Insights

Into the vacuum stepped a cadre of young filmmakers concerned and affected by the unpopular war. Vietnam films can depict individual bravery and perseverance in the face of a determined enemy and perhaps even capture the essence of combat, the unique excitement of challenging death in personal combat. By focusing on the victims of the war, these first movies continued the anti-war, anti-military movement of the Sixties and early Seventies. If the film wastes the strong anti-war statement inherent to Dern’s character, it badly dilutes the powerful climactic anti-war monologue which Voight delivered to a group of high school students. As the Vietnam War escalated in the 1960s, Hollywood was struggling financially and the longtime studio system was collapsing. If you put a lot of it on the screen, it makes people lust for violence.”. Telling the same story of the struggle of paralyzed veterans to adjust to their disabilities, Zinnemann conveys the harsh reality that the men’s injuries are irrevocable and must be accepted, that they will never walk again and never be able to perform sexually. Jack Valenti, then an advisor to President Johnson, advised him that while John Wayne’s politics might be wrong, “insofar as Vietnam is concerned, his views are right. When the gang kills Devane’s wife and son (who has become his only reason for living), it becomes the enemy he had not been able to fight in Vietnam, an enemy against which he can vent his pent-up rage for his eight years of torture and deprivation and, indirectly, his wife’s unfaithfulness. Shifting Conrad’s story of civilization’s submission to the brutality of human nature from the jungles of Africa to Vietnam, the script told the story of a Green Beret officer who defects and sets up his own army across the Cambodian border where he proceeds to fight both American and Vietcong forces. The Army could not accept the characterization of the movie’s central figure, a major played by Burt Lancaster, and the filmmakers refused to revise the role. In any case, it is doubtful if Apocalypse Now or any film about Vietnam can help the American image be “pro-human and therefore pro-American.” No movie about Vietnam can delineate events that occurred there in terms of American good versus enemy evil as Hollywood could do in its films about earlier American wars. Although the VA’s position in regard to assistance on Coming Home changed when Max Cleland became its director in 1977, filming had already been completed. Ultimately, Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, interceded on behalf of the filmmakers. He saw the movie as “an American film about American boys who were heroes over there. The prisoners eventually escape, but have become addicted to the game and seek out the game at illegal gambling dens. As the vehicle for his explorations, Coppola selected John Milius’s six-year-old screenplay based on Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. In that sense, it was propaganda.”. Apart from objections to Lancaster’s language and drinking, which were compromisable matters, the Army pointed out that a man of his age and years in the military (a veteran of World War II and Korea) would have been promoted or have left the service. But clearly, the military wanted nothing to do with a film that conveyed the idea that Devane’s Vietnam experience contributed to his vengeful pursuit and carefully orchestrated slaughter of his son’s killers. These include Platoon, Born on the 4th of July, and Heaven and Earth. If the Army could ignore this message and give limited assistance to Heroes because it outwardly appeared to be a comedy, the armed forces have had a far more difficult time agreeing to cooperate on serious films dealing with the Vietnam experience. No such compromise was ever worked out between the Pentagon and Francis Coppola, despite his half-hearted efforts to obtain assistance while in the Philippines. When asked why he was attempting to show this in a film set in Vietnam, the director responded that it was “more unusual that I am the only one making a picture about Vietnam.”, In coming to the Pentagon with his plans in May 1975, Coppola told Public Affairs officials that his initial script would need considerable work, especially the end, which he considered “surrealistic.” While recognizing that the screenplay had considerable problems, the officials forwarded it to the Army with the recommendation that the service should work with the director so that the completed film “will be an honest presentation.”.

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