There are some major omissions in my movie-viewing history, and one of them is "Apocalypse Now." Never saw it in its first release, never got around to renting the video. I mean, c'mon, who's ever really in the mood to rent a 2 3/4 hour war movie? But the Redux version showed up on Saturday night on Showtime and so Kathleen and I plunked down to watch it.
Sure didn't feel like 3 and a half hours. Only problem was, I was constantly distracted by considerations that original viewers didn't have to deal with. There's the "My God, he's so young" upon seeing Martin Sheen, who looked a lot like Charlie Sheen back then but sounded the way he does now. Not to mention the incredibly youthful Harrison Ford, Robert Duvall, etc. Then there's the, "Oh, I remember this parody" phenomenon. "Hot Shots" sent up Sheen's voice over and cruise down the river, "Xena" riffed on Sheen's mud-covered face coming up out of the water, and there's the immortal "Buffy" episode with Principal Snyder in the Brando role and Xander as Sheen. After Brando said the line about Sheen being an errand boy, I kept waiting for Sheen to grimace and say, "I'm getting a cramp."
Great movie, but boy, do you bring a lot of baggage to it if you've never seen it before.
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Posted by Peter David at May 13, 2002 12:27 AM | TrackBack | Other blogs commentingHey!
The same happened to me! I can so relate. Fortunately I have a friend who's a movie critic where I occasionally reside in Stockholm, Sweden who grabbed my arm and forced me to go have a looksee at Redux on a big screen. Incredible movie!
And, hey, while I'm here. You are one of my top ten comic book writers. You've made me cry! (Hulk #420) You've made me laugh! (List toooo long.) Thank YOU!
Hey!
The same happened to me! I can so relate. Fortunately I have a friend who's a movie critic where I occasionally reside in Stockholm, Sweden who grabbed my arm and forced me to go have a looksee at Redux on a big screen. Incredible movie!
And, hey, while I'm here. You are one of my top ten comic book writers. You've made me cry! (Hulk #420) You've made me laugh! (List toooo long.) Thank YOU!
There's a lot of movies like that...I saw "Casablanca" about two years ago, and the experience was very similar. And unfortunately I knew the "secret" of "Citizen Kane" long before I actually saw the picture.
Heck, even reading Shakespeare is a constant surprise at lines that have become common sayings...
I saw this version in the theater during the third week of September last year, and it was a lot more powerful because of that than it would have been the month before. In the theater, I was so swept into the world that Coppala created, it wasn't until afterwards that the things you talked about hit me. I haven't seen it on TV yet, and I don't think I want to...this is one of the few movies that you really need to see on a screen for it to fully hit you.
And this is also one of the very very few cases where the director going back and fixing things was a good idea. It brought meaning to a lot of the scenes that seemed to go nowhere, gave an emotional context to the movie that wasn't there before and didn't make you think that the film crew as finding stuff on the floor and adding it in to get you to see it again.
For me, it's the problem I have with watching any Monty Python stuff...I have heard so many people use the punch lines that it isn't as funny as it would be if I was coming to it fresh.
And Charlie Don't Surf.