Apocalypse Now Movie Quotes
Kurtz
We train young men to drop fire on people, but their commanders won't allow them to write "fuck" on their airplanes because it's obscene!
🧡
👏
🥺
2
🤔
2
🥱
4
Lance
What?
Kilgore
Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn't find one of 'em, not one stinkin' dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell? The whole hill. Smelled like... victory. Someday this war's gonna end.
[He reflects on this for a moment and frowns. Then he gets up and walks away. Willard stares at him in disbelief]
🧡
1
👏
1
🥺
🤔
🥱
2
[last lines]
🧡
👏
🥺
1
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
[intercepted radio message]
I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. That's my dream; that's my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor... and surviving.
🧡
👏
🥺
2
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
Did they say why, Willard, why they want to terminate my command?
Willard
I was sent on a classified mission, sir.
Kurtz
It's no longer classified, is it? Did they tell you?
Willard
They told me that you had gone totally insane, and that your methods were unsound.
Kurtz
Are my methods unsound?
Willard
I don't see any method at all, sir.
Kurtz
I expected someone like you. What did you expect? Are you an assassin?
Willard
I'm a soldier.
Kurtz
You're neither. You're an errand boy, sent by grocery clerks, to collect a bill.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Charlie don't surf!
🧡
👏
🥺
2
🤔
🥱
1
[first lines]
Willard (voice-over)
Saigon. Shit. I'm only in Saigon. Every time, I think I'm gonna wake up back in the jungle. When I was home after my first tour, it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. I hardly said a word to my wife until I said yes to a divorce. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the jungle. I'm here a week now. Waiting for a mission. Getting softer. Every minute I stay in this room, I get weaker. And every minute Charlie squats in the bush, he gets stronger. Each time I looked around, the walls moved in a little tighter.
🧡
1
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
'Never get out of the boat.' Absolutely goddamn right! Unless you were goin' all the way... Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
How come all you guys sit on your helmets?
Soldier
So we don't get our balls blown off.
[Chef laughs. Then a few moments later he takes off his own helmet and sits on it]
🧡
👏
1
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
Could we, uh... talk to Colonel Kurtz?
Photojournalist
Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll... uh... well, you'll say "hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you. He won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say, "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you"... I mean I'm... no, I can't... I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's... he's a great man! "I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas."
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
[recorded message playing from speakers on helicopters flying overhead]
I will not hurt or harm you. Just give me back the board, Lance. It was a good board and I like it. You know how hard it is to find a board you like.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I never wanted another.
🧡
1
👏
🥺
🤔
1
🥱
Colonel Lucas
Your mission is to proceed up the Nung River in a Navy patrol boat. Pick up Colonel Kurtz's path at Nu Mung Ba, follow it and learn what you can along the way. When you find the Colonel, infiltrate his team by whatever means available and terminate the Colonel's command.
Willard
Terminate the Colonel?
General Corman
He's out there operating without any decent restraint, totally beyond the pale of any acceptable human conduct. And he is still in the field commanding troops.
Civilian
Terminate with extreme prejudice.
Colonel Lucas
You understand, Captain, that this mission does not exist, nor will it ever exist.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Oh man... the bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam, you needed wings to stay above it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
Who's the commanding officer here?
Machine Gunner
Ain't you?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
I was going to the worst place in the world and I didn't even know it yet. Weeks away and hundreds of miles up a river that snaked through the war like a main circuit cable plugged straight into Kurtz. It was no accident that I got to be the caretaker of Colonel Walter E. Kurtz's memory any more than being back in Saigon was an accident. There is no way to tell his story without telling my own. And if his story really is a confession, then so is mine.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
How many people had I already killed? There were those six that I knew about for sure. Close enough to blow their last breath in my face. But this time, it was an American and an officer. That wasn't supposed to make any difference to me, but it did. Shit... charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets in the Indy 500. I took the mission. What the hell else was I gonna do?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
[Kurtz dictates to tape]
They train young men to drop fire on people. But their commanders won't allow them to write 'fuck' on their airplanes because it is obscene.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
No wonder Kurtz put a weed up Command's ass. The war was being run by a bunch of four star clowns who were gonna end up giving the whole circus away.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
General Corman
Well, you see, Willard, in this war, things get confused out there. Power, ideals, the old morality, and practical military necessity. But out there with these natives, it must be a temptation to be God. Because there's a conflict in every human heart, between the rational and irration, between good and evil. And good does not always triumph. Sometimes, the dark side overcomes what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Charlie didn't get much USO. He was dug in too deep or moving too fast. His idea of great R&R was cold rice and a little rat meat. He had only two ways home: death, or victory.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photo Journalist
This is the way the fucking world ends! Look at this fucking shit we're in, man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
If that's how Kilgore fought the war, I began to wonder what they really had against Kurtz. It wasn't just insanity and murder; there was enough of that to go around for everyone.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
Are you crazy, Goddammit? Don't you think its a little risky for some R&R?
