Episode Summary
In their fourth episode, three nerdy friends learn more about leeches before discussing the 1979 film Apocalypse Now. They also pause mid-episode for a much-needed leechy, beachy respite.
Episode Notes
After rollicking through another round of Leech Anatomy 101 (2:36), Aaron, Banks and Evan dive into Apocalypse Now’s leechiest themes (8:13), scenes (14:12), and characters (21:51). To get some relief, the guys head into their second Leech on a Beach segment (31:08). They conclude by considering the film’s medicinal qualities (33:04) and giving an overall rating -- from 1 to 4 -- of the film’s leechiness (39:57).
We’re always looking to expand our pond -- please reach out!
Series URL: www.theleechpodcast.com
Public email contact: theleechpodcast@gmail.com
Social Media:
@leechpodcast on Twitter
theleechpodcast on Instagram
Credits:
Hosted by Evan Cate, Banks Clark, and Aaron Jones
Editing by Evan Cate
Graphic design by Banks Clark
Original music by Justin Klump of Podcast Sound and Music
Production help from Lisa Gray of Sound Mind Productions
Equipment help from Topher Thomas
Episode Transcript
Evan 00:26
Hey everyone, welcome back to the Leech Podcast, the most visceral podcast. I'm your host Evan Cate, and I am joined by two leechy gentlemen, Aaron Jones and Banks Clark. Hey guys. The Leech Podcast, as always, is a show about movies that suck the life out of you. But they also stick with you. And they may even be good for you, like a leech. The three of us are three bleeding hearts who love films. And we all know that blood attracts leeches. We all used to teach together. And now we leech together. So welcome back, everybody. We have a great episode today about the film Apocalypse Now, which we will get into shortly. But before we do that, I just want to remind everybody that you can be in contact with us on Twitter, @leechpodcast, or on Instagram, theleechpodcast. Please send us your questions, your ideas, any ideas for new episodes, movies we should do. And, after this episode, we would love to hear a recording from our listeners of your best impression of an Aaron Jones laugh. So that, Aaron, I think that was your cue to give one of those laughs, but...
Aaron 01:51
I'm just gonna see what comes out in the episode. This is an uncontrollable... uncontrollable creature within me. Yeah.
Evan 01:59
Sorry. Sorry. Good point. So careful listeners will hear an Aaron Jones laugh I'm sure at some point, and are welcome to record themselves doing their best impression. Please, please share those with us.
Banks 02:13
Also, still looking for your recommendations for leechy cocktails. We've got some good ideas coming in. We want to get more and more because we want to try more and more.
Evan 02:24
That's right, indeed. Indeed. So let's get to it. We're gonna start with Leech Anatomy. And so, let's just go with this: Leech. Camera. Action.
Aaron 02:36
This is Aaron, reporting in from the field on leech anatomy. One question I asked myself is, what would a world without leeches be like? A sad world. So how is it that we get more leeches, which is why leech reproduction is the topic of today. The information I'm presenting comes from the Mountain Lake Biological Station at the University of Virginia. Their information on the freshwater leech. I'm reading here, it says, leeches reproduce in the spring -- this episode being recorded in May, it seems appropriate. Leeches are hermaphrodites, I read here, and reproduce through reciprocal fertilization. Let me say that one more time: reciprocal fertilization, in which quote, "both leeches become impregnated at the same time." [Wow.] Oh. "The mother leech," I'm quoting, "forms a tough gelatinous cocoon around the egg mass and attaches it to a hard object or buries it in the mud." No, wait, one last thing. "The cocoon contains all the nutrients the young leeches need to survive. The young emerge several weeks later." Good lord! So here you have here, folks, hermaphroditic creatures, reciprocal fertilization, strange egg cocoons that, like a chicken's egg, contain all the young chicks need to survive. They're born in the mud to fill the world with their goodness forever after. That's all for me.
Evan 04:10
That was beautiful. Thank you for sharing that. And that has been Leech Anatomy 101. Okay, so let's dive into this episode of Apocalypse Now. We're calling it ApocaLeech Now. [Woot!] Banks, what happened in this movie?
