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Revisiting Apocalypse Now

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Christine Bacareza Balance discusses about Revisiting Apocalypse Now: Hollywood in a Time & Place of Philippine Martial Law

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 27, 2024

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The speaker reflects on their academic journey related to the film "Apocalypse Now" and its production context, particularly through a course taken at NYU and the documentary "Hearts of Darkness." Revisiting the film in relation to Asian American critiques, the speaker became interested in "Apocalypse Child," a film that explores the impacts of "Apocalypse Now." This video video led to visits to the production sites in the Philippines, particularly Bel Air, raising questions about the historical and cultural implications of such film productions vis-à-vis the local Filipino experience.

The discussion reveals the challenges faced during the production of "Apocalypse Now," including casting difficulties and environmental obstacles like monsoon seasons that delayed filming. The speaker emphasizes the contradictions and myth-making surrounding Hollywood's portrayal of the Philippines and its people. They mention how the film's production accumulated financial and cultural capital largely at the expense of local Filipino labor and resources, further complicating the narrative of US military and colonial activities within the region.

In examining their own biases while acknowledging the broader Philippine context, the speaker critiques a limited focus on screen representations, advocating for a deeper exploration of the historical and socio-political framework surrounding film production. They express a desire to pursue future research using an archeological approach, focusing on the nuances of each location used in filming and the lived experiences of those involved, especially against the backdrop of Philippine martial law.

Overall, the text serves as a critical reflection on the intersections of film history, imperialism, and the ongoing narratives around identity and representation, emphasizing the need for a more nuanced understanding of these relationships beyond Hollywood myths.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP:LOCAL=00:00:00.000,MPEGTS=900000

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I actually, took a course in, in graduate school

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as an undergrad course at NYU,

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called Asian Americans in War,

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and it was taught by a filmmaker, angel Velasco Shaw,

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who showed us the documentary Hearts of Darkness,

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which is about the making of Apocalypse Now.

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Um, so of course I was kinda familiar with Apocalypse Now,

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I, strangely enough,

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liked watching Vietnam War films in high

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school and undergrad.

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Uh, and then of course, you know, as I got older, started

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to understand like, this, this canonical text right, is,

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is, is up for critique, particularly by,

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by Asian Americans, right?

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Um, so that, that was the first kind

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of entry into the story.

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And then around 2016, I heard of this film,

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apocalypse Child, right?

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Which is making its, rounds amongst festivals in Canada

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as well as, the us, right?

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Uh, which then kind of prompted me to visit the place

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of Belaire just 'cause of the way the film figured, right?

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The history of, of the films making.

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Um, and then, I actually in conversation

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with Patrick Compost, who is the editor of,

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Bela Journal, the online Journal of Philippine film,

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he's also a very prominent film critic in the Philippines,

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and told him about this piece,

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and he said, yeah, you know,

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I think there might be a venue

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for this right in the future issue.

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Uh, and I really wanted it, it was really important for me

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for it to be published in a Philippine venue in a Philippine

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journal, because part of, kind of the impetus as well

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for for writing, it was to, try to collect more

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of the stories of the film's production, from the kind

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of non-US, points of view.

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So, so the film itself, filming began around 1975.

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So this is technically at the tail end of the Vietnam War.

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Um, Francis Ford Coppola is coming off of Big Success

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of The Godfather, right?

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Um, but that was such a kind of internal film,

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I guess both in terms of narrative, but also production.

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Uh, and according to his wife, Eleanor, he wanted

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to kind of, you know, pivot

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to making something more like a cowboy movie

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or an action adventure movie, right?

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Which you call an outdoor opera.

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Um, and, you know, I think he was also of this time period

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of wanting to critique, right, the us military,

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the us, presence in Vietnam, what it was doing there.

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Uh, so this is also a time of the Global Cold War,

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and of course, the hot wars in Southeast Asia, including,

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the one in Vietnam, a time here, right,

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of anti-war demonstrations in sentiment,

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but also across the global south, a time of,

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rising authoritarianism, including in the Philippines,

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with the rise of former, Philippine dictator, a a lot

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of, movie studios found it, intriguing,

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but also wanted to see, right, what Coppola could do.

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Um, and so the issue of kind of location scouting, right?

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So needing to find a place that looked like Vietnam,

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but where you could have,

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where Coppola could have easy access

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to us military equipment, right?

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Um, as well as the kind of a government

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and a local people that are amenable to, a us

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film production crew kind of planting themselves for months,

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or, you know, in this case a year, locally,

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there was issues with casting.

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Um, so this is also part of the film's lore.

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Um, going from Harvey Kittel

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and trying to convince really, Hollywood heavyweights

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to spend all year filming in the

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jungles right of the Philippines.