Kilgore
If I say its safe to surf this beach, Captain, then its safe to surf this beach! I mean, I'm not afraid to surf this place, I'll surf this whole fucking place!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
I worry that my son might not understand what I've tried to be. And if I were to be killed, Willard, I would want someone to go to my home and tell my son everything. Everything I did, everything you saw, because there's nothing that I detest more than the stench of lies. And if you understand me, Willard, you will do this for me.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
The machinist, the one they called Chef, was from New Orleans. He was wrapped too tight for Vietnam; probably wrapped too tight for New Orleans. Lance, on the forward .50s, was a famous surfer from the beaches south of LA. One look at him and you wouldn't believe he ever fired a weapon in his whole life. Clean... Mr. Clean... was from some South Bronx shithole and the light and space of Vietnam really put the zap on his head. Then there was Phillips, the Chief. It might have been my mission, but it sure as shit was the Chief's boat!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
Have you ever considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinion of others... even the opinions of yourself?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
How're you feeling, Jimmy?
Door Gunner
Like a mean motherfucker, sir!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
My orders say I'm not supposed to know where I'm taking this boat, so I don't! But one look at you, and I know it's gonna be hot!
Willard
We're going up river about 75 klicks above the Do Lung bridge.
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
That's Cambodia, captain.
Willard
That's classified. We're not supposed to be in Cambodia, but that's where I'm going.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Everybody wanted me to do it, him most of all. I felt like he was up there, waiting for me to take the pain away. He just wanted to go out like a soldier, standing up, not like some poor, wasted, rag-assed renegade. Even the jungle wanted him dead, and that's who he really took his orders from anyway.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
'Someday this war's gonna end'. That'd be just fine with the boys on the boat. They weren't looking for anything more than a way home. Trouble is, I'd been back there, and I knew that it just didn't exist anymore.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Colonel Lucas
Your report specifies intelligence/counterintelligence with ComSec I-Corps.
Willard
I'm not presently disposed to discuss these operations, sir.
Colonel Lucas
Did you not work for the CIA in I-Corps?
Willard
No, sir.
Colonel Lucas
Did you not assassinate a government tax collector in Quang Tri province, June 19th, 1968? Captain?
Willard
Sir, I am unaware of any such activity or operation... nor would I be disposed to discuss such an operation if it did in fact exist, sir.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
We're taking her to some friendlies, Captain. She's wounded, she's not dead.
Willard
Get off there, Chef.
[Willard shoots the injured girl]
Chef
Fuck it!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
They were gonna make me a Major for this, and I wasn't even in their fuckin' army anymore.
🧡
1
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[quoting Kurtz]
Willard (voice-over)
In a war there are many moments for compassion and tender action. There are many moments for ruthless action - what is often called ruthless - what may in many circumstances be only clarity, seeing clearly what there is to be done and doing it, directly, quickly, awake, looking at it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
[after having encountered a tiger in the jungle, returning to the boat, and proceeding into a nervous breakdown]
I'm done with this goddamn fucking shit! You can kiss my ass on the county square, because I'm fucking bugging out! I don't fucking need it! I didn't get on the goddamn A train for this kind of shit! All I wanted to do is fucking cook! I just wanted to learn to fucking cook, man!