Banks 04:29
So before we get started with this, a quick spoiler warning: we're about to go into the plot. If you haven't seen the movie, it is well worth your time. For the diehard fans out there, you can do Apocalypse Now Redux, and I don't even know -- that movie is exceptionally long. Apocalypse Now is already like three hours plus; I think the Redux version is like five. It's also a, just general content warning, as well. This is a movie that definitely deals with a lot of violence. It's also a lot of adult themes that deals with a lot of like PTSD and mental health issues. So just want to make sure we're putting that out there, since this is probably an episode we're going to be talking about some of that because it really looks at it in with a lot of depth, for sure. All right, let's go up. Let's start going up this river, shall we? This is a movie that starts with us meeting Captain Benjamin Willard, played by Martin Sheen. And we meet him in his hotel room, not on the battlefield, but clearly still bearing the memories of the battlefield. Still very much carrying the pain, the memory, the post-traumatic stress. And we have this splicing of battle imagery with the Doors with the fan with helicopter blades. And it's this powerful scene where he's clearly in pain, clearly suffering, and yet, he cannot wait to get back to the fight. He gets his wish. He gets an assignment to go and to find the sort of very enigmatic, very elusive character named Kurtz. Colonel Walter E. Kurtz. Who is this apparently AWOL officer who has since collected this following of people who are sort of worshipping him, almost like a cult, up in Cambodia. So past even the borders of Vietnam. And so Willard needs to -- is supposed to go upstream in a boat and find him and eliminate him. And he takes the offer. And so this is a story of him sort of going up river, learning more and more about Kurtz as he gets more mail. And then having these strange encounters, including an encounter with a certain Lieutenant Bill Kilgore, played by Robert Duvall, who is this cowboy who, you know, takes helicopters into battle with surfboards, playing Ride of the Valkyries and Wagner. You know, they go to bridges, they meet different characters as they move upstream. And as they do, sort of the movie starts to almost unravel in terms of its plot; the sense of the mission, the sense of assignment, starts to go away. And you're just sort of left more confused about the purpose of the war and to the point where Kurtz is finally shown to us and we're they finally reaches this destination. You still don't ever get to meet Kurtz. He stays in the shadows. He's this very elusive character. And Martin Sheen is not a soldier anymore, in a certain sense. He's just at his wit's end. And the whole purpose of sort of military-- sort of this whole purpose of this being a military movie has kind of gone. And you're wondering what, what happened to the plot? That's what I'm wondering by the end of this! And the movie ends in this profound climax, as there's a ceremony where a water buffalo is sacrificed, just as Willard takes with the sort of the same machete -- goes and kills Kurtz. And there the movie ends. And you're sort of left with all of these pieces that are just sort of disjointed, but also tell a story that is weirdly relatable. At least for me. That's Apocalypse Now. Or ApocaLeech Now. Let's talk about some apocaleech themes.
Evan 08:13
Yeah, it is a very strange movie. We'll try to unpack a lot of those scenes and characters. So Banks, since you've just walked us through what happened in the film, I wonder if you could start us off with a theme that is leechy in this movie for you.
Banks 08:27
So in the end, this is a movie that it's a, it's a story about a journey for me, and so like journeying. But it's a very interesting kind of journey, because this isn't a journey so much to a destination as it's a journey unto an unraveling for me. I have no idea where this story even ends; it just ends. So as I think I was alluding to when I was describing the plot, you have a real sense of purpose at the start of this movie: we're going on a mission, right? There's this sense of organization and it's -- you see the horrors of war and you see these things that're very difficult to to watch, but it's like, okay, there's sort of this military purpose, perhaps even a sense of misled heroism at times, but also this genuine feeling of "this is why we're doing it." But as the movie goes on, that just starts to not make sense. It just starts to be about just the inhumanity and the oddity and the arbitrariness of violence. And in the end, these end scenes -- all those initial narratives of purpose and structure are more or less gone. And so yes, there's this journey into, you know, of sort of this -- into the darkness of Cambodia, into the darkness of war, but also just into the darkness of a very troubled mind, of what might be called trauma and into a deeply hurt psychology. And I think that that journey element, if I have to find a theme that is powerful, that's what I look to.
