He's just he's good at spinning a yarn and he gets it out man.

And most of his movies are all pretty damn entertaining.

Even when they're not working great, they're still entertaining.

He does it with such it's again like there's some of it is some of this like I've got big ball, like you know, like I'm just gonna do it and call me on it, like fucking call me on it.

And there are some people that are like, again, maybe not myself so much, but there are people that are like, fuck you, I'm gonna do it and see if anybody calls me on it.

And Coppola did it once and did it twice, and he's done it every time he makes a movie as far as I'm concerned, And this is in my mind, this is the biggest, like one of them all where it's just like I'm gonna tackle what feels like filmic Mount Everest.

But even when he's as most reserved, and let's say, like Tucker, Tucker is a great movie.

It's just solid, straightforward Hollywood movie making and He's like, I'm not getting all bananas with it.

I'm just telling you, I'm spinning a nice yarn here, and it really works.

Rain Maker works too, Like it's just he's gonna what he does.

I haven't seen Megalopolis.

I think it was only playing downtown and I just didn't get a chance to get to get to it, so I can't comment on it.

I imagine it's very pretty and very.

Obnoxious, very masturbatory, is what I have.

Yeah, well, let me mention when we haven't mentioned yet.

And it is a particular favorite of mine of Coppola's, which is Peggy Sue Got Married, which is one of his director for Higher Things.

But if you're going to be a director for hire, make that fucking movie.

That movie is magic, often overshadowed by Back to the Future with kind of like similar themes in that time period.

Yeah, and they both came out the same are exactly, but you know one is just you know, a once the wacky adventure we got and then one is Coppola's version some of them.

Is that the one where Nick Cage is doing the weird accent.

Yes, man, oh man, I.

Watched that movie a long Yikes.

Is he like, well, Uncle Francis, should I stand over here or stand over there?

Like, yeah, we're pretty good?

A very understated Nick Cage.

I like that, Thank you.

That was a good one.

I remember seeing that movie and just thinking that Nick Cage was fucking obnoxious.

Yeah, but you know what, some people talk like that, so what.

So yeah, I mean again, like whatever, I imagine most people who encounter Nicholas Cage say that.

But yeah, and just a couple of years after that, what's this guy's problem?

Is?

Brother?

What the hell is this guy's deal?

But then you know, for all of that, he did give us high a couple of years later and raising Arizona and all will be forgiven.

Yeah, that's fair.

I'm actually talking about that movie this Saturday and another podcast.

I love that movie.

God, I love that movie.

God, I love those Raising Arizona's just every second of that movie is magical.

That's a perfect movie.

Apocalypse Now is not a perfect movie, but it's a great fucking movie.

Yeah, Oh, Copleas.

Best movie is still The Godfather.

This that first Godfather.

Every it's just flawless movie making The Godfather too.

Yeah, it's amazing, but it doesn't live without the first one, like you.

Would you might be able to argue that.

I don't know, but I.

Think that first No, no, I agree.

I agree with that because anytime a sequel is better, it's because we've had so much shoe leather to get there.

So it's not a fair thing.

Like if you watch them out of order, maybe would you have said that.

Probably not.

My favorite couple of film is The Conversation, just straight technological paranoia San Francisco, fucking Cindy Williams and fucking man Gene Hackman.

Uh and it just gets worse and worse and it gets I love it.

I love it so much.

Why not Jack from nineteen ninety six.

I've never seen that movie.

I will not see that movie.

I will die not having seen Jack.

Why I'm not gonna I'm not going to sanction that buffoonery to steal align from Tommy Lee Jones.

I was about to say, God damn.

And this Ladies and Gentleman as Father Malone's one man play of how much he hates it's Jim Carrey.

I get it.

I mean, look, I think.

It seemed like twee and just like let me pull in your fucking heart strings and and I could not, like I expect that from Robin Williams.

God, damn it.

Francis Coppola, Yeah, don't it's it's well he I mean, like Antonio said, it's he likes to tell a story.

He likes to spin a yarn.

It's very much like a modern fairy.

And like that was the Coppola of it all, the injection of Copola into the movie.

The injection of Copola is also a great name for a porno starting.

