Original subtitles

[Sheen] On March 30th, 1987, Platoon, a low budget

independent, non-SAG film

cast with mostly unknowns making their first movie

won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

And the winner is Platoon.

[applause]

Platoon

Platoon.

Platoon.

[applause]

This isn't a story about winning awards

but rather the journey of the no name grunts

that made this film what it is

and the impact that experience had on all of us.

[Keith] I had a teacher and she would say

"Do you know when you're in the presence of something beautiful?"

And I had no idea of the profundity of the question.

Platoon was one of those circumstances

when you put together in the audition

the boot camp, the filming, and the relationships.

Now I know when I'm in the presence of something beautiful.

Who have left that experience and then come back here in June

and the summer hit was Top Gun

I just thought, "Well, we're fucked."

Top Gunwas glorifying the war.

What Oliver made, was this film about horrible, horrible things happening.

Not glorious things, that wasn't Oliver's experience there.

The glory that Oliver experienced was love and brotherhood

and that's the film he shot.

[Sheen] That brotherhood

is the reason I'm narrating this film.

The same reason we all want to be part of this passion project

by our friend and fellow grunt, Paul Sanchez.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

First, Oliver needed to get his film made.

[Sheen] Hollywood is full of great scripts

that never see the light of day.

Oliver peddled the Platoon for over a decade

without success.

I had just gotten into the production business and a friend said:

"Listen, do you know who Oliver Stone is?"

Oliver Stone for Midnight Express.

I said: "Sure, I know who Oliver is."

He said: "Well, he has this script about Vietnam."

And I ran up to my office and I sat at my desk

and I couldn't believe what I was reading.

I was literally sobbing, I had tears coming down my face.

And Ed said to me: "What's wrong," I said I had just read

the greatest screenplay I've ever read.

It's Academy Award time, we'll never get closer.

I called Oliver Stone and I said:

"Listen, I just read a script of yours, I want to make this movie."

He then got caught up with Salvador

and I was trying to get Platoonfinanced.

I met with the people that had financed Salvador.

He is refusing to make eight cuts in the movie.

He's really digging in, and they said:

"We're not getting any closer to another movie

with Oliver unless he agrees to make the cuts."

I met with Oliver, he read it, he says okay,

signed it, and that got the movie made.

[Capt. Dale Dye] I did a little over 20 years of active duty

in the United States Marine Corps. Served all over the world

including three tours in Vietnam,

one tour in the Middle East,

in Beirut, Lebanon, '82, '83.

When I retired from the Marine Corps...

Uh, I really didn't know what to do with myself.

I'd seen every military movie there was for obvious reasons.

What I had seen, pissed me off.

It's not us, it's not combat.

That's not war, that's Hollywood's pipe dream.

So I said: "You know what? I'm gonna fix this."

It took me some chicanery, but I finally got his number, and I called,

and I said: "Look, I know and you know

that the only way to do this credibly

is we've got to train those guys."

You know, he got it, because he's Oliver

and he loves a left-handed approach

and because he knew what I was telling him was true.

I'm gonna give you 33 actors,

we're gonna shoot in the Philippines.

I had to produce a trained rifle platoon.

I look at my life as-- as, as BP, before Platoon and AP, after Platoon.

Tom Berenger I think definitely

was the most successful and the most high profile actor.

I mean, Looking for Mr. Goodbar,my auspicious debut.

I was in a show at Kings Island in Cincinnati

I was Moosey in Rock Around The Clock.

Telemarketing. Yeah, I was telemarketing. [laughing]

I just graduated, I was looking for something to do and this was my first film.

I was doing commercials

or at least I was auditioning for commercials.

I wasn't getting a lot of commercials.

I had done the smash follow up

to Grizzly, called Grizzly 2: The Predator.

I got eaten by a giant bear.

I didn't feel like an old hand, let's put it that way, but

next to almost everyone else where it was their first film

I guess I felt a little

more like an old hand than they did.

[Dale] Got a scholarship from Stella Adler

to go to New York city.

Ah, Eddie and the Cruisers.

I got my first job Hoosiers.

Banging around New York. I'd just gotten out of NYU in 1984.

I had been in a movie called Stranger in Paradise.

Before I got the job, I had just joined this band.

I had made one other film before Platoon,and that was The thing.

I was on unemployment, just having a good time. And then The Big Chill.

Really not much of hardly anything professionally.

Platoon.

There was a project called The Platoon.

Originally, it was set to go with Dino De Laurentiis in like '84...

and it went up to the Gulf Western Building.

Many times the film got very close to be getting done

and didn't get done, and...

It was a long casting process and

everybody and his mother read for these roles

over, and over, and over again.

[Sheen] What a lot of people don't realize, is that

my brother Emilio had gotten

the part, the Chris Taylor part.

Huge desk, Oliver sitting behind it

and every single space was filled with stacks,

I would say, this high of black and white photos.

Two years later, Oliver called up and said:

"McGinley, we're going to shoot the movie again."

"Do you want to come in and audition?"

I'm like: "Well, I got the role last time."

Oliver Stone is doing this film Platoon

and he's looking for-- He has a list of like eight actors

that he's looking for and it's just like, wow.

And I got the call from Oliver saying, "We're back on."

I had read in Backstage Magazine

about this audition for this film.

I'd like to play the southern sergeant, uhm...

I don't know if that's what he was thinking.

[Kane] I said: "I'd like to get an audition for this film."

They said: "No, you just have to leave a picture and resume."

I said: "Oh, really? Where are they auditioning?"

And for some reason, she told me the Empire Hotel.

Walked in, nobody was sitting out front.

[Sheen] Oliver, he said: "You're too mannered."

"You're doing all this Tony Danza shit."

And Oliver offered me Sgt. O'Neill.

It was one lane here, it was one lane there.

It was like, "We got gooks coming over the ridge."

She said, "I, I don't see you on the list."

And I...

I just threw a shit fit. I said:

"My fucking agent fucks up all the time.

I'm so sick of it. You know what? Call my agent!"

I gave her a phony number. I said: "You know, I gotta get to the bottom of this.

I can't take this. This is the second time this happened to me."

He was like, "Hey, can you go get me a coffee?"

Like, "Yes, no problem, Mr. Stone."

I ran out and got him a coffee and I was like,

"I might, I think I might have a real shot at this part."

She said: "Alright, alright. Relax, relax.

Just do a monologue for me."

I told Mark, I said: "Listen.

I'm going to do this low-budget independent film in the Philippines.

It's the greatest script I've ever read.

Uh, it's for no money, but

when you read-- and there's a juicy part."

-Playin', Lieutenant? -Nah. Wouldn't want to get raped by you guys.

Gave it to me. Called my agent, he got me in.

But this time I'm auditioning for Oliver.

She said: "You know what? Come back tomorrow. I'd like you to meet the director."

Then when I finish, he goes, you know: "I want you in my film. I just want you in my film."

I came down and called my agent, told him

I got this film, and he said:

"Ah, forget it," and just blew it off.

Every single agent at every agency went:

"Don't go to this movie. It's not insured.

They don't know what's going on."

I got called back. I lost 10 pounds.

I flew to Los Angeles and he said:

"Greg, you have the part. Gain 20 pounds."

I brought in my 357 Magnum to the audition.

The casting director freaked out.

He's like: "Whoa, whoa, whoa. What the fuck is this?"

and I was like: "Shut up. Sit down. Relax."

Oliver had like a big grin on his face and I knew I had him. Like I knew I was in.

It's really because of

To Live and Die in L.A. that he cast me.

Because he wanted to do kind of casting against type.

Which is funny, because To Live and Die in L.A.

is a very cool movie, but I look at it

and it looks like such a little kid trying to play tough.

Monologue? You-- In my head I'm thinking:

"You did not ask me to prepare anything.

This was just a conversation.

Make sure I didn't gain 50 pounds

and you already told me I was cast."

And I remember I kind of lost it.

I don't remember much, but I wound up under his desk

and I remember looking up at Oliver

and his hand stuck out and he said, "Chill out, man."

So, I thought I got the part of Rhah, and I told my agent like

"Yeah, man, I got it. He told me I had it."

And I "That's cool, man." I thought Rhah was a cool part.

And then they go: "Well, no. You didn't get the part of Rhah. You got the part of Tex."

"Yeah, but you're doing Sal." And I-- Of course, I went to the script, like,

"Where the fuck is Sal? Where is Sal? Oh, there he is!"

By Monday, I get a call saying,

you know: "Would you like to come play?"

[sighs] Yeah, it was my first--

You know how it is when you get your first job.

I remember it was raining on Monday and I was on

Fifth Avenue and I'm like jumping in the street.

