Interviewer: “There was a bump in Apocalypse
Now I guess, and then there’s another era of…
Keitel: “Apocalypse Now was not a bump.
It was an experience. And a valuable experience,
because I learned a lot by getting involved
in Apocalypse Now.”
The process of finding an actor to play Willard
proved to be as difficult as it would be to
[quote/unquote] “find the character” of
Willard. Coppola’s first choice to play
Captain Willard was Hollywood cool-guy Steve
McQueen (Cowie 16). McQueen was interested
and spent some time with Apocalypse Now screenwriter
John Millus
and his friend Steven Spielberg during the summer.
Milius: “He decided he was going to take
Spielberg and I and make us into men that
summer, and so he took us to biker bars and
he was into full contact karate, which was
just ridiculous. He’d get dressed up in
these padded suits with this other guy and
they’d practice all these weird oriental
moves and then they’d just flail around
like two little kids and fall on the floor.
McQueen wanted to be paid more than Coppola,
demanding a $3 million dollar fee, and Coppola
was on board. Author of Coppola’s Monster Film:
The Making of Apocalypse Now Steven
Travers thinks that Coppola may have been
motivated by [quote] “the chance to work
with the man who wrecked the marriage of his
nemesis, Robert Evans” (Travers 100).
During the time of The Godfather’s release,
Evans’ wife, actress Ali MacGraw, was cheating
on him with McQueen (New Yorker).
McQueen and MacGraw would later be married.
Realistically though, McQueen was a Hollywood
legend, so it was likely that Coppola and
Milius had already been fans of his.
While McQueen ultimately passed on the role,
he was involved long enough to have some clashes
around the Willard character in the screenplay.
According to Coppola, McQueen [quote] “never
wanted to have a scene where he said anything
or did anything, and he always had to have
the best of everything” (Cowie 16).
Krusty has laryngitis and a bad back, so he
won’t be saying anything or doing anything.
McQueen seemed to have an idealistic view
of the Willard character, envisioning a man
who, as Coppola put it, “knows everything
all the time and was always cool
and being a smart ass” (Cowie 16).
McQueen ended up deciding to pass on this
project, not because of creative differences,
but because he was not up for spending the
planned four months out in the jungle (which
ended up actually being over a year). He expressed
that he did not want to leave his wife, Ali
MacGraw, and their young son to spend seventeen
weeks on location in the Philippines. Coppola
suggested the whole family come out to Manila,
but McQueen declined, since his older son
would be graduating from high school. It turns
out that McQueen had been suffering from the
cancer that would end up killing him four
years later,
but hardly anyone knew at the time (Cowie 16).
They needed to find someone different to take
on the central role,
but who could fill McQueen’s shoes?
After McQueen was out, Coppola considered
some other friends and big names. Jack Nicholson,
Robert Redford, and James Caan all declined
the role. He then approached Al Pacino, who
he had worked with on The Godfather. Pacino
liked the script but, like McQueen, he did
not want to spend 4 months in the jungle working
on a Coppola film, having suffered health
problems when filming in the Dominican Republic
for the Godfather Part II (Travers 100).
While on location in Santo Domingo for The
Godfather Part II, the already exhausted Pacino
ended up catching pneumonia
and his doctor ordered him to take a month off to recover (Phillips 117).
I guess that's why you don't go around giving the kiss of death...
During that month, Coppola went to New York
City to shoot more of the Robert De Niro sections
of the film (Phillips 117).
When Pacino turned down the role of Willard,
he said to Coppola, “I know what this is
going to be like. You’re gonna be up there
in a helicopter telling me what to do, and
I’m gonna be down there in the swamp for
five months” (Travers 101).
Marlon Brando also refused to be a part of
the project and it was at this point that
a frustrated Coppola scooped up his five Oscars
and threw them out the window,
breaking four of them (Travers 99).
What’s the point in winning an Oscar if
it doesn’t help you with your next projects?