I.

I don't know.

I I have never seen the Conversation.

It seems probably like my kind of movie.

I would like to check it out and watch it.

But I think of the movies of his that I've seen, I think this is probably it's either this or The Godfather one.

And I think they scratch different itches, but I think they both speak to a certain time and place in this country in terms of filmmaking.

And I mean, you, Father Milone, you said you know the god and Antonio you both said the god doesn't exist without the Godfather.

One Apocalypse now doesn't exist without the Godfather.

So that's probably more of the thing.

Is like the Godfather is.

I think the Godfather is Francis Wordcopola's best.

It is not my favorite of his.

I think probably this is just because I don't know, I probably speaks more to me more than anything else.

I vibe with how with how wild and up his own ass.

Kurtz is Kurtz Is at the end of this movie.

He's just so nuts and I love it.

He's just you know, I watched the cut the arms off and I saw the pile of arms, and I thought to myself, if I just had four platoons of these guys, we'd end the war right here, right now, Like what the fuck are you on?

Man?

He's like, I never let it go.

I never forgot about it.

This guy's nuts.

This is Kurtz has given himself over to the jungle completely, and I love it.

I love it, I love it, and I love that again one of them.

I'm this genuine, like honest to god.

Tropic Thunder is one of my favorite movies.

I've seen it a million times.

So it explains why I vibe with this movie so much, because again, a lot of Tropic Thunder is just like a moronic retelling of apocalypse Now, like what Ben Stiller's character goes through in the end of that movie where he's sitting you know, I'm the dude playing the dude disguised as another dude, like all of that, Like and him and Robert Downey Junior back and forth in that scene, like it's it's like Marlon Brando arguing with his ID.

It's hilarious, Like it's it is what this movie takes seriously.

That movie just lampoons and parodies in the best way.

And I love that.

I love the self serious version too, because Kurtz has given himself He's gone native and I love that fucking term.

He's gone Nate.

I love it.

I don't know like Kurtz for as terrible as Marlon Brando seemed to be as a person in terms of dealing with him and working with him and getting him to, you know, act like a decent collaborator for all the bad things the knocks against him.

Man, there ain't nobody that looms large over a movie like him.

He loomed.

He's like a specter over this entire movie.

He's in it for like ten minutes, literally, like ten fucking minutes, But they make so much usage of that time when he's on screen as much as when he's off and I love Marlon brand I genuinely love Marlon Brando.

In this movie.

He looms over it like Orson Wells looms over the Third Man.

You know, he's got that just that star introduction.

At the end, you're finally waiting for him, and here he is.

Where.

Yeah, And it's a different vibe because when Orson Wells shows up, it's just like, look.

How cool this guy is.

And then when Marlon Brando shows up, You're like, oh fuck, what happened to Marlon Brando?

Like it's how really this fucking guy?

Yeah, it's like and it just it sells that character so much.

Yeah, he showed up unprepared.

Yeah, he showed up three hundred pounds and golly, it all really work, It really really plays.

Are you telling me that Marlon is taking a million dollars of my money and he's not gonna show up.

It's a great part of that documentary.

Yeah.

Christ you mentioned that there is no Apocalypse Now without Godfather one, and I will say also that there is no Apocalypse Now without John Millis.

This is his movie, even Coppola, We'll say so.

I can't forget that that this movie is the reaction of a twenty six year old who intended to go fight in Vietnam was denied that and then gave us this instead.

That's pretty great.

So that's a pretty great artistic reaction.

So I asked the question then to you Parblon, because I feel like this is something that a lot of people not struggle with, but I think have interesting opinions on.

Is this a pro war movie an anti war movie or yes, it is both both.

I this movie is the contradiction of warfare, definitely, right.

It's necessity, it's insanity, it's yeah, just everything about it is.

I don't think, yeah, I don't think the movie comes down that war is bad or war is good.

Here, it's just the mania of it, all right.

I mean I was watching The Meaning of Life over the weekend and there's that scene where all the British officers are in the tent talking about the leg being you know, cut off, and they go outside and Eric idols here and he's like, hey, kill sixteen people here.

They give me a fucking medal.

If I go home, they'll throw me in jail.

