Apocalypse Now question: martial arts or tripping on acid?

[Frank Lakatos]

I saw this movie in it's entirity the other night on late night tv and wanted to know in the beginning of the movie, the scene where Sheen is drunk in his room, is he practicing some type of martial arts? He's in what appears to be some southern asian Petjak Silat type stance and then he punches out the mirror. Then, later in the movie, the surfer soldier Sam Bottoms is seen doing those strange Silat stances as Sheen wasdoing in the room. Are they high on acid and doing strange involuntary movements, or is it supposed to be some type of martial art kata? Vietnamese marial arts resemble kung fu, but they look like they are doing Malaysian Pentjak Silat.

As for the movie, it felt fake to me, not the battle scenes, but the story and way it was shot and Brando wasn't used enough though. They mad him lk like he's a big stomping monster of guy when he was actually 5' 8 or something and had this huge belly.

Some years ago, 2003-04, the Encore channel played a 4 hour version of this movie which was based on the 5 1/2 hour 1st draft rough cut along with a 2 hour behind the scees documentary, different from the Hearts of Darkness. The 2006 DVD release only shows an extra 40 minutes of unimportant from what I've read. I prefer the Deer Hunter over this one though.

Frank

[teako170]

Whatever he was doing, Sheen was BOMBED out of his skull! I believe it was his birthday and he started drinking and Coppola just went with it.

Big fan of this film. Did a critical analysis of it while in film school. The extra footage you mention was a bit of a letdown. I personally felt it detracted from the 'darkness' of the original video release.

I'm jealous of that Encore channel broadcast you mention. Would love to have seen that.

[kungfusamurai]

I agree the longer cut of Apocalypse Now, while interesting, is not as good as the original. It kind of ruins the pacing of the film. Then again, if we had all been exposed to that longer cut of the film first, maybe we'd all think it worked? Hard to say.

I like both Deer Hunter and Apocalypse, although with Deer Hunter, everytime I watch it from the beginning, I'm too eager for them to get to Vietnam.

KFS

[jirpy100]

I love both AN cuts, but will probably not watch the old one again. Never been a big fan of The Deer Hunter. I believe the ever-so-long wedding scene was copied from the Italian film The Leopard.

[chopsocky]

I have a 5 hour long bootleg workprint of the movie, its jam packed with stuff, though as a movie it doesn't hold up well at this lenght it is cool to see after watching the original and redux.