Original subtitles

In the spring of 1965, the first United States Army combat troops were committed

to the conflict raging in South Vietnam. There was no point in my living life elsewhere. So,

this was the place to start. And if they had was intended for me to die,

I was quite willing to die because I had thought of suicide quite a bit and written about it,

entertained it, and fantasized about it. I want I want to see what America really is. I want to

I want to hang out with people who come from with no education who come from nowhere and

I want to see what they're thinking. I want to feel what you know what the bottom of the

barrel what the what reality reality is like and I could think of no greater reality than

war. I was eager to get to the war to learn. I wrote the platoon script in 1976 in New York

City in about a few weeks primarily because I reached a place in my life where I felt like

if I didn't write it at that point in time I would forget what had happened in the war.

Here was a script that uh was the most fantastic writing I had come across. It had captured

the essence of war from the viewpoint of the foot soldier and I felt that I had something

very special. I went back to all the studios that Oliver had been at and every one of them rejected

the film. That was the first hurdle that we had to get Platoon made. There's nothing Oliver wouldn't

do to get this movie made and all of a sudden you want to get on that. You want to be part of

that show. I met this guy by the name of Oliver Stone. And the thing that I remember was that he

was unlike uh any guy that I ever met before. As far as he was not like someone that someone would

give bunch of money to to make a movie. When I smoke, I think of platoon. The film is based

on people that I knew in two different infantry outfits over there. I was in the first cavalry

and I was also in the 25th infantry. So, it's the platoon that was drawn in the movie is based on

composits and groups of people that I met in different units. The characters in the film,

they're accurate. I mean, that's that's the platoon. The platoon is made up of men and each

one has an individual characteristics. Each one comes from different states,

different feelings. I was very comfortable with the cast because I knew that I had like a good

like a baseball coach with a great team. I just knew that I had platoon of different

layers of players and I knew that all these kids were hot. Nobody had done anything. Tom had done

a couple movies. Will had done a few. Charlie had done Squat. It was pretty pretty magical. I mean,

the fact that he chose who he chose. Heard about the project when I was uh 18 for the first time

I went on tape. They sent it to Oliver and um he looked at it and got back to us um and said that

I was too mannered, I don't know, predictable in my gestures or that it was I didn't internalize

enough of the audition. So, I said, "Okay, this one goes away." And that's that. Oliver got it

back on its feet um couple years later and uh met me again, not to audition but just to talk.

And then a couple days after that I got the gig and uh that's my story and I'm sticking to it.

Tom Behringer was really a little bit of a bland sentimental TV hero prior to, you know,

but he was excellent in The Big Chill and uh I thought had an edge. I felt like he could push the

limit and go go evil, go go go sour. He told me a story about the real Barnes. They were going down

a jungle path somewhere out there on the Cambodian border, just walking along, maintaining, you know,

silence. the Barn's character put his hand up to stop and they came on three of the gooks sitting

there. I go, "Well, how did he know?" And he said, "He smelled them. He could smell them." It's based

on people I knew. So, what you look for is some matching spirit that that resembles. You can't go

for facial. I could never find Elias Indian, but it was the same kind of rebellious and defiant

spirit. I felt that. And William had never done that cuz he'd always been the bad guy. But in the

bad guy, Streets of Fire, for example, he'd been in that movie. He was really on. He talked about

Elias being an Indian. That was very important to him. And the curious thing was he was able

to project that on to me. With uh McKinley, I felt like uh he's a highly energetic guy,

strong, Irish, control. It seemed that I would do the opposite with him, that I would make

him an immoral man, a man who was a coward, uh, physically physical coward, too, and a bully. So,

uh, it was, but he didn't resemble at all the real Sergeant O'Neal. He used to hound me and

drove me crazy. Well, I was casting it when it was set to go in 1984, in the spring of ' 84,

when I got out of, uh, NYU grad. And, uh, then the whole thing was scuttled. Two years later,