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Uh, it was kind of a hard call.

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Uh, so then, you know, went from Kittel to,

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Martin Sheen, who was a younger actor,

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and then of course, Marlon Brando, who, was the kind

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of obstinate figure in the film's kind of, making.

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Um, but then once, right, the,

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the production crew was there.

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Um, there was kind of, of course, nature,

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making itself known.

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And so, there's often strong monsoon seasons,

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which happens right in the Philippines and the tropics,

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and particularly a typhoon, known as Dding

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or Olga, right?

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Which, actually destroyed, completely destroyed a set

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that had been built by both, us

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and Philippine production crew members,

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set the production back two months

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and, you know, set them back, $1 million, right?

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So, so thinking about these general conditions of kind

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of the tropical weather, the heat, the housing,

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and of course, limited food supply.

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So I think,

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and I think limited food supply in terms of, not

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that there wasn't food in the Philippines,

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but the kinds of things that Americans would

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want to eat, right?

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So it's kind of, part of the film's lore as well is,

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is actually Coppola

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because a majority of his production,

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crew was both American

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and, Italian, kind of importing in, pasta

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and cheese and, you know, this thing and wine, right?

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Um, and so not really partaking of,

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of the local cuisine, generally.

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This notion, Hollywood right?

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Has a tradition, from the very get go

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of figuring the third world settings,

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both those presented on screen as well as off screen,

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as a type of frontier, right?

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Um, so it's an inhospitable terrain.

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Uh, it's a land that belongs to no one.

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Um, and that is actually populated by these strange and,

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and faceless natives, right?

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Um, and then what you kind of get

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as an update in this version is, a country where,

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the government is corrupt and, and so on and so forth.

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So, so within this, what's,

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what film critic,

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Jasmine Trees calls a frontier mentality, right?

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Uh, Francis Ford Coppola is, is the man,

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is the kind of pioneer.

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He's the risk taker.

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He's the one, who's not only able to succeed

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amongst this kind of inhospitable terrain,

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but also in fighting against, right?

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Um, the Hollywood studios

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and the US government,

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which is not looking favorably upon, this production.

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Um, and so then, you know, this film really solidifies him

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as a kind of ature director, right?

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It, it leads to his own prestige as an artist.

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So van color capitalism is just the notion,

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that the film itself, right?

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And, as well as its makers really accumulated, a lot

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of financial capital, but as well as cultural capital, right

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after the fact of this film's production.

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Uh, and a lot of that kind of capital

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and that prestige was really built upon the backs of,

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and the labor of local Filipinos,

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Filipino artists, right?

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Again, those who, who built these sets, those who were,

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film consultants right on the film, as well

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as the local everyday Filipinos in the various locations

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where, they were shooting, as well as thinking about

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the extras right in the film.

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So, this is also a time, again, of the US Vietnam War

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and Martial law,

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and, one of the largest kind

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of refugee relocation camps, during that time

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of both Vietnamese

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and Cambodian refugees is in the Philippines.

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So, you know, their labor is part of, of the film itself.

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Um, and of course, you know, the, the natural resources

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of the Philippines, which includes the indigenous people

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who are also used as extras,

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and who actually, if it were not for them,

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the film itself would not have the ending it has right now.

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So after watching the film and then the making of,

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and then, apocalypse Child, right?

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This indie film is really compelled to, to go to Belaire

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and see, you know, what remained right there.

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Um, if you do a kind of search online, most of

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what you see is kind of the lore, right?

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Or the myth that, it was Apocalypse Now

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that brought surfing to Aire.

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And so Belaire is really known as one of these,

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destinations in terms of, a kind of surfers itinerary,

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particularly around the Pacific.

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Um, and then also to just really interested in,

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looking at other places where

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after a film's production, they build a kind

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of tourist economy around, okay, this is a place where

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Jurassic Park was made, or so on, so forth.

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Uh, but when I actually got to the place of Aire, all

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of those preconceived notions were totally debunked, right?

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Which is to say, you know,

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this wasn't nobody's land, right?

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And actually as the opening of,

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apocalypse Child shows, right?

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It actually kind of gives you various dates, in history,

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in the history of Aire.

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Uh, and so there are dates that are pre-colonial

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and colonial, and then it gets to Apocalypse now, right?

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But also, too, just in terms of you get there

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and it's, it's almost, I mean, there was one cafe

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where there was a poster of Apocalypse Now, but

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otherwise not really much of a, of a ible mark, right?

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Of the films making, at least upon the landscape

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or the places that I saw.

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Uh, and also just, you know, when you talk to the locals,

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when you go to kind of local restaurants, you see that,

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the history of surfing, both predates

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and, extends beyond, right?

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Apocalypse now is coming, coming to the, to the area.

