Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Page #7

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Okay, fellows, here we go.

They set up this hotel room,

and Marty decided to have a few drinks.

He wasn't drinking at all at the time,

and they rolled the cameras

without telling him what to do.

Fellows, watch your reflections

in the mirror. Here we go.

Yeah, places, everybody.

Five-B, take three, camera A.

Action!

That opening sequence was shot

on my 36th birthday, August 3rd,

and I was so drunk,

I couldn't stand up, frankly.

Marty, go look at yourself in the mirror.

I want you to look

at how beautiful you are.

I want you to look at your mouth,

your mouth and your hair.

You look like a movie star.

Now frighten yourself, Marty.

Show yourself the part that's an animal.

I was so intoxicated, I didn't realize

how close to the mirror I was.

So when I struck it,

I ended up catching my thumb

in the mirror and split it open a bit.

Okay, cut.

Do we have a doctor?

Francis tried to stop it,

and he called for a doctor.

There was a nurse standing by,

and I said, "No, let it go.

"I want to have this out

right here and now."

It had to do with facing

my worst enemy, myself.

I was in a chaotic, spiritual state inside.

Talk to me.

Why did you come back?

Why did you come back?

I fought him like a tiger.

It was real hard for me to reveal myself.

You f***er!

Think about it.

Your wife.

- Your home.

- I...

Your car.

My...

My heart is broken!

God damn it!

The room had been charged

with the possibility

that Marty might lunge at the camera

or attack Francis.

There was an electricity in the room.

Anything could happen.

They were inside somebody,

in his personal territory,

with a man alone

in his most private moment.

I pretended I couldn't remember

a lot of the things I'd done that night.

Actually, I remembered it all.

Dave, give me a hand, would you?

Come on, pal, let's take a shower.

Marty is extremely generous,

big-hearted man.

He's filled with a lot of love,

and...

Much unlike Willard.

And so, when you ask Marty

to examine the darker nature

of this character,

it meant closing himself down a lot

and becoming very inward,

in order to find the killer

who could carry out the task

and terminate Kurtz.

I think it was...

Willard was definitely responsible

for Marty's own breakdown.

March 1, 1977.

Last night at 2:
00 in the morning,

Marty Sheen experienced

severe chest pains.

At daybreak, he crawled out of his room

and down to the local highway,

where he was picked up

by a public bus.

After being taken

to the production office,

he was rushed to the hospital.

Marty, it turned out,

had suffered a serious heart attack.

He received last rites from a priest

who did not speak English.

I really had a very close call

and I realized...

It's nothing that I can put into words.

I just knew that if I wanted to live,

it was my choice.

If I wanted to die,

that was my choice, too.

There wasn't even any fear.

The fear only came when I realized later

how close I came to the end.

That's when I got scared.

I remember the phone ringing,

and my secretary said,

"Marty's had a heart attack,

and Francis doesn't want to admit it."

Dave Salvin let Melissa

tell Barry Hirsch

that Marty had a heart attack!

What the f*** is that?

What the f*** is that?

You know that it's gonna be

all over Hollywood in a half an hour?

If Marty is so seriously stricken,

then he must go back.

Of course he will go back,

and we'll eat it,

but when I talked to the doctor,

they didn't know.

Marty's a young man.

He probably would be able

to be up and about in three weeks.

I said, "Could he do non-strenuous work

"such as just close-ups,

sitting and acting?"

He said, "Possibly, yes. "

That's all I need to hear from the doctor.

So what's going on in f***ing

trade winds is f***ing gossip.

Gossip.

That gossip can finish me off.

If UA hears that it's eight weeks,

UA with a $27 million negative

is gonna force me

to complete it with what I've got,

- and I don't have the movie yet.

- Right.

- All right, now, you understand exactly?

- Yes.

If Marty dies, I wanna hear

that everything's okay,

until I say, "Marty is dead. "

- You got it?

- Right.

If it's not done, man,

ship the whole office out of here.

- You know what I'm saying?

- Yes.

Okay, I'm really scared, guys.

The first time

I've been scared on this movie.

Whenever Francis gets in trouble

on a picture, and not sure...

The thing is to keep going,

which I respect and admire.

You gotta keep moving forward.

'Cause, I mean, of course,

the guy had mortgaged his home

and everything else

to be able to make this movie.

We shot masters of scenes.

A lot of that material we shot

with a double over Marty's shoulder.

Then we went back when he came back

and shot the close-ups.

So we had to find work

for the shooting unit

for as long as it was gonna take

to get Marty back.

Okay...

I'll shoot anything.

Tell me something I can shoot.

We're out of little pickups to shoot.

I'll shoot the transition to medevac.

Or I'll do a take of this.

I'll shoot anything.

Give me a break.

What did I accomplish today?

You found out, number one,

that we're going to have

a tremendous problem

without Marty with these scenes.

We knew we were gonna have to

at least open one major scene

without Marty.

I knew that a lot.

I told you we could get through

three weeks or four weeks maybe,

but after that, we were in trouble.

We both knew it.

All I'm saying is, from my point of view,

I'd like to do something.

I feel like I'm this Peck's Bad Boy

who's, like, being unreasonable.

Can I have a club soda?

- Club soda department?

- Yeah.

Who knows

what Francis had put together?

And they brought me back

to put the script back together,

and everybody said,

"Thank God! He's returned to reason!

"Thank God! This will be all right now!

This is a new day!

"This thing will finally be released."

They said, "Go in there and tell him

that he's been crazy."

And all this kind of stuff.

I felt like von Rundstedt

going to see H itler in 1944,

and I was gonna be telling him

there was no more gasoline

on the eastern front,

and the whole thing was going to fold.

And I came out an hour-and-a-half later,

and he had convinced me

that this was the first film

that would win a Nobel Prize, you know.

And so I came out of the room

like von Rundstedt,

"We can win!

"We don't need gasoline! "

He had completely turned me around.

I would have done anything.

April 19th, 1977.

This is Marty's first day back on the set.

He arrived about an hour ago.

He looks tan and terrific,

just like he came back

from Palm Beach.

Francis put his ear on Marty's chest

to check him out.

He said he looked too good.

Part of me was afraid of what I would find

and what I would do when I got there.

I knew the risks, or imagined I knew.

But the thing I felt the most,

much stronger than fear,

was the desire to confront him.

What I have to arrive at in my mind

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