[laughs manically]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
On the river, I thought that the minute I looked at him, I'd know what to do, but it didn't happen. I was in there with him for days, not under guard; I was free, but he knew I wasn't going anywhere. He knew more about what I was going to do than I did. If the generals back in Nha Trang could see what I saw, would they still want me to kill him? More than ever, probably. And what would his people back home want if they ever learned just how far from them he'd really gone? He broke from them, and then he broke from himself. I'd never seen a man so broken up and ripped apart.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
This colonel guy, he's wacko, man. He's worse than crazy, he's evil! I mean, that's what the man's got set up here, man! It's fuckin' pagan idolatry! Look around you! Shit, he's loco.
Willard
Then you'll help me?
Chef
Help you? Fuckin' A, I'll help you. I'll do anything to get out of this joint! We could blow all them assholes away! They're so fucking spaced out, they wouldn't even know it. I ain't afraid of all them fuckin' skulls and altars and shit! I used to think that if I died in an evil place, then my soul wouldn't be able to make it to heaven. But now, fuuuuck. I don't care where it goes, as long as it ain't *here*. So what do you want to do? I'll kill the fuck.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
You can either surf, or you can fight!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[quoting Kurtz]
Willard (voice-over)
As for the charges against me, I am unconcerned. I am beyond their timid lying morality, and so I am beyond caring.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
The First of the Ninth was a old cavalry division that traded in their horses for helicopters and went tear-assing around 'Nam looking for the shit.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Hubert de Marais
See, Captain, when my grandfather and my uncle father came here, there was nothing. Nothing. The Vietnamese were nothing. So we work hard, very hard. We brought the rubber from Brazil, and then plant it here. We took the Vietnamese, work with them, make something, something out of nothing. So when you ask me why we want to stay here, Captain, we want to stay here because it's ours. It belongs to us. It keeps out family together. I mean, we fight for that! While you American, you are fighting for the biggest nothing in history.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
What do you call it when the assassins accuse the assassin? A lie. A lie and we have to be merciful.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Colonel Kilgore
[Explaining why the helicopters play music during air assaults]
I use Wagner. It scares the hell out of the slopes. My boys love it!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
Where are you from, Willard?
Willard
I'm from Ohio, sir.
Kurtz
Were you born there?
Willard
Yes, sir.
Kurtz
Whereabouts?
Willard
Toledo, sir.
Kurtz
How far are you from the river?
Willard
The Ohio River, sir?
Kurtz
Uh-huh.
Willard
About 200 miles.
Kurtz
I went down that river once when I was a kid. There's a place in that river - I can't remember - must have been a gardenia plantation at one time. It's all wild and overgrown now, but about five miles, you'd think that heaven just fell on the earth in the form of gardenias. Have you considered any real freedoms? Freedoms from the opinions of others. Even the opinions of yourself.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[the boat has arrived at the Do Lung bridge, which is a combat zone]
Chef
Lance! Hey, Lance! What do you think?
Lance
It's beautiful!
Chef
What's the matter with you? You're acting kinda weird!
Lance
Hey, you know that last tab of acid I was saving? I dropped it.
Chef
You dropped acid? Far out!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photojournalist
[to Willard]
Why? Why would a nice guy like you want to kill a genius? Feeling pretty good, huh? Why? Do you know that the man really likes you? He likes you. He really likes you. But he's got something in mind for you. Aren't you curious about that? I'm curious. I'm very curious. Are you curious? There's something happening out here, man. You know something, man? I know something you that you don't know. That's right, Jack . The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad. Oh, yeah. He's dying, I think. He hates all this. He hates it! But the man's a - he reads poetry out loud, all right? And a voice - he likes you 'cause you're still alive. He's got plans for you. No, no. I'm not gonna help you. You're gonna help him, man. You're gonna help him. I mean, what are they gonna sat when he's gone? 'Cause he dies when it dies, when it dies, he dies! What are they gonna say about him? 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!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
What the hell do you know about surfing, Major? You're from goddamned New Jersey!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Lieutenant Richard M. Colby
[Richard Colby's last letter to his wife, as read by Willard]
Sell the house. Sell the car. Sell the kids. Find someone else. Forget it. I'm never coming back. Forget it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate of the Year
[as couple gets steamy, another soldier peers into window]
Who are you?