I’m guessing the awards are more fragile
than they look, because Coppola’s father
Carmine accidentally dropped and broke his
Oscar
shortly after winning at the 1975 Academy Awards (Travers 99).
Even though Pacino himself did not end up
playing Willard, Coppola wanted similar types
for the patrol boat crew. He said he wanted
to cast unknown [quote/unquote] “young Pacino’s”
saying, "The war was fought by children. Redford
and McQueen are too old” (Travers 101).
After casting Pacino didn’t pan out, Coppola
approached Martin Sheen, who was a rising
young talent at the time. Besides being more
affordable than the big stars, Sheen had impressed
Coppola and Roos during final screen tests
for the role of Michael in The Godfather,
Sheen: “Mr. Brasi went after them, and so
the story goes.”
so he became their top choice (Cowie 18).
But Sheen was committed to a role in The Cassandra
Crossing, which was filming in Italy, so he
had to decline.
They hired Harvey Keitel, the breakout star
of Scorsese’s Mean Streets from only a couple
years earlier.
Michael, Michael, nobody’s out to screw
you. I guarantee that.
Keitel signed a contract to star in Apocalypse Now
for $1,538.46 per week, which would come
out to $80,000 for the year— the idea being
that shooting would be finished within that
time (Cowie 18).
They were expecting a fourteen-week shoot
(Travers 104).
Keitel may have not been the first… or second…
or even third choice for Willard, but on the
plus side, he was the only one in the PBR
cast, including the yet-to-be-cast Martin
Sheen, who had actually served in the Marines
(Neon 113).
With the cast and crew set, production was
ready to begin. On the first day of shooting,
Coppola gathered the cast and crew together
for a good-luck ritual that he had been doing
since making his first films in college (Hearts of Darkness).
Coppola: “You say this word three times:
Puwaba.”
“What was the word?”
Coppola: “Puwaba.”
Coppola: “One, two, three.”
“Puwaba, puwaba, puwaba!”
The only thing I could find about the meaning
of “Puwaba” is [quote] “to catch or
take something from and... a word that expresses
action or a state of being” (LookDef).
So, I imagine that chanting “Powaba" is meant
to try and capture and harness the luck around them.
The first couple of shots of the production
took place on March 20th and were of Willard
being taken by helicopter to the patrol boat.
We can see here, Keitel getting onto the boat
and it sailing away.
However, there was already a problem, a “mix-up”
caused Keitel and others to be “stranded
on a raft” (Travers 105). Keitel used his
walkie-talkie to say,
“Hello, this is Harvey Keitel."
but there was no answer (Travers
105). Keitel then half-jokingly said,
“You wouldn’t do this to Marlon Brando” (Travers
105).
Production designer Dean Tavoularis had picked
out a variety of locations all over the island
of Luzon, which was the location of a "World
War II battle between General MacArthur’s
forces and the Japanese” (Travers 104).
On April 15th, Coppola got together with editors
George Berndt and Richie Marks and producers
Fred Roos and Gray Frederickson to watch the
rushes (footage of what has been shot) of
Keitel as Willard (Cowie 53).
In her diary, Eleanor Coppola wrote of that
night, "Afterward he sat down on the couch
with the editors and Gray and Fred, the producers.
He said 'Well, what do you think?' I went
upstairs to say good night to the boys, and
when I came down about fifteen minutes later,
they were already on the phone making plane
reservations for flights to L.A. the next day.
Francis had made the decision to replace
his leading man. Gray said, 'Jesus, Francis,
how do you have the guts to do it?' (Coppola
34).
The rushes took ten days to reach the Philippines
from the lab in Rome, but apparently this
was something Coppola had been thinking about
even before seeing them (Cowie 53). Earlier,
Coppola had dinner with cinematographer Vittorio
Storaro and said said, "Vittorio, I have a
problem… I think I have to replace the main
actor, the assistant director and the props
guy” (Cowie 53).
