Apocalypse Now

POV OF THE P.B.R.

They pass in front of the village which is rundown and completely deserted. The huts are on stilts to avoid the flooding of the river – they are just skeletons of what they once were.

CHEF (O.S.)

Flood.

CHIEF (O.S.)

No – most of 'em are still standing – might've been disease.

WILLARD (O.S.)

I don't know – there'd still be some sign – it's just like the one this morning.

DISSOLVE TO:

POV BOAT – FULL SHOT – JUNGLE

The canopy of trees grows taller and stretches out across the river filtering the sun. The forest itself has grown darker and more twisted with ferns and creepers. Strange birds fly out of the trees as the boat passes – a huge snake slips along an overheading limb. The depth of the jungle is dark, ominous – yet cool and strangely inviting.

FULL SHOT – BOAT – JUNGLE

Suddenly the river widens, the trees give way to marsh and as they emerge into the light a strange shadow falls upon the boat. It is the shadow cast by an enormous vertical tail section of a B-52 bomber thrusting out from the mud. Pieces of aluminum hang loosely from it, oxidizing in the sun. Creepers have already started to grow up around its heights – the jungle is claiming it. But once under its shadow, they have passed a gateway. A gateway to paradise.

The river widens and the trees at its edge are soft and seductive. The hills beyond are purple and lush. Strange orange colored water-fowl swim lazily out of their way. The water itself is glass smooth and black as if there were no bottom. The sun is warm and the breeze gentle and laced with wild gardenians. It is indeed the most peaceful valley in all the world and each man looks upon it and has never known such a sense of peace and well-being.

Each man in his heart feels a need to stay – his soul cries to stop – stop their madness – this spiral into hell.

Here is all that can be had of earth. But no hand moves. The boat drifts on its own toward a hole at the end of the clearing. A hole into the jungle from which a darkness permeats. The boat follows the river into this hole.

DISSOLVE TO:

FULL SHOT – P.B.R. – RIVER – DAWN

The skull looms in the foreground – the P.B.R. is pulled back about seventy yards – Early morning mist still hangs on the water – as it clears, we SEE another post and skulls on the opposite bank, It is strangely quiet.

CHIEF

All right, Lance –

Lance's TWIN FIFTIES split the silence as they POUR into the skulls on the opposite bank – Suddenly there is a tremendous EXPLOSION and SECONDARY ONES from the jungle as shrapnel rips into the jungle and water from CLAYMORE MINES obviously set to cover the mound of skulls. The smoke clears.

LANCE

The other one –

WILLARD

No – leave it –

CHIEF

Why – Charlie put it there to kill –

WILLARD

Thta's not Charlie's work –

There is silence.

WILLARD

Whoever put 'em there didn't do it to kill people – They put 'em up as signs –

CHIEF

Signs?

WILLARD

Yeah – like keep out –

Willard motions – the Chief accelerates – they move ahead past the smoking mound.

EXT. THE RIVER – FOG – DAY

The P.B.R. pushed deeper into this mysterious area. Mist swells in and around the river, as the boat moves into an obscure fog. The Chief cuts the engine, and they coast.

WILLARD (V.O.)

Toward the night of the fifth day out of Do Lung Bridge, we judged ourselves about eight miles from Kurtz' base. Everything was still, the trees, the creepers, even the brush seemed like it had been changed into some kind of stone. It was unnatural, like a trance. Not a sound could be heard. I began to think I was deaf – then the fog came suddenly, and I was blind too.

The boat disappears in the thick fog.

MEDIUM CLOSE ON WILLARD

We catch glimpses of him, even though we are close.

WILLARD

Listen.

CHIEF

What is it?

WILLARD

Listen.

They are silent. We can HEAR the most ominous SOUND COMING FROM THE BANKS. The GROANING, OR WAILING... of HUNDREDS OF MEN.

CHIEF

They're on the banks of the river.

VIEW ON LANCE

Frantically, he swings the twin fifties around.

LANCE

Jesus!

VIEW ON CHIEF

We can barely SEE him – in and out of the fog.

CHIEF

No, Lance. Not while you can't  see.

VIEW ON WILLARD

Listening. The SOUND IS TERRIBLE, HORRIFYING.

CHIEF

Will they attack?

WILLARD

If they have boats... or canoes... they'd get lost in the fog. We can't move either – we'll end up on the shore.

CHEF

God...

LANCE

Sounds like hundreds of them.

WILLARD

Shhhhhh.

The CHORUS OF GROANS in unbearable. But it is not a hostile chant; or a war chant, but rather the SOUND OF HUMAN ANGUISH.

WILLARD

(continuing)

It doesn't sound hostile – it sounds like they've seen us coming and it sounds like – I don't know, a funeral. I don't understand.