Evan 10:03
Yeah. And I think, to build off that a little bit, and maybe -- you know, for me, this theme is about being trapped. That's the one that comes out to me. And I think part of -- I wonder if part of the deterioration in the journey has to do with the various kinds of traps people find themselves in. I think about the characters on the boat with Willard and Chef and Clean. And over the course of this journey, each of them begins to lose track of reality, begins to lose track of what is okay, even -- their moral compass -- in different ways for each man. And there's something, I think, about the boat and being confined in that space -- surrounded of course, by war -- but being in that boat somehow amplifies the chaos. I mean, I think about Willard ending up in the temple with Kurtz, and again, he's enigmatic, like you said. He, Kurtz, he says some things, they don't seem to make sense. He has some books are lying around. It's very difficult to understand what it all means. And yet Willard is imprisoned there? Question mark? And then he leaves, but comes backm and murders Kurtz. And, and then that just kind of brings me even back to the beginning of the film, where Willard himself is in this apartment. And we'll talk about this in a little bit more detail in a minute, but I think he's in there, and he's, he's drunk, he's becomes violent, causes himself harm. And he himself seems to be trapped within his own mind, within his own memories. And so it's too simplistic to say being trapped is what causes this descent into chaos and madness. But I do think these traps -- the film is playing with those again and again and again.
Aaron 11:59
Yeah, I'm interested in this idea of this being a journey. As watching a journey toward trauma. Like there's been a lot of -- like we step into the story, where a lot of that has already taken place. We're midway through, in media res, through a process of like an entirely trauma-filled war, and narrative. But like we're journeying toward the heart of trauma, toward the Heart of Darkness, so to speak. And where there's like this, like the pulsing heart of like, where does this, where does this journey lead? This place of like ceremonial destruction?
Banks
Hmm.
Aaron
And I'm intrigued by that. And I think for me, like, I'm interested in the certain forms of escape. That's my theme is these certain forms of escape that people try to enact, as they find themselves pulled deeper and deeper toward that core. And I'm really interested in the scene where not only do people seek escape, but those -- the powers that be -- try and engineer forms of escape and escapism by providing entertainments for the boys. And when the ship that Willard is on stops at the fueling station, where the Playboy playmates have been invited. And we see the helicopter descend with the Playboy bunny insignia on the side and the women are dancing. And now it's like the men are going wild. And for me, like, as I watch, the men storm the stage, there's this wild urgency. And that scene, like, it holds onto me, because literally, they're -- one of the soldiers at the end of the scene is desperately clinging to the helicopter, as the women are whisked away from these maddened soldiers. Someone is just clinging to the helicopter, so desperate for whatever it is these women represent, which is some escape from this descent. This ever-gravitating pull toward the traumatic core of the film and the experience that they're trapped in. This trap and attempted to escape.
Evan 14:12
Powerful. It's a powerful scene, and maybe that's a good segue into our leechiest scenes. So I'll start us off with the opening scene, which Banks described well in the introduction. I think this scene sticks with me because of the vulnerability that I see in Willard. He seems broken from the minute you see him. He's drinking, you know that he's a soldier -- you can only, like it is in media res, so you can only imagine what he's been through. And then, alongside that, Francis Ford Coppola is playing the Doors, and there's the wowhirringrrying of the, of the fan, like a helicopter whirring. And so visually and in audio, they're taking you back into the war, but he's in this apartment. Or he's in this room. So you see that the war hasn't left him; he's still very much living it. And then you see the -- what comes from that, which is, he keeps drinking. He starts dancing around and he punches a mirror and his hand becomes bloody. And by the end of the scene, he's basically naked on the floor, blood all over himself, and eventually passed out. And this scene just sticks with me. What a strange way to start a movie. Right? It starts with trauma. And, and it's going to go even further into that. But that scene, I just, I just can't get it out of my head.
Banks 15:48
It's almost like there's this -- to get to the leechiest part - it's almost like there's this trauma. And the journey is almost to root out the heart of it. [Hmm.] Discussions can be had if that's what the movie achieves in the end. But there is that feeling for sure.