There has been much speculation as to what
happened with Keitel. Storaro said, “Francis
needed the audience to identify with Willard.
There was more passion in [Martin Sheen],
his soul was more in front of the camera,
the audience could identify with him. His
performance is almost not a performance” (Cowie 53).
Editor Walter Murch said, “Willard is virtually
a completely inactive character. Almost the
only thing he ever does is kill Kurtz. For
the rest he’s a passenger, he’s a vehicle
for the audience to look at this world through,
and so the audience must be able to accept
the Willard they see as being their own pair
of eyes, through which they regard this strange
world of war… I think Francis felt unsure
that an audience would accept Harvey Keitel
as their eyes… They’d watch him do things,
and be fascinated by that, but they would
not accept him as an inactive person” (Cowie 53).
Part of this was that Keitel's [quote] "stock-in-trade
is a series of tics - ways to make people
look at him,” which wouldn’t work for
an inactive character (Neon 113).
What’s funny about this is that I’ve heard
many many times that this is a trademark of
Steve McQueen—that, even when he wasn't
the focus, he would be doing little things
to get people to look at him instead of who
is talking.
So, what about Coppola? Well, he said,
“I had searched for someone to be in the film.
I had hoped for McQueen for the part. After
I realized that that wasn't going to happen,
I settled on Martin Sheen, but he wasn't available.
Fred Roos pushed hard for Keitel, whom I admired
as an actor, but I didn't feel he was right
for the role, which was really very much that
of an observer—a man gazing out into the
jungle, and I didn't think he'd be the kind
of passive man—a face, if you like—gazing
out into the jungle. When we got [to the Philippines],
I could see that he was very uncomfortable
about conditions in the jungle, and I thought,
'Not only do I think he's wrong casting, but
what's it going to be like for six months
in these difficult conditions in the jungle,
for a city guy who's afraid of it? I just
decided to make this tough decision.
Harvey's always been gracious about it, so I'd say
that this was just one of the most difficult
things that happen. But I feel I made the
right decision for the picture” (Travers 105).
I’m here to help. If my help is not appreciated,
lots of luck gentlemen.
—No no no, Mr. Wolf...
In a separate interview twenty-three years
after the events, Coppola gave a similar explanation saying,
“Harvey Keitel is a fine actor,
and I did not replace him because of his acting
talent, which he has more than made evident
over the years. I never was 100 per cent sure
that he was right for the role. Willard by
his nature is a kind of more passive observer.
Harvey is an extremely active actor, and you
want to look at him all the time. I cast him
because he seemed to be the most talented
actor we could choose. Then later when we
got him out [to the Philippines] I worried
that… much of the movie was going to be
him observing and thinking… Another thing
was that Harvey was incredibly uncomfortable
in the jungle, among weird creatures and boats,
and I thought, ‘My God, I’m gonna be with
this guy for nine months in the jungle, and
he’s not comfortable!’ So I had to make
a grown-up decision, and recognize that I’d
made a mistake. It’s always hard to fire
an actor” (Cowie 53, 54).
Also, it’s worth noting that we just went
from the expected length of the shoot going
from 14 weeks, to six months, to nine months.
Part of why having to fire Keitel was, to
Coppola, [quote] “so bad” and “a terrible thing”
was that Coppola worried about the
effect that this could have on Keitel’s
career for his own casting mistake (Travers
105).
He said that it was a “very, very hard decision,”
but during this time, he was in the appropriate
mindset to pull the trigger on these kinds
of tough decisions
for the sake of the movie (Neon 113).
Producers Fred Roos and Gray Frederickson
went to Keitel’s hotel room to let him know
of the decision to recast the role (Casting).
Frederickson claimed that Keitel was “almost
relieved” saying, "Oh, thank you so much!
Listen, would you come out with me - I want
to buy a suitcase, some luggage” (Cowie 54).