Like that is the insanity of war is like it is, you know, government sanctioned murder, like you are allowed to go and murder someone else and you're giving an award for it, like it's insanity.

Like in both cases.

Watch Out for Tigers, right.

Right, Tiger in Africa, it's not a tiger in this movie.

Right, It's like it isn't a tiger.

I always think it's like a hog.

Oh no, it's a fucking tiger.

Man Chef nearly has se my tiger.

It's that's my favorite scene in the movie.

Oh I stay on the boat, never get off the boat.

Well yeah, then they parody that in Traffic Thunder with the fucking panda exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I just watched Apocalypse Now today and I saw the longer one.

We had the French.

People in it and do yeah, and had the extra scene with the bunnies too.

But I think anything see Tropic Thunder again.

Yeah, it's and it and it plays and it I mean like it plays.

It plays into the spots where Apocalypse Now refuses to go.

I'm like and Father Malone, like you mentioned at the top of the episode, Apocos is a pretty funny movie.

It's darkly comedic.

It is Everything with Kilgore is hilarious.

I'm sorry, I know that's a brutal, ser brutal sequence ultimately, but like if you're not laughing from the moment that motherfucker walks on screen, like, I don't know what to teut Yain.

I mentioned the thing with the guy holding his guts in with his helmet and then he just like lets go of him and he falls.

It's like, what the fuck is going on?

Like he's just I don't know, Like I find the movie very comedic, but Tropic Thunder definitely plays further into the comedy that Apocalypse Now kind of hints at or kind of is more interested in, like how insane war drives you as opposed to like the inherent not hilarity of war, but like the darkly comedic aspects of war, Like Tropic Thunder kind of starts going more in that direction, and Apocalypse Now kind of gets that ball rolling, I feel like, and it's just interested in having that conversation in a lot of them.

You guys keep mentioning Trumpic Thunder, which I think is an okay movie.

I didn't respond to it, I think as positively as you guys, But I will mention another parody that came out almost exactly the same time as Apocalypse Now from Ernie for Cilius, who made Hardware Wars, the classic parody of Star Wars.

He made a parody of Apocalypse Now as Ernie Ford for Cilias, and that was Corkclipse Now, where there is an insane butcher who is under selling all the butchers in San Francisco, and so a guy is hired to go take him out.

It's really fucking hilarious.

Porcallipse now Hardware Wars, Aggy Ben Doggy Oggy Been doggye absolutely.

Oggy Ben Doggie and ham salad.

Yeah.

I was like ten years old when I saw it.

Good.

This is all on YouTube, so everybody Porklipse now, you'll enjoy it.

You also mentioned the self parody that that Coppola does on that episode that that Saturday Night Live he was he hosted, directed, or whatever it was.

If he can find it, it's the most bizarre thing.

He's like, that's almost that is on Peacock.

I watched it.

I watched it again recently, absolutely, and it is.

So bizarre and it's all he's parodying himself in it, and and it's it's it's absolutely delightful.

Even when I saw that, like you know, a Nicked Night or something in the nineties.

I remember getting it and going.

Oh, this is cool.

What what a cool dude.

You know, he's gonna just piss all over himself and make fun of this crap because it's so funny, and he does it.

But at the same time he does something serious.

I remember with the Nietra Vans and gives a really nice moment on the show that she might not have ever had otherwise.

Anyways, he does absolutely and you know when he plays the whole fucking thing straight, so it's extra hilarious.

But I really like that he's he's being very Francis fort Copola, and it too like you know that with his kind of like shouting and explaining and the way his hands are waving around.

Yeah, surprise he didn't bust out and give everybody's on spaghetti and wine.

At the end of We're all gonna cook now.

But I you know, as a as a you know, as a filmmaker, that's one thing I picked up from him, is I cook, and I was something I try to cook if I got actors around and ship like that.

I think it's a really nice way to make your crew and your and your cast family, And I mean, I think that's one of the reasons he does well with actors so much as that I think he knows how to be with them and how to be around them except them.

The clips that.

I saw from Megalopolis and.

Uh Kylo Renn talking about the club.

And shaking his head around was pretty pretty terrible acting.