Clean
I'm next, ma'am.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Lieutenant, bomb that tree line about 100 yards back! Give me some room to breathe!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
It's a way we had over here for living with ourselves. We cut 'em in half with a machine gun and give 'em a Band-Aid. It was a lie. And the more I saw them, the more I hated lies.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
We must kill them. We must incinerate them. Pig after pig... cow after cow... village after village... army after army...
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Lt. Carlsen
I'm Lt. Carlsen. I was sent from Nha Trang with this message for you three days ago, sir. They expected you here a little sooner. This is mail for the boat's crew. You don't know how happy this makes me in delivering all this.
Willard
Why?
Lt. Carlsen
Because now I can get out of here... if I can find a way.
[an enemy artillery shell lands dangerously close by as Lt. Carlsen runs away]
Lt. Carlsen
You're in the asshole of the world, Captain!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
My mission is to make it up into Cambodia. There's a Green Beret Colonel up there who's gone insane. I'm supposed to kill him.
Chef
What? Oh, that's typical! Shit! Fuckin' Vietnam mission! I'm short, and we gotta go up there so you can kill one of our own guys? That's fuckin' great! That's just fuckin' great! Shit! That's fuckin' crazy! I thought you were going in there to blow up a bridge, or some fucking railroad tracks or something!
Willard
I'm sorry. Look, I'll cut you loose here and you can turn around and...
Chef
[interupting]
No, no, we go together... on the boat! We came this far, so we go together. All the way! We'll take you up there, we'll go with you... but on the boat! Okay?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
[Redux version]
Captain, are you giving away our fuel for a Playmate of the Month?
Willard
No, Playmate of the Year, Chief!
[Willard takes a swig from a beer bottle]
🧡
1
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
He was close, real close. I couldn't see him yet, but I could feel him, as if the boat were being sucked upriver and the water was flowing back into the jungle. Whatever was going to happen, it wasn't gonna be the way they call it back in Nha Trang.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photo Journalist
This is dialectics. It's very simple dialectics. One through nine. No maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space. You can't go out into space, you know, without like, you know, with fractions. What are you gonna land on? One quarter? Three-eighths? What are you gonna do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics, okay?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[apologizing for severed heads adorning Kurtz's headquarters]
Photo Journalist
The heads. You're looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far, you know. He's the first one to admit it.
Chef
He's gone crazy!
Photo Journalist
Wrong! Wrong! If you could have heard the man just two days ago. If you could have heard him then. God. You were gonna call him crazy?
Chef
Fuckin' A!
Willard
I just want to talk to him.
Photo Journalist
[thinking fast]
Well, man, he's gone away. He's gone away. He's disappeared out into the jungle with his people.
Willard
I'll wait for him.
Photo Journalist
He feels comfortable with his people! He forgets himself with his people. He forgets himself!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
As long as cold beer, hot food, rock 'n' roll, and all the other amenities remain expected norm, our conduct of the war will only gain impotence.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
The crew were mostly kids; rock & rollers with one foot in their grave.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
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.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
The war will still be here tomorrow.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Clean
This is sure enough a bizarre sight in the middle of all this shit!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photo Journalist
He can be terrible. He can be mean. And he can be right. He's a great man. I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words... I can tell ya something like the other day he wanted to kill me. Somethin' like that.
Willard
Why'd he wanna kill you?
Photo Journalist
Because I took his picture. He said "If you take my picture again, I'm gonna kill you." And he meant it! So you just lay back. Lay cool. He becomes friendly again, he really does. But you don't judge the Colonel. You don't judge the Colonel like an ordinary man.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Hubert
[rebuffing Willard's inquiry as to when his family might return home to France]
You don't understand our mentality - the French officer mentality. At first, we lose in Second World War. I don't say that you Americans win, but we lose. In Dien Bien Phu, we lose. In Algeria, we lose. In Indochina, we lose! But here, we don't lose! This piece of earth, we keep it. We will never lose it, never!
