Daily Dialogue — June 28, 2017

“Saigon… shit. I’m still only in Saigon. Every time I think I’m gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I’d wake up and there’d be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife, until I said ‘yes’ to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there; when I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I’m here a week now… waiting for a mission… getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker, and every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around the walls moved in a little tighter.”

— Apocalypse Now (1979), written by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, narration by Michael Herr

The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Voice-Over.

Trivia: The scene at the beginning with Captain Willard alone in his hotel room was completely unscripted. Martin Sheen told the shooting crew to just let the cameras roll. Sheen was actually drunk in the scene and punched the mirror, which was real glass, cutting his thumb. Sheen also began sobbing and tried to attack director Francis Ford Coppola. The crew was so disturbed that they wanted to stop shooting, but Sheen wanted to keep the cameras going. Sheen was fighting a drinking problem and his own issues. He got so caught up in the scene and his personal internal struggles that he hit the mirror. He believed that continuing the scene would help face his problems. This was revealed later in a conversation with Coppola and Sheen and has been shown in the Redux version.

Dialogue On Dialogue: A key benefit in using voice-over narration is it can provide a direct line into a character’s state of inner being. Such is the case at the beginning of Apocalypse Now.