VIEW ON LANCE

A glimpse of him, almost in tears. We then SEE glimpses, fog moving, of all the men on the P.B.R.

DISSOLVE TO:

MEDIUM VIEW – THE P.B.R.

MOVING THROUGH the thinning mist. The Navy craft proceeds cautiously.

WILLARD (V.O.)

Two hours after the fog lifted, we moved slowly to a spot we thought was roughly a mile and a half below Kurtz's camp. We approached a long sand-bank stretching down the middle of the river.

CHIEF

Which way? Right or left?

WILLARD

Who knows? Right.

CHIEF

Looks pretty shallow.

The P.B.R. moves toward the right-most channel. Chef takes a long pole and begins sounding depth.

VIEW ON WILLARD

The men are really tense now – Lances swivels his gun from bank to bank. Chief keeps his fingers on an M-16. Willard takes out the TOP SECRET packet he received at Do Lung. Tears it open. We MOVE IN ON him.

WILLARD

(reading)

Upon reaching objective. Target key personnel and commence operation. Should difficulty arise from which extraction is impossible, break radio silence Com-Sec Command code Strong Arm – indicate purgative air strike – code – Street Gang.

(pause)

Purgative air strike! Purgative! They'd kill me too!

Suddenly Chef lays out flat on the bow. Hundreds and hundreds of slender sticks fly onto the P.B.R. rattling against the boat.

CHIEF

Shit! Fucking arrows! They're shooting fucking arrows at us.

CLOSE ON WILLARD

Looking toward the banks.

WILLARD'S POV

Frags of men – naked limbs, arms, breasts, glaring eyes entangled in the dense jungle gloom. And hundreds of pathetic wooden arrows flying out toward them.

VIEW ON THE P.B.R.

Crazily zig-zagging up the river in the midst of the childish assault.

WILLARD

Steer her right.

VIEW ON THE P.B.R.

Arrows hitting the deck. The men open up everything they've got. Lance is FIRING the two fifties wildly.

WILLARD

Keep going... keep going. They're just fucking sticks! Chief, stay at the helm.

But Chief seems out of control – he lets the clip of his M-16 go. Then slowly lets the rifle fall out of his hands, and falls to Willard's feet, a primitive spear having caught him right through the ribs. Willard looks down in horror.

VIEW ON CHIEF

Laying at Willard's feet – the long spear through him, bleeding onto Willard's boots. He looks up at Willard, about to say something.

CHIEF

A spear?

He dies.

MEDIUM VIEW ON THE P.B.R.

The men are still crazily FIRING into the empty jungle long after those who attacked beat their retreat.

WILLARD

Stop it. Stop it!

Slowly he pulls his boots from under Chief. They are absolutely soaked in blood. He is stunned – sits down and begins to unlace the bloody boots, and take them off.

LANCE

Chief's dead.

Willard unlaces the other boot, and holds the bloody boot in his hand.

WILLARD (V.O.)

It was the strangest thing – I don't know that I can explain it. Two of my men dead, and all I could think of was whether Kurtz was dead too. That's all I wanted: to see Kurtz, to hear Kurtz.

He starts to wipe the blood off the boot.

WILLARD (V.O.)

(continuing)

Somehow, in the middle of this... carnival, Kurtz had grown into something – a gifted officer; a great man. Somehow, he was the only light in this hopeless, hopeless darkness. And now I was too late – he was  probably gone, disappeared... by a grenade rolled into his tent – or by some spear on the head. Christ, I felt like howling like those animals in the fog.

EXT. THE BOAT AT MARINA DEL REY – NIGHT

The people at Charlie's cocktail party on the boat. Some flashbulbs are going off. Some people are dancing to the MUSIC. OUR VIEW MOVES SLOWLY TOWARD Willard, on the edge of the party.

WILLARD (V.O.)

Here they are in Los Angeles. Everything is safe. There's a supermarket around the corner, the police station around the other. It would seem ridiculous to them that I was shot to hell because I had lost the privilege of listening to the mysterious Colonel Kurtz.

(pause)

Of course I was wrong. He was waiting for me. Kurtz was alive and he was waiting for me.

DISSOLVE TO:

EXT. THE RIVER – P.B.R. DAY

The P.B.R. moving up the river. The men are practically in a trance now, looking at the banks of the river. They don't even make an effort to touch their weapons.

WHAT THEY SEE

Hundreds and hundreds of Montagnard natives – dressed in the most ornate and primitive manner: feathers, parts of birds and animals; cod-pieces – all in body and face paint of the most savage nature. But there is a purity about them, men and boys, standing passively watching the small Navy craft flying the strange flag of red, white and blue.

VIEW ON THE P.B.R.