Gaston de Marais
You Americans. In 1945, yeah, after the Japanese war, your president Roosevelt didn't want the French people to stay in Indochina. So, you Americans implant the Vietnam.
Hubert
Yeah, that's true. The Vietcong were invented by the Americans, sir.
Willard
The Americans?
Gaston de Marais
And now you take the French place. And the Vietnam fight you. And what can you do? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
Hubert
The Vietnamese are very intelligent. You never know what they think. The Russian ones who help them, "come and give us their money. We are all Communists. Chinese give us guns. We are all brothers."... They hate the Chinese! Maybe they hate the American less than the Russian and the Chinese. I mean, if tomorrow the Vietnamese are Communists they will be *Vietnamese* Communists. And this is something you never understood, you American.
Gaston de Marais
I don't know. Maybe in the future we can make something with the Vietnam.
Philippe de Marais
Don't you understand? The VC say, "go away, go away". That's finish for all the white people in Indochina. If you're French, American, that's all the same. "Go." They want to forget you. Look, Captain. Look, this is the truth. An egg.
[cracks it, draining the egg white]
Philippe de Marais
The white left, but the yellow stays.
[stomps off]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Lance
Disneyland? Fuck, man, this is better than Disneyland!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photo Journalist
There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I'll tell ya.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Clean
Run, Charlie!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[the patrol boat's crew are lighting up a joint]
Lance
Buddha Time!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
General Corman
Captain, I don't know how you feel about this shrimp, but if you eat it, you'll never have to prove your courage in any other way.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
[2:58:22]
I've seen horrors. Horrors that you have seen. But you have no right to call me a murderer, you have a right to kill me. You have a right to do that. But you have no right to judge me. It's impossible for words to describe what is necessary to those who do not know what horror means. Horror. Horror has a face and you must make a friend of horror. Horror and moral terror are your friends. If they are not, then they are enemies to be feared. They are truly enemies. I remember when I was with special forces, it seems 1,000 centuries ago. We went into a camp to innoculate the children. We left the camp after we innoculated the children for polio, and this old man came running after us, he was crying, he couldn't see. We went back there and they had come back and they had hacked off every innoculated arm. There they were, in a pile, a pile of little arms, and I remember I cried, I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it, I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized like I was shot, like I was shot with a diamond. A diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought of the genius of that the genius of that, the genius. The will to do that. Perfect genuine, complete crystalline. Pure. TheI realized that they could stand it, these were not monsters, the mes were trained cadres. The men who fought with their hearts who had families with children who had families who were filled with love, but they had the strength, the strength to do that. If I had 10 divisions of those men, then our troubles would be over here very quickly. You have to have men who are moral, and at the same time who are able to utilize their primortal instincts to kill without judgement without judgement without judgement. Because it's judgement that defeats us.
[3:01:15]
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Do you know why you can never step into the same river twice?
Willard
Yeah, 'cause it's always moving.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
[after the Red Team gunship spectacularly knocks out a heavy AA artillery unit]
Outstanding, Red Team, outstanding! Get you a case of beer for that one.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
I was supposed to go to Paris, study at the Escoffier School. That's when I got my orders. Well, I joined the Navy. Heard they had better food. Cook school, that did it.
Willard
Oh yeah? How's that?
Chef
[mutters something]
They lined us up in front of a hundred yards of prime rib. All of us, you know, lined up and looking at it. Magnificent meat! Really! Beautifully marbled... magnifique! Next thing, they're throwing the meat into these big cauldrons. All of it, boiling it. I looked inside, man, and it was turning gray. I couldn't fuckin' believe that one!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Director of TV Crew
Don't look at the camera. Don't look at the camera! Just go by like you're fighting. Like your fighting. Don't look at the camera! It's television. Go through! Go through!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Will you go back after the war to America?
Willard
No.
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Then you are like us; your home is here.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[the redux version]
Willard
Who's in charge here?
Soldier
In charge? I don't know, man. I'm just doing what I'm told - I'm just a working girl.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
[about Colonel Kilgore]
Well, he wasn't a bad officer, I guess. He loved his boys, and he felt safe with 'em. He was just one of those guys with that weird light around him. He just knew he wasn't gonna get so much as a scratch here.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
All right, let's see what we have. Two of spades. Three of spades. Four of diamonds, six of clubs... there isn't one worth a jack in the whole bunch. Four of diamonds...