Aaron 16:07
I think this kind of leads me toward my leechiest scene, which is sort of seeing -- if this film is partly a journey of deterioration, and an increasing sense of confinement that the soldiers have in this experience: what sorts of explosive and deadly consequences can that have? And for me, the leechiest scene is the one where Willard is on the boat with his escort. And Chief Phillips, who pilots the boat, who's really committed to military protocol, they see a civilian ship, just a little little boat of Vietnamese who are carrying what it looks like is supplies for the market. But they have to inspect the boat, according to policy, even though Willard says, please don't, don't do this. But now it's probably a military duty to inspect the boat. And in this moment, your stomach -- you have a sinking feeling, like, this movie is so claustrophobic: all of this energy here is negative, dark energy and it's going to explode and be unleashed somewhere. And who's it going to be unleashed upon? And you have to watch as this moment intensifies to the point where one of the soldiers, Clean, snaps and guns down everyone on the boat in cold blood -- just goes totally mad. Totally insane. He just shoots down [gun sounds] every person on the boat. And then, as if that wasn't enough, the scene gets worse, where the one wounded survivor kind of hurries to the back of the boat to protect something. And you find out it's just a puppy. Like she, who herself is innocent, tries in her dying breath, to save that which is helpless and innocent. And when the soldiers are horrified by what they've done, attempt to think about resuscitating her, getting her medical care....Willard has no time for it. He just shoots her point blank. The lone survivor -- just shoots her down. They take the puppy and they go. And all they can do after that moment is just sort of shrug it off and keep going. Like keep following the pulse of the heart, the gravity, the gravitational pull. And it's the sort of... the madness of that moment. The horror of that violence. The explosive nature of pent up trauma they met. That scene won't leave me; that scene will trouble me for a long time.
Banks 18:53
It's a really hard scene. I mean, it's -- one of the interesting things is that's the only scene where Willard ever fires his gun. [Wow.] The only time in the whole movie. An interesting thing is my leechiest scene actually comes right after Aaron's. You know, one of the interesting things is that this, for a long while, I would always say Apocalypse Now was my favorite movie. And this is when I was, you know, end of high school/start of college. When I really like fancied myself to be like a really smart person with movies. That's what I wanted to tell everyone was my favorite movie so they like felt like it. And like, I didn't know anything. I probably like, if I was honest, I would have said like Star Wars or something. And I watch it now, and I say, I don't know what the heck I was talking about. I had no idea what this movie was, I couldn't trace any of these themes. But there might be one exception for me, and that's the scene of the Do Lung Bridge, and it stuck with me then. And still today, if I ever think about this movie, it's the images of this scene that stick with me. And this is the scene where they, the boat is riding up to this bridge at night. And the bridge is not a bridge. This is supposedly like the last holdout of US troops in Vietnam. And all that's left of the bridge is like this string of Christmas lights and there are flares firing overhead and tracers and flashes of light and almost like fireworks. You know, men are like crawling the river trying to get on them. And so you know, Willard and Lance end up getting out of the boat to try and find the commanding officer to get fuel. And Lance, who has dropped acid, just to make it more surreal, you know, puts a puppy -- puts this puppy from Aaron's scene -- in his jacket. He is walking around with a puppy. While there are soldiers around crying, you can hear, you know, cries of pain in the distance. Men are shooting at --you can't really tell, they might be shooting at nothing. Are they shooting against their own demons? You don't even know. And it's just this surreal scene that all of a sudden, nothing is making sense. Right after an event -- like everything to this point has been, you know, a movie budget that's been through the roof to try and create this military epic. And Francis Coppola at this point says no, we're going for now, like, surrealist metaphors. I think it's just really powerful because it's unexpected. And for me, it's this hinge on which the movie sort of swings from a war movie into a movie that has unraveled. It's an unraveling of a mental states, the unraveling of a lot of the plot that you were expecting. It's a swing into what could be called madness. But it's also -- the imagery is just fascinating. And I just, I can't shake it off. Haven't been able to my whole life. Leechiest scene.
Evan 21:51
It is really memorable. And it feels like a carnival almost. [They play the carnival music.] Yeah, very absurd. Scary in a way, and also utterly pointless, right? I think they say that every day, they take back the bridge; or every day, they're fighting over the same bit of territory. And nothing is ever gained, nothing's really ever lost. But they keep fighting. And the band plays on. [Yeah.] So there's some characters we've named so far. And I wonder if we could really dig into these leechy figures. Aaron, do you have one in mind?
