 of course. So if you'll indulge me a little bit, we might have to go over just a few minutes because of how we're a bit behind here, but I promise that you'll be so enthralled with apocalypse now that you won't want to leave. I promise you that. So we sort of transition and we draw on what Robert gave us a really good outline with the heart of darkness. And so basically what I don't have time to do is really talk too much about the connections between the two texts, between the film and the book, and I would argue in many ways we need to watch the film not in terms of thinking about heart of darkness but in thinking about the film itself and how it is as a film in its moment in film history. So that's what I want to talk about today. I want to talk about filmmaking in the 1970s and how that led to a film like this and then how the film itself really represents that era of filmmaking and creates sort of its own heart of darkness, its own apocalypse now in that particular period. So a quick history of this film, the book, the novella heart of darkness has not been remade very much and you wonder why. Part of it is it's very expensive to remake this. You have to film on location. Filming on location for a story like this demands that you're on a river. You have to have many locations in which you're filming. Very expensive. Not many students wanted to undertake this. One first attempt was Orson Welles in 1938. He did a radio play. It was the first sort of remake of the novella and he ended up writing a screenplay and was prepared to make a film about it in 1939. He dropped it and ended up doing Citizen Kane which is now, of course, one of the most famous films in film history. So probably good for him that he chose to do Citizen Kane. In 1958 there was a television adaptation with Boris Karlov. In 1969 there was a script written called The Psychedelic Soldier by John Milius and Coppola commissioned this screenplay, gave him $15,000 to write it and $10,000 if it was green lighted. It never got made for many reasons. Cost being a big one. And then in 1975 Coppola sort of takes this up and decides that it's finally time to make the film about this novella. But in many ways, again, like I said, I want to keep thinking out. It's really not about this particular story. But I wanted to give you at least the film history so we know. And then in 1993 there was a remake with Tim Roth and John Malkovich. Not great. FYI. All right. And then, so is this a remake or is it not? Well, obviously it's a remake. I mean, I'd be absurd to say it's not a remake. But again, it's really not a remake of the novella. The attempt to the film, Coppola's attempt is not to retell the story of this and just do it through cinematic means. But the type of cinema that's being done in this period is all about retelling its own story and not through narrative, but even through film form and how the form of filmmaking is its own story. And that's what Apocalypse Now perhaps is considered one of the greatest films ever made. Some argue the greatest, some argue vehemently. Not the greatest, but it's in that conversation. So there are a lot of innovations occurring within that film that even allow us to start talking about it in that way. So it does it a great disservice to think of it as a remake or an adaptation because it's a secondary. It's not a primary. And story, again, is less of the focus, although it seems like it should be the focus, right? So kind of keep that in mind as we work through this. And I just have some quick things here. I'll send this around so you guys after so you can get the slides that I'm not really addressing in depth here. And some of the video clips that I won't really get to will be on here so you can get to it. But essentially, there's a lot of inaccuracies with the script about in connection to Heart of Darkness. So Coppola doesn't even, for example, credit Conrad in the film. So he himself is admitting to the fact that this isn't the remake, right? On many levels. Okay. So quickly about Coppola and then I want to talk about really how he fits in the pantheon of American filmmaking and why that's so important to talk about, why film theory is important to talk about in order to really get this film. And then we'll talk a little bit about the film. So those are the two parts of what we're doing today. So Coppola was born in Detroit in 1939. He studied University at Hofstra in New York. And then he ended up going on to study film, film, graduate film school at UCLA in 1960. And he's a writer, director and producer, which is significant that he has all those things because that's a big piece in the new wave of Hollywood filmmakers that he's a part of that we're going to talk about in a minute. In 1969 he tried to start his own production company called Zotope. That's also significant because a lot of the new wave filmmakers were trying to disassociate themselves from larger production companies so they had more artistic license. So part of that was starting their own small film companies. He's a winner of five Academy Awards personally as his part in it. His films have won more Academy Awards. And his filmography there are some of his well-known films are in the list you can look out later. Take note that most of his well-known films are in the 70s. They're in this period of film making. And before he was 40 by 1975 when he started making Apocalypse Now he'd won five of those Oscars. So he had tremendous success between 70 and 74. So that leads us to the new Hollywood the American New Wave also called the American New Wave of filmmakers that he was a part of which will end with. But we