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Soldier in Trench
[Captain Willard steps on a sleeping soldier in the dark]
Goddamn it. You stepped in my face.
Lance
We thought you were dead.
Soldier in Trench
Well, you thought wrong, damn it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
[20:05]
Charging a man with murder in this place was like handing out speeding tickets at the Indy 500.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
AFRS Announcer
[radio announcer]
And now, here's another blast from the past going out to Big Sam, who's all alone out there with the First Battalion, 35th Infantry, and dedicated by the Fire Team and their groovy C.O. The Rolling Stones, "Satisfaction."
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Supply Sergeant
[Captain Willard steps on a sleeping soldier in the dark]
Goddamn it. You stepped in my face.
Willard
We thought you were dead.
Supply Sergeant
Well, you thought wrong, damn it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[roar]
Chef
It's a motherfucking tiger! It's a tiger, man! A tiger!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
What do you mean "Hairy", sir?
Kilgore
It's hairy. Got some pretty heavy ordinance. I've lost a few recon ships in there now and again. What's the name of that goddamn village, Vin Drin Dop or Lop? Damn gook names all sound the same.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Kurtz staged Operation Archangel with combined local forces. Rated a major success. He received no official clearance. He just thought it up and did it. What balls.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
I used to prepare pipe for my husband. It was the morphine he took for the wounds he suffered in his heart. He would rage and he would cry, my lost soldier.And I said to him, there are two of you. Don't you see? One that kills and one that loves. And he said to me I don't know whether I'm an animal or a god. But you are both. You want more? All that matters is that you're alive. You are alive, Captain. That's the truth. There are two of you, don't you see? One that kills and one that loves.
🧡
1
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Lance Johnson the surfer?
Lance
Yes, sir.
Kilgore
Well, it's an honor to meet you Lance. I've admired your nose riding for years. I like your cutback, too. I think you have the best cutback there is.
Lance
Thank you, sir.
Kilgore
You can cut out the "sir" crap, Lance. I'm Bill Kilgore. I'm a goofy foot.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Mike, you know anything about this point at Vin Drin Dop?
Mike from San Diego
That's a fantastic peak.
Kilgore
Peak?
Mike from San Diego
About six foot. It's an outstanding peak. It's got both the long right and left side, with a bowl section that's unbelievable. It's just tube city.
Kilgore
Well, why didn't you tell me that before? A good peak. There aren't any good peaks in this whole shitty country. It's all goddamn beach break.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Bomb them into the stone age, son.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
[the redux version]
Hubert de Marais
Traitors! Communist traitor's at home!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
Make it loud. This is a Romeo Fox Trot. Shall we dance?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
You prefer the heavy or a light board?
Lance
Heavier.
Kilgore
Really?
Lance
Yeah.
Kilgore
I thought young guys like lighter boards.
Lance
You can't ride the nose on those things.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
You like it like that, Captain? When it's hot, hairy?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Lance, what's with all the green paint?
Lance
Camouflage.
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
How's that?
Lance
So they can't see you. They're everywhere, Chief.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
How come they call you that?
Chef
Call me what, sir?
Willard
Chef. 'Cause you like mangoes and stuff?
Chef
No, sir. I'm a real chef. I'm a saucier.
Willard
Saucier?
Chef
Yes, sir. See, I come from New Orleans. I was raised to be a saucier. A great saucier.
Willard
What's a saucier?
Chef
We specialize in sauces.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Clean, bring that 60 forward.
Chef
Never get out of the boat! I gotta remember! Gotta remember! Never get out of the boat!
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
How many is it?
Chef
A fucking tiger!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
[high, relaxing on the boat]
I'm not here. I'm walking through the jungle gathering mangos and I meet Raquel Welch. We make a nice mango cream pudding. You know, kind of spread it around on us. See, she's into mangoes, too. She's like one limb above me. We're both in the jungle here, nude.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
He could've gone for General, but he went for himself instead.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Supply Sergeant
Hey, listen, would you guys like some seats, some press box seats for the show? You want those? The show, man, out here. The bunnies! The bunnies.