calls and says, you know, McKinley, do you want to be in in Platoon again? And I'm like, yeah, you

know, yes, yes, but I'm doing, you know, Hamlet at the Public. And he goes, tell Joe Pep it's my

movie. He'll understand. Oh, Johnny. I could tell a mile away. I said, you know, you're going to be

a star. There's just absolutely no question about it. You got a great face. You're unbelievably

handsome and you have an original character. You have you have a quality. He said, you know,

read for this part. And I read for the part and he said, "All right." I mean, right then and there,

he said, "All right, I'm going to need you for, you know, about 13 weeks. We're going to be in

the jungle. It's going to be awful conditions. Uh, you know, are you ready to do that?" And I said,

"Oh, yes, absolutely." And I said, "We're going to the Philippines." And I'd never been out of

the country before. What happened was I came and I auditioned and then every day he would tell me,

"I'm getting better or something." You know, when I would leave, like he'd lean out the window and

yell and down there and say, "Something better." You know, bring me something better tomorrow. No,

it was like it's actually kind of, you know, kind of psychotic. It was a very odd soup bowl of gods.

You know, it's a strange mixture. The only way we were going to get these we willy-wink the actor,

you know, to to have any concept of what it was like to be an infantryman in the jungle. Um,

was to put them in the jungle as infantrymen. We made it clear up front before they left the

United States that we were not interested in them working on this film unless they were willing to

undergo two weeks of rehearsal. uh as uh training as light infantry. Uh and that was the condition.

Hypothetically, if you broke your leg, um you wouldn't be allowed to do the film. Three actors

in New York tried to start a uh movement that would prevent that language from being in the

contract. And I'm like, Oliver, and he's like, you know, you're not you're not with these guys,

are you? And I'm like I almost I almost started crying. I'm like, Oliver, no. I am going to the

Philippines. I'm so going. I'm already there. Nobody was around cuz I wanted to go there early

just to relax and get used to the surroundings. Was really tired and I said, "I can't go to sleep

now. It'll totally throw me off, but I can set an alarm. I'll take a little nap." Alarm woke me up

and I went to open up the curtains, you know, to see, you know, whether it was still sunny out and

all that. And I looked and there was a column of tanks going down on the street. The revolution had

started while I was taking my nap. What happens now? There's a revolution in the Philippines.

this is what else you know everybody was saying listen don't go to the Philippines you know don't

uh don't do that it's it's very dangerous you know cuz that entire you know the NPA the new people's

army was there and it was just chaos of you know riots and murders and bombs and [ __ ] everywhere

selfishly all I could think about was I wish these bastards would get the revolution over so we could

make our little $6 million movie we landed there I think it was 2 days after Marcos had split from

the moment The moment those lads arrived in the Philippines where we shot it, they were their

characters. They were new guys coming into a unit in Vietnam, nothing else existed. He wanted them

to understand the pain and the agony and the angst and the psychology of being a grunt in Vietnam.

One of the first things I did was uh a shocker. I cut all their hair off. I stood right in front of

them, looked in their beady ass eyeballs and said, "Get that civilian slime off of your gourd." And

that [ __ ] was gone. And with it went their persona. Whoever they thought they were, they

were now a soldier. 48 hours earlier, I was in New York City, you know, getting a cup of coffee and

a bagel. And now these idiots are looking at me for what to do. I'm hardly prepared to tell you,

gentlemen. That piece of equipment that looks like a little tiny shovel, that's what it is. It's

called an entrenching tool. Now, you pick it up and you take it out of your character and you go

here, here, here, and here. And you spend the next four hours digging your home. And they started

in on the holes. You know, our hands are just raw because we're not used to this kind of work. We're

a bunch of city guys out in the bush. On that same night, I had the uh special effects guy,

Eves Dabono, came out and and while they were digging their home, he quietly put in

some explosive charges around the perimeter. And I gave the signal, "Boom, boom, boom." These mortar

explosions went off all around them. We got up and screamed, "Incoming! Incoming! Get in your holes!"