have to actually start with what they're responding to. And what they're responding to is really what's called the classic Hollywood era the golden age of Hollywood between 1927 and 1963. Some argue it starts in 1950 1915 with Griffin's Birth of a Nation. But the first talking film was the Jazz Singer in 27. So some start it there. And then it ends in 63 with Cleopatra which was kind of a disaster film. And that's sort of where they mark the two that long era. So this is this is an era that's based upon a style where the film remains divorced from the formal structure. Form doesn't matter. What matters is the audience. The audience has to experience watching a film without thinking it's a film. So they don't we don't want them to know there's formal innovations happening. We want smooth transitions between time and space. What's what's called invisible style continuity of editing is another term that's oftentimes used with classic Hollywood Hollywood filmmaking. Excuse me. So directors were considered employees not artists right. Coppola being a director that's a big distinction. They were a part of a large company that made films. They had a job. They weren't supposed to put too much artistic focus on things. Stars on the other hand the actors who played the stars they were the draw the film. So all former formal technique of camera angle close ups were always about the stars face how the star looks. And that's what draws people to a film. Perhaps a lot like it is now when we watch film right. It's about who's in the film all the close ups quick edits to faces try to get that that focus in a film. So the technique is not what's important. The story is also important. The narrative a narrative in a star is what makes a Hollywood film. So you need a good story. You need good writing by a writer who's not the director who's not in charge of those formal aspects. And and then you know films were were supposed to look similar. All films are supposed to look similar in style and structure right. You kind of knew when you watch the Hollywood film class called film. They'd all look similar in a way. You didn't question that there'd be differences depending on who directed it. Who wrote it and so forth. And then there are the major eight studios in the classic Hollywood era that really dominated and controlled and owned everybody. You would sign a director for five year contract and you would have that person direct as many films as they could or an actor. So it was it was very different than how how filmmaking in the studio system later became. All right. So that's sort of a very quick sense of the model that the the new wave was responding to in part. However the new wave built on another model called Autourism or Autua theory which came out in France in the 1950s and 60s or it became people were a tourist before this period. This is a period that kind of defined it heavily. Does anyone have any film people out here that have any sense of what Autour theory is or what Autour is by chance. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. I mean Autour is just you know author for French in French. So the ideas directors were principle principle creative forces. Right. But they didn't just direct. They controlled a lot in the film. They were producers. They were writers and so forth. So yeah. And the this period where it became quite popularized to consider the idea of an Autour in as a filmmaker occurred in that French New Wave period in the 1950s and 1960s where there was a journal called the Cayet du Cinema which was edited by Andre Bazin among some other people. But he's sort of the famous name associated. It started in 1951 and this journal really wrote a lot about how film theory and how filmmakers work as artists rather than as commercial interests for bigger companies. Thinking again of a filmmaker as a novelist and that's the distinction. You're not a director. You're a filmmaker because a filmmaker does more than just direct. That's just a function of the larger aspect of the job. Some famous New Wave directors you might have heard of Jean-Luc Godard France Francois Truffaut Eric Romer. And the list goes on. So some of the stylistic features to the Autour type of type of film which is important again to start logging these in as we think about apocalypse now. And actually I should break in here. So I was going to ask you at the beginning of this lecture. I know that there's a film showing later today apparently. But how many of you actually have seen the film yet. I'm assuming not many. Yes. Not many. But I assume some some have. Right. So what I'm saying today sort of log this in as you watch the film and actually will be beneficial to watch the film thinking of what we're talking about today because I think a lot more will become would come present as you're as you're viewing it. So some stylistic features of the of Autourism is sort of an excessive or pretentious erratic Maison Sen. So how the visual is arranged Maison Sen and drama is just a way of staging a play and how you talk about that staging. Same thing with a film. How do you talk about how film is staged or you know how are sets designed. How are techniques being used. Again opposing characters characters that are creating tension with each other not stars that are the main attraction are a stylistic feature innovative camera angles lighting and editing. Again you know it's a film now you know the form is happening because you're not lost in this imaginative story like you would have been in the classical era. And then a lot of Autour films are really interested in not so much remaking but adapting literary