What's your take on how your films and projects have translated to home video over the years?
My term of my activity in my profession included the creation of the home video market, which is what it was called in those days, and I recall touring with some fellow who was the head of this new department at Paramount when they made the first Godfather collection, when I saw the beginning of the deluxe video market. And DVD was the next step in that. I think Blu-ray is a stunning level of quality, so I've seen it go from Betamax to VHS to laser disc, all of these technological revolutions. But with DVD has come this notion of extras and commentaries and many other things which the public seems to expect.
There are some filmmakers - Woody Allen, at least - who still refuse to record commentaries, and other filmmakers wrestle with whether or not they want to do any kind of digital clean-up on their films when they go to DVD. How do you approach it?
Obviously, the commentary notion is almost a fact of life, and it is a pleasure if you're on the other side. At first when it all happened, I thought, What are all these activities, why would I want to sit there for three hours and go through it again? But I think this idea was pioneered by the Criterion Collection, and since then I've seen the value of it and now it's just part of the job of bringing it to the public. In addition, the folks who have invested in these beautiful wide-screen televisions, the 1080p true high-definition, a film like Apocalypse Now, I feel, is really for them an opportunity to try out their system and really see what the picture can really look like and extraordinary sound can sound like on their systems. I'm really optimistic about this new edition of Apocalypse on Blu-Ray, it's really stunning.
I watched it with a tech-geek friend who has a souped-up home theater, and he was really impressed. I think this DVD pushed some limits he hadn't seen yet on his set-up. What are some of your favorite commentaries from other filmmakers?
I haven't really listened to a lot of commentaries at this point. Unfortunately, a couple of the commentaries I'd really like to listen to are from filmmakers that are long gone. And instead you have commentaries from professional commentary-makers, the whole collection of historians and journalists who comment on the film. But I'm interested in any of the documentaries they have about [Henri-Georges] Clouzot or any of these great figures, and although it's not specifically made for that edition... Actually, I'm always struck by the fact that some of these masterpieces that you think just came down from heaven all perfectly made, and you realize what doubts and struggles they went through, and how they were hanging on by their fingernails. It's sort of heartening to realize that that's just part of the process.
The struggles of the process of making Apocalypse Now are very much a part of the film's legend -- whereas if you could have faked a lot of the things they can fake now, it would have been a very different shoot.
Well, the struggle is part of it. And in the case of my movies, I always try to identify early on what I thought the theme was, preferably in one word, and let that be my guiding light for what the style was. And in the case of Apocalypse, I think the process of throwing myself into such a difficult production scheme without the benefit of the modern effects... But then, you know, people who see a lot of extraordinary things on CGI, they know the difference, and there's a big difference. You could have faked a lot on Apocalypse Now, and in fact that was the film that made me think long and hard about the fact that there's got to be a better way to do this. A lot of our efforts brought about the revolution in digital filmmaking. You know, I saw recently saw Patton, because they asked me, oddly enough, to do a commentary because everyone else was dead, and that was filmmaking where they really did it all, and there is a big difference.
As one director told me, "I'd rather have one Chewbacca than a thousand clone armies."
I am totally convinced that the CGI technique can be used in a way that doesn't just get written off by the audience, that does extraordinary things but in a way because it's true cinema, which is to say using metaphor or direction. [...] It's not the tool that's dangerous, it's the way that it's used, and that all goes back to the mentality of why the movie was made. I believe that if a movie is made, number one, to make money, it's not of much interest to me. Basically, the other happens, but I believe films have to be made because they're personal or because you are searching for an answer to some question in your life that you can only arrive at through the making of that film.
Since it owes so much to the famously difficult making of Apocalypse Now, I'm curious what you thought about Tropic Thunder.
Well, it was funny, you know. I like Ben Stiller and I love Robert Downey, Jr., and I saw that the entire film was based on our experience. My feeling is that, in my career, I always looked to the films that came before me and know that they want you to rip them off, because that's the purpose of art - you see something and you try to do something like that, and of course you can't, so little by little you get your own voice. So equally, you know, I've been inspired and liked to copy a lot of wonderful films. And I know those filmmakers want me to because that makes them immortal, and certainly Ben Stiller and those guys were obviously affected or impressed or in some way inspired by Apocalypse Now and the process of making the film that they went and did their comedy. I thought it was funny.
You went back to the original, longer cut of the film for Apocalypse Now Redux, and you retooled The Outsiders for DVD. Are there other films in your catalog you'd like to take back to the editing room?
I don't have a lot of films that I'd love to get my hands on, but I look at my early films that aren't even of enough importance that anyone would want me to do it - I didn't cut Finian's Rainbow in the final form; I was 22 years old with a big movie, and I went off to make The Rain People because I wasn't completely comfortable with the studio system. I'd love to get my hands on that for a couple of days to make the cut shorter. But no one cares about Finian's Rainbow or some of those pictures, so... The little film I made for New York Stories got cut way down to accommodate the other two films, I thought I was sort of unfairly pressured to do that. There were some darker parts of that fairy tale that balanced it, and they were taken out and it was made into a little comedy. I'd love to put those eight minutes back, but they're not of any importance, so I don't know that it's a big thing for me. Obviously, Cotton Club got mutilated when it came out, and the whole story of the African-American brothers got cut out, but I don't think these films... It's not on my mind, let me put it that way.
The extras on this new Apocalypse Now set are so extensive, about the only things I could think of that aren't there are the Apocalypse-themed episode of Saturday Night Live you co-hosted in the '80s, and the sketch Martin Sheen did about the movie when he hosted back in the '70s.
When the first Apocalypse Now Blu-ray came out, a lot of aficionados got bent out of shape because Hearts of Darkness wasn't included. But that's not part of the film, technically, and the rights situation often in these things is very complicated. I did eventually put it in because ultimately I was able to control the rights. Every time you do one of these things, there's a whole bunch of permissions to get and complications with music, which is really the toughest. There might be a wish-to-see list, but it might not be possible to do.
So I assume you have a complete screening facility at home - when you watch a movie, do you put on a Blu-ray or screen a 35mm print?
Oh no, at this point, the Blu-rays with the modern projectors that exist are superior to what you can see with an old 35 print. It's horrible to say, but it's become true.
John Milius talks on the DVD about writing the script for the film while the Vietnam war was raging. The war was over but still very much in the public consciousness when you actually made the film, and now you have a generation of fans who were born so long after the war that they mainly know it through this movie.
I think that has to do with the way we made it, in a funny way, that we simulated the conditions of the war. In a way, whatever we did was appropriate and apt. I've talked to veterans who were there, and of course I was not there, and they're struck by how authentic it is. Of course, I always pay a lot of attention to research and learning as much as I can, but I think it primarily comes from the dire situation I put myself and the entire production in, that sort of in a way paralleled what the experience of the war might have been. Sort of in the same way that with The Godfather, I know nothing about mobsters, but I did know my Italian musician and machinist uncles and family, and I made it very authentic to an Italian-American family. And then gangsters are also family, obviously, and so it appeared authentic.
[Top photo: MARTIN BUREAU/AFP/Getty Images]