Hey, he's just he's just adding his own Adam Driver's fleave.

The best Adam Driver moment is also Saturday Night Live and he just turns around, He's like, you think I killed Han Solo.

I didn't woke this did open.

So when we talk about I guess the way this movie is received broadly, I think people talk about this movie being a masterpiece.

I mean, Coppola releases The Redo in the early two thousands, and then we get it released on Blu Ray in twenty ten, so you can have like the definitive version.

I guess the definitive version is the final cut, which came out in twenty nineteen, so we have an even more definitive, definitive version of the movie in twenty twenty five.

Does this movie still hold up as the masterpiece that the movie I think has lived for a very long time as or has something else come along and kind of taken its place in terms of the bearer of the conversation about Vietnam and this kind of aspect of Vietnam, Or is this still the singular Vietnam film?

Because I think for me it's still the singular Vietnam film.

It's like this or Full Metal Jacket.

Really those are like.

The two I think this is and this is the more magical, realistic version of Vietnam.

So I think to me that's the most definitive, it's the most artistic version of it.

Like obviously Platoon is probably letter perfect, you know, that's probably how it exactly looked, because that is that was the guy instead of John Millius.

Oliver Stone was the guy on the ground in Vietnam, and those were his experiences, and that's what it all looked like.

Neither neither Coppola nor Milias had anything to do.

It's going to Vietnam.

It's an completely imagined playground that that that they've dropped these characters into.

So there, you know, there's a con for it when you say, like is this the definitive Vietnam movie?

Like, well, you know, not from a veterans perspective, not from a real world perspective, but overall about what America was going through and what warfare was and what the state of consciousness was at that time and place.

No, there's no better version, no better uh uh, there's no better film version of that.

Yeah, because I mean, Platoon is the movie about Vietnam, but Apocalypse Now is Vietnam.

Here's going.

Fuck.

He's like, it's Francis is here with us now?

But no, do you don't let me go in there for a second.

Almost going for a second.

But you know, it's subjective versus subjective.

I guess you know he's Oliver Stone was like he said that he was there.

This is what I remember, This is what I experienced.

This is the war for me.

And I think Apocalypse Now is looking at it.

Yeah, okay, but I'm some crazy artist out here and this is what I'm seeing.

So I think if they're both very different pieces, I think they're very good companion pieces to one another.

I think one should one should enjoy the other film after watching the first one, you know what I mean, Like they go together.

Full Metal Jacket is just Stanley kubrick Man.

So it's just Stanley Kubrig.

You're gonna watch it regardless.

It doesn't matter what it's about.

It's great.

It's Stanley Kubrick, So it doesn't matter, and that is more I think.

I think also Full Metal Jacket is really more a treatise on the military than it is necessarily on Vietnam, on how the military warps these young men into doing, into becoming what goes over there, because what is the Vietnam is like an.

Act and a half in that movie.

Most of the movies is boot Camp, So it's it's different.

Most of the parts that people like that movie our boot Camp.

Yeah.

No, nobody likes the dealing with the sniper part of the movie, which which, by the way, I always think is like the last half of the movie, and really it's maybe like five minutes at the end of the film.

Yeah, you just get out of Baldwin and is he the one what dealt.

With the earnet animal mother?

Yeah.

I think to both of your points, Platoon I think is the movie the most Like if we say, like we want to watch a movie about the experience on the ground there in Vietnam, it's probably Platoon.

And Platoon is not a fun movie like, I don't know, I've seen it.

It's fine, I don't go back.

I don't think fondly of it.

And Apocalypse Now is a movie that I don't think negatively of again, other than kind of the way the movie ends, just not paying off the way I would personally have vibed with if it had gone the way the movie was kind of pretending it was going up until it wasn't.

I think Apocalypse Now is a movie that stands the test of time because there's so much going on that kind of becomes a definitive statement on the war and America in the war.

I think fum Alone to your point more aptly, but I mean again, Platoon is more about like the boots on the ground, the guys in the moment, like what was going on with them, And obviously there's some other kind of fantastical shit going on in that movie with William Dafoe and Tom Barrenger's character.

But I mean again, I think Apocalypse Now for me is if I want to watch a Vietnam movie, it's this one.