I didn't care how big the role was.

And I called my aunt who was like my muse

my confidant, and I said: "Guess what? I got a movie."

She says: "Baby, great. That's wonderful."

She said: "Where is it?" I said: "The Philippines."

She hung up the phone on me.

Okay, I got the job.

Then the war breaks out in the Philippines. [laughs]

[Sheen] In 1986, Ferdinand Marcos lost the election

but he refused to relinquish power.

The people revolted.

My plane was the last plane to arrive

from anywhere before the airport got closed.

I got picked up, I went to the Manila Garden Hotel.

I took a nap, the first thing I did.

[speaker on TV] Standoff between rebellious

military elements and

Marcos loyalists

began Saturday.

I woke up a little later and I remember

opening the curtains and looking down.

There were tanks going down the street.

Unbeknownst to me, The People Power Laban Revolution started to happen.

This is all going down.

We obviously can't shoot here.

They said: "Just sit tight.

The film's probably canceled. We'll get you out when we can."

I flew from Savannah to L.A.

and was gonna make connection to Philippines, and they were, "Oh, no."

And I remember hitting the streets

with Bob Richardson and some other people.

And we went to the People Power barricade

around Camp Aguinaldo because what happened is

some faction of the army kind of mutinied and said:

"We're not going to suppress the people."

[speaker on TV] General Fidel Ramos leading the reformists

had decided on mutiny against President Marcos.

And another faction, Marcos told to go and, you know, arrest those guys.

[speaker on TV] The trucks and armored personnel carriers

were met with an amazing display.

People came and made a million-person barrier

around Camp Aguinaldo and basically said:

"No, you have to go through the million of us to get to them."

I think it put a lot of pressure on the foreign governments.

They got him out of there and, you know, it was a big celebration.

It was really special because these millions of Filipinos saying: "A Westerner."

They were so happy because it was the feeling that,

"Ah, you're gonna tell the world about this."

And then I remember Alex Ho saying:

"I think we can get it back together."

And... we were back on.

Tom Berenger, Staff Sergeant Bob Barnes.

Saddle up. Lock and load.

John Glover. My character in Platoonwas Sanderson.

You're going on reports, son, now.

I'm Tony Todd and I was blessed

to play the role of Sergeant Warren.

He's taken us this far, right?

He'll takes us the rest of the way.

Mark Moses, I played Lieutenant Wolfe

in Platoon.

I got to run. I'll catch you men later.

I'm Ivan Kane and I played Tony Hoyt.

Go for it. Let's do the whole fucking village.

Hi, I'm Bob Orwig and I was Gardner.

I show you a picture of Lucy Jean?

I'm Reggie Johnson, and I played Junior.

Fuck that honky shit. Got to give me some Motown, Jams.

Hi, I'm Johnny Depp and I had the, uh, privilege

of playing the role of Lerner,

[in Vietnamese]

Hi, I'm Corey Glover, I played Francis.

It ain't D-E-R-E. It's D-E-A-R.

I'm Chris Pedersen. I played Crawford.

What's O'Neill got? A nose up the Lieutenant's ass already?

Robert Rock Galotti, assistant military technical adviser

and played spec for Thomas Huffmeister.

Kevin Dillon, I played Bunny in Platoon.

Yeah, but I still like a piece of pussy once in a while.

Kevin Eshelman.

Fucking lame, fuck.

I played Morehouse.

My name is Willem Dafoe.

Sergeant Elias.

I'm captain Dale Dye, United States Marine Corp, retired.

And I was the military adviser on the Platoon.

I'm James Terry McIlvain.

Goddamn right, he does.

A.K.A. Ace.

John C. McGinley,

I played Sergeant O'Neill.

Oh no, no, no.

Paul Sanchez, I played Doc in Platoon.

This is bad, man. I have bad vibes here.

David Neidorf, and I played Tex.

I ain't getting greased on this bush tonight

so you keep this sorry cheese-dick off my ass."

My name is Keith David, and I played King in Platoon.

You got to be rich in the first place thinking like that.

Richard Edson, Sal.

Man, this is gook stuff. Let's get out of here.

Mark Ebenhoch, I am one of the technical advisers for the movie Platoon,and actor in it.

I'm Corkey Ford.

I played Manny Washington in the film Platoon.

I'm Charlie Sheen. I played Chris Taylor in Platoon.

[sound of crickets and heart beat]

I was living in a funeral parlor at the time on Sullivan Street, a five-story walk up.

And so, I'm walking down the stairs, and in walks Cher.

And I've got those goofy duffle bags,

or whatever we were allowed to take.

I'm like, Cher, walking into my funeral parlor.

And I'm going to do some low budget piece of shit halfway around

the world in revolution torn Philippines." I'm like:

"I stepped out of a hit plane. What I'm I doing?"

It was not like: "Okay, my agents and my handlers

and my super star people will package this together."

It's a bunch of, like, idiots from the street who like showed up

and were in the right place and the right time

to somehow get dumped on a plane to Manila.

It's really how it happened.

Had to tell my girlfriend,

had to tell my band members,

had to tell my parents

that I'm going away.

I'm not coming back for like,

what I thought was gonna be a month,

turns out to be three months.

The first time we all met was

'cause everyone had to change planes in L.A.

You guys were coming from New York.

Paul, McGinley, Ivan.

A bunch of us flew out of New York. We stopped in L.A.

we met a bunch of the other actors.

We started bonding right away in that bar

and then I think we felt pretty good when we got on the plane.

We sat around and just kind of drank.

And then got on a plane... for a long time.

There's either little Filipino families or us.

33 guys just pounding beers.

You know, In my head I thought: "Oh, I'll be looking over my script."

Because we were young and we'd never been on like a 16-hour plane ride.

It was guys just tossing beers

from the stewardess station.

We were taking drinks off of people's trays

-when they weren't looking. -David Neidorf who ended up getting a blanket

like lying in the aisle, the air hostesses

is like, kicking him out and telling him to move.

A few hours later, and like the flight all the way through

I think we felt really good by the time

we eventually landed in Manila in the morning.

It was a cold plane ride, man.

[Sanchez] Mum packed for you, didn't she?

She did, yeah. She did.

She, she packed for me and

she sent a bunch of stuff ahead of me.

Uh, it was about 14 boxes.

Because we'd been there, uh, during Apocalypse.

And she knew that uh, the stuff we might need.

We got off the plane, I remember the heat

kinda hitting me in my face.

It was everything that my mom was worried about.

You know, tanks going down the street, you know, armed guys

with, uh... with M-16s all over the place.

[Sheen] So I'm sitting there thinking:

What the mother fuck am I doing back here?

And all those feelings I remember so intensely.

You know, as a child, I spent eight months in the set of Apocalypse.

I vowed never to return.

Shit. I'm still only in Saigon.

What are the freaking odds that I'd come back 10 years later

with my own Vietnam film and narrate the damn thing?

I think you'd sooner win the lottery in five states on the same night.

I don't think I can keep this up for a year, grandma.

I think I made a big mistake coming here.

[Sheen] The warrior, leading us through boot camp,

Captain Dale Dye, USMC Retired, was lovingly referred to

as Dai Uy which means Captain in Vietnamese.

I designed a two-week program

in which they lived in the jungles in the hills.

They lived exactly as we lived as young men in Vietnam.

So we all knew heading over there that there was

gonna be a boot camp,

but I don't think any of us were really prepared

for what was awaiting us.

Boot camp was designed to be shock and awe.

Those of us that couldn't cut it, might be on a plane back to the States.

When you landed, it was a full military indoctrination like:

"Hey, welcome. How are you doing? Good to see you.

Now, boom, you got no agents now."

[Neidorf] He stormed in that room, right?

And he started barking at us right away.

And, you know, it was really intimidating.

"Just grab your tooth brush that's the only thing you're going to need."

We were like, "Oh-oh."

Myself, Galloti and Drew

were the drill instructors, but we were the docs.

We had to put the fear of God into you guys.

[Sheen] Did you know once we got out there, we were just staying there?

-[Sanchez] I had no idea. -[Sheen] Guy didn't either.

I thought we're gonna like you know, take a look and, you know,

maybe, you know, just take down our spot and go back.

So, everybody gets off the bus bright eyed and bushy tailed.

Then the yelling and screaming starts.

Once we got there, it was on.

Are you going to dig a fighting hole?

Wrong place! Dig a fighting hole here!

We had to dig our own freaking holes.

The dirt was like super-crete.

We all had to dig these four or five foot berms

in front of where we were sleeping.

[Orwig] So, I walked up to stand by and I said:

"What I do about this?" He looked at my hand and

he said: "Those blisters?" I said: "Yeah."