Aaron 22:27
Yeah, let me jump in. I think my character kind of follows... This scene that Banks just talked about is this scene of kind of maximum turbulence. And I think emotionally the film is, is pretty turbulent. At a lot of points in the film, I'm not sure what I'm supposed to feel. But there's this one moment of clarity for me that -- with one specific character --that kind of gives me an anchor of pathos that, I don't know, it just makes this character really leechy for me. And it's -- the character is Clean. Tyrone Miller, that's played by young Laurence Fishburne. The one who, in the scene that I described, he guns down the innocent people who are on the riverboat and... But at the moment -- it's the scene of his death that really, that really makes this character stick with me because he's one of the youngest, most boyish-looking characters in the movie and on the boat. And to watch him become this, like, enact these kind of monstrous forms of violence, and then -- the way that they do his death is so troubling, so troubling. He receives a voice recording, receives a voice recording from his mother, who is reaching out and trying to find some way to reach him and talk to him and, and wish him well and tell him to be safe. And it's this moment of, of humanity and sanity and home. And it's at that moment, as that recording is being explored, that the boat is ambushed. Clean attempts to like shoot back at these -- whoever's ambushing them in the woods -- and he dies as the recording plays on and tells him to stay safe and stay out of the way of the bullets. And for me, like, I never, I never in the film care about Willard that much. Because Willard I never get to know. About his family or his people or a home that's waiting for him. But because Clean has a home -- he has love waiting for him and we see it taken away. He sticks with me. Thats like, that pain, that pathos is leechy for me.
Banks 24:52
Mmm.
Evan 24:54
Yeah, he's such a memorable character. Especially as someone, like you said, who's so young and sort of at the bottom of the military hierarchy. For me, the leechy character is perhaps an obvious choice. It's Kilgore, the Robert Duvall character who's higher up on the hierarchy. Very memorable character, has probably the most famous line in the film: "I love the smell of napalm in the morning." [Aww yeah. Wow.] Couldn't not drop that quote. I think what -- and this is probably not a new idea -- but I think what sticks with me about him is this combination of being quintessentially American, right? And that [Oh, yeah.] it's this: he uses the technological superiority, the military tactical superiority, he uses a classic of Western music as part of his attack. This is Western civilization, in the body of Kilgore, attacking this Vietnamese beach. And all he really wants to do is surf. That's all he's talking about the whole time. It's funny, and yet absurd. And they are going to slaughter the Vietnamese folks there. And, and I think that the juxtaposition of his power, his humor, but also the brutality, I think, is Coppola's way of highlighting: this is, this is America in this moment. Yes, they have all the wealth. Yes, they have the advantages. Yes, they're sort of fun and boyish and cowboy. Like he's a cowboy, right? [Oh, yeah.] And this is sort of a western frontier [He has the hat.] and they're subduing the lands of these native peoples, right? But it's utterly banal. He just wants to surf. And, and there's, there's something so just tragic and revelatory about it. You know, I think about this film called Apocalypse Now -- apocalypse in the sense of revelation -- there is something revealed about America in the body of Kilgore. But the only other thing I would say is that his men -- the white guys, mostly -- but his men love him. And he builds a kind of community around his body, right? Remember the scene before they ambushed the beach, they're all sitting around the fire and they're like draped around him. So there's a community that he offers in this cowboy, fun, absurdist mystique that is also premised on violence and destruction of Vietnamese bodies. I just can't get that, that figure out of my mind.
Aaron 27:44
Oh and there's such a sense that he's like invincible, too. [Oh, yeah.] As those shells go off around him, and as bullets fly, he stands proudly erect, and [He's not worried!] fearless. Nothing can touch him.
Banks 28:01
He just wants to surf, fly his helicopter, and play his Wagner. Yeah, I think that my choice for leechiest character is, I think, also perhaps an easy one. I think that, in my opinion, the whole movie is kind of built around making this person stick with you, make you interested in them -- and the movie never gives you an answer. That's the person of Kurtz. I think that the movie introduces Kurtz as an enigma. And up to the last line, where Marlon Brando utters "The horror, the horror," you really don't get to know him. He speaks in cryptic phrases and half-spun poems. And he also has built this community around him of almost something like a cult of people who worship him. And you don't ever get to know him, really. He has some things to say that are very lucid and seem insightful. And then other things that he says make him sound like a sociopath. And then he says...and he's this figure that you seek out the entire film, and you cannot wait to know him -- you've been sitting here for three hours. I'm like, I wanna meet Kurtz! And then you meet him, but you never get to see him. Half the shots the man is entirely in shadow. It's like you're not allowed to even see him. You're not allowed to hear his full thoughts. And the mystique that's built around him makes him all the more appealing, which is, I think what they're trying to inspire and show from Willard's point of view. As he reads more of these letters, he wants to get to know him more and more, and is drawn to him more and more. And so for me, I think Kurtz is the leechiest.