And and you know what, I wanted to be a troll and say Forrest Gump, but I I don't fucking hate myself that much, even though I feel like Zamechis is like and this is the this is the quintessential Vietnam film experience.

Like, yeah, I guess, so drop some CCR in there, like four times, we'll call it good.

So they did was listen, un fortunate son and Vietnam guys.

That's what That's what I'm led to believe.

They hand like rations.

Yeah, some folks were born to raise a flag.

Here's your CCR tape and your and your tape player bound.

You could just hear that, like it's like on every single So that's the thing.

Like for me, whenever I think of helllicopters in Vietnam, I think right of the Valkar.

That's what I think of, like and so like in my mind, like it's an intangible thing linked with apocalypse.

Now if you think of CCR like that.

While there is some of those those kinds of needle drops in this movie, I feel like the things I think of when I think of this movie aren't so much that kind of Vietnam stuff.

I think of more of the psychedelia of Vietnam, like the.

Needle drop in this thing at the beginning, though with this is the end of the explosion of Oh my god.

That's that's it.

I mean, it's really for me, it's the door.

It's the doors in this movie.

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, it's.

The psychedelia of Vietnam.

Like those other things are just like remember CCR remember now that was like a Vietnam a Jason thing, Like we'll just put that in there, like now it's become fortunate Son and Vietnam are like intrinsically linked.

That's like peanut butter and jelly.

I'm not even kidding.

Well, you know, it's a song about Vietnam.

So it's the most fucking obvious thing in the world.

It's like, here's a red door and a character walks on and goes look at his red door.

Everybody, I know, I just I can't believe anybody's even doing it anymore.

But yet, like again, the fact that they ever did to begin with is I mean again, Forrest Gump did it.

And you know, as far as I'm concerned Forrest Gump, any needle drop used in that movie is like the most obvious needle drop possible.

Haint.

You know that King Kong movie Skull Island, did they use it in that movie.

I'm hoping they didn't.

Oh I like that movie too.

I like that movie a lot too.

And now I'm thinking back, I'm like, God, did they make that mistake?

Did they fucking put Fortune Sun in there like a bunch of fucking obvious morons?

Because that is kind of the last Vietnam movie that came out.

Right, Yeah, that's a good one.

Vietnam is a giant ape a jacent.

I mean, those guys are coming back from Vietnam.

You're not exactly in Vietnam.

I think it's I think they went to Skull Island in that movie, which is in Indonesia.

So I went and looked the soundtrack for Coong.

Skull Island does have two CCR songs.

They are theyone want to take a guess?

Uh?

Bad Moon Rising?

Okay, that's one of them.

Yeah, Antonio, you want to you want to guess Fortunate Sun?

No, they over spoil success.

So Big Wheel probably Proud Mary.

I mean run through the Jungle.

Wow.

However, I will dock the movies point the soundtrack points it has Jefferson Airplanes White Rabbit, which is.

Like, no, no, don't do that.

I know, I know, why do we ever?

Need that used in anything post Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Like what about Buffalo Springfield?

Did No Buffalo Springfield?

Thank god?

No some Bowie, some Stooges, some Black Sabbath No, uh yeah no no no more obvious picks.

Yeah, no, fortunate Son, thank god.

I mean, it's the whenever, whenever it's the sixties, you automatically hear the.

Incense, yeah, exactly, or you here just went fucking soul Boston nova.

Like in Boston, I went to the Museum of Science had a planetariumhere.

They would do the lates arium shows and they did this this.

This is in like eighty nine, So the sixties was all the fucking age.

And I remember seeing specifically a laser show that began with incense and peppermints and just going, what the fuck am I doing?

Who's this for?

And there's just one guy in the back with the joint like far out.

It's my happening.

Some guys like it's my happening, and it's freaking me out.

You know, I will say, you know, for a movie about psychedelia, we don't really get that moment of like far out man.

But I mean, you know, there are moments that get verge on it with the Sam Bottoms' character towards the end of the movie, Yeah you know which, which is funny for about thirty seconds until he gets four little fourteen year old Lawrence Fishburn.

Killed while listening to his mama.

