Godfather: The Intimate Francis Ford Coppola

6. The Unknown Soldiers: Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Now Redux, and Gardens of Stone

6 The Unknown Soldiers Apocalypse Now, Apocalypse Now Redux, and Gardens of Stone Nothing comesfree.One way or another, you pay for what you are. —John Garfield as Paul Boray in the film Humoresque Life is a trail you follow in an unknown jungle. There is always uncharted territory ahead. —Francis Ford Coppola Apocalypse Now was originally conceived by George Lucas and John Milius as a film about the Vietnam War when Francis Coppola was just starting American Zoetrope. In early 1970 Coppola presented to Warner Brothers a package of seven projects that Zoetrope had in the works, among them a proposal for Apocalypse Now. Several months later, in November 1970, Warners summarily rejected six of the seven projects—Lucas's THX 1138 was the only one that Warners produced—and the rest were shelved (see chapter 3). After Coppola repaid Warners for the development money the studio had spent on the other six proposals, he owned the rights to all of these Zoetrope projects. The Conversation, one of the projects, was, as we know, directed by Coppola as a Paramount release. It was not until Coppola fin- 144 Part Two: The Mature Moviemaker ished making Godfather II, however, that he decided to revive Apocalypse Now. Lucas and Milius had begun discussing the possibility of a Vietnam War movie in 1968, while they were still film students at USC. Milius had heard numerous harrowing stories from friends who had been in Vietnam, which he planned to string together in the scenario. He wanted to call the movie Apocalypse Now "because of all those hippies at the time who had these buttons that said, 'Nirvana Now,"' which was a drug-related slogan of the hippy peace movement. "I loved the idea of a guy having a button with a mushroom cloud on it that said, 'Apocalypse Now,'" suggesting the idea of dropping the bomb and ending the war.1 Lucas and Milius collaborated on a preliminary treatment about Captain Willard, an American CIA intelligence officer, who must track down Colonel Kurtz, a rogue Green Beret Special Services commander operating along the Cambodian border who has "gone native," and liquidate him. Lucas suggested that they frame the story as a boat ride upriver, as the intelligence officer seeks out the Green Beret commander. After they completed the prose treatment, Milius was to turn it into a screenplay. In discussing the script with Milius, Coppola recalled Joseph Conrad's 1899 novella, "Heart of Darkness," about a European ivory trader who disappears into the Congo jungle. He suggested that Milius use the search for a mysterious ivory trader named Kurtz, which provides the fundamental structure of "Heart of Darkness," as the basis of the screenplay. Milius agreed that "it would be interesting to transplant Conrad's 'Heart of Darkness' toVietnam," and he proceeded to write a screenplay loosely based on Conrad's novella. While Milius was working on the script, news reports began to circulate about the case of Col. Robert Rheault, commanding officer of the U.S. Army Special Forces in Vietnam. Rheault was courtmartialed in 1969 for the murder of a Vietnamese guide he suspected of being a double agent. The international press called the investigation "the Green Beret murder case." The news coverage pointed out that the Green Berets were involved in guerrilla warfare and espionage activities involving links to the CIA—facts that were not previouslyknown bythe general public. Rheault's lawyer contended that liquidating enemy agents was standard procedure in wartime and that Rheault's suspicions were well-founded. The charges against Rheault were finally dropped, but his career was in ruins. Unquestionably, Rheault was the inspiration for Colonel Kurtz in Milius's scenario, for Kurtz is accused of executing no less than four alleged enemy agents in Apocalypse Now. Milius transcribed material about the Rheault case into his screen- The Unknown Soldiers 145 play directly from the newspaper headlines of the day. "I remember in 1969 when the story came out about Rheault," he says. "[T]he idea was that the U.S. troops were out there committing their own foreign policy." Indeed, Kurtz is described by an officer as operating well beyond official military policy for the conduct of the war. Moreover, Rheault's killing of the suspected Vietcong agent was described in official documents as "termination with extreme prejudice"—a phrase that would find its way into Milius's script and into the finished...