Aaron 30:02
There's something about, something about Kurtz. He is sort of the... he is the... he's the full violence of the Vietnam War detached from the propaganda machine that wants to justify it. And to make it have a moral heart. I'm interested in this and he gives this long monologue, this speech. At the end of the speech, he says, "You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time, who are able to utilize their primordial instinct to kill without feeling, without passion, without judgment. Without judgment, because it's judgment that defeats us." And so I think that Kurtz is this... he is super enigmatic, and he's deeply symbolic, because he detaches from the hierarchy and kind of takes away the relationship to politics, and is just interested in like the pure meaning of violence. [Yeah.]
Evan 31:08
Well, on that note, I think we should take a commercial break. So please stick with us for our next segment of Leech on a Beach, brought to you by Banks.
Banks 31:26
Well this Leech on a Beach scene is brought to you by the one, the only Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore. And his need to surf literally on the beach. I don't know what it says about me and how heartless I can be at times that I find the scene to be utterly hilarious at times. I just think, [Oh!] you know, Robert Duvall just commits 100% to this character and delivers. And I just think it's... I mean, he's, they're flying in, you know, they're playing music and they have surfboards where machine guns could be. They are like coming out and I think that it's awful and heartless and yet, I think it's, it's also just a genuinely funny scene. And I don't know what that says about American views of humor, or about Americans' senses of humor, but Geez, like, I can't help a laugh at it. I mean, they have bullets flying, and then like Kilgore was like, "If I say it's safe to surf on this beach, Captain, then it's safe to serve on the beach!" And then a napalm strike, just like clears out the whole thing. And so I don't know, Leech on a Beach. It's absurd. It's so absurd. And yeah, it's surfing in the middle of a war film. I mean, who else would think that that would make a great idea. Right? [Yeah.] So we give it to Francis Coppola, right?
Evan 33:04
It is a stunning scene. In so many ways. All right. Well, that's been our segment of Leech on a Beach. Thank you, Banks. Now back to our regularly scheduled program. All right, welcome back from Leech on a Beach. We are now going to talk about the medicinal qualities of this film. The hirudotherapy. [Hmm.] The ways in which this film is sticking with us, in a good way. Banks.
Banks 33:38
I think like there is a positive read that you can give to this film. You know, I think, you know, Evan, your favorite scene, right? Or not favorite scene -- your leechiest scene, right, of meeting this deeply troubled man, who is already broken. One read on this is this is that you can look at this movie as a journey to try and remove "the horror, the horror" that is at his own heart. [Mm hmm.] Right, you can read this entire movie as a psychological metaphor. For like these, perhaps -- It's almost like different ways of coping, or something, or all of these different scenes and characters and mechanisms that he's used. In the end, getting to Kurtz is like getting to, you know, the heart of his pain. And much like, you know, a devil or a demon in medieval iconography, you don't ever get to see it. In medieval iconography, often the, the devil was never actually portrayed, it was just negative space, it was just a blank part. And in some ways, that's how Coppola portrays Kurtz: literally, with the lighting, you don't ever get to see him. And maybe this is an attempt of trying to root out, search out, shine a light on the thing that troubles us most. And it's in that sense, maybe some healing can be found in trying to seek that out.
Aaron 35:07
I think as I think about the film, its therapeutic qualities, I think, for me, there are three. And I will say them briefly. The first is that I think, for me, this film cultivates empathy. I live in a country and community -- I live one block or two blocks away from a Veterans Hospital where people, a lot of people, are processing either long term health consequences from from this war or traumas from this war. One of my dearest college professor friends, her husband died early of cancer because of his exposure to napalm and chemicals used in Vietnam warfare. And so there's a way in which that experience is so far from my experience. And, and this film, in a way, helps me, gives me some empathy, I think, for the trauma that I see in it. I think this film also, a hirudotherapy quality of it is it sort of forces us to ask questions about the righteousness of war -- and any kind of moral heart to war and conflict of this kind. And lastly, I honestly think, beyond even asking us questions, I think that this film provides us a much-needed condemnation. A condemnation that is cathartic of, for the viewer, about the kinds of things/horrors that were perpetrated in the war. And to see that condemnation so vividly portrayed in the film is -- that's, I think that's therapeutic, in a way.