Oh my god, what a great what a great scene, What a horrible juxtaposition.

My god, that copla is going somewhere, folks.

Big solutinary Fishburn one of one of my all time favorite actors.

Man, Yeah, and I was that.

I just don't remember seeing what was What's that cop movie he did?

Oh gosh, when he's the.

Undercover deep Cover?

Yeah, with Jeff Goldblum.

That was the coolest.

Movie probably for me for like a decade and a half.

Man, I just oh, I fucking love that movie.

I love Laurence Fishburn.

Every time I pop him up, he puts a big old smile on my face.

Talk about a guy who worked with Keanu Reeves twice and has been able to make something out of it two times, and also then goes on to be I think, for me, the perfect version of Jack Crawford in Hannibal the TV show where where Laurence Fishburn takes that role.

I mean, I love Laurence Fishburn.

He's a great He's literally, I think one of the great like character actors of like a specific generation, and not even a character actor.

I think, frankly like he's able to carry.

I mean most of the things he's in, he's like either a secondary main character or a main character.

So I don't know.

I mean, he's great here for a guy who's fourteen years old at the time.

Like shit, I didn't have this talent when I was fourteen.

I was not signing up to go to the jungle to go make a movie.

But the balls on him, I mean the balls on him.

Can you magin?

That's that's your high school experience?

How'd you spend high school?

I was in the Philippines making a movie with Francis Copal and Dennis.

Hopper, and we thought we were never coming home.

Yeah you've seen have you seen Laurence Fishburn's Othello opposite Kenneth Barana.

Yes, excellent, Yes, excellent, indeed, indeed, always just such a solid guy.

I remember he was supposed to do Jimmy Hendrix way back in the day and they never I remember that.

Yeah, that bummed me out.

That to this day.

It's the one bio rock and roll bio pick I'd really love to make, man, no one's ever done Jimmy any kind of justice.

They did almost a little bit with that one with Andre three thousand for a.

Few years ago, but had no music in us.

It was just like him hanging out, go hey man, I've been London on Jimi Hendrix and that was about it.

Yeah, you can't make those movies without they without the music, it's.

Just not I don't know, can't you make You can't make biopicks about me?

Come on, come on right?

You don't want to listen to a biopic about Paul McCartney without the music of the Beatles?

Probably not.

No, you know everyone it works.

In is backbeat, and that's because they hadn't recorded anything yet at that age.

So yeah, there you go, what you're gonna do.

I am glad I got to talk about Apocalypse now though, because like this movie was big for me when I was a kid.

Man.

I just remember it just being like, oh, it's a war movie, but it's an adventure film and it's got all this cool music and Marlon Brando, Like I did the Brando's monologue, I did it in high school for my theater class.

It was only eighteen year old me going, you know.

But they will let us right fuck on the bomb.

My teacher goes, bro, can you do it with like maybe a Latin acic because you're starting to sound like Brando every time you talk?

And I got an a.

It was pretty good.

That's I think for me.

I think for me to your point, Antonio, like the the Marlin Brando of it all is maybe you know, do you have this three hundred pound actor who shows up unprepared but yet turns in I mean a performance that it's like ten minutes and he's on the poster front center.

He makes the most of that ten minutes.

You genuinely believe I mean again, in my mind, I believe that Willard should have you know again, Willard should have walked off into the jungle with his I mean, you want to get really esoteric, how about hard how about Apocalypse Now is just about, you know, journey into the being gay and he turns his back on being gay at the end of that fire.

Why what well it's about it's I'm not against it, but like, were we always going there and.

Into yourself?

I mean I don't know.

I mean, you never know.

How about how about he gets but he gets there and there is no Kurts.

Oh he was Kurts all along.

Maybe he like looks.

In the mirror and he's like, oh my god, Brad Pitt from Fight Club is just standing in the mirror.

I mean, I mean that could have worked.

I do like the idea of Kurtz and him running away together at the end or him stay like there is something about that that seems I don't know literally and it's execution like there's something about that that's what the movie's building.

But the fact that the movie doesn't do it, and I think still more or less nails the landing.

And I think has something to say about Vietnam, both on a micro scale and as a in a macro scale both.