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So, so all of these various things really made me kind

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of question, not just Hollywood myth

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and LO's making right, of the, the importance of the film

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and to this place, but also my own right as a,

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as a critic who's coming, who's

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of Filipino descent, but from the us.

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So you think about Philippine martial law,

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and again, there are various,

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times in Philippine history

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where martial law has been declared,

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but the one that's kind of most prominently known,

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and especially now with the return of Marcos's son

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to the presidency, is again, the time period of,

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president Fernan Marcos and his wife Emelda.

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Uh, and so during that time period, you still have,

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the structures of us militarism.

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So, the, some

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of the oldest US base in the Pacific are actually in the

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Philippines, and that's ing back to the time

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of the Philippine American War.

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Uh, and of course, you know,

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US' colon colonial presence in the Philippines.

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Um, but having those, those military bases

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and that presence, right, allowed again, the access

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to the US military equipment, to the personnel, right?

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That helped in the backup, as well as, you know,

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issues of transport

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and again, the, the mobilization of the refugees, right?

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Um, from those various place bases to the,

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the production sites.

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Um, I think too, you also thinking about the longer history

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of, of US empire in the Philippines, you see that there's,

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it's actually a Philippine film industry

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that's actually the oldest in Asia.

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Uh, and again, this is all kind of connected

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and bound up with the fact that the us,

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had a presence right?

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In the Philippines since the turn of the 20th century,

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and was using, the Philippines as a site of,

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production, right?

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Even since that time.

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Um, and then finally it's just, you know, thinking about

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dictators in particularly the

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Marcos's regime, they were really drawn to

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bringing the Philippines onto a global stage.

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Um, this was part of,

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Imelda Marcos's own kind of cultural policy.

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Uh, so another example is them hosting a kind of, miss,

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not this Philippines,

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but the Miss Universe pageant right in, in Manila,

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and thinking about other ways of developing tourism, right?

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Particularly in this case for Hollywood and its production.

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Um, so there are various, actual production stills where

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Coppola and other production members are meeting, right?

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With President Marcos or meeting with local officials.

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Uh, so you start to see, right, that if, if it wasn't for,

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Marcos's interest in, in developing this, this,

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this film probably would not have been made.

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Both looking at the production history

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and visiting the place, I would say really,

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made me question the,

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the ways in which I, myself, right?

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Was looking for a kind of visibility

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and representation, within US standards.

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Um, I think more

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of a focus on production history also made me kind

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of question and critique,

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my other colleagues in Asian American studies

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who often just focus on what's on screen, right?

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And that, that does tell one story, right?

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And has, various types of Im impacts,

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but there are many ways in which it screens out, right?

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These other kinds of, of history

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and particularly the role of the Philippines,

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in the US Vietnam war, as well

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as just thinking about the US Vietnam War as a,

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as a global phenomenon, right?

13:31.725 --> 13:34.905
Um, as something that was fought with the assistance

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of various countries.

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It wasn't just between two countries.

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Um, I think too, in terms of, going to the place itself,

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so there's a theme, an Apocalypse Child where,

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the main characters, and it's near the beginning

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of the film, go to the, this eo de Aire,

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and they see kind of production stills and posters,

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and it's a full exhibit, right?

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Um, of the film.

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And so I imagine that's really what it looked like.

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And, and that is not actually what I experienced, right?

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So it's just like one production still on the second floor

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totally tucked away, like not prominent, at all.

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And so that really also made me question that Hmm, you know,

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apocalypse Child made by filmmakers, from Manila.

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And so it was like, okay, so how does the Metropol, right?

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Or how is the, the cosmopolitan place, the city,

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look at the province, right?

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Look at these spaces. Um, but I think also too,

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and for future research

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and writing, I want to now approach, right,

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the production history of Apocalypse Now, through more

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of an archeologic approach, which is to say,

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rather than thinking about it as,

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the Philippines as this

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Nation where it was filmed, which kind

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of falls in line or works in line with the kind

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of lumping right of,

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of the various local places in the Philippines,

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I actually want to kind of pay more attention

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to the specificity of each place,

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that this film was produced in, as well

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as the relationships right between them.

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And again, during a time of martial law, a lot

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of the focus about Philippine martial law history

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is on Manila is on the city.

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Um, and so I think there's a way in which the archeologic,

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you know, forces us to flesh out

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and consider, what it felt like

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for other people in other places in the Philippines.

00:00 - I actually, took a course in, in graduate school as an undergrad course at NYU, called Asian Americans in War, and it was taught by a filmmaker, angel Velasco Shaw, who showed us the documentary Hearts of Darkness, which is about the making of Apocalypse Now.