And then the AK-47 fire started from outside the perimeter. Just started pouring in. These

guys were just crapping little green pellets. The special forces guys were also pretty hardcore. I

mean, there was some question about whether they knew the boundaries of the game. I don't think any

of us, myself included, really knew the extent of what that boot camp would become. And it was all

sorts of things. It was cooking. It was slang of the period. It was music of the period. It was it

was weapons, booby traps, small infantry tactics, uh defensive, offensive tactics, ambushes,

first aid, um medevac, radio communications. All your time was occupied with something, either a

lecture or a demonstration about some weapon or some type of ordinance or whatever, some equipment

that you had to wear. We were doing basic infantry and advanced infantry training uh things in twoe

period that's ordinarily done in 9 10 12 13 14 weeks. It was rigorous, rugged, tough, designed

that way. Everybody was had to follow their rank was um only spoken to as their character name. Um

it was very regimented. It was very exhausting. You know, 2 weeks is not a long time, you know,

but you got to jam it all in. We didn't shower. We didn't we didn't bathe. We didn't uh have any

access to those facilities because of the grime and the bites and the mung and the the stonosity

of it all. I decided to scratch blood from my body and uh that basically had to stop me. The rations,

you know, that we were given to eat was the most shocking thing that you you'd ever seen would be

like uh uh bean, what was it? Bean component, I think was the name of one of them. Bean component,

turkey loaf. But I had eaten my socks at that point, you know. I mean, you know,

we're all starving to death. I mean, I lost 28 lb in 2 weeks. You couldn't [ __ ] So for four

or five days you couldn't take a [ __ ] and then finally you do and it's just nirvana. Then my

biggest fear was that while you're taking a [ __ ] a cobra was going to crawl up your ass and eat

your colon. We got up. I filled my tank canteen up. I put uh these pills in that you know purify

the water supposedly. Shook it up. We walk about 50 yards upstream from where we were. I collected

the water downstream. remember there was a big fat dead pig in the water all all bloated and you know

really disgusting. I drank the water that just ran over that thing. We got back I was delirious for

like 24 hours. I don't remember it. I got a little taste of like jungle fever. I was 50% alert every

night. You were up for two hours and then you woke your buddy and he was up for two hours. That was

the one thing I told Dale O'B up front. I said I don't want I want them to know what a year without

sleepers feels like. I wanted to I want them to feel it in 2 weeks. Okay. You say you're playing

army and all that, but there's enough real danger and enough peer pressure that the stakes somehow

got very very high. And one night I'm sleeping and I sleep with my mouth open, you know, like this.

And he takes a uh a water bug, which is a huge cockroach. Took two of them and they were culating

and he put it on my beard and like this. And then I think crawled into my mouth and it called in my

tongue and I spit it out and in what was pretty dim light, I could see two water bugs copulating

on my lap. They begin to snap at each other. They begin to say, "You son of a [ __ ] That's

my C-ration." You know, and you could hear this going on. And I knew then that we were beginning

to build a real life. End of that two weeks, we took uh two hours out. We all went up. We did a

mass reading of it. And it was fascinating hearing all the characters cuz it was I was like it was

all jelling in my mind. And it was like indeed all these guys were becoming the characters.

These kids were ready to go and I was very very proud. We went directly from our graduation party

to the first day of shooting. Oliver didn't want any downtime back in Manila at the hotel. all this

and that for anybody to lose that edge. It was 0400 when we we got on the the little buses they

had and we went directly location. We got all our gear on and then we marched up the hill and it was

quite a march actually probably a mile good mile or so uphill and all you could hear were the feet.