Evan 36:41
Yeah, that's great. Just to, what you said about being by the VA hospital, Aaron, reminded me actually of the...I did a chaplain residency for a summer at that hospital. Through meeting with veterans from Vietnam, and reading a book about, about the experiences of Vietnam veterans, and PTSD, and their lives after the war, I learned about this idea of the berserk state. And the book that we read was called Achilles in Vietnam, by Jonathan Shays. It's a very powerful book, strongly recommend it. And it's interesting to think about that book in light of this film, in that it's using a different epic, right, the epic with Achilles and his story of experiencing war, experiencing the chaos of it. And one of the really important points of that book is that, when this hero goes through this chaotic experience of war, and watches, maybe a righteous friend die, or just the randomness and the arbitrariness of the war -- it destroys their entire moral compass. Things that they thought were just obviously right suddenly seem wrong. And folks who seem wrong live. Everything gets turned upside down. And out of that loss of a moral compass or out of the loss of a moral universe, it becomes possible for that hero or that person to then, in another instance of war, to become triggered. And this leads to what Shays describes as the berserk state, where they sort of lose all moorings to reality, to morality, maybe to God or a higher power -- and horrible atrocities are committed. And I think this film, visually, sonically, narratively captures the descent into the berserk states through various stages of the moral universe of these characters being destroyed. What they narrated as the moral life no longer makes sense. They don't have a new story to tell. And instead, they kind of can't help but go berserk. And I think I think this film, like, gives me images for the things I read to go along with the stories that I was told when I was in that experience.
Aaron 39:13
Wow. Yes.
Banks 39:15
That's also the story of the making of the film itself in so many ways. In order to tell a story that can go into that...You know, jeez, Francis Coppola just about drove himself mad, and broke, making this film. They shot so much... I don't even know how much like film they went through in the shooting, but way more than could ever be put into a movie. So much so that it took like, I don't know how long, like years to even edit it. It's, you know, it's almost as if you had these fragmented stories that they didn't even know how to put together. And what we got was a movie that shouldn't have worked, but it ends up telling a story that we can oddly connect with.
Evan 39:57
Yeah, yeah, that's right. So maybe to build on that. How would we rate this movie 1 to 4 leeches? Anybody have a strong, strong feeling on a rating?
Aaron 40:08
Let me see here. I think Banks is the person who's seen this movie the most. [Probably true.] The first time I saw it, I saw it -- I've only seen it twice. We re-watched it recently -- But the first time I saw it was a couple years ago when a local theater -- the Carolina Theater -- played it on the big screen. And I saw it. Yeah, big shout out to the Carolina Theater of Durham. I saw it on the big screen with a friend and, in that context, when the film was enormous. I found it really engrossing. And when the film was on a small screen, the last 30 to 45 minutes I could hardly stay awake through, honestly. It...
Evan 40:50
Wow, you don't have to, you don't have to make fun of my TV like that, Aaron.
Aaron 40:53
I didn't say, I didn't say it was your TV. The screen was painfully small!
Evan 41:01
I've gotten a bigger TV since then, so it's okay.
Aaron 41:03
It was difficult to see images at all. Yes. No, that's not the point! That's not the point! My point is that it didn't, it didn't grip me. I started to doze off -- the film for me started to become incoherent. [The leech fell off, huh?] The leech released! And didn't like hold on the whole time. Like... and so for me I'm, as we... I think I would have started out this conversation maybe as a single leech. I'm gonna go up to two leeches because of the ways that we've discussed it together. I'm motivated: Okay, I think this film does stick with me. But it doesn't hold on to me. It doesn't grip me the way that I want a leechy film to grip. [Mm hmm.] Come on leech! Grip! Grip. That's what I got: two leeches.
Banks 41:58
Grip, like your life depends on it! (Because it does...) I think when I'm thinking about a number of leeches for this film, you know, I've definitely seen it once or twice. When I was younger, I would have said "4 and I'll fight anybody who disagrees with me." Other times like I probably would have said that was just silly. I don't know, I woulda given it like one or two. But seeing it again, watching it with fresh eyes and a new appreciation, I think that there are some scenes that really are pretty remarkable. And I think that this movie does have a lot to offer. I'm going to give it three leeches.
Evan 42:36
Okay, three. [Three.] Aaron, you were at two?
Aaron 42:39
Mm hmm.