Frederickson said, "I think Harvey realizes,
as well as Francis, that it wasn't his kind
of role… He’s a New York street guy, and
this was a different role for him; he didn't
quite feel right with it. It was a mutual
thing” (Travers 105).
However, Keitel had this to say, "I was the
only person there who knew how to handle the
jungle - I was the only one who had ever been
in the Marines. I don't think we communicated
well. We dashed. It was a matter of a young
actor who was an ex-Marine out of Brooklyn
meeting up with a talented director who was
out of UCLA and some fraternity” (Neon 113).
“It would seem like Apocalypse Now was somewhat
hurtful to your career at that point, no?”
Keitel: “Well I can’t say that. I was
disappointed, and I was hurt on some level, yes.
But like I say, I look at every event
as an opportunity to learn something from it.
It only remains hurtful in the bad sense
if you don’t look at it as an opportunity
to learn something from it.”
All that remains of Keitel’s performance
in the final film is this shot—that’s
Keitel on the boat (Commentary).
The day after Keitel’s firing, the production
shut down and Coppola was on a plane to Los
Angeles (Travers 105).
Coppola didn’t want the press to find out
that there were problems with production,
so he tried to look inconspicuous. At this
point, Coppola was thirty-five pounds lighter,
and so he thought he could get away with disguising
himself.
Coppola: “I had shaved my beard off to go
back to L.A. when I was involved in the recasting
of the part of Willard, and I wanted to back
and didn't want to have controversy, so I
shaved my beard so that I could be back in
the U.S.A. without being recognized.”
He met with Martin Sheen “in the VIP lounge
at the airport” to discuss Sheen taking
on the role of Willard (Travers 105). More
on this in a bit.
When the news of the recasting finally broke
in Hollywood, Variety Magazine wrote an article
about what happened. It’s important to note
here that, by this time, Marlon Brando had
reconsidered taking on a role in the film.
The article reads:
“Harvey Keitel has been fired from the lead
role of [Apocalypse Now] in what Keitel’s
agent, Harry Ufland of ICM, says is a contract
dispute over the possibility to shut down
all summer to accommodate Marlon Brando.
Coppola returned to Hollywood late last week
from Philippines location of the Vietnam war
pic, while shooting was stopped for the Easter
holiday period, and fired Keitel in a letter
Friday from his attorneys to Ufland. Ufland,
angered at the turn of events, said, 'I had
to call Harvey (in the Philippines) and tell
him; they didn't have the decency to call him.’
A Coppola spokesman said there is a possibility
that film may go into hiatus this summer because
Brando doesn't want to work while his children
are on school vacation. [The] plan being discussed
was to build sets for Brando's sequence during
the summer, and reassembled for brief September
shooting, but Ufland said Keitel balked because
he had Coppola's prior permission to appear
in another film at that time.
[The] situation raised doubts in Keitel's
mind about the desirability of being under
long-term contract with Coppola, Ufland said.
An oral agreement to that effect had been
made before filming started late last month,
per the agent, but no contract had been signed.
Ufland said the firing occurred after Keitel
requested a meeting with Coppola to iron out
the dispute. Keitel had been highly-touted by Coppola as
one of his five initial contractees in the
producer-director's much-publicized attempt
to counteract the high-priced star syndrome…” (Cowei 55).
This article paints quite a different picture
than what we just discussed. The article got
several things wrong—Keitel was told in-person
before the call from his agent, he was fully
paid for the period he worked, and recasting
the role had nothing to do with Brando’s
schedule (Cowie 55).
I do believe you, that’s what I want everybody to believe.
Shortly after being fired, Keitel was interviewed
by the Los Angeles Times in which he said
that he was set to sign a seven-year contract,
but had a verbal agreement with Coppola in
which Coppola gave him "assurances" (Cowie 55).
Then, when the production was scheduled to
shut down for three months because of Marlon
Brando, Keitel asked to meet with Coppola
and was, instead, given a “five-page letter”
from the lawyers saying that Keitel [quote]
“had repeatedly refused to fulfill his obligation
to execute a written memorialization” (Cowie 55).