He grabbed them and he smashed them.

I'm like: "Yeaaow!"

You'd look-- look over, and

dudes who'd and be like

blisters everywhere, man, and bursting.

He said, uh, "Well, you're still alive, aren't you?"

And I said yeah, he said: "I'll just rub a little dirt in and it'll be okay."

I wanted to reduce them to the lowest common denominator

grind them down, tire them out

until the only thing on their mind was

"How do I get away from that crazy, white-haired bastard?"

Uh, we humped heavyweight, no styrofoam.

They gave us real equipment.

I mean it was heavy, you know,

we had to walk 25 clicks a day.

We'd get issued weapons and shit.

You know, it's like, "Oh, this is real, I mean, oh, my God."

That's when it felt for the first time real and it felt good.

Like, you know, "This is gonna be really fun."

Learning how to clean our weapons,

learning how to shoot the weapons and that sort of things.

They were soldiers

that were teaching us

how to do soldier things.

I can teach a monkey

how to carry a weapon and wear his gear and wear his uniform.

Where I wanted to go, was inside their minds and inside their guts.

The way to survived this, was to learn to rely on each other.

If you could do that, you would then begin

to understand the relationships that men in combat have.

They love each other and it's that kind of love that I had to teach.

We always addressed each other by our cast names

and I can... I insisted on that throughout the run of the film.

In fact, it's happening still today.

[John] For two weeks, you weren't allowed to be called your name

which Stanislavsky would have loved it,

and it was genius, in retrospect.

Everybody got into their characters

and it seemed to gel right away.

You don't get that kind of luxury every day.

During training, we had two new guys come in,

Sal and Corkey.

We were late, Corkey and I.

We hear this noise, chunk-chunk-chunk.

We look up the street and there's a bunch of soldiers

all decked out looking like,

"This is some bad ass, dudes."

Who the hell are these guys?

And now, I realize this is us.

I was like, "How did these guys get, get so good,

looking so good and authentic, so quick?"

I only fed them twice a day if they didn't piss me off.

If they pissed me off that day, they only ate once a day.

Yeah, I definitely lost like 20 pounds, for sure.

They were eating military rations.

Those MREs.

The one that I liked the best was some kind of

turkey thing that looked like brains or something,

but it tasted okay.

The rest of it, I didn't want no part of.

Meals Ready to Eat. MREs, they're... how should we say?

Meals ready to throw up.

Those, I-hated- that-fucking-food.

The bean component was the-- That was just bad luck.

The first time you eat those MREs...

you swear, you can never... you'll never eat it again

and you'd rather eat dirt than these MREs.

So, everybody lost a lot of weight.

[Rock] Nobody likes the dehydrated beef patty.

It was the worst. However,

Johnny Depp would end up wanting to get that

because I taught Johnny how to make a cheeseburger out of it.

You want a cheeseburger? You want to do this or that? I mean, he'd...

They'd found out ways to mix these things and...

But then, a couple of days later

it started tasting really good.

Like... They're fully chemical

and then they taste like they're worse than dirt.

On the set, where they have fish heads and rice

and the garlic sauce where the actors were like,

"We can't eat this, give us an MRE."

You know you did something right when they're asking for MREs.

There's a pre-determined, uhm... result,

that they'd like from those MREs.

Constipates you beyond comprehension.

So, for most of us out there, the first three, four

or even five days, nobody went to the bathroom.

[Depp] It's trying to persuade you

to not wander out in the middle of the night.

What I thought was, was a giant root, that I was poised over

it began to, to slide and slither.

My first movement was on top of a-- of a giant constrictor.

That happened.

[C. Glover] They had all the Marine guys around us and they were no joke.

These guys were hardcore.

Put us... Uh... through the wringer, you know.

I mean, it was thrilling. To me, there was-- there was nothing better than that.

I mean, no. Okay.

There's the idea of it, and then there's the reality of it.

You slept two hours on, two hours off.

A person would have to be awake and look around and the other person could sleep.

I would push my watch ahead a half an hour,

and then wake dude up and say:

"Come on, man, you're up. It's your turn."

He'd say: "No, no, no. There's no way."

I'd be like: "Check the watch, brother."

This is where I learned how to sleep standing up.

[Rock] So, you were up pretty much all night.

My theory was they need to know what tired is.

It wasn't like you had to make, uhm, some effort

to think about what it might have been like

for those guys at night when you're on watch

'cause at night you were on watch.

We were seriously sleep deprived.

They would keep us on our toes.

Drew Clark, Ebenhoch and I would move around

and we would get into positions to attack.

I'm in my foxhole and I'm just trying to keep my eyes open.

It's gotta be like three o'clock in the morning.

During the attacks, we would fire blanks at these guys.

Yves De Bono would set up explosives to enhance the experience.

[Shouting, explosions and gunfire]

They're trying to fire and they've got weapons on safety.

And Dale's running up and down the line,

"We're being attacked! Fire [indistinct]!"

And they're just panicking.

They have no clue what to do.

Oh, this sucks. This sucks. I-- Fuck, this sucks.

We're throwing things at 'em and we're breaching lines!

"Come on, you got to go, you got to go. We are being bombed. Aaaah!"

"Ah! What's going on here?" You know.

The shit just started blowing up, man.

I mean, shit was just blowing up.

It was like, sounded like the real thing. The lights going off.

[Rock] I was about 15 feet from Charlie Sheen.

I was on patrol with, uh, Bunny,

and we heard some rustling or some noise out in the bush.

As I'm crawling up on him real quiet,

he goes, "Shh! I think I hear something. I think I hear something."

I was like: "Hold on. The fuck was that?"

You could see the silhouette of Charlie turned sideways like that with his rifle

opening up with an AK 47

and the muzzle flash is coming off his full load blanks.

I remember seeing Charlie's face as it's strobing

with the muzzle flashes and his eyes went from normal to [shoo]!

I was, I was not far from Charlie and the next thing I knew...

Some guy got his balls like scorched by an explosion

because he was walking over it when it went off.

Sheen got stopped on a dime.

I got hit in the balls with a smoke grenade.

That came in from like St. Louis.

I sort of heard this involuntary, inhumane noise.

[grunting comically] You know.

"Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ. I'm hit, I'm hit."

I was so mad that I just emptied every magazine I had on me,

just screaming, die, motherfuckers, you know. Just fucking snapped.

I jumped into the hole with Ivan Kane and Charlie Sheen.

He's like, "Give me your mag! Give me your mag!"

He pulls out a copy of Time Magazine.

He claims to this day that I handed him a magazine which was bullshit.

Dai Uy, he'd snuck up on me

and put something to my neck and said: "You're dead'.

"Bang, Lerner, you're dead." Dai Uy.

That was an embarrassing moment, man.

I was a big fan of Dai Uy's.

I was kind of gung-ho and a true believer.

He cared enough to make us just miserable enough.

But, "Oh, yeah, I'm gonna fuck with you.

I'm going to try to make you fuck up,

'cause I got to teach you not to fuck up."

[David] He was just a no-bullshit kind of guy.

He didn't cuddle us. He didn't treat us like actors.

I remember I took this canteen

and I filled it up with water in the stream

'cause it was a running stream.

It was 110 degrees.

They gave us little salt tabs.

And I treat it with some pills

and then we went upstream

and we saw this big carcass of

a bloated water buffalo.

Like, you know, dead for like two weeks.

Like it was rotting corpse.

And I thought, "Man, I just... put... got my water from..."

I thought, "Well, I'm okay because the pills."

We didn't think anything of it.

We kept hiking, hiking, hiking.

I wasn't okay.

I'm told Willem's not feeling well.

I go to him. His fatigues are drenched

and he's just shaking and shivering in a ball.

And... I touch him and he's ice cold.

I went into like a fever and I remember sweating through things.

I mean, he looks like death. He looked like he lost 10 pounds that night.

I have this thing called Nux Vomica.

Can I get you a couple of aspirin?

I, you know, I don't know what I'm gonna do.

He was in bad shape, you know, and I kind of thrust

a-- just a batch of shit at him.

And I came back, and he's kinda like, he's kinda leaned up against this thing,

you know, and he's more pale than To Live Or Die In L.A.

I don't remember, but I remember being really taken care of.

And I looked over and there's, there's, a puddle of puke, right?

And in the puke were all these like

half-dissolved little white pills.

I go over to Dai Uy and I said:

"Listen, Willem has a really high fever.

He looks like he's gonna die. I don't know what to do."

Dai Uy looks at me and he goes, "Do your best.

We're hours away from any kind of medical facilities

and we've got a job to do."

