I'm watching Apocalypse Now now

so don't bother me!

What did you think of the movie? (I've watched it periodically for many years, and still love it).

Haven't seen it in a few years though. Wanted to see that special edition on the big screen but never made it.

I've seen both versions of it. It's been a while since I've seen it though. One of my all time favorites. One of the few movies that I've watched more than once. For me to do that it has to be really good.

I got Coppola's director's cut on DVD...

I just can't even say what I think about this film. I get sucked in every frigging time.

I also feel the same way about the Godfather trilogy, but over the years, I find Godfather II to be the best of the 3.

End of Line.

...The scene where Martin Sheen asked the soldier where his commanding officer was and the soldier responded, "You ain't him?" bonechilling in its accuracy.

Right up there on my list of all-time most disturbing film moments.

in terms of accuracy?

that it's not especially accurate. Not surprising, in that it is NOT really a movie about Vietnam, though the insanity and pointlessness of the Vietnam conflict was an amazingly apt setting for retelling Heart of Darkness.

On the other hand, the original story has elements drawn from veterans' recollections (this even includes Kurtz' story about the pile of hacked-off children's limbs). The 'Roach' scene, with the grenade launcher at the brodge, was taken straight from the book Dispatches. Kurtz is said to be based on one or both of Colonel Robert Rheault and Tony Poe. Rheault was commander of all Special Forces troops in Viet Nam -- he and some of his men were jailed on charges of killing a suspected double-agent but the charges were dropped after the CIA got in the picture...dropping the charges provoked Daniel Ellsberg to leak "The Pentagon Papers. Poe was a CIA agent sent to Laos in 1961 to fight a 'secret war' -- he recruited something like 10000 Hmong tribesmen and did have a setup very kuch like Kurtz', including that his hut was at the top of a couple of hundred steps. He kept his guerillas rowdy by giving them liberal doses of rice whiskey. He also stuck a decapitated head on a spike for his men to throw stones at and, a couple of times, dropped communist heads from aircraft, aiming them at the front porches of his enemies' residences. He paid a bounty for communist ears (I think he stopped when fathers began cutting off their own children's for the money) and, when he was asked by skeptical higher-ups whether he was actually doing anything out there in the jungle, he sent them bags of ears. That kind of thing did not go over too well with the secretaries who took delivery. He basically became a warlord, and extended his secret war beyond communists and those involved with the Ho Chi Minh Trail. He married a Hmong princess and was there in Laos well into the '90s. Poe died last July.

Although some of the film's obviously over-the-top and also more than a little allegorical, it's not surprising that the vets I know don't recognize much of their own experiences in the film because none of them were assassins operating in Cambodia. The film was originally envisioned as being filmed in Vietnam in 1969, by George Lucas. As it was, yes, the film has many errors (e.g., military details and geography) but even some of the scenes that I've heard vets label as unrealistic did allegedly happen and there is one thing that the film is tremendously faithful to: Conrad's book.

From my own experience in the tropics, I can definitely see how what is perhaps the most 'unlikely' aspect of the movie -- a 'troppo' insane Kurtz holding sway over an army of locals -- can happen. I've encountered people who were about 80% of the way toward being Kurtz, complete with devoted followers. And, again, I refer you to the Tony Poe story for evidence that the Kurtz character in Apocalypse Now, although based on a character placed in 1900s Belgian Congo, was not out of place in a Vietnam/Cambodia setting circa 1969. Crazy stuff.

The other is "Annie Hall."