Keitel said, "If I have one god in my life,
it’s not going to be Francis Coppola…
Had I known then what I know now, I would
have kept my mouth shut longer and had them
shoot so much they couldn’t fire me” (Neon 113).
Back on April 16th, when Coppola was about
to leave for LA to meet with Martin Sheen
in-disguise, Eleanor Coppola wrote, “This
morning Francis got up even earlier than usual.
He didn’t sleep much during the night. He
started shaving his beard off. When he got
down to the breakfast table about 6:00 a.m.,
the boys were pretty surprised. He has been
wearing contact lenses lately because it is
easier to look through the camera without
glasses, and he’s lost about thirty-five
pounds. He really did look different. He said
he wanted to go to L.A. and not be noticed
by the press. He didn’t want a lot of rumors
to start about the film being in trouble before
he had a chance to recast the part.
Later he said he shaved off his beard to prove to
himself, as a sort of outward symbol, that
even when he is really in trouble he is capable
of change" (Coppola 34).
Fred Roos said, "It was a little embarrassing,
firing an actor and then coming
back to recast. I don’t think many directors
would have had the courage to shoot for a
month with an actor, suck it up and say,
'This is a mistake', and stop, and recast.
Usually people just live with such mistakes” (Cowie 55).
Again, they offered the role of Willard to
Jack Nicholson who was already working on
a new project (Cowie 57). They contacted Martin
Sheen who was in Rome for Easter. Sheen immediately
flew to California on Good Friday
and met with Coppola and Roos at LAX (the Los Angeles airport) (Cowie 57, Travers 105).
They had only fifteen-minutes to talk
before Roos and Coppola’s flight was scheduled to leave (Travers 105).
Sheen had really wanted the part of Willard
and the next day, he got the call asking him
to take on the role and the day after that,
Sheen was on a flight to the Philippines (Travers 105).
During this time, the production was still
going back in the Philippines, filming some
shots of Robert Duvall as Kilgore (Cowie 57).
As it turned out, they could reshoot everything
they had done with Keitel in four days and
they’d be back on-track, considering Sheen
was already familiar with the script (Cowie 57).
On April 24th 1976, only eight days after
Keitel was fired, Eleanor Coppola wrote this
in her diary: "I can hear the voice of one
of the military advisers in the hut a few
feet away talking to Martin Sheen. He was
cast as Willard on Francis’s trip to L.A.
This is Martin’s first day on the set.
He was at our house last night until curfew at 1:00 a.m. (Coppola 40).
Coppola realized that the problem wasn’t
just Keitel, but how the entire production
had been going and this was his chance to
begin again. He wrote a memo to himself reading,
"What I have to tell Marty really is that,
the little work we’ve done so far has been
totally off the mark. That if we were to do
the whole film this way it would be a total
turkey probably, and nobody would care very
much for the character or the performance
and it will be a source of great pain… I
think in a nutshell the secret is not to play
Willard as a nice guy. Because he is a leading
man we think there is an obligation to play
him a nice guy. He doesn't have to be a nice
guy ... To wit, although he gets put on this
boat with these sailors he's the Captain we
don't have to assume that he is good to them.
He is annoyed by them. He has no privacy from
them ... He doesn't want to go on the mission
with them, he's stuck with them. And the whole
trip could be a gigantic being put out for him.
Mr. Clean's radio and teeny-bopper vernacular.
Lance's kind of oafish adulation for him.
The Chef's eccentricity and smoking grass
all the time. And the Chief's kind of do-good
saintly holier-than-thou act” (Cowie 58).
In an interview, Sheen said, "Making that
film was an ordeal, not just physically but
emotionally. I was staying In this hotel,
and right outside was all this poverty. Pigs
running around, children without teeth" (Neon 113).
So, it would be Martin Sheen as the lead in
the biggest Vietnam War film ever made.