I never really investigated what it was,

but that was intense.

[Todd] I saw grown men weep because what Dale

and Oliver did was to strip us down to get rid

of all that New York and L.A. artifice.

[Edson] Like, no, we weren't actors doing boot camp.

We were real people doing this training.

When you live in a dirt hole in a jungle for two, three weeks

you get a little bored and weird.

Flash didn't speak a lick of English.

I mean, the dude would say "hello".

He was like a truck driver in Nigeria or something

and they cast him!

Suddenly he's in the jungle with a bunch of 30 other guys. [laughs]

I started teaching him English.

-"Repeat after me, eat." -"Eat."

-"My." -"My."

-"Shorts." -"Shorts."

-"Dickhead." -"Dickhead."

I said: "Now put it all together."

I was, I was lucky enough to be, near

when he would, yeah... give that salutation to the Captain. [laughs]

Just this pure innocent, and the kindest eyes.

"Eat my shorts, dickhead."

Dai Uy was like, "What was that?"

He learned it well. He used it a lot.

Throughout the end of the two weeks, he started saying:

"You guys are beginning to look

and act like a-- like a rifle platoon."

The present was, we were allowed to ascend down a--

a wall, a two and a half story wall.

We were allowed to repel down the wall.

[David] F. D. Follow Directions! You're standing, you know, over 60 feet.

[Sheen] And I remember it's like, kind of just tip toeing.

That thing was swaying in the breeze

and you'd hear everything creaking.

You know, you're not going up there to fuck around.

I mean, this ain't no time to be... nothing but follow directions.

So, I remember kinda just like taking like a few steps down the damn thing.

Just like one, two, three and then,

he kept saying: "Come on, come on!

Taylor, bounce! Bounce! Push off, push off! Slide! Bounce!"

You know, I remember just stopping and being like halfway down.

And I looked up at him and I said: "Sir, the bouncing thing is not gonna happen."

That's a fucking direct quote.

We had this final exercise

where we were supposed to apply all the things we'd learned.

And I had two of the squads, and Elias, Willem Dafoe,

had one, and we're supposed to meet up.

The idea was we were gonna converge

on a North Vietnamese ammunition dump.

and there was a farmhouse on the map

and there were different routes to get there.

We were supposed to go from point A to point B.

And one of the weakest things for everybody was land navigation.

[Berenger] We're gonna go off here to the left.

East on the maps or something.

Uh... West. Uh... whatever.

[Rock] And one group went one way and the other group

went the other way and they were lost.

And it became clear we had no idea where we were.

[Edson] And we'd been wandering around, around, around.

And this jackass has-- has to read a map

in the middle of this triple canopy jungle.

He didn't know what the hell he was doing.

So, he was like, "Why do you... it's just a map, you know.

I had like, two days to learn how to read a map?"

[Rock] Mark Moses, the Lt. was perfect.

He totally got us ass fucking lost.

Which every time he had an opportunity to, he'd get us lost.

He was very proud of that, that he never found...

whatever we were looking for.

He never found it.

Uhm, yeah, it was a disaster.

[Neidorf] We lost radio contact.

Gunny was with us and

Dai Uy was with the other side.

[Rock] And Dale was freaking out. "Where the hell is Robert?

Jesus Christ, we got to find him, it's getting dark!"

What's the delay up off point?

You having compass trouble again, Wolfe?

We couldn't find this place.

Everyone was getting hot, everyone had drunk all their water,

and then we got to a cliff.

[Ebenhoch] I remember climbing up, and I found a way

that was clear enough to get out.

Up a walk wall, about 40 feet tall.

Climb up the cliff.

You guys have learned to repel.

So steep, we could have been killed.

I'm climbing it, getting weaker and tired

and I get about five foot from the top and I'm like:

"Oh shit, I'm stuck."

And Mark Ebenhoch found me, stuck on the side

of the wall. And he said: "Are you okay?"

I said: "Nah, I'm not so sure I'm okay or not."

And he actually climbed up, took my weapon to the top,

and he said: "Oh, you can do this. You can make it."

And I made that last five foot.

And, he actually was really responsible

for me being here today because

I think he saved my life. He saved all our lives.

So now we get up to the top of this area and we thought:

"Okay, we're in a clearing, we're good. Let's--

We're gonna-- we're gonna bivouac here for the night."

We don't have anything to eat because we didn't

plan on being gone for the night.

So, guys are hungry, guys have

drained all the water in their canteens

so they're totally thirsty.

It was only supposed to be a day-trip, it was not supposed to be an over-nighter,

so you guys weren't ready for it.

I saw a cow.

[Ebenhoch] They're going: "Hell yeah, there's beef!

Let's, let's light a fire, let's go

kill the damn thing, let's go eat it!"

It's like: "No, no, no, no, no."

I c-- if I just hit it like right behind the head, uh!

But you leave the damn bull alone.

We found that farm and we grabbed these pineapples.

It's like, "Dude,

you ain't got nothing else to eat.

There ain't no farmer around here."

So there was a little bit of a raid on the

pineapples and bananas.

We were all so hungry and so out of water,

that people gorged themselves on pineapples,

and to a man, everyone got these horrible lesions in their mouths.

If they can't get the coconuts down, you might as well bring the fucking tree down. Screw it!

Yeah, but then we uh, chopped them down.

A couple of guys took a whack at that thing with

a machete it took about an hour...

Pulling the tree down as it flipped over, I remember.

You built a fire, and then it was like camp fire girls at night.

All the fun stories, because then all the bitching stopped.

You were fat, dumb and happy.

It was sort of like an adventure away from

Dale Dye. We didn't have to go out that night,

we could actually sleep. We had, we had, a fire,

a bonfire, so we had kind of a good time.

[Neidorf] I thought that was the moment where everything turned.

Probably for my money, the most fun, the most fun,

and the most that I learned in the training camp.

Rock was sent by Dai Uy to reconnect with us.

Gunny made us march in really proud and really strong.

[Richard] Stan stopped us and said:

"We're gonna march in there

and we're gonna march in there like men."

The other half of the platoon came out to greet us

and welcome us back and ask us

if we wanted anything to drink, and we were like, "Fuck no."

Dale Dye told me they gave me the wrong coordinates on purpose.

-[man in background] Liar! -And I'll stay with that story.

[Ebenhoch] Yeah, we had our graduation and uh, a lot of it's a little foggy.

We were rewarded with uh, with copious amounts of...

[C. Glover] Moonshine. And it was, like, over proof

whatever it was, you could start fires.

We had the drink.

Whatever that coconut rum was

and we were howling at the moon.

We heard it was coconut wine.

It was supposed to be good

because it had a little bit

of coconut in it or some shit.

It wasn't, it was lighter fluid.

It was pretty smooth for 200 proof, it was pretty smooth.

Lambanog.

Yeah, lambanog.

Lambanog?

Ah, yeah! Lambanog. Lambanog.

Lambanog. It was lambanog

And it was pretty much moonshine.

It was essentially moonshine, man. It was moonshine.

Lambanog, shit.

We stayed all night drinking lambanog.

People woke up the next day like out of comas.

We had to wake up really early in the morning, it was like four.

A couple of guys were lifted into the truck.

It was such a throbbing gristle in the skull and confusion.

Then all of a sudden, they faked us out and said:

"We're going to go shoot that first scene

just walking through the jungle."

There was no way to get rid of the hangover

because we couldn't get our hands

we couldn't get our mitts on the lambanog anymore.

We were looking bad because we were like, you know, dirty

because we hadn't changed in two weeks.

People looked at us and they were kind of horrified.

We were, I remember, "Good, you should be horrified."

They went from there just feeling miserable. So, we looked perfect.

Now we're going to something that might look like a hotel,

and we'll start this thing tomorrow. Bullshit.

And then Oliver, to his eternal credit, woke everybody up.

And we had to walk around along this slough.

And it's the first time, in the movie,

that any of us were actually on camera, in that condition.

[Susan] What I was told was: "The kids are gonna walk in from boot camp

and we're going to roll camera."

But everyone had that look

uhm, because nobody gave a shit about the movie

'cause we were all sick.

When I brought them down out of the jungle

and they were looking rugged, and they were looking ragged,

Oliver looked at me and he said:

"Yeah, I think so. I think that's them."

We became a rifle platoon, somehow.

[Kopelson] When the guys were coming out of the jungle

all of you, you looked like you had been at war for about a year

and which is exactly the way Oliver wanted you.

He wanted you mean. You were hating him for doing this to you, but he got that look.

[Sheen] So, we started to sense, uh right there and then, uh, Oliver's manipulation.