The men of the crew are not the same men who began this voyage. Their manner is lifeless as though in a trance. The various decorations and paraphenelia that they have picked up along the way seem oddly relevant to the savages that stand before them. The Chef has made a hat of birdfeathers; Lance's face has been painted with mud under the eyes to block the glare of the sun. He wears certain animal skins; trinkets; some animal teeth. Their uniforms have been torn and patched throughout the difficult journey. They start to move to their gun positions.

WILLARD

Just stand here with me where they can see us. Do nothing.

VIEW FROM BEHIND THE P.B.R.

MOVING SLOWLY TOWARD the fantastic human wall of feathers and war paint, standing on canoes across the river. The men on the crew stand in a group, their hands visibly without weapons. The natives standing across the river make no hostile gestures as they approach. They accept the small boat moving toward them with a sort of inevitability. The boat moves closer, approaches the wall of feathers – which slowly and automatically gives away, in almost a ritual of birth, undulating, allowing the little boat to penetrate.

VIEW ON WILLARD

Mus on his face (to protect it from the sun), the palms of some jungle vegetation protecting his head, he looks something like a tribal chieftain himself. His intuition was right. He senses that they would be allowed to pass.

FULL VIEW ON THE RIVER

Hundreds of Montagnards who had been lining the river now run, absolutely silently, along the banks, keeping pace with the P.B.R. There is no hostility in these faces, only curiosity and a sort of grief.

VIEW ON WILLARD, THE CREW

They look up toward the bank.

THEIR POV

The temple at NU MUNG BA, a fortified encampment, built around the ruins of a former Cambodian civilization. Stone walls, barbed wire, cracked pyramids and rows and rows of Escher-like sandbags arranged in an endless maze around the fortress.

VIEW ON WILLARD

He picks up his field glasses and looks through.

WILLARD'S POV – THROUGH GLASSES

A sign entangled in the barbed wire – its lettering strict and military:

"FOURTH SPECIAL FORCES

MISSION F-82

NU MUNG BA"

The GLASSES POV MOVES REVEALING another sign written in a wild psychedelic hand. "OUR MOTTO: APOCALYPSE NOW!"

The POV OF THE GLASSES MOVE once again and come upon an astonished sight, a black man dressed in a tatter of colored fabrics, feathers, and an Australian bush hat. He looks something like a multi-colored harlequin waving frantically to the P.B.R. The POV OF THE GLASSES MOVE OFF of him.

VIEW ON WILLARD

Not believing what he's just seen.

THE GLASSES POV

Once again the young black man is now waving his Australian hat.

VIEW ON THE P.B.R.

Willard shouts out to the strange greeter.

WILLARD

We've been attacked.

AUSTRALIAN

(shouting back)

I know, I know, it's all right. Come in this way. It's mined over there. This way. It's all right.

Willard look at Chef who is at the helm. He shrugs and they do as this man says. The P.B.R. moves towards the water's edge where there is a dock covered with concertina wire. The odd Australian stands waving his hat, guiding them safely in.

A thick greasy smoke hangs from fires that burn near the fort; fresh shell craters indicate a recent battle. Near the dock there is a tangled clump of corpses – half submerged in the water. Other piles of bodies lie about, some of them on fire. Fire literally burns from out of the ground. Chef nods at the bodies.

CHEF

Charlie?

WILLARD

Looks that way.

CHEF

(looking at the Australian)

Who's he?

WILLARD

God knows.

The boat pulls up. The Australian harlequin hops on board; the crew regards him with their dark faces splattered with mud and blood.

WILLARD

(continuing)

Who the hell are you?

AUSTRALIAN

Moonby. Got any Winstons?

WILLARD

Moonby what?

AUSTRALIAN

Moonby, 4th battalion, Royal Australian Regiment, Task Force. Ex-Corporal Moonby, deserted.

WILLARD

(incredulously, indicating the hundreds of natives)

What is this?

MOONBY

Oh, they're simple enough people. It's good to see you, baby. Nobody has any Winstons?

Chef automatically offers Moonby a Winston.

MOONBY

This boat's a mess.

WILLARD

Where's Kurtz? I want to talk to him.

MOONBY

Oh, you don't talk to Colonel Kurtz.

(he puffs, then smiles)

You listen to him. God, these are good. I kept these people off you, you know. It wasn't easy.

WILLARD

Why did they attack us?

MOONBY

Simple. They don't want him to go.

WILLARD

You're Australian?

MOONBY

Pre-Australian, actually. But I'd dig goin' to California. I'm California dreamin'.

WILLARD

(almost to himself)

So Kurtz is alive.

MOONBY

Kurtz. I tell you, that man has enlarged my mind.