work. So drawing from other so called experts in the artistic field in order to say we're paying homages to some of these people who have previously been recognized for their artistic credibility. And again that's a response to the idea of artistic versus commercial. That's the whole sort of enterprise behind this. And so you and even even with even with technical aspects they would pay homages to other previous directors like a famous shot in a Hitchcock film might be redone by more contemporary director in order to sort of see if people recognize these little these little gems throughout. So if you think of if you think of it as an author plus a subject equals the work whereas the classic Hollywood model would be much more about the subject equals the work and there's no author. There's no one person that's that has a personality or a stake on this. So there's another way there's three easy steps to think about this and this came out this came from an essay by Andre Saris called Notes on the Outdoor Theory in 1962. And this is still widely widely based on a way in which we view film and how we can sort of understand an auteur film is that an auteur has technical expertise. So the director the filmmaker understands all aspects of the technique of making a film knows all levels of what's happening on a film again not a singular expertise but a larger one. The auteur's personality permeates the film style and becomes a signature. If we watch an Alfred Hitchcock film we know it's an Alfred Hitchcock film. And that's the whole idea of it right just like if we read a Conrad novel we should know that it's a Conrad novel based on style narrative how in a film how things are typically lighted. Coppola has a style again that we can recognize if we watch The Godfather and then we watch Apocalypse Now. We can see a lot of similarities in how these films are made right and how scenes are elongated. Coppola loves long scenes. The opening of The Godfather is a wedding scene that lasts 50 minutes and the film's like two and a half hours. So it's a significant amount of time to put on a wedding scene that's all dialogue and character introduction but that's Coppola right introducing you to the Maison Saint of that film right. So an auteur's film exhibits tension between the auteur's personality and the material. So the material may be for example in Apocalypse Now's case the Vietnam War right that may be the so-called material that he's working with but there's still a conflict with the personality of the filmmaker and that material. In that the filmmaker's not satisfied in letting that material tell the story. But the filmmaker also has to use that material in order to make the film. So there's a conflict. There's a conflict in how things are being represented. How are narrative forms being being played out on the film. How is linear. Is a film linear or does it jump around in temporal sequence right. All these types of things that you sort of play out. A lot of juxtapositions in other words not smooth again smooth is classical Hollywood. Tour films are never very smooth. They're never very comfortable. Okay and then that takes us to the new wave of Hollywood the post classical era. Which ranges between 1967 and early 80s. Some people say 82 some people say 80. I like to think of it ending in 1980 with raging bull Martin Scorsese raging bull predominantly because this was sort of a change in in a political landscape change in 1980. In the US of course Reagan became president. There's a major shift in policies and how how companies were run and how funding happened. So no longer were studios really interested in dumping tons of money in artistic projects. Right. They wanted to make films that made money with as little with as little difficulty as possible. Not having to deal with artistic anything if possible. So but it started with 1967 with Arthur Penn's Bonnie and Clyde. And so the idea of this of this period is that of course it's responding to the French wave the tour theory that we just talked about. It's also responding to the fact that television dominated filmmaking or that that period of 1950s and 1960s in the US and American filmmaking. So films didn't do very well. They weren't being very funded. Studios didn't know what to do. And so they're trying to recreate some sort of popularity and they did this by drawing on the counterculture that was happening in the period and young filmmakers who are part of that counterculture who could speak to a younger population because of course that was the population that they needed to get. They needed to track young people so that they wouldn't you know keep watching TV. So they'd have more of a sense about going to cinema again or you know being interested in that. And the third part is they wanted to draw on young people counterculture who were also studying film right. They weren't self taught like a lot of people were in the 30s and 40s 20s 30s and 40s. A lot of the people for the from the new wave of Hollywood in like Coppola went to film school graduate film school UCLA. He studied theater at Hofstra for his BA. Like he had that background he had that technical expertise. So that kind of plays into the to the the tour as well. And we talked about tour theories don't go there. And of course they're they're they do draw on classical Hollywood film but they also draw on what was quite popular also in the 60s which was that sort of Asian avant garde and European avant garde if you talked about but certainly in Asia and Japan specifically there is there is a sort of renaissance of film as well. So they were they were looking at not only