[theme music]

Oliver, as we have all got to know and love him, is not easy.

'Cause he thrives on confrontation, you know. He wants to upset you.

I've done six films with Oliver.

Oliver doesn't direct by committee.

It is a quasi-collaboration,

but it is Oliver's movie and it's Oliver's vision.

Oliver can be chaotic when he directs.

He feeds off of that sort of thing.

I understood it. I'd served with commanding officers who are like that.

[Dafoe] He wore his experiences on his sleeve.

I mean, I felt like there was a part of him that was still in the jungle.

[Kane] He is crazy genius, has that look in his eye

and that smile that you have no idea

what the fuck is really going on in there.

I was on point, and I was rigged up

with just a zillion squibs. In my hand

I have the detonator that shoots off the squibs.

Charlie comes in and carries me.

Doc, help me out now! [groaning]

There was the kind of, you know, Oh, my God, I'm dying-scene.

Please tell my mother that I, you know, gurgle.

[indistinct]

Gets through about two and a half lines.

"Cut. Bullshit. Do it again."

Alright, back in, you know. Just lying there on the ground.

Rain. Blood. He's working on me.

Charlie is talking to me.

[rain]

"Please tell my mom--"

"Cut! Bullshit! Fucking bullshit!"

And he hit me with that about... seven times, you know.

"You're full of shit, you're fucking lying."

From that moment on

I would avoid any conversation with Stone that,

you know, involved anything more than action or cut.

He is a genius...

a dark evil genius.

At whatever cost, he's going to get what he wants,

what he is after, and that's great

if you're sitting in that movie theater

and looking at the 40 foot screen.

But when you're on the opposite end of that...

You know, you've got to be selective.

You've got to treat different actors different ways

because you've got to have some sort of intuition

about how they can respond.

During the film, I didn't even

like Oliver very much.

I thought he was kind of distant.

He liked-- And I think this is the way he makes films,

he likes to just kind of stir shit up.

Just like create crisis and stress and then he shoots that.

I knew what he was doing. But it was...

Uch, I felt it was... unnecessary.

[Rock] Doc Sanchez, in that head hooch where the line was

"Let military justice do the job on him."

We did 30 something freaking takes of it.

An eye for an eye.

I say let military justice do the job on him.

[Rock] He was just Oliver being Oliver

and Doc would try different ways

and he'd get more pissed, and it was just Oliver fucking with Doc.

[Berenger] I'm alone in that giant pool, just swimming laps

and all of a sudden, I see these feet.

It's Oliver. He goes: "What are you doing?"

I go: "What do you mean what am I doing?" I'm, I'm working out.

I'm swimming laps. He says: "Are you coming up? Today? Tonight?"

I go: "Well, I'm not really working."

He goes: "Yeah, but you're coming up, right?

Show a little support to the guys."

Then I get there, and I'm watching a scene,

I don't know, it's like, Lieutenant Wolfe and Ralph and just go:

I want you to take those two holes right there and there.

You're tying it off with Barnes up here, King down there.

[Berenger] I'm watching a scene, off back-- behind the camera

and he turns around and he goes: "What are you doing?"

I said: "I'm watching the scene."

He says: "You're making them nervous."

I go: "What?" "You're staring at them."

I go, "I'm watching the scene, you told me to come out..."

"Back off, get over there." [laughs]. This is Oliver.

[David] The way he would yell: "Hey, it's not working.

You know, this is just, you know the scene is flat! What's the matter with you?

You're the fucking actor!" You know, I mean. [laughing]

You know, I don't think people know how traumatic he can be.

Confrontational, traumatic, sets up antagonism wherever he goes.

I did a scene in... When it was done,

he just-- He just dropped his eyes

and shook his head and turned and walked away.

When you're a young kid, it's your first film

and, man, all you want to do is please.

And he knows that. When you don't know that that's just a setup,

because the next scene you do, two days later,

where you break down that's 48 hours

of thinking you're the biggest asshole on the planet.

[Sheen] He treated us like we were suddenly the worst casting choice.

I just thought like: "Damn it, man, there's such a smoother

and cooler way to get results."

[Rock] Oliver loved to fuck around with the actors.

Push them around, bully them, if you will.

[Sheen] You know, there was one day I came to set prepared

for what was on the call sheet

and there was a new scene that had been added.

[Depp] Ace had been talking to Oliver

saying: "I've written my monologue.

I've got this thing, and you can shoot-- we can just get it."

Oliver shot it and Bob Richardson operated.

[Sheen] 'Cause Oliver said, "I'm going to need you

to back out of this shot."

"What am I-- what am I doing?"

"You're carrying, uh,

water buckets, back and forth."

I said: "The same water buckets?"

He said: "No, if you exit frame, we'll think that

you've loaded up new ones. Then you're taking those back over."

I said: "But shouldn't the thing be empty on the way back?" "Don't worry about it."

Oliver would go, you know, he'd cut him, you know, at a certain point.

Kill his confidence and he'd go:

"Don't waste my fucking time, man. Just go, just do it again."

Jesus fucking Christ, man.

They do about fifteen takes, and I'm back there and you know,

I'm giving it my all. And he wrapped the scene, and he was already off to the next,

next location, and I caught up with him and I said:

"Hey, man what, what, uh, what was that all about?"

I'm talking to Boos and I said:

"You know, we got some stuff outta the guy.

There's stuff in there. What's he fucking..."

And he goes: "There is no film in the camera, man.

There's no film in the camera."

[Sheen] He did this just as an exercise in-- in torture.

Yeah, it was like psych warfare, you know.

Sometimes it happens to people

that can't take it and then it gets ugly.

In that village, Berenger was screaming at the--

What about the fucking rice and the weapons? Who the heck for?

[Depp] The man and the woman, uh, interpreting.

Oliver's standing back there, and she's not crying.

He wants real tears.

[Depp] She couldn't have been more than nine.

Oliver's strategy into bringing real tears

to the little girl's face, was a bit much.

Oliver yelling at us is one thing.

He raised his voice, and...

It went on for far longer than it needed to.

These people aren't actors. These people aren't actors.

Sergeant Barseball who had been involved quite

a lot in our training camps down there,

he was with the Philippine constabulary police,

you know, the dude was-- He could handle himself very well.

He just reached in for his weapon

and was like, you know, he was coming out, and he was moving forward.

And I went: "Oh fuck!" And I just put my arms on his wrist.

You came over, like: "Whoa, whoa, whoa, calm down,

everybody calm down. It's okay."

And then Barseball explained to us: "What I just witnessed,

I will never see again."

-You lie! You VC! -[shouting in Vietnamese]

[shouting in Vietnamese]

When you come after a little girl like that,

the Philippines is a very big place.

People disappear here all the time. You know?

That was a very heated, scary fucking moment, though.

'Cause he was... He wasn't joking, man.

That was bad.

I'll never forget it.

[Depp] So, I'm going to the restaurant and I saw...

The edge of the bar is a restaurant.

I saw Oliver and Alex Ho, I literally thought:

"This is it. I will make my statement here and now."

I was wasted.

So, I climb up on this marble banister

and I got behind Oliver's table,

there was a curtain right here. Oliver's head's there.

So I unzipped the old fly, and...

pulled out the old friend and uh... was about ready to uh...

Yeah, I was going to urinate on Oliver, and history will absolve me.

Challenge after challenge after challenge.

Word after word after word and you go:

"Oh, I'll get you, man. I'll get you".

And that was my moment. I've seen it, I was about to take it, and...

I felt, I felt this violent, like tug on the back of my shirt.

I fell flat on the ground and it was the first AD, H. Gordon Boos.

And he says: "Are you out of your fucking mind?

-What are you doing?" -I'm gonna piss on his fucking head.

No!

[Sheen] Oliver chose each of us for our commitment and our desire.

He led us and willingly we followed.

We didn't always appreciate his methods,

but we gave his film everything we had

because we believed in him and his vision.

Even Tom had to surrender to Oliver's vision and it worked.

[David] The power of that kind of authenticity.

Suddenly, we didn't, we didn't have to act anymore.

One of the things that I think is a mark of a good director

is putting your actors under the circumstances

to which you just have to now find the behavior, so you don't have to act.

[McGinley] The jump into where Oliver had been

for two tours in Vietnam.

The actors were not strained

to take that leap and so people were in.

I think he thought the material deserved it

and they should be operating from a place

where they aren't too in their stuff.

[Kopelson] Oliver was full of passion to make this movie.

[Dale] I mean, he desperately wanted to tell this story

and he had worked for 10 years to get this story

told and couldn't do it.

And here was our only opportunity and neither one of us

wanted to strike out with this because it represented

the experience we'd had in Southeast Asia.

