A version of this post was previously published in Facebook Notes in 2014 (https://www.facebook.com/notes/10152731573444079/).
I'm fond of identifying huge moments in my reading, listening and watching life, pronouncing them as absolutely critical. Sometimes it has more to do with finally recognizing that something has had a huge effect on me. And sometimes, it's just true.
Apocalypse Now was a line in the sand. It's the first film that I saw, loved, still love today, and remember it as it really seems to be. What I mean to say is that we went to the drive-in when I was 10 and saw Chinatown. I loved it then and I still quite like it, but when I look at it now I barely remember a single shot or other element of the film that I saw when I was 10.
When I was 13 I saw Star Wars, also at a drive-in. It was such a special moment, coinciding with the second period of my life that I loved comics. I hadn't seen anything like it - who had? - and for the first time everI was conscious of what cinema could be, what it could do for me. I felt like maybe this would define my life.
I started seeking out classic science fiction films on TV, reading science fiction and fantasy, making SF and comics zines, and checking out every new film in the SF and fantasy genres.
Though fetters of interest remained for a few years, Apocalypse Now blew the whole Star Wars thing away. My father and I saw it at the University Theatre in 70mm. I think it's safe to say from the opening montage (helicopter/crazy Sheen/The End, "Saigon. Shit.”) on, my life changed. Film mattered like nothing else, except maybe rock and roll (and this was a very rock and roll film). THIS is what I wanted films to look like, sound like, and feel like.
Not that I wanted every film to be Apocalypse Now or directed by Coppola, but I wanted films to be the product of personal visions, rendered obsessively, and adding something of value to the world. Films that weren't formulaic, especially when the formula was always to involve what Stan Brakhage used to call a "brain drunk."
From that moment on, I couldn't stand "escapism" in movies or literature: I guess I fulfilled that need with booze and drugs. I had no use for "light", for feel good, for nostalgia, for tuning out.
Admittedly, the powerful experience I had with Apocalypse Now had to do with me being a tabula rasa. When it came out I had seen no more than a couple of dozen films, certainly no more than that at the movie theatre. Maybe if I count all of the Don Knotts-type Sunday afternoon movies it's more, but the list of real movies prior to Apocalypse Now included:
Burnt Offerings
Logan's Run
Rollercoaster
Earthquake
Towering Inferno
Norman, Is that You?
Jesus Christ Superstar
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
(Part of) Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore
The Aristocats
A Three Musketeers movie
The Birds
Wizard of Oz
Jungle Book
Divorce American Style
Oliver!
Star Wars
The Long Trailer
A Carry On movie
Blazing Saddles
Chinatown (a strange story that we may return to)
Here Come the Nelsons
I'm missing a few, but that's where I was at when I was 15watching Apocalypse Now. I saw some other great films prior to it - especiallyThe Birds and Chinatown - but they felt distant and mysterious: after Apocalypse Now provided the benchmark, I had a sense of what I needed from film.
The funny thing is, today I'm not sure that I can watch anotherVietnam film, nor anything that is so obviously spectacular. I'm not qualified to compare the treatment of war in today's cinema, nor the use of surroundsound, visual effects (which had a different meaning in the 1970s anyhow), etc.I got turned off as other cinematic possibilities opened up for me - classicHollywood, avant-garde, verité, postwar French, German and Italian film, etc.Still, what I have to say about the modern trend in spectacular filmmaking fromLucas to Cameron to Jackson can best be described as "contempt prior to investigation," a special form of ignorance that seems to plague me.
No matter how much Apocalypse Now's appeal is at the intersection of the spectacle of cinema and the spectacle of war, that wouldn't have been enough to turn me on and hold me all these years. It was so powerful that it became a kind of ground zero for me:
Ground zero for commercial American filmmaking: like, I know movies can be this good, so what's your excuse?
Ground zero for Coppola's career: the height of a creative career that was preceded by the two Godfathers, which are as good but I didn't see them till later, and that mini-masterpiece, The Conversation. As much as I love many of the films that follow, including the "catastrophe" One from the Heart, which I live, we never get the thrill of Apocalypse Now again. I'm not complaining.
Ground zero for any film about Vietnam. I always have to compare, even and especially the other great Vietnam films from that period, The Deer Hunter and Coming Home.
Ground zero for anytime I hear someone argue that films are never better than the literature they adapt. I'm not saying Coppola's better thanConrad and Eliot, but in this film he's as good.
Ground zero for any film that attempts to weave rock and roll into it so seamlessly. It's not my favourite in that regard, but it set a new standard, almost surpassing American Graffiti and Mean Streets (but not Scorpio Rising).
Ground zero for any discussion of film sound.
Ground zero for understanding Brando's career. This is the End, and what an end. He appears to have gone as loopy as Kurtz himself. Whenever I watch him in A Streetcar Named Desire or The Godfather, On the Waterfront, Guys and Dolls or anything else really, I am aware that he is Kurtz. I hear Stanley Kowalski, 1st Lt. Fletcher Christian and Don Vito Corleone all mutter, "the horror, the horror."
Ground zero for Martin Sheen too. Mention The Exorcist and my mind goes to Linda Blair, then Sweet Hostage, Martin Sheen, and then"Saigon. Shit."
Ground zero for Duvall. I don't care if you say Tender Mercies, my brain conjures up:
"You smell that? Do you smell that? Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. But the smell! You know - that gasoline smell... the whole hill! Smelled like... victory. (Pause) Some day this war is going to end..."
Ground zero for intelligent filmmaking.