previous American models but non American models. And again this use of extravagant or self indulgent styles. I mean as apocalypse now extravagant and self indulgent. Those of you seen it right entirely. I mean as I'm going to talk about like this might be one of the most extravagant self indulgent films ever which doesn't mean it's devalued necessarily but that's just a product of that that type of filmmaking and this is sort of the apotheosis of that of that situation. So again the making of the film is the story as much as the story or the narrative of the film is it is as well. So we have to think of how these films are made that plays into the story of the film. In fact that in many ways over shadows and has more control over than the actual story. Hence the whole idea of remake or not. And of course discomfort or shock. New wave directors wanted like the o tours like all sort of avant garde cinema. They want to shock you. They want they want you to be uncomfortable. This is not enjoyment which is of course classic Hollywood. You want to enjoy a film. Go have a nice evening. You don't usually go watch apocalypse now on a date. Right. Probably not the best thing to do. I mean you know maybe right. Test your date. See how you know see what they're like. See if they like the darkness. Right. Hearts of darkness. Yes. Exactly. This is a good one. Consider. It's true. It's true. And you know Woody Allen films he famously went to sorrow in the pity which is you know horribly depressing film about the Holocaust and he would take dates. Yeah. So there is a history of this that goes and film but but anyway part of it is in doing so they create a realism. That's the idea. Right. It's not so much that they're trying to shock because this doesn't exist. They're trying to shock like heart of darkness that the novella because this does exist and people need to know about it. So there's a way of bringing people to that very close and so they use technical technical aspects to do that like long takes not having cuts showing actors for very long periods without a cut which means actors have to act actually instead of having you know two second cuts all the time like we see now where you know you just look pretty and usually does the job. So so therefore many people who were actors in this new way period were called you know drew from the school of method acting and anyone want to. I'm sure you guys some of you guys know about method acting. Anyone have a good definition of it or want to take a stab at it. Sure. Yeah. Good. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. So what that means is we draw on our own internal trauma in many ways to create character. So we become a character but through our own emotional depths. So oftentimes very disturbing as an actor to be a method actor because throughout the filming you are constantly at yourself drawing on an inside turmoil of your own being. But then you're also embodying this character that you have to be within that and you never stop being that character right in a filming. You are that character. You don't you know stop shooting and go have dinner near yourself. The idea is you keep embodying it. Right. So so that's a key piece to creating that realism and that shock. Marlon Brando and Martin Sheen who are of course in the film are both well known method actors. So that's why I'm bringing this up because we we see these scenes and we have a sense of how this is really being played out formal level. OK. So that was sort of our quick breeze through of 1970s filmmaking and where that situates Coppola where that situates this film. Again this film came out 1979 but it was started in 1975 right at the heart of this period and which I'll get to actually in a minute about filmmaking and production. So this idea of decadence. I mean this type of filmmaking is decadent. It really is. But it draws on that decadence because you know simultaneously it's quite disturbing. Right. Even though they have exorbitant budgets and they they have huge productions. The ideas again this is supposed to be real. This is supposed to be quite disturbing. So the historical and the cultural context. Right. Heart of Darkness of course takes place in Congo and Poclop's now takes place in Vietnam. However the film itself is filmed in the Philippines and we'll get to that in a minute. They wanted the film in Vietnam in 1969 when they originally wrote the script during the war because they wanted that sort of realism. Probably good they didn't but you know the studios had would have nothing we wouldn't know louder anyway. So the Vietnam War we could spend the whole hour and a half on the Vietnam War. I'm not going to get too much into it except bring up what's the important element of it. I think that does connect with Conrad's. That's important to think for the next week when you're in seminar as well as think about your essays. But also sort of the aspects of war that this film is responding to that relates to counterculture. Right. So Vietnam War 1964 to 1973 as you guys probably know U.S. forces were actually in Vietnam is really 1955 and they were they were quite busy but the official war started in 64 with the Gulf of Tonkin incident and that's when you know Congress declared and they moved in and it was all official even though it's been happening kind of like empire and what is official what is an official how's this stuff working out but it's based on this idea at the time in the fifties and sixties called U.S. U.S. interventionism or what's called the domino effect what they called the domino effect of the domino theory anyone anyone know their U.S. history