He opens his arms wide, to indicate the breadth of his mind's expansion.

MOONBY

(continuing)

But lemme tell you, he is the most dangerous thing in every way that I've come on so far. He wanted to shoot me. The first thing he said is, 'I'm going to shoot you because you are a deserter.' I said I didn't desert from your army, I deserted from my army. He said, 'I'm going to shoot you just the same.'

WILLARD

Why didn't he shoot you?

MOONBY

I've asked myself that question. I said to myself, why didn't he shoot me? He didn't shoot me, because I had a stash like you wouldn't believe. I hid it in the jungle; the wealth of the Orient: Marijuana – Hashish – Opium – cocaine – uncut Heroin; the Gold of the Golden Triangle. and Acid – I make Koolaid that makes purple Owsley come on like piss. Now I'm Kurtz' own Disciple – I listen he talks. About everything! Everything. I forgot there's such a thing as sleep. Everything. Of love, too.

CHEF

Love?

MOONBY

Oh, no, not what you think... Cosmic love. He made me see things – things, you know.

The whole time Moonby is chattering on, Willard has picked up his field glasses and scans the fortress.

WILLARD'S POV – THROUGH THE FIELD GLASSES

Men in small groups, huddled over food. Now he settles on the entrance in the temple. There are stakes in front, and on top of them are horrible shrunken heads.

BACK TO SCENE

WILLARD

Sounds like he's gone crazy.

MOONBY

No, Colonel Kurtz couldn't be crazy – if you heard him talk, just last week, you'd never think he was crazy.

WILLARD

Is that where he is? By the shrunken heads.

WILLARD

Is that where he is? By the shrunken heads.

MOONBY

Those heads, yes. Well, the rebels...

WILLARD

(to his men)

We're going ashore. Tie her up – and leave your guns up, Lance.

LANCE

What?

WILLARD

Bring your rifles, that's all.

(looking at Moonby)

Take us to him.

MOONBY

Right on – he's been waiting for –

WILLARD

And shut up.

Moonby nods and shrugs, and hops off the P.B.R. Willard and the men follow.

MOVING VIEW – WILLARD, MOONBY AND THE CREW

As they proceed closer to the fortress-temple, men appear where a moment before there was only jungle.

They are mostly Montagnards, but far more savage looking than any we've seen before. They wear only loinclothes and bandoliers of ammunition. their bodies are painted in strange patterns. They carry Army M-16's, Russian AK-47's and a wide variety of knives and clubs. Women emerge from the brush as well. they are armed and equally primitive looking. Interspersed among them are a few taller men with paler skins, with the remnants of Army insignia on them. The paint on their bodies is, if anything more bizarre. We CONTINUE TO MOVE ACROSS the entire group up to the stone gates of the fort, where thirty or so more are seen silhouetted against the sky. Willard and his men look up at people more primitive and more savage than any since the time of Captain Cook.

They encounter, in the center of the group, what once appears to have been an American. he is tall, gaunt, wears a flak jacket, but is otherwise naked, save a loincloth. His face is darkened from dirt, battle smoke, strange camouflage patterns. His hair and beard are long, matted with mud and grease. He carries an AK-47 decorated with scalps and human ears. Willard approaches this beast, who seems shy and retiring.

WILLARD

Who are you?

MOONBY

(breaking in)

His name is...

WILLARD

I'm not ever goin' to tell you to shut up again.

Moonby shuts up. The MAN tries to speak, but nothing comes out. He is dumbstrucked at seeing them, as they are to see him.

MAN

Colby. Exec. officer, A-Team... Special Forces. F-82 – Col. Walter Kurtz, commanding.

WILLARD

What happened here?

COLBY

What – happened here.

WILLARD

Charlie?

COLBY

NVA regulars. They're coming again tonight. Tet – their big – assault.

Willard is the man in the middle – he doesn't know what to say to this man, but he understands the forces that pounded him. He takes his arm.

REVERSE ON COLBY

Looks at Willard, not understanding.

REVERSE ON WILLARD

Six months later, and he and Colby would be identical.

WILLARD

I'm taking you back.

Moonby slaps himself in the head with his hand.

MOONBY

Oh, no, don't say that.

COLBY

Take us back. Take us back! But, the operation – the team. Colonel Kurtz has such plans for – the team.

WILLARD

Take me to him, Major.

Colby starts, and then, seeing the shrunken heads on poles, he turns, agitated, to Willard:

COLBY

I had nothing to do with these operations – I did not do the planning – none of us did. It was all Colonel Kurtz – he was the genius. You'll see – the genius of our Colonel. He should be made a General, don't you think? A General? It's...

Suddenly, frightened, he stops. Without looking Willard knows that Kurtz is standing behind him. He turns.