Daily Dialogue — August 4, 2015
WILLARD: I only met Kurtz once.
CIVILIAN: Would he remember you?
WILLARD: Maybe.
CIVILIAN: What was your impression of him?
Willard shrugs.
CIVILIAN: You didn’t like him.
WILLARD: Anyone got a cigarette.
The Major offers him one; they wait as he lights up, thinks.
WILLARD: (continuing) I thought he was a lame.
CIVILIAN: A lame?
WILLARD: This is years ago, before he joined Special Forces, I guess. We had an argument.
CIVILIAN: About what?
WILLARD: I don’t know. He was a lame, that’s all.
CIVILIAN: But why?
WILLARD: He couldn’t get through a sentence without all these big words; about why we kill.
CIVILIAN: Well, he’s killing now.
WILLARD: Maybe.
CIVILIAN: What does that mean?
WILLARD: Maybe it’s not Kurtz. I don’t believe he’s capable of that. I just don’t believe it.
CIVILIAN: It’s got to be Kurtz. The point is that Kurtz or somebody attacked a South Vietnamese Ranger Platoon three days ago. Last week a Recon helicopter was lost in the area — another took heavy damage — direct fire from their base camp.
WILLARD: Our Recon flight?
CIVILIAN: Ours.
WILLARD: Touchy.
CIVILIAN: You can see, of course, the implications, if any of this — even rumors leaked out.
WILLARD: You want me to clean it up — simple and quiet.
CIVILIAN: Exactly — you’ll go up the Nung River in a Navy P.B.R. — appear at Nu Mung Ba as if by accident, re-establish your acquaintance with Colonel Kurtz, find out what’s happened — and why. Then terminate his command.
WILLARD: Terminate?
CIVILIAN: Terminate with extreme prejudice.
— Apocalypse Now (1979), written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, inspired by the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Call To Adventure. Today’s suggestion by Jon Raymond.
Trivia: The famous line “terminate… with extreme prejudice” is spoken by Jerry Ziesmer, who also served as the film’s Assistant Director.
Dialogue On Dialogue: Commentary by Jon: “Here we see Willard chided into accepting the mission to find and terminate Kurtz. Willard can’t believe what he hears about Kurtz. But he does understand this is simply a mission to cover up Kurtz’s embarrassing behavior. It seems perplexing he would accept the mission.
On the other hand with so ruthless men as the general and the civilian giving him this information, what choice does he have? He’d probably be assassinated himself. Besides, he’s probably so screwed up at this point that he doesn’t care one way or another. Willard’s apathy is prevalent throughout the film, and in fact (I think) illustrates the extreme lack of his arc into someone else.
The final version in the film has the general spelling things out more coherently in one monologue, and basically forcing Willard to agree based on the General’s logic, that Kurtz is insane, and here again, an embarrassment.
Obviously embarrassment is a primary theme and factor in the decision to kill. It’s easy to find this reasoning believable.”