well enough to talk about the domino theory yeah yeah exactly well said well well said and Korea was a very similar situation as well right yeah good yeah exactly I mean though I think both explanations are really good and understanding how you know the metaphor the domino works but it's the idea of one country falls right to communism another country's going to fall a communism so if if South Vietnam becomes communist due to the pressures from the north then the Philippines are going to become communist then you know and it goes on and on and on so similar to the arms race in the 80s is this idea of how is communism and capitalism going to sort of wage the war globe and who's going to own the most very you know called interventionism but of course that sounds very resonant to what was happening with Conrad with European colonization you know that's something obviously to work out your seminars and discuss that more but clearly parallels but what's also important about the war is the historical part of course and of course there's a map of you know Southeast Asia that sort of thing to kind of contextualize where the dominoes might have fallen you know had the south been taken over which of course it was is that the this was a very absurd war right this was a war that had a lot of problems it was one of the first wars that was probably the first war that had so much media coverage so there was the war that was happening there was the war that people were seeing through media there was the war that people imagined based on what they saw through media based on what they heard so there's all these different wars happening based on what sources they were getting their information from and nobody really knew what was actually happening even the people fighting the war had no idea what was actually happening and during the war in this period so that was sort of the reason right and the rules were the line the lines about the rules and war were being obscured right and this is a very contentious period in that way especially after coming off the Second World War where you know there seemed to be some momentum as though we knew what we knew what war was we knew how war should be fought a kind of thing so anyway that was the reason right the response is counter culture and the counterculture at the time was responding significantly to the war and that created other things that that came off of that and of course the counterculture is is is sort of the response to mainstream dominant culture right that says this is good we should be going to war communism is bad you know all that kind of dominant culture in the 60s counter culture was saying well hey I don't know about all this what why what's asking what's going on so of course this led to a lot of protests to the war civil rights happened the 60s women's rights we talked about a little bit this is the second way of feminism with the Bavar but it was also a revolution and a renaissance for arts because the arts were a way to communicate counterculture so of course we have music I was playing the doors the beginnings that's fundamental to this film that was a huge part of counterculture we'll get to artists politicians or politics education this these were all being redefined and re-questioned in this period so of course this plays out significantly in the film this is the background in which all these people come in the film who are actors the characters in the film and sort of their motivations and how they respond and then of course drugs and psychedelics how do you cope with this going on well a big coping mechanism at this period was escaping from reality how do you escape from reality well through through drugs and psychedelics as well as through art and the two together are all even better right that's the whole idea was the whole idea so this is like a form of enlightenment was assumed and in fact the film was often called acid apocalypse because of so many of the actors in the film were dropping acid during filming and the film crews while they were filming were dropping acid all the time but this was a commentary on the war that same thing was happening with actual soldiers during the war right it was a way of coping and sort of seeing a different reality because the reality they were seeing wasn't certainly one you know they wanted to see all right so that's a quick quick historical context I don't have enough time to do it but I want to call your attention to a quick scene when you're watching the film if you haven't already there's one huge hugely famous scene in the film of course which is when the helicopters are coming in to bomb a beach in the north and the Richard Wagner's ride of the Valkyries is playing you know it's really loud you know they're coming in and they just they just bomb this beach completely right total destruction total decadence total extravagance from a filmmaker standpoint too because it seems very hard to make huge explosions huge orchestrations getting these helicopters all that but also from just if you didn't think of it as a film and you saw this happening huge decadence scene but after that scene after all that destruction happens Kilgore Captain Kilgore was played by Robert Duvall talks about he's talking about surfing he's a huge surfer he's interested in serving he cares in some ways it's like he's two things he's all about war and surfing and it's this odd juxtaposition but it really characterized sort of the absurdity of what's happened and how people have coped with it and how counterculture is sort of infused in the war in many ways and so one at Lance one of the the boat the one