It did force me to really dig a little deeper.

The one thing he did, that was amazing,

made us feel like we were a platoon, that's why

we formed such a brotherhood that 30 years later is still there.

[Moses] He gave me my first job ever in film.

I will always owe Oliver Stone

and I always thank him and love him for that.

[Sanchez] The night before our first day of scenes with actual dialogue

a piece of paper was slipped under my door.

It turns out it was a call sheet.

I'd never seen a call sheet before.

I said: "Oh, I'm putting it in my pocket, we might need it tomorrow."

The 2nd A.D. says: "OK, so, we're gonna go--

Uh, you've got about five minutes left of breakfast

and then we're gonna rehearse and shoot."

I said: "What? What the fuck are we going to shoot?"

And I'm starting to go in a panic.

I didn't know this at the time, but it was your, your

first day, and I think your first time ever speaking on, on film.

So, we start to do the scene and, uh, Charlie collapses.

I got covered in, uh, in ants.

You know, I'm bug phobic, like, like, like a bitch.

They don't just like, stay on your neck,

they start on your neck and wind up all around.

[Sanchez] He's really uncomfortable, he slams down.

Willem comes over to him and says, "Hey, you're okay?"

I come over, all the guys are marching behind.

It's 110 degrees heat. "Oh, this is fine, you know. Charlie, this is fine."

See, the red ants are bad, but the black ants are the one--"

"Cut." I went: "Oh, please don't be me, please don't be me.

I think Willem fucked up. I hope Willem fucked up."

And, Oliver goes: "Susie, what's the line?"

She was: "Black ants are bad, but red--"

"Yes, I thought so. The red ants are the worse."

Oh, my! So, everybody's like, everybody in the background grumbles.

'Cause there's, there's a line about, you know, red ants and black ants

and I could see you were starting, starting to panic behind it.

It goes back to first positions and okay, okay.

Charlie goes down again, da-da-da... And I come in,

and "Red ants are bad, but black ants are--." "Cut."

I thought, "Okay, I, I get the nerves, uh,

but he's either dyslexic or, or, uh, or, or colorblind."

Everybody's like: "Oh, my God. It's one line."

I've got ants all over my neck.

[Sanchez] It felt like we were there for days.

I've got some red ants, quite some killers.

[Sanchez] Instead of correcting me

she crossed out the lines after a while and

just put in... Whatever I said she wrote it into the script

"That's your new line."

And Oliver looked over to her: "Sus, is that it?"

She goes, "Yup." "Okay, moving on."

I get an e-mail, uh, and it's yourself, it's Paul.

And he's reaching out to contribute

to this very documentary and I wrote back

"Red ants, black ants, blue ants."

And then it says: "XOX C."

That's so emblematic of how deep this stuff got into our DNA.

We hadn't spoken for easily a decade,

not for any, any reasons of, of, of whatever,

just 'cause, uh... You know, people's lives go different ways.

But as soon as I got that, I wrote you back,

uhm, and the first thing I thought of was uh,

was the various colors of those ants.

Happy to help.

[Dafoe] I had a beautiful role because he's kind of a charismatic

sensitive guy, and he dies so tragically.

Which, you know, it's a fantastic shot.

It's these helicopters. It was physical.

It was complicated. It was a quite dramatic shot.

[helicopter over Adagiomusic]

But Tom as Barnes was inspired casting.

He's the performance of the movie

and he was able to contact some sort of rage

and bitter disappointment that really ran deep.

Out here you belong to me. Now move!

Tom is fantastic in that role.

I was the first to talk, and the first to die.

I didn't live long, but I had good screen time.

My line was, "Oh, man. Is that what I think it is?"

Berenger just came up with that phone and just wreck--

I think actually, he knocked the helmet off with the telephone.

But a few times it just blew off by itself.

That's how strong those explosions were, and they were frightening.

You didn't have to do much acting.

Sort of reacting. [explosion]

[shouting]

We were working with, uhm, those huge helicopters that had no doors.

[helicopter overhead] King, King grabbed me from behind.

You almost went out of the thing?

Well, it was close, but I'm still here.

[Depp] I just remember being, being thrown on that chopper,

and it took off, and it immediately went sideways.

You don't know where a camera is around.

There may be one in the chop. You don't know, so...

You just keep going, you just keep going.

We had to keep flying around in circles [chuckles].

The ground is there [laughter] now.

And I don't remember my gurney

being especially roped in or anything [laughs].

I'm wounded at that point.

I don't know about you, but I'm holding onto something

because I'm not going to go through all of this

and not get in the final cut.

[Berenger] My favorite in the film would be the hooch scene.

I am reality.

Because it is a great piece of theater.

Kill me.

"What are you doing?" I said: "Ah, this is my entrance."

He said: "Yeah, but you think you... Like, maybe come around the corner?"

I say we frag that fucker tonight!

If they are all in there talking about Elias being killed

and I set Elias up for this.

You're wrong, man! Any way you cut it, Barnes is a fucking murderer.

You don't see me. You hear me.

He goes: "What do you mean?"

Talk about killing.

[Berenger] They look around, and I'm sitting down there

in a little gook squat smoking a cigarette

and drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels.

How long has he been there?

You're all experts?

[Berenger] How much did he hear?

You all know about killing?

Well, I'd like to hear about it, potheads.

You know, you hit that point where anything you do

is right for the character.

It was like the first night of the final siege,

you know, and uhm, you know, just me and Cory are stuck in that, in that foxhole

when it all goes to shit.

I missed a mark or overshot something

and I was too close to one of the pots, you know, for the bombs.

And the shit went off right here.

I got knocked out before I knew anything.

I think that shot's in the movie

'cause I was basically drooling [laughs] and dizzy eyes.

I also sprained my ankle. It was, it was a fucking bad night.

And so, Captain Dye rolls up and, you know, he shakes out a cigarette,

and he says: "Taylor, it's moments like these why we continue to smoke."

It was the Tet offensive at the end of the movie

and Doc and the Lt. and myself were all featured in this one shot.

Bombs going off all over the place.

For me, it was an overwhelming experience to shoot that night.

And don't forget, 40 bombs.

They put the little yellow flags in so crew

and camera knew where those bombs were.

And then just before filming, they pulled the flags out.

And you have 125 extras at the top of that hill

gonna have to run down in the dark.

Didn't know where the bombs were.

I mean, it was something. It was such a huge, huge shot.

It was one of the highlights for me.

[explosions]

[Sheen] Tom Cruise, uh, he done a film called Taps.

So, Tom's last moment in Tapsbefore the tank

just riddles the shit out of him,

It's beautiful, man. Beautiful.

That's where I got that thing in the foxhole at the very end.

I just stole it from Tom.

[gunfire]

-It's beautiful! -What are you doing?

In the script, it was Sal who was supposed to be blown up.

Man, these are gook stuff, let's get out of here.

No, Sal this is important.

Which made sense. He picked up the, uh, the metal box.

And I was like: Man-- [laughter]

It's like, I can't get respect around here no matter what.

But, uhm, so I was really like pissed off.

They took my arm and pinned it behind my back

and then they took what was left out

and they stuck a piece of sh-- like thing on there

to make it look like my arm was blown off.

And the same with the other.

So, it was a long time, it was probably from like eight

till about noon we took to do the make-up.

But then I saw what-- how much work...

He was like four hours preparing for that thing and I was like: "Oh, just as well."

[J. Glover] It's probably 15 seconds on film, but uhm, it works pretty well.

[music]

My favorite scene would be, uh, the scene

where I bash the guy's head open.

When Bunny and I go into the hut that day,

and discover the handicapped kid,

something snapped, something completely snapped.

Dance you one-legged motherfucker, dance!!!

Then Bunny did things that were brutally unsound.

[yells]

They kept saying get in as close as you can, get in as close as you can.

[yells] [cries]

One time I actually, accidentally hit him with a gun,

which they used on film.

Because at that point we were so freaking tired and just, just addled.

I felt bad and I felt like the guy didn't understand acting.

He didn't under-- he didn't even hardly know where the camera was, so he didn't know.

He was looking at me like it was all real

and it was really, really hard to do.

[Sheen] At that point, it was just reaction and raw emotions.

[crying dies out]

I felt terrible for that kid.

I felt awful about that.

I always carried all my per diem on me.

Then Charlie took our per diem

we pulled it together, we gave it

to the kid so that he could get his cataracts fixed.

[Sheen] That same day, shot the scene when I come in and break up the rig.

My character was supposed to be the one raping.

[crying] Get outta here! Get the fuck off!

[dramatic music] Don't do it! Don't do it!