That's all you could hear. Nobody was talking as the sun was coming up. And as we would march by,

we saw Oliver go by in a Jeep, right? Goes by in a Jeep like that. And we all look, remember the

story, my dad was in the Philippines in World War II and he saw MacArthur drive by in a Jeep with

that corn cob pipe and he says, "What an [ __ ] What an asshole." I thought he was a mad man. One

of those guys who sort of rides rides that fine line between uh brilliance and uh explosion of the

brain. He would find ways to get into get inside you. the more he got to know you, the better

access he had to your buttons. And uh he started pushing him a little bit. I think one scene he

got pissed at me. Uh I made the helicopter land and I made him run up and get the uh resupply

and he wanted to wear a t-shirt or something cuz there was a dirt and the rocks hitting his

back and I said, "Bullshit, take your t-shirt. I want your, you know, skin." I said, "Look,

Ollie, if I wear my t-shirt behind the tattoo, the thing the chopper's kicking up rocks and pebbles

at 100 miles an hour, I'm getting beat as [ __ ] out here." He says, "What? You a [ __ ] Little

[ __ ] from Malibu. Playing too much volleyball on the beach, huh? The wrong you can't handle

some pebbles. Put some dirt on your tattoo." That was early on. That was like day four. So,

I knew what I was going to be dealing with. Everyone hated it so much it was embarrassing.

But he wanted it that way. He'll stop at nothing. You'd hate him at in the moment. You'd hate him.

But that would take you to the next level and the next level. The next level. You know what I mean?

He took he just took you on that ride. You know, a good director is a guy that creates a certain tone

and creates the world and you can be in that world and then all he has to do is steer you.

[ __ ] piece of [ __ ] Get him.

Break it up. Break it up.

He made this. Like really, it was a life or death thing. There's real talent in that. You

want me to hold on to a chair? I didn't have a seat belt on. Yeah. And midfoot chair get

way. So King grabbed me from behind. You almost went out the thing. Well,

it was closed, but I'm still here. Uh, it's a good thing you're here. Otherwise,

we wouldn't have a movie. Hey, I put a seat belt on this time. Hello,

R.

Felt better. Oh, man. What happened? What happened? Sorry. With what? Surprise. I guess

you could say it's a method direction in the sense of uh wanting them to realize that the stakes were

high that uh their lives were on the line. I was completely knocked out for about 10 seconds and

um I woke up to Dale die with a little pen light in my eyes checking my pupils and was it was

very strange. I was not I was not back in Kansas however. I was still in the jungle. I remember the

42nd day I had this vivid memory of my going out to this night shoot and feeling like I was alone.

I think my my Bob Richardson showed up and a few other people but we were down to nothing. It was

absolutely totally gorilla film making. It was like, you know, knock this shot off over here,

run over here, do this, you know. Bravo two, we all helped move equipment. You never seen

an actor do that. Uh you saw these actors do that. They were used to humping heavy things

and they they were into this. They wanted to do this. Uh, and anything they could do to help out,

they did. One day we did 55 setups. And how did we like some of that stuff? I don't know. I said,

uh, how do you how do you see this? I mean, do you, uh, do you see me? Is it very internal?

Is it external? What's going on here? Am I looking at him? Am I looking away? I mean,

what's going on? Oliver didn't say a word. He just stared at me. in a very serious, focused,

deadly, I just might kill you any second type of stare. And I didn't figure out first. Then

it like it hit me. That was the performance he wanted was that stare, that look, that thing,

you know, you go off like like that and you just start blinking like that, you know,

and and you you know, you realize that he wasn't there anymore.

He was um somewhere else. The eye of our rage and our captain Ahab.

We're first in the village and and there's a a a spider hole like covered up with a with a basket.