of the soldiers on the boat is a well known Southern Californian surfer Kilgore's from Southern California he surfs and that's all he wants to talk about so they bombed this beach there's you know there's war fare going on around them and he has the soldiers go surf he says you can either fight or surf right and so that juxtaposition sort of characteristic of what this film tries to do to to show Sony keep an eye on those clips they're they're very important for for the film and there's someone surfing but we're not gonna get there okay so I'll end with filmmaking and production and then quickly at the very end just talk about how it connects to the counterculture but I'll be able to do that with this a little bit so Coppola famously said this film is not my film is not a movie my film is not about Vietnam it is Vietnam it's what it's what it was really like it was crazy we were in the jungle there were too many of us we had access to too much money too much equipment and little by little we went insane so the reason this happened from for many of I would say many many reasons this happened but one of the reasons this happened was because of the again the type of filmmaking that was happening at that time allowed for this sort of thing to happen right there weren't typically strong rules about budgets there weren't typically strong rules about how long something took to film because again it was an artistically driven decade right that the filmmakers got to sort of have a lot of say in what happened and so art did what art does and oftentimes goes off schedule right so if we think about that we think about some of the problems with production the budget this film was budgeted to be thirteen million to excuse me thirteen million dollars to make right it ended up costing thirty one million dollars now at the time that's an exorbitant some is probably them I think it was one of the most the highest most expensive films at that point that had been made now the studio gave Coppola another ten million on top of the thirteen and he was happy of course but he needed still way more money so he risked so this was about seventy six seventy seven and he'd come off of winning all these Academy Awards he made a lot of money in the early seventies he bought a number of vineyards in Napa Valley he bought a house he had millions at this moment which again in the seventies was was a fair bit especially for a filmmaker and he basically put all of that on the line his own money to finish this film he was that committed to this film and he knew he might lose everything there's a lot of transcripts that shows that he thought this is a terrible film when he was shooting it he was really concerned he didn't think this would be great at all he knew he was going to be ruined and he thought well but I just have to finish this there's nothing compelling him right but that's the a tour he's not driven by the commercial he's driven by the artistic and that's the idea where you're living it as much as you're talking about it right so that's the budget the problem with the cast and the actors is significant as well because the the film originally slaughtered have Harvey Keitel act as as Willard captain Willard and the problem of they filmed for actually a week and the problem is hopefully realize Harvey Keitel is not the right actor for this film because he needed somebody much more introspective much more observant Willard doesn't speak much at all right most of Willard's camera time is him saying nothing it's non-verbal it's him acting of course but he's not saying much of course the narration on top is him but that's obviously separate done in a studio so anyway Harvey Keitel was too much too much of a character too forward too front if you guys know Harvey Keitel it makes sense whereas so they ended up getting a sheen because he had much more of that drawn-back characteristic Martin sheen had a major heart attack in the middle of shooting almost died he was only 36 at the time but he was smoking three packs a day for a decade and not in the greatest shape and you know finally and he drew he was an alcoholic and he drank huge amounts and so anyway all that and the filming and everything got to him and he had this major heart attack and Coppola didn't know what he's going to do but he kind of apparently convinced the doctor to let him keep working on the film because you know he he had all his money invested and he had to do something so he ended up having a lot of the end scenes that you see and the film was actually filmed sequentially up the river not all film not that's quite rare with films right usually it's not filmed sequentially but he did film it as he went up the river so some of those end shots of the boat was with with Willard's character on the boat is just a double it's somebody's back whereas you know Martin Sheen was relaxing some are trying to recover and then they later shot in some of his faces into those shots when they when they when they would edit and show up show the face so anyway so there's some like catastrophes that went on with that and then Marlon Brando who was sort of the major attraction this film and that's Marlon there of course you know obviously very well known actor he demanded three he demanded a million dollars per week to do this film now in 1975 when they were talking about this a million dollars per week was insane right it'd be like demanding now 50 million for a week for an actor I mean it is that that much money but of course Coppola agreed I don't know why probably because you know he wanted he wanted Brando and he thought Brando would play the perfect course