My mom said: "Please, please don't do that."

You just don't fucking get it, do you, man?

You just don't fucking get it. It's okay.

I was young and didn't want to upset my mom.

If I could compare one day to the hundreds that dad had in Apocalypse.

That's the one day. Let's just say there was

a lot to drink away in the bar that night.

[music dies out]

Once we got out there, it was shot so kind of unconventionally, that uh...

you had no sense of anything outside of that world.

That was one of the beauties of it.

We left Hollywood so far behind.

You know, we would drive the trucks

they only went so far into the jungle

and then we had to hike 30 - 40 minutes.

Actors were picking up camera cases and humping them in.

And they didn't give it a second thought.

And everybody wanted to be there and everybody carried their own weight.

We had gone down to Manila

and we had found actual Vietnamese refugees

who would play these roles.

What we didn't realize is that when we got them all together

they would begin speaking Vietnamese.

[chattering in Vietnamese]

Oliver actually had to walk off the set

and he was sitting out on the dike of a rice paddy.

And I shook my head because it was really getting to me.

And finally, I just went out and sat down next to him.

We didn't say a word because both of us at that moment

were back in Vietnam.

In making the movie

yes, we're actors, but there were none of the trailers

there were none of the makeup conventions

The-- And we were in a foreign area and a lot of these guys

had never even been out of the country.

My dressing room, my pot, my helmet.

I'm sitting in my dressing room, uh, in the jungle.

So, it was very exotic.

There were so many parallels and of course,

I'm not saying that that makes us--

I'm saying maybe it invites us to pretend better

not makes us understand better necessarily.

I remember teaching you to handle a sucking chest wound

and, uh, you know, you kept, you kept wanting to add things

and I said: "Doc, stop it. You're a medic, you've seen this before.

You know that this one is probably not going to make it.

You can talk to him, you can try to keep him conscious,

try to keep him breathing, but probably can't save him."

I knew that you would do the right thing

with the battle dressings and so on and so forth.

What I didn't expect was the emotion that got to you. And I saw it,

and I said: "You know, that's not acting."

It's so fucking hot and you are so tired

and then people are harassing you

and we just saw it a little bit, and you know what?

Like, I'm pissed. I'm thinking like, any mother fucking gook that comes in my path

I'm going to light your fucking ass up.

Fuck you. I don't care.

And I thought that is how they felt

and that was real for us in that moment.

We were doing the first night ambush

where you see two NVA soldiers that come out of the fog

and make that little signal about "come ahead."

I always kept an M16 loaded

with blank ammunition next to the camera

because Oliver would every once in a while

want me to fire the thing and you know, heat things up a bit.

So, I was kind of leaning on the muzzle of the rifle next to the--

While all the fog was settling and Oliver said: "Action."

And those NVA came up and did this

and I came awake and looked at them.

Dale, in an eighth of a second,

went-- I mean, cause he was just standing there and was just sort of spacing out,

you know. He just went, swoosh!

You know, I had a firearm.

It was one of the heaviest,

things I've ever seen, you know.

Puerto Azul was this resort and they had a, they had a lounge-bar.

We were just kinda salty at the end of the day when we'd get off the set.

We were filming for 12 hours in these really intense scenes

and come back looking like hell.

[Sheen] No one would go to their room.

Everyone would, uh, forget how bloody they were,

caked in dirt or whatever.

Forget a shower, we all went straight to the bar.

[C. Glover] At the end of the day, we'd all ride in the bar together.

[Eshelman] Full fatigues, blood.

[Sanchez] We don't care. We own this place.

[C. Glover] We needed a break, we needed a real sort of release from that sort of thing.

So, the lounge at Puerto Azul was what we needed.

[Sheen] That bar was like the greatest place in the world.

It was real gathering uh, spot for us, where we sought refuge.

[Depp] We all knew that binge drinking was dangerous, you know.

So, if you kept your blood alcohol level to a certain point

it was a whole lot easier to deal with shit.

Well, it really did help. It helped a lot.

That was our moment, to just phew...

And it didn't matter if, if, you know, the later we stayed the less sleep we got.

It wasn't you know, sleep, schmeep.

I think we were all pretty inebriated.

I remember glasses breaking,

being chucked at the bar.

[C. Glover] And there was this cover band basically singing pop tunes phonetically.

They didn't speak any English.

They were saying that, "We built this city."

There's a point when it was like:

"Hey, you play guitar, you play the drums?"

We overtook this little bandstand where the local band played.

[C. Glover] The band would take a break and we'd pick up their instruments.

[Sheen] The Platoon band consisted of the following:

Johnny Depp, lead guitar. Corey Glover, vocals.

John Glover, vocals, rhythm guitar,

Chris Patterson, bass and Richard Edson on the drums.

Playing, you know, old blues covers and old like soul songs

and just entertaining ourselves.

We just said hey, can we borrow your instruments?

And then, that was the first night, and the second night it was like:

"Hey, we're taking your instruments." And then after that

I was like: "Don't even come near the stage."

For four guys that never played together,

they were fabulous.

Depp and John Glover were some amazing guitar players

and they were playing some of this stuff

and it sounded really, really good.

I wasn't good enough to make the band.

I played the drums back then.

These were really talented musicians.

It was hard to break into the band. They were very tight.

It was a really good band, I mean, amazing.

I still didn't really consider the idea of myself as an actor.

I was still a musician as far I was concerned.

I remember Johnny kept saying "I don't want to be an actor.

I want to be a musician."

Look at him now.

[C. Glover] It became a thing. When we came to the bar

the manager was like: "Okay, you go on in 10 minutes?" "What?"

I'm not even sure those dudes ever came back.

They just left their instruments.

I don't know how much I'd pay today

to have just one night of that back.

But... the better it was and as good as it got, guys started leaving.

[Sheen] What we didn't really anticipate is as certain characters

in the movie died, they were sent home.

You have 33 people in this bar every night.

And... one by one, throughout the course of the shooting

there would be one less guy at the bar.

When you got killed in the movie, you left the next day.

It's a practical enough thing, but it had a weird effect

because you get close to these guys

and then they got killed, and then they were gone.

The NVA comes in and Bob Orwig is up

and his character gets a sucking chest wound and he's dead.

Next day, he's on a plane out.

We got Bob on the airplane and sent him home

and Berenger looked at me

and he said: "Wow, that's feels weird, doesn't it?"

I said: "Yeah, it feels like we just lost one."

He's not dead in real life, but it felt like that,

because they were, they were just suddenly gone.

Manny.

The whole scene about looking for Manny, and he's gone

and you feel that loss.

Cookie was a good friend, and like--

I went through boot with him. I was,

I was having a good time with him.

Everybody ended up in the bar of the hotel that night

drinking San Miguel beer and mourning the fact

that we had lost one of ours. Now, he was fine.

He was on an airplane going home, but not to us.

To us we had lost one.

That was another clue that we'd really done something special.

Oliver obviously did a really smart thing.

He filmed the movie in sequence so that when people got killed--

They left, so it was the most bizarre thing

that you created this camaraderie of this acting company

and then you get to a certain point in the schedule, they were gone.

Depp left. We had a party the night before

but, he-- after his scene he was, he was gone.

Richard Edson left early, John Glover left early.

Uhm... all of a sudden there was fewer and fewer of those, of us.

I don't wanna lean on it too much

but that, that really plays on your... On your imagination.

And the community we created,

you saw it get chipped away at.

You know, you're a few days into filming

and you already know how tight this group is.

If you could time-lapse film a tableau of that bar

and all of its initial glory, and watch it just shrink down and down

and further and further, and further.

The group kept getting smaller

and smaller and smaller and smaller.

Suddenly there was no band.

There was no music.

Uhm, it was, it was the few remaining souls.

[Berenger] Then you go back to the hotel and it's just...

there's nobody there, and I went back to my room

and I'm getting like: "Oh God, they're all gone.

Everybody's gone. I'm getting depressed."

I, I felt each death, and each wounding

much more deeply than I thought.

I think I had crossed

some fourth wall and those were my guys.

[Sanchez] You know, the van's outside and I've got my stuff and I look in the bar

which was normally packed with us.

Well, there was just John McGinley and it's just him.

[nostalgic music]

And no music. There's nobody playing.

There's nobody.

It's him, I came and I put my, kinda, softly just slapped his shoulder,

and I said: "Hey, I just wanted to, uh, say goodbye 'cause I'm leaving."

Without turning, not out of anger

but to contain his emotions,

he just said: "Well, if you're gonna go, then go."

[McGinley] All of a sudden there was fewer and fewer of us.

You didn't have to act your ass off.