Lance
Playboy bunnies?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
Hey, guys. Hey, fellas. Guys? I just made a deal with people from Hau Phat. I negotiated two barrels of fuel for a couple of hours with the bunnies.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
How come you got a bird?
Playmate, Miss May
I used to be the bird girl at Busch Gardens.
Chef
Bush Gardens?
Playmate, Miss May
Yeah, I used to train birds there.
Chef
You are Miss December, aren't you?
Playmate, Miss May
Miss May.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
You know, man, that was far fucking out. I collected every picture of her since she was Miss December, Chief.
[looking at the Playboy centerfold]
Chef
Hey, Clean, look at that. She was here, man! I even wrote to the cunt. She didn't write me back.
Clean
You can get really hung up on these broads, man.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
Just think, if it hadn't been for the Vietnam War, I'd never would've met you, Miss December.
Playmate, Miss May
Miss May.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate of the Year
Maybe I'm unfit to have a relationship with a beautiful, innocent boy.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate, Miss May
Oh, fly baby! Cock it to me! Cock it to me! Fly!
Chef
I can fly like an eagle!
Playmate, Miss May
Oh, my God! You drive me crazy! You drive me crazy!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate of the Year
They make you do things that you don't want to do. Like this picture here. I started feeling repulsed with myself.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate of the Year
Being Playmate of the Year is the loneliest experience I can imagine.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Clean
Shut up, slope!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
Pigs! Mangoes! What's in the rice bag? Fucking rice!
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Well, look in there, Chef!
Chef
Fucking fish! More coconuts. Rice. Here's rice.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Mrs. Miller, Clean's Mother
[tape recorded letter]
Do the right thing, stay out of the way of the bullets, and bring your hiney home all in one piece. 'Cause we love you very much.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Did you find the C.O., Captain?
Willard
There's no fucking C.O. here. Let's just get going.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Still want to go on? Like this bridge. We build it every night, Charlie blows it right back up again, just so the Generals can say the road's open. Think about it. Who cares?
Willard
Just get us up river!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Hubert de Marais
This is my family's plantation. It has been such for seventy years and it will be such until we are all dead.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chef
This food is really wonderful, isn't it? The wine, the sauces. I can't believe it. Can I speak with the chef?
Sergeant Le Fevre (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
The chef speaks only Vietnamese.
Chef
No kidding. He cooks like this and he can't even speak French? Hey, Lance, the chef's a slope.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Sergeant Le Fevre (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
All you white people are shit.
Christian de Marais (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
They are fighting. Fighting for freedom.
Sergeant Le Fevre (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Freedom? Bullshit. French bullshit. American bullshit.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
How long can you possibly stay here?
Hubert de Marais
We stay forever.
Willard
No, no, I mean, why don't you go back home to France?
Hubert de Marais
I mean, this is our home, Captain.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Sergeant Le Fevre (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
All soldier know they are already dead.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Christian de Marais (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
When I was in Saigon, I spoke to an American politician, and he explained it very well. He said, "Look, yesterday it was Korea. Today, Vietnam. Tomorrow, Thailand, the Philippines, then maybe Europe." Come on, why not Europe? Look what happened in Czechoslovakia recently. And even before the Second World War, the Americans knew exactly what was going on! They don't want that shit to take over!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
You savages! Come and get it, you son of a bitches!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Christian de Marais (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Why don't you Americans learn from us, from our mistakes? My God, with your army, your strength, your power, you could win if you want to!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Roxanne Sarrault (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
You are tired of de war. I can see in your face. It was the same in the eyes of the soldiers of our war. We called them "Les Soldat Perdus." The Lost Soldiers. If you like we can have some cognac.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
The Communists at home have never been traitors.
Hubert de Marais
No, never traitors. For me, Mendes- France was a Communist.
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Mendes-France was a Socialist.
Hubert de Marais
He was Communist! That's it!
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Socialist.
Hubert de Marais
How do you want the government to win when it is Communist?
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Communists have always worked for peace wherever they are.