I think about the people involved in the war, about the people that were having the war thrust upon them, talking about the Vietnamese people, and then the people who were in charge of making the war happen, talking about the US government.

Like I think that Apocalypse Now is the perfect kind of cross section of all those things, the confluence of all those things at once.

And I don't know if anybody other than Millius and Copola could have made it work.

And I don't think Copola could have made it work on his own.

I think he had to have someone like Millius really turn in a script that just I mean again, you know you want to have Sam peckinpot at the end of this movie, I'm all for it.

Maybe it wouldn't have worked, but I mean again, that's pretty goddamn John Millius if you ask me, like, and you know, maybe we don't get to see his complete narrative idea, but I think what we get on screen is pretty great.

And Copola, I think is is is a is a huge reason for that.

I mean, the script is great, but also Copola being like you guys have both said, just a real true auteur, like a filmmaker with a capital F in a way that a lot of filmmakers aren't anymore, or a lot of filmmakers pretend to be like you know, Chris Nolan and his ILK like, I think they're the closest, but heiny nobody going out to the jungle and making fucking movies like this anymore, because nobody should have been doing this to begin with.

Is the reality and the only way to get a movie like this is to go do it.

Like it's the age old adage, like if you're gonna go do it, just fucking do it.

Commit to the bit.

Go drag a bunch of actors to the jungle, drag a bunch of cameras to the jungle.

Make everybody's life miserable, and it'll show through on the on screen.

Like how many of these movies do people make that suck?

Like not a lot because people aren't doing this, But when they go out and do this, it turns it into this like catalyzing moment where people are, you know, changed their entire lives or change for being involved in the making of this movie.

Like that's the sense one gets from watching Hearts of Darkness is like these people were forever changed by being involved in the making of a film for entertainment purposes.

Here's what I'll say And Magnum Forrest John Millius gave us one of Dirty Harry's catchphrases, which is a man's got to know his limitations.

This is, of course, after the do you Feel Lucky punk in the previous film, and that eventually the go ahead make my day.

He was a catchphrase generator John Millius, and no more so than here.

If you take anything away from this movie, just realized that Charlie don't serve.

And that you love the smell of nape on him in the morning.

Oh my god, it's never ending.

Smells like victory.

Like you're fighting.

Don't look at the camera.

Oh you're fighting.

Like you're fighting.

Go look at the camera.

Copola gives himself one of the fest lines in the entire movie.

I love it, Son of a bitch.

Can you imagine remember that scene in Saving Private Ryan where it cuts away and they so Steven Spielberg on the beachhead with everybody.

That'd be great.

He should have done it.

He should have done it.

Don't look at the camera, keep running, don't look at the camera.

He should have done the exact same fucking thing.

It would have been great.

Yeah, yeah, this is this is a movie that I actually watched three times for this episode.

I and that's a lot of time to watch it.

And I watched the original version, I watched the redo, and then I watched the final cut.

So you're welcome, Coppola.

That's a lot of apocalypse.

Now.

I really vibe with this movie.

I resonated with this movie.

I think on the wavelength that this who he wanted to resonate, wanted me to resonate with it.

On you know, Brando's performance, I think is I mean, he's an actor who I haven't seen enough of, but the things I've seen him in he's great.

I find him to be fascinating in this movie.

And I think that this role is I don't know, Kurtz is just a He's an interesting character, and I think that nobody could have done this role as kind of big but small as Brando.

He's as big as he humanly can be on screen.

But this is a pretty reserve performance for someone who is operating at the wavelength and caliber that Brando operate, you know, I you know, for a guy who shows up three hundred pounds overweight and doesn't know his lines.

Bro, he didn't have very many lines, like compared to like everybody else in the movie, You're being tasked with a very small amount of things that are needing to be done, which is why it's kind of like, all right, he's the one dude who's just like didn't show up prepared.

He's like, Bro, you're just like standing in a room for most of the movie talking what the hell man?

Everybody else puts in performances and work to the to the tune of having heart attacks and losing their minds, and Marlon Brando just shows up and isn't prepared.

But yet even the guy who isn't prepared turns in one of I think his his great performances, if not one of the great like cinematic performances.