You really had to hit your mark and say your lines

and, and, and exercise this collage

of experiences that you've been bombarded by.

Bob, I've had a bad feeling on this one, alright?

I mean I got a bad feeling.

I don't think I'm gonna make it out of here.

I, I sat next to this, this businessman and, uh, as soon as we got airborne,

it was-- it was so deeply akin to the, the last chopper flight.

The war is over for me now

but it will always be there the rest of my days.

When I was overcome with... in that scene, you know,

it was identical leaving the Philippines.

[dramatic music]

I think now, looking back,

we did not fight the enemy.

But this guy next to me, he sees I'm in a state,

I'm crying and I'm just like, you know, I'm just out the window

and I'm really having in this moment.

He says, he says: "What's going on?"

And I said: "I don't think this flight is long enough to explain it."

We got back to the States side a lot of the actors we did get together.

Dale had several parties at his home and we would all go to that.

[Kane] We were all clinging to that, you know, camaraderie.

I get to L.A. and moved in with Depp.

[chuckles] We had a little studio apartment in Hollywood.

And, uh... there's cast and crew screening.

I remember we watched it and I think

many of us were a little bit in shock.

Platoonis a really, really tough film to watch.

It's like ugly and violent and depressing.

And I had my grandmother and my mother and my stepfather,

kind of like: "Oh, my God. I probably shouldn't have brought my family to this."

I remember my grandmother afterwards saying:

"I never want to see a movie like that again."

You know, my mom tried to scramble out in the middle of the scene

where Bunny's bashing the head open.

And I basically had to physically put her back in the seat

and say: "Mom, you have to stay. You cannot walk out."

And it was tough for her to watch that.

They had a little party for us across the street in some bar.

And... I'll never forget, you know, everybody saying, "Great shot, great shot."

About six of us actors, Moses, McGinley, myself, Ivan,

we just pushed right up to that bar. "Yeah, tequila."

We're just drinking and maybe three words

were shared like: "Fuck. Fuck."

All of us knew we fucked that film.

I was looking at minute things.

"My God, he had his finger on the trigger in this scene.

Come on, what we worked for three months for?"

We didn't get Dai Uy's instruction good enough.

Oliver's dream was, was gonna crash and burn.

I think it was the third time I saw the movie.

Uh... And we sat and watched it. And, and watched it differently this time,

'cause it wasn't like we had, you know, worried about getting a job

from that or winning some fucking award or some bullshit.

We, we kinda watched it, sort of, over here, and uh... everybody was proud of it.

We're all proud of it, you know.

Uhm, I found out the film was gonna be released right on Christmas.

I'm like: "Super! Nothing says Christmas like Platoon."

But what, what are they doing? We're shit out of luck.

No one is gonna see this fucking thing.

Well, we can show it to our cousins, that'll be good.

Ah, and I'll be goddamned if it didn't all work out.

We're up at Depp's and it's Christmas. It's opening night.

Let's go and see what the film is doing.

Hop in the car, I see some people milling about the box office.

"Okay, somebody's coming."

Then, we get closer. Oh, the--

Okay, there's a few people waiting. You get to the corner,

there's a line down the block

and we took a left down this block and half a block up.

It's good to be wrong sometimes.

I'm going: "God, Oliver, have you seen the reviews?"

He says: "I know, there's not a bad review."

I said: "Every single one of them."

I go: "You can't do better than this."

I started hearing good things about it.

And then, in those days,

because it wasn't so sophisticated as it is now.

I'm at home and my son's babysitter calls me up

and says: "Hey, you've been nominated."

The only, the only thing I think is, I really wish my dad

was still around to see this. He goes, "Me too."

The most surreal thing was that it won the Academy Award.

I remember McGinley stood up and just couldn't...

didn't know what to make of it. I think he's gonna fall over. 'Cause it's a little

low-budget film, with a bunch of,

you know, we're not... You know, we get like maybe two

and a half actors in the thing and then the rest of us.

Hemdale threw a party for us at La Scala in Beverly Hills.

We were all dressed like we were going to the Academy Awards.

It was so great. When the show was over

Oliver, Arnold, Tom, Willem, they all came.

That was a really, really special night.

That was a nice payoff.

When we won four Academy Awards, including Best Picture

my phone suddenly started ringing

and all of those guys who said: "We don't need you,"

suddenly did need me.

This is the beauty of it.

None of us had pumped in our heads that

"Oh, my God, this movie's gonna win four Academy Awards.

It's gonna put us all on the map." We didn't know that.

We were there to do the work.

He hired the right people at the right time,

that were hungry enough to get in there and do the task at hand.

[Sheen] To be part of the Best Picture it's like you won

the championship that year.

Maybe we didn't get the MVP

but together, we won the championship.

I, like many other Vietnam guys, came home to not so nice a welcome.

Uh, the country was ragged and the country was tired.

We were ostracized and I think a lot of Vietnam veterans,

uh, too damn many of them, kinda went in the closet

and they kept all this stuff inside.

I showed it around to a few veterans,

uh, before it had ever been released or anything like that.

Oliver gave me a copy and let me show it.

And the veterans said: "Ooh, that's it."

But we now understand it

and rare is the film that brings

such understanding of horrible things.

This helped people understand. It was a point

of reference for something that they could never talk about.

A guy rushed over to me

and he said: "Listen man, I don't want to disturb you.

I just want to know-- I just want you to know

that I was in the 365th in 1968, and I know you!"

And he walked away, and I wept.

That film had a huge sociological impact on the nation.

They, they were talking about Platoon

and talking about each other and talking about their experience.

And I think that was very healthy.

A lot of Vietnam guys, who had for 10 years, kept this stuff inside

eating a hole in their guts.

A lot of them took their family to see Platoon,

and said: "Look, I haven't talked about it.

I can't talk about it, I won't talk about it, but there it is."

[theme music]

I'm here because of the impact...

Make it outta here...

...of a little movie we did...

Every day of the rest of your life man - gravy.

...in the Philippines 30 years ago.

A group of guys that I bonded with so quickly and so impactfully.

I think it was because it was a trial by fire

that we all sort of went through together.

It may have been the, the training we went through together

that we are-- We consider ourselves brothers.

It's not like a job that you get where you show up,

and you're gonna know your lines and you're in a safety net. This had no safety net.

If I see anybody, it's like seeing a brother.

Yeah. It was 30 years ago and when you get back together

uh, it's the same spirit that we had back then.

You and I see each other, uh, it's like yesterday.

And If I run into, into anybody from our experience back in the world,

uh... it didn't matter what I was doing.

What was going on? It would--

It would all come to an absolute Flintstone's halt.

We all had the best time in the world

and the worst time in the world.

I've never been in another circumstance like it.

It was, it was wonderfully unique in that sense.

It gave us a chance to bond as actors and as human beings.

I love the guys I made that movie with.

On every film you go away for three months

and you live together and you become like a family.

But this was a whole other level and watching you guys,

It was like brothers, all of you guys.

And It's amazing even today just seeing you guys out in the hallway.

It's, it's like a bond that was created.

I don't want to romanticize it, but it never existed for me...

I did 10, 15 other movies and stuff,

it never existed on any other movie, that bond.

It was the tightest bond I've ever had on any film.

You know, it was the camaraderie that we formed. It's the bond.

Without a word, you hug...

and it's like everything else will wait and you reconnect.

You look into their eyes and it doesn't matter if it's a month or three years or a decade.

These are my brothers. These really are my brothers.

[Sheen] It's truly a confluence of the time that we did it

of the place that we did it in and of how we did it.

I'll probably, you know, be buried with my helmet

and my entrenching tool and maybe a picture of my wife.

[Edson] The bond that was created isn't one

that had to be reinforced by constantly seeing each other. What is that?

'Cause this is something special.

This is something, this is something you just... don't forget.

What we all got 30 years ago

is a gift I think every one of us is going to die with

and I am so proud to be here doing this today.

I've never been impacted more by three months

or four months than Platoon.

I'll never forget ya. You know, it's like, I love you guys.

I mean, I have no problem looking at these guys and saying: "I love you, guys."

We all ended up sort of getting clipped on to one another

in this, in this very organic and necessary way.

[Sheen] We're all connected forever. We're all... we're all just we are linked, cosmically.

I just wanna be back with those guys.

Platoonwas great.

For four months, you got to be involved

in something that actually came together and worked.

[John] It grounded everybody just for once in excellence.

You got to connect with greatness

if you can just reference it from time to time

it functions as salvation, as oxygen.

The bond, a strange bond, uh, will never go away.

It's, it's seared onto my brain forever

until the very final second when I become smoke.

[music]