Hubert de Marais
They killed the French Army, which was the strongest. Destroyed because of who? The Communists.
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
The army damaged itself by its attitude toward the people here.
Hubert de Marais
And why do you think that it did that? Because it understood it had been sacrificed by the Communist government.
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Socialist.
Hubert de Marais
Communist!
The Tutor (Redux and Final Cut versions only)
Socialist.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photojournalist
You can feel the vibe of this place.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photojournalist
I'm an American. An American civilian. Hi, Yanks. Hi. American. American civilian. It's all right. And you got the cigarettes, and what's what I've been dreaming of.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
Who are all these people?
Photojournalist
They think you've come to take him away. I hope that isn't true.
Willard
Take who away?
Photojournalist
Him! Colonel Kurtz! These are all his children, man, as far as you can see. Hell, man, out here, we are all his children.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Everything I saw told me that Kurtz had gone insane. The place was full of bodies. North Vietnamese, Vietcong, Cambodians. If I was still alive, it was because he wanted me that way.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Photojournalist
Dialectic logic is, there's only love and hate. You either love somebody or you hate 'em.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kurtz
You'll be free. You'll be under guard.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
It smelled like slow death in there. Malaria and nightmares. This was the end of the river, all right.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Machine Gunner
You think you so bad, nigga? You think you so bad?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard
What are you shooting at, soldier?
Machine Gunner
Gooks! What the fuck do you think I'm shooting at?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Hubert de Marais
This is Baudelaire. It is a very cruel poem for children, but they need it, because life sometime is very cruel.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Injured Soldier
[Captain Willard steps on a sleeping soldier in the dark]
Goddamn it. You stepped in my face.
Lance
We thought you were dead.
Injured Soldier
Well, you thought wrong, damn it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
This ain't the army! You are a sailor. So get out of that frizzly army-looking shirt and stop smoking that dope, you hear me?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Kilgore
[giving his canteen to a wounded Vietcong holding his guts in with a pot lid]
Any man brave enough to fight with his guts strapped on him can drink from my canteen any day!
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
General Corman
Walter Kurtz was one of the most outstanding officers this country's ever produced. He was brilliant. He was outstanding in every way. And he was a good man, too. A humanitarian man. A man of wit and humor. He joined the Special Forces, and after that, his ideas, methods, became - unsound. Unsound.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Playmate of the Year
Lance, there were things that they made me do, that I didn't want to do. But they said, "Pull the ribbons between your legs," and I didn't want to do it. But they said that was what was expected of me, that what people wanted to see.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
He had an impressive career. Maybe too impressive. I mean, perfect. He was being groomed for one of the top slots in the corporation. General, Chief of Staff, anything. In 1964, he returned from a tour with Advisory Command in Vietnam, and things started to slip. His report to the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Lyndon Johnson was restricted. Seems they didn't dig what he had to tell them. During the next few months, he made three requests for transfer to Airborne training, Fort Benning, Georgia - and was finally accepted. Airborne? He was thirty-eight years old. Why the fuck would he do that?
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
I've pulled a few special Ops in here. About six months ago, I took a man who was going past the bridge at Do Lung. He was regular army, too. I heard he shot himself in the head.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
General Corman
Every man has got a breaking point. You have and I have them. Walter Kurtz has reached his. And, very obviously, he has gone insane.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
At first, I thought they handed me the wrong dossier. I couldn't believe they wanted this man dead. Third-generation West Point, top of his class. Korea, Airborne, about a thousand decorations, etc., etc. I'd heard his voice on the tape and it really put the hook in me, but I couldn't connect up that voice with this man.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Kilgore had a pretty good day for himself. They choppered in the T- bones and the beer - and turned the L.Z. into a beach party. The more they tried to make it like home, the more they made everybody miss it.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
Well, Air Mobile. Those boys just couldn't stay put.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Willard (voice-over)
They'd given Charlie a few surprises in their time here. What they were mopping up now hadn't even happened yet an hour ago.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
Chief Quartermaster (QMC) Phillips
Hueys over there. Lots of Hueys.
🧡
👏
🥺
🤔
🥱