What’s interesting is that, about ten years later,
his son Charlie would be the lead in another
huge Vietnam movie…
Somebody once wrote, “hell is the impossibility
of reason.” We get up at…
—At first I thought they’d handed me the
wrong dossier. I couldn’t believe they wanted
this man dead. About a thousand decorations,
etc. etc…
I loved you in Wall Street!
Wait, not that one. This one.
Somebody once wrote, “hell is the impossibility
of reason.”
That’s what this place feels like, hell.
Sheen: “I had some personal concerns about
my own physical condition. I was thirty-six
at the time, and I felt old and out of shape,
and I was smoking three packs a day. Not a
healthy guy. I wondered if I’d be able to
keep up a strenuous schedule. At the time
I hired on, remember, it was only a sixteen-week
shoot. Which didn’t prove to be the case,
but who knew that at the time, you know?”
When Coppola came back to the Philippines
after firing Keitel and recasting Willard
in Los Angeles, he found that Philippine president
Marcos, who had promised the use of helicopters
given to the government by the United States,
was having more trouble with the nearby rebels
than expected (Travers 106).
It was sort of up-in-the-air whether the much-needed
military vehicles would be available for use
on the production. Coppola reached out to
the American Department of Defense one last
time hoping that Secretary of Defense, Donald
Rumsfleld, would, in essence, “finance”
the movie like they did with John Wayne’s
The Green Berets (Travers 106).
Again, the Pentagon said that they would only
help if the script was rewritten to remove
the [quote/unquote] “objectionable” portions
of drug use and other moments that shed a
negative light on the American military (Travers
106).
The main issue, however, was the military
and CIA ordering an American officer to be
assassinated, which the Department of Defense
said would never happen (Travers 106).
Steven Travers writes, "The Pentagon objections
certainly would have grown over the changes
to the Milius script, much shot on the fly
by Coppola; at first to Milius's consternation.
The director veered the story sharply to the
left politically, replacing much (if not all)
of the jingoism with couched representations
of America as pseudo war criminals in the
form of frightened boys forced to perform
horrible acts in which they would otherwise
never engage. But all of that was still in
the future; for now Coppola was forced to
go it alone, increasingly in every way. Neither
the government nor the 'Hollywood system'
was with him” (Travers 107).
The Pentagon did offer some ideas for ways
to change the story to meet their needs. One
was to have Willard’s mission to find and
bring back Kurtz for a court-martial (Travers
107).
Coppola countered with a compromise to have
a civilian give Willard the orders to assassinate
Kurtz, but the Pentagon refused (Travers 107).
There was a similar impasse between the Pentagon
and the production of Patton, which Coppola
wrote—Patton’s battle scenes were shot
in Spain with [quote] “equipment the Spanish
government had been given… by the United
States” (Travers 107).
What’s funny is that there is a reference
to the military’s cooperation with John
Wayne’s Vietnam film in the mission briefing
scene that never made the final film.
I hadn’t thought about it that much. Saw
the movie.
What movie?
Green Berets, General. John Wayne?
We gave cooperation to that movie. God knows
how many troops, how many helicopters we furnished
to make the green beanies look like soldiers.
In the next episode, we continue the movie
with the haunting ‘Mission Briefing’ scene
where Willard is given his quest and where
we begin to see the line between the story
of the movie and the story of the production
begin to blur.
This episode’s Companion PDF contains a
short article I wrote on why Harvey Keitel
may have been more suited to play Captain
Willard than you might think.
It also has some behind-the-scenes photos,
info from Walter Murch on why they didn’t
reshoot the shots of Harvey Keitel that made
it into the final film, and a selection of
interesting comments from the previous episode.
It’s yours for just a dollar and you can
check-out easy with PayPal. Your support really
helps keep the channel afloat during copyright
issues and other annoying problems that inevitably
arise while making these.
Thanks so much for your support and for thanks
for watching!