Evan 42:41
I think I'm, I think I'm gonna go two, as well. I think for a while I was at one. But, that was, I think that was too harsh. There are, like you said, Banks, so many scenes that are memorable, indelible. So many quotes that are just in our cultural lexicon. [Yeah.] And I, but I think that's also part of why, for me, the film -- I feel a distance from it. I think it's in part because so much of the literature that I've read about the Vietnam War, and so many of the movies I've watched that are about war, or are set in war times, I think were profoundly shaped by this movie. So it's hard to imagine a war film after Apocalypse Now not echoing it, or nodding at it in some way. And I think the sort of general gist of this movie, which is like, this war was absurd. It was terrible. It was morally bankrupt on the American part especially, it descended into madness and chaos. All those things we've talked about. I think that's just like, that's how I learned about the Vietnam War. And so I think, when it came out, it was probably so subversive and staggering, and would really hit you in a way that -- maybe because of its success -- it didn't quite hit me the same way when I watched it for the first time in 2021. [Right?] So that's not the film's fault. That's not the film's fault. In a way it's a victim of its own success. But for me, personally, as I watched it, I felt that distance. So I'm at two leeches.
Aaron 44:23
I love looking at it through that historical lens. And I'm so curious, I'd love to hear from listeners, too, who've seen the film, to respond to this question: Do we feel like the film kind of like holds together? Or whether it's a kind of a series of pieces that, by the end, are not more than the sum of their parts in some way? That's, that's my concern about it as a piece of art. Independent of this kind of this deeply important history that we're referring to, as a piece of art, like, does it hang and hold together? And I'm, I'm not sure. I'm still figuring out the answer to that question. Because it feels like fragments of this movie blow my mind. But does the movie itself stick with me, leech on me, in a way that I want? I'm not sure.
Banks 45:14
It's hard to follow the story. By the end, people, I think, argue still about, like, the nature of this ending. Because it's not an ending. It just ends. And there's a difference.
Evan 45:36
Yeah, well, I think for me, some of it connects back to Kurtz. I think a lot of this movie hinges on whether you think -- how you interpret Kurtz, I think, says a lot about where you think the film ends up. He is enigmatic, but I kind of found myself by the end -- and again, I've only seen it one time. So you know, I probably should go back and watch it a few more times -- but I just kind of thought, well, I don't really get what he's about. And I, I like the juxtaposition of killing the water buffalo. And at the same time, I mean, that move. I mean, Coppola does the same thing in the Godfather, you know? This act of utter, brutal violence, coupled with a sort of religious rite, or ceremony, which I think is visually and intellectually interesting; and yet, I didn't, I still don't know if I know what was being said with it. So then the movie left me with this weird unsettling. I mean, which maybe is the point -- maybe that's the point.
Banks 46:34
What's this metaphor for?
Aaron 46:37
Because usually, I mean, a sacrifice is done to appease. I think there's probably two meanings of sacrifice, right? One is to create a scapegoat, which is to sort of take that which is troubled or wrong in oneself or one's community into, sort of map it onto the anima and kill the animal -- and therefore kill that thing that is wrong or troubled. Or a sacrifice is meant to appease something, to appease an angry God or to, to please or feed some kind of hungry thing. And I'm... for something that seems almost like this act is an act that Willard needs in some way. This is about his own salvation. This is about enacting something that will somehow cleanse him or take that which has been troubled and restore it by destroying kind of his shadow, which is Kurtz. I don't know. I'm speculating. I think that's all that the movie lets me do, is just speculate.
Banks 47:46
That said, the modernists amongst us would say, that's -- the fact that it invites such things is better than one that just gives it to you outright. We shall debate and the debate shall continue. So please, viewers, we want to know what you think. Which is it? Is it worth all the extra effort to come up with the answer ourselves? Or should a good story actually do a little bit more effort to help us along the way?
Evan 48:18
It's a great question. If you would like to respond to that, please go on Twitter to @leechpodcast and on Instagram, theleechpodcast. Also please do send us your audio recordings of your Aaron Jones laugh -- there were plenty of lovely examples in this episode to choose from. And in honor of Apocalypse Now, we will be recording three different versions of this that we will release every decade. [The redux! the redux!]
Banks 48:54
That one is going to be five hours long. It is going to include so much laughter of Aaron Jones. It will also include Evan Cate singing the opera part to Flight of the Valkyries.
Evan 49:11
So yes, please stay tuned and we'd love your input. Thanks again for listening to the Leech Podcast, the most visceral podcast. This episode was hosted by Evan Cate, Banks Clark and Aaron Jones. Editing by Evan Cate. Graphic designed by Banks Clark. Original Music by Justin Klump of Podcast Sound and Music. Production helped by Lisa Gray of Sound Mind Productions. And equipment help and consultation from Topher Thomas.