Open it up. We find it. The response of Dale and and and Oliver on that scene was I turned around

and I walked away. Print. I didn't say anything. I think they had a flashback on that one. There

were a couple scenes like that. Why didn't you listen to me? Huh? Why? Why didn't you listen

to me? Stupid. You stupid [ __ ] I lose it. Come here, mother. Basically snap. It was an audible

snap. And have to make them onelegged kid dance. And the poor kid that they got was he had one of

those milk things going on with his pup. He was blind in one eye and he was [ __ ] completely and

he really only had one leg and and they weren't treating him that well and they were asking him

to do things he couldn't really do. You know, a guy with two legs I have trouble with and it was

it was very disturbing. I didn't I didn't enjoy that at all. And as I was doing it,

you know, I got good peripherals. So, I could see Oliver over on the side. I could really see him

uh going back. I was convinced that he was back. It was the whole feeling you got from him. Him

watching us and me sneakily observing him. Uh it was an interesting character study in his world.

Uh how it affected him, some of the things that uh I was doing that I knew he had done. I never saw

a MI massacre where which is what happened with one unit in the American infantry destroyed 120

130 people in one afternoon deliberately. Let's go for it. Let's do the whole village. Come on

S. What the are we waiting for? I saw much more random patterns of killing and it bothered me.

Uh I understand it. I understand why people do that under the pressure of war. Many Americans

felt the villagers were against us. Certainly they were villagers were getting their share fair fair

amount of pressure from the North Vietnamese but also ideologically the villagers uh were really

on the North Vietnamese side because the way they saw it they were fighting for their freedom. We

uprooted them. We uprooted we bombed the the territory. We destroyed their infrastructure.

We destroyed their shrines. We destroyed their temples. We didn't understand their Buddhism or

their ancestor worship. So we really alienated the countryside. And I tried to show this a bit in in

the movie where uh the villagers are very upset with what we've done to them. At the same time,

the Americans are very upset at the villagers because of the feeling that they're storing

the rice, storing the weapons for the North Vietnamese. So this leads inevitably to a

conflict. Women screaming at you, you know, and the men saying nothing and you just, you know,

it's 110° and you got your pot on and you're like your head's ready to explode. And this is when he

crosses. This is when he goes over the edge. To deny that it happened, which is what many some

critics of the film say is to deny the reality of Vietnam. Also, what was happening was that there

was a tremendous amount of uh fragging incidents where American soldiers would kill other American

soldiers or attempt to kill, which started to happen when the morale of the troops started to

go down. When Lyndon Johnson announced that the war was over, that he was pulling out from the

presidency. We knew we were never there to win. We were there simply to survive as individuals.

I think Elias's smile is relief. I mean, you know, all of a sudden the adrenaline's gone out. I mean,

he thought he was out there alone and he's nailed a bunch of guys, but he could very

well got killed. He could very well have been left back there. It was like a recognition. Uh,

you know, he was a very fatalistic guy and it was like, okay, this is the way it's going to

come and it's my time and you're going to do it. I fancy that. That's a good one. Well,

I think you can you can entertain both. They're not contradictory. and uh his levitation, his

ability to transcend uh his mortal body is what motivates the smile. And I think that probably

Barnes Behringer sees it in a whole different is a practical man who doesn't have much respect

for the spiritual life. He was reconciled to his death. That's why he could do something as crazy

as he did. And that also makes it equally hard when he decides to go for the helicopter after

all. I've got all these technical considerations. I got to avoid that. I got to get around that. I

got to pass through here that I got to blow this off and I got to these guys are there. You know,

I've got to queue the whole shot. It's this massive shot. Everything gets activated by me

saying I'm ready and I'm totally alone. I'm a guy in the middle of nowhere with this walkie-talkie

ready to activate this huge shock. It was very exciting. I think he's feeling incredible guilt.

There's that shot of him on the helicopter with Lieutenant Wolf looking at him like,

"What the hell? You told me he was dead." You know, and a couple of the other guys going,

"You said he was dead." He comes in there to say he's sorry, but how can he ever say those words?

I didn't look at it as killing Barnes as much as I looked at it as as releasing Barnes from

Barnes. This may sound crazy, but a gesture of peace and an act of violence uh to release his

soul. These boys were returned old and fractured souls. They were in part of them was dead forever.

