Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse Page #8

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is Willard's state of mind

when he arrives at the compound.

He could either arrive incredibly angry

or like a newborn baby.

And I think what he should find

at the end is death.

That at the end of this whole thing,

there is a frightening...

A frightening place

that just smells of death.

In the script,

Kurtz has trained a tribe of local

Montagnard Indians as his private army.

Rather than dress up Filipino extras

everyday,

Francis has recruited

a tribe of lfugao Indians

from the mountains to the north.

There is a rumor on the set that,

until recently,

the lfugao were practicing headhunters.

Last Saturday, they had a feast.

The old men of the tribe

sat in the priest's house and chanted.

I wanted to film the ceremony,

so their mayor asked permission for me

to shoot.

I was told if I entered, I could not leave

during the first set of chants.

I was interested in documenting,

photographing the actual ritual

that they performed.

They began at night,

inside their hut up on stilts,

and they drank a lot of rice wine

and chanted,

and they told a long story

in their own language.

This went on during the night.

The next morning, they began to kill

some chickens and look at their bile

and tell the fortune of the tribe.

And then they killed some pigs

in a very sacrificial way.

By this time,

I felt that there was something

very profound and moving

about this experience,

so I ran back to the house

to get Francis,

and I said,

"You know, you've got to see this,

"because they're going to kill a caribou."

He was writing

and didn't really wanna come,

but I really encouraged him

to come back to the location.

And we got back there

just maybe 10 minutes

before they killed this caribou

in this ritual way.

The caribou was standing there,

and they just seemed to come out

from nowhere

and just kill it very quickly

with these big machetes,

and it fell to the ground.

There was something very beautiful

and strong and profound

about these people

who killed this animal,

and then they all ate it at a festival,

kind of like Thanksgiving.

As Francis and I

were getting ready to leave,

the mayor asked

if we would do the priest

the honor of accepting

the best part of the caribou

that is usually reserved for him,

the heart.

We thanked him.

Through a translator,

he said that he would like his picture

taken with Francis.

I took a photograph

of the two priests and Francis

standing there together.

It was enough like people in war

who get set up like little tribal chieftains

to stimulate the imagination

along those lines.

A film director is kind of one of

the last truly dictatorial posts left

in a world

getting more and more democratic.

So that, plus being

in a distant, Oriental country,

the fact that pretty much

it was my own money

and that I was making it on the crest

of the acclaim of the Godfather films,

you know, I was wealthy,

did contribute to a state of mind

that was like Kurtz.

What did they tell you?

They told me that you had gone

totally insane,

and that your methods were unsound.

Are my methods unsound?

I don't see any method at all, sir.

Thirty-eight takes

and Francis said the scene

was never the way he wanted it.

The people who were

playing the severed heads

sat in their boxes buried in the ground

from 8:
00 in the morning

till 6:
00 at night.

All day they were there in the hot sun

with smoke blowing on them.

Between takes,

they were covered with umbrellas.

It's nice because this is the moment

when Chief dies,

that he looks up

and sees this harlequin figure

waving all the people away.

He sees, essentially, Dennis Hopper.

Know what I mean?

Zap them with your siren, man.

Zap them with your siren.

I have Dennis Hopper playing

a spaced-out photojournalist

with 12 cameras who's here

because he's gonna get the truth,

and it's all, "Man!" You know?

And he's a wonderful apparition.

I'm an American. Yeah.

An American civilian. Hi, Yanks.

Hi, American.

I didn't know till two weeks

before I came in

I was even going to be in the picture,

much less play the photojournalist guy

in tatters and rags, taking photographs,

trying to explain what this was all about

and how it's blowing his mind away.

I was not in the greatest of shape,

you know,

as far as, like,

my career was concerned,

and it was delightful to hear that

I was gonna go do anything anywhere.

And I really appreciate Francis' writing,

even though he does

drop it on you sometimes,

and it does take you sometimes,

an idiot like me, a whole day to learn it.

Why didn't you say that

to him in the scene?

- Who?

- Something clever like that.

When he says, "Who are you?"

Why didn't you say, "Who are you?"

- Because I haven't learned my lines yet.

- I know. You've had them for five days!

- The other thing I'd like to say is that...

- Those glasses...

These glasses,

I can't see anything through them.

But, like, every crack

represents a life I've saved.

You know what I mean?

They represent a life I've saved.

Say all that in the scene.

I do, but you see, the director says,

"You don't know your lines."

Well, if you know your lines,

then you can forget them.

You can know, more or less...

Oh, I see,

but that's what I'm trying to do.

Forget those lines.

No, but it's not fair to forget them

if you never knew them.

I'm not gonna help you.

You're gonna help him, man.

You're gonna help him.

I mean, what are they gonna say,

man, when he's gone, huh?

'Cause he dies when it dies, man.

When it dies, he dies.

What are they gonna say about him?

What are they gonna say?

"He was a kind man. He was a wise man.

"He had plans. He had wisdom."

Bullshit, man!

Am I gonna be the one that's gonna

set them straight? Look at me. Wrong!

You.

For years, Francis has dreamed

of a group of poets,

filmmakers and writers

who would come together

to form American Zoetrope.

This morning I realized that this was it,

right here in the heart of the jungle.

When you stop looking for something,

you see it right in front of you.

I'm not disclosing any trade secrets,

but I want you to understand now

that Mr. Kurtz had taken a high seat

amongst the devils of the land.

I mean, literally.

A group of natives appeared

bearing a stretcher.

I looked down on the long,

gaunt figure of Kurtz,

the hollow cage of his ribs,

a bald skeleton head, like an ivory ball.

What did you do

with Marlon Brando when he arrived?

Well, he was already heavy

when I'd hired him,

and he promised me

that he was gonna get in shape.

And I imagined if he were heavy,

I could use that.

But he was so fat,

he was very, very shy about it.

Immediately when I saw him, I said,

"Well, I'll write this as a man

"who really, you know,

had indulged every aspect of himself. "

So he was fat, and he had

two or three tribal girls with him

and was eating mangoes

and kind of go the other way.

And he was very, very adamant

that he didn't wanna portray himself

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