In terms of villains quote unquote, I mean again, depending on your view on things in the movie, I'm not sure Kurtz really is a villain.

I think he's a man of certain principles, Arry Strong.

I mean, I think you put Kurtz and Thanos in a room together, and I think they might figure out a way to maybe come around to three quarters of the world, if not ninety nine percent.

Or they just kill each other.

Maybe, Yeah, are they are?

They go on a date?

Yeah?

Right?

I mean again, following your following year.

This is all just a gay metaphor.

It's all just a gay metaphor.

It's like Nightmare on Elm Street two.

They just didn't know they were making a gay metaphor the whole time.

Oh they did.

Yeah, they fucking did when Freddy Krueger starts coming out of guy's chest and he's whipping him on the ass, like, yeah, you knew what you would do?

Anything else we want to talk about with?

Uh, pork clips now?

I love pork clips.

Now, Cory clips?

Now, what a fucking ross rose name for something?

I'm slashing prices with a straight razor.

He goes out there the best herds.

How focus when you go talk it's about filmmaking.

He's like, when you go to make your first film and raise money, don't do it in office work is a bouncer and a sex club and orderly in an insane asylum.

Poetry is not made from behind a disk.

Man.

That guy, that guy's never smelled a part of his own that he didn't think smell to me.

And that's what I love about her as all, Like, he's just These artists are never not themselves, and I love that about them, and they will continue to be themselves, probably to a fault in some of their You know, David Lynch didn't want to make No Return of the Jedi.

He doesn't work inside the corporate machine.

Baby, all right, whatever, David, you could have worked on the Ewok movie.

We would have loved you for it.

Can you imagine?

I am again like, that's that some of these directors just they will not compromise, Like you said, by the moment, man's got to know his limitation.

You gotta know when to compromise.

And Copola did not want to compromise on this movie, and I think it shows on screen.

I think every bit of this movie is earned, and I think every bit of insanity and crazy bullshit is earned in this movie.

Agree, And that's Copla Copra.

That's you can take anything away from Francis for Coppola is that he doesn't call compromise at all for anything.

Yeah, good for good for him.

Yeah.

So on that note, we'll take a break, play in previews and some ads, and we'll talk about the next episode.

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Good night, mister Walters, Good evening, and welcome to Night Gallery.

Thank you, Rod, and I want to welcome everyone to Midnight Viewing, where once a month we talk all about your follow up to the Twilight Zone, Rod Serling's Night Gallery.

They say it's Rod two Ling's Nightgoery, and it isn't really Rod too Legs Night Gallery.

It's somebody else's.

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Join us monthly at Midnight Viewing, the Night Gallery, Weird Way Meeting at.

Another John Williams at All So until then, where can people find you?

Antonio?

Well, you can find me and my filmmaking adventures at Swampmedia Group dot com or at Swamp Media Group on Instagram, or you can just follow me at Antonio l O a P.

I got a show called Midnight Viewing which you guys are both co hosts and various shows on there, so come check that out Midnight Viewings.

John Roy from Mister Longe Podcasting, Stoke Best Deliberty's John Gold, screenwriter.

You've already covered cross Roads and Young Guns and Young Guns Too, and The Babe and most recently I think by the time this is Life Father part featuring series.

Check us out over there, John over.

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Listen to as many podcasts as you can spend your day.

Uh.

Anything that can't be found there can be found the patreon dot com slash over mask for patreon dot com slash on So for me the ten dollars or higher level, but your access to ranking on Bond with fa them alone will be all soon.

Once again.

To talk about License to Kill, It's a James podcast released once a month.

If not, uh, you know, just like grate review to show where if you get it nowers and likely and more helpfully on YouTube or on iTunes like YouTube, Jesus, nobody listens to any podcast on YouTube.

That's not a thing, or is it.

It is, that is, but not in the way that it is on Apple, and it won't ever be.

As for uh Antonio and alone, thank you both for joining me.

Antonio, it's been too long.

This was a lot of fun.

I hope you had a good time and Fatima all and thank you for programming the month again.

So yeah, thanks a lot, great to be here.

Yeah, and as always, we'll catch you on the next episode.