And this is what I tried to show at the end with Charlie Sheen going back to his country. Uh he

would never be the same man again. He would he would in fact have the soul of a murderer he

had killed. I said, "Dad, I'm going to kiss the ground at LAX." And I did. I kissed the ground.

I didn't think I was going to make it out of there alive. At one point some of those kids

got picked off in the sense that they um you know this was their first film and it's a hard place to

follow and they would you know go back to jobs as waiters hoping for the next film. Uh some of them

never got that second film ever. Some of them just went back to hometowns and you know it was

a bit like Vietnam. We all kind of fell apart and some guys did better. So each one went his own way

and it's sort of sad to see that. It's like you know life moves on. It doesn't stop. That's the

point. This was important to us from the get-go cuz it was important to Dale Dy. It was important

to Oliver. We took their lead and also with a very good material in this incredible, you know,

we in our simple way as much as possible. We were trying to be committed to, you know, it

goes beyond realism. It it has to do with a being the right spirit. I asked him, I said, ' Alver,

look, I'm going to Las Vegas uh to meet with the surviving guys from my outfit in Vietnam

uh to a sort of a reunion. Now, these guys are the real deal. They have seen the elephant, heard the

owl. Uh I think we should see what they think. And he said, "Oh, it's not ready and we don't

have the sound and we don't have the music laid in and yada yada." And I said, "Oliver, they don't

care." Said, "Let's just test the waters." It serves, I think, as Oliver's own tribute because

he himself was a combat infantry in Vietnam. It serves as his tribute and his statement about

those things which happened to us in the war. Even if the public ignored it, we had done something

special. The country is critics, the newspaper guys are critics, the world are critics. Then

you get it down to the vets. The vets are your best critics. But then you specifically get it

down one more step to the guys who are in the same platoon and they're looking to see which character

they are. And I would imagine it makes him a little bit nervous. Larry, I said, "Watch flavor."

And you said something like, "Uh, that's pretty good." We always had these verbal sparring acts.

Struck a lot of nerves because a lot of people say, "Well, yeah, I went through that. this is

what I went through, but I have never been able to express myself and talk to my family or to my

kids or to my buddies about what actually went on because it's just been a part of my life that I

didn't want to talk about. And boom, here's this film Platoon that says, "Yeah, I went through

that. That that's that's my experience." We got home, Top Gun was the big hit. And you know,

we really by the end of that platoon, it felt like we'd made a love story about young men dying

in war. I mean, that's what it felt like. It was like this wildly horrific bonding experience and

you get home and it's like you know aircraft carriers and guns and stuff and it's like the

[ __ ] that's not what we did and that's what people going to see as a war movie and then it

turns out all going to release it at Christmas and I'm like oh we're in the ass you know this is not

uh it's a wonderful life this uh so I just figured we're dead mate. I knew we were making

a very important film. I knew that the vets would appreciate it and the families would appreciate.

I didn't know that this film was going to be received like it was and that was a real shock for

me. I thought we were going to make a movie with a lot of integrity and a very smart movie, but I

thought it would be misidentified and that people did not want to hear about Vietnam. Platoon was

hailed by viewers and critics alike. It has been a phenomenal cultural as well as box office success.

The whole response to platoon changed my life as a filmmaker because until that time I never realized

the power of a motion picture. Uh that you can affect social change. You can you can change

people's thinking about subjects. I can remember the days when I wouldn't even admit that I was a

Vietnam veteran. But now, and I'm sure this movie has a lot to do with it. I can finally say I'm

I'm very proud to be a Vietnam veteran. I hope the one thing they walk away with uh from this

this film is uh is the truth and knowing that um that this film is is about the horrors, the um

the madness. It's a mythological movie, man. And he and he understood that. Oliver, I look back on

it as a very gratifying uh experience. It's real labor of love in my heart. And uh I think we all

felt we were doing something special and the the idea was more important than any single one of us.