well Brando shows up finally and and Coppola realizes that he hadn't read the book he doesn't even know the story right and not only that he shows up very heavy right and course is a very thin guy right I'm not supposed to be this large large person but but brand and brand was very shy about it and clearly Coppola didn't know what to do right because he thought maybe I'll just film him as this extravagant Kurtz you know eating mangoes all the time but but Brandon didn't want that because that would draw attention to the fact that he was heavy so inevitably inevitably what he did is that's why the the ending is all in darkness with Brando every shot is in shadows because that was the way he could cover his body right he if you see if you watch the film you only see shots of Brando's face and this was you know again a filmmaker's way of using technique around problem right around around difficulty the other thing is none of the lines in the end of the film are written they're all in probably they're all improvised and part of that is Coppola improvised as he went it was based on a script loosely but he kept going and another part of that is that Brando had no lines he wouldn't memorize the lines he's a method actor he just wanted to feel the character so he arrived in the first two weeks they talked about the character and of course you know after three weeks it's starting to do a million so this is a lot of pressure and so anyway the whole filming of Brando which is interesting to see when you're watching the film is basically Coppola holding up cards that saying like feel this do this say this you know read T.S. Eliot's The Hollow Men and there's a whole on YouTube you can see him reading the whole Hollow Men whereas in the film you'll only get a quick little stanza of it and it's beautiful by the way it's extraordinary and so it's interesting to see that everything that Brando was doing essentially method acting this character and Coppola shot you know dozens and dozens of hours of this and in the end edit it down to the five minutes that we see Brando of things that he could use right so it was again that's the whole idea though where there's not a formal plan there's that sense of spontaneity improvisation that this whole film really is about well really the war was seemingly about right and this whole kind of era was about so you see that on multiple levels there was a monsoon that happened in the middle of this all the sets were destroyed part of the cost and the delays it was supposed to go I think it's supposed to be 13 weeks and it ended up going 35 which is over two years and so that's insane right for a film to go that long on location filming and what's interesting maybe the parallel between between the the the novella and the film as that while they're filling the filming in the Philippines there's the Philippine Civil War going on 10 miles away and helicopters they're using in those scenes where the Philippine Army's helicopters so they kept needing their helicopters to go fight the rebels and then they would bring them back and then they would take the helicopters to quickly make their film scenes about the war in Vietnam and then the army would take the helicopters again so this odd irony that they're filming a war about Vietnam well there's an actual war just like Vietnam happening south of them at the time yeah exactly so that's that's the idea right this film format device it's defies a typical narrative film there's not a formal rise and fall it's a slow burn right there's no resolution like we're talking about the the absurdity the banality of the modernist the modernist fiction it has a sense that there's no resolution right we live in the world of hollow men we live in this world where where the horse and yeah if you guys do need to go to class then of course go I'm just going to take a couple more minutes to finish out here so in order to maybe to end this I'll show the one clip and then we'll finish it but this clip is important because it kind of encapsulates the whole film in one minute and shows the decadence shows the spontaneity of acting shows method acting shows the fact that that amidst this war even the film was engaging in chaos and overlaying the top of it is the song by the doors the end which is a form of narration in the film that needs to be paid attention to not only the lyrics but how the end was the the end was a song that was very long every time it was performed it got longer the lyrics always changed it was sort of a mythical rock rock mythology about this song and how it's done in this song starts the film ends the film is in the scene very very important aspect which I don't have time to get to it's on the slides so you guys can see it when I send it around so anyway if you need to go you need to go but let's end with with this clip it's minute and a half it's worth seeing but what's what I wanted to end with this clip specifically is this scene was not planned Martin Sheen was very very drunk and Coppola was running the shots kind of just like do whatever you do right and so this whole scene was sheen just going crazy essentially but he had said he had a sort of personal breakdown in a scene this was personal as well it was acting and you know he felt like he lived the scene as a not as an actor but this is actually him he hit the mirror that was actually him that's his blood all that happened because he was just in you know spontaneously combusting essentially on this scene but you know this is a scene that happens in the hotel room and it really demonstrates him being a longtime soldier the instabilities of of his character