00:17 - so of course I was kinda familiar with Apocalypse Now, I, strangely enough, liked watching Vietnam War films in high school and undergrad. and then of course, you know, as I got older, started to understand like, this, this canonical text right, is, is, is up for critique, particularly by, by Asian Americans, right? so that, that was the first kind of entry into the story.

00:43 - And then around 2016, I heard of this film, apocalypse Child, right? Which is making its, rounds amongst festivals in Canada as well as, the us, right? which then kind of prompted me to visit the place of Belaire just 'cause of the way the film figured, right? The history of, of the films making. and then, I actually in conversation with Patrick Compost, who is the editor of, Bela Journal, the online Journal of Philippine film,

01:17 - he's also a very prominent film critic in the Philippines, and told him about this piece, and he said, yeah, you know, I think there might be a venue for this right in the future issue. and I really wanted it, it was really important for me for it to be published in a Philippine venue in a Philippine journal, because part of, kind of the impetus as well for for writing, it was to, try to collect more of the stories of the film's production, from the kind

01:46 - of non-US, points of view. So, so the film itself, filming began around 1975. So this is technically at the tail end of the Vietnam War. Francis Ford Coppola is coming off of Big Success of The Godfather, right? but that was such a kind of internal film, I guess both in terms of narrative, but also production. and according to his wife, Eleanor, he wanted to kind of, you know, pivot to making something more like a cowboy movie

02:20 - or an action adventure movie, right? Which you call an outdoor opera. and, you know, I think he was also of this time period of wanting to critique, right, the us military, the us, presence in Vietnam, what it was doing there. so this is also a time of the Global Cold War, and of course, the hot wars in Southeast Asia, including, the one in Vietnam, a time here, right, of anti-war demonstrations in sentiment, but also across the global south, a time of,

02:51 - rising authoritarianism, including in the Philippines, with the rise of former, Philippine dictator, a a lot of, movie studios found it, intriguing, but also wanted to see, right, what Coppola could do. and so the issue of kind of location scouting, right? So needing to find a place that looked like Vietnam, but where you could have, where Coppola could have easy access to us military equipment, right? as well as the kind of a government

03:22 - and a local people that are amenable to, a us film production crew kind of planting themselves for months, or, you know, in this case a year, locally, there was issues with casting. so this is also part of the film's lore. going from Harvey Kittel and trying to convince really, Hollywood heavyweights to spend all year filming in the jungles right of the Philippines. it was kind of a hard call.

03:51 - so then, you know, went from Kittel to, Martin Sheen, who was a younger actor, and then of course, Marlon Brando, who, was the kind of obstinate figure in the film's kind of, making. but then once, right, the, the production crew was there. there was kind of, of course, nature, making itself known. And so, there's often strong monsoon seasons, which happens right in the Philippines and the tropics,

04:22 - and particularly a typhoon, known as Dding or Olga, right? Which, actually destroyed, completely destroyed a set that had been built by both, us and Philippine production crew members, set the production back two months and, you know, set them back, $1 million, right? So, so thinking about these general conditions of kind of the tropical weather, the heat, the housing, and of course, limited food supply.

04:53 - So I think, and I think limited food supply in terms of, not that there wasn't food in the Philippines, but the kinds of things that Americans would want to eat, right? So it's kind of, part of the film's lore as well is, is actually Coppola because a majority of his production, crew was both American and, Italian, kind of importing in, pasta

05:17 - and cheese and, you know, this thing and wine, right? and so not really partaking of, of the local cuisine, generally. This notion, Hollywood right? Has a tradition, from the very get go of figuring the third world settings, both those presented on screen as well as off screen, as a type of frontier, right? so it's an inhospitable terrain. it's a land that belongs to no one.

05:45 - and that is actually populated by these strange and, and faceless natives, right? and then what you kind of get as an update in this version is, a country where, the government is corrupt and, and so on and so forth. So, so within this, what's, what film critic, Jasmine Trees calls a frontier mentality, right? Francis Ford Coppola is, is the man, is the kind of pioneer.

06:14 - He's the risk taker. He's the one, who's not only able to succeed amongst this kind of inhospitable terrain, but also in fighting against, right? the Hollywood studios and the US government, which is not looking favorably upon, this production. and so then, you know, this film really solidifies him as a kind of ature director, right? It, it leads to his own prestige as an artist.

06:41 - So van color capitalism is just the notion, that the film itself, right? And, as well as its makers really accumulated, a lot of financial capital, but as well as cultural capital, right after the fact of this film's production. and a lot of that kind of capital and that prestige was really built upon the backs of, and the labor of local Filipinos, Filipino artists, right? Again, those who, who built these sets, those who were,

07:12 - film consultants right on the film, as well as the local everyday Filipinos in the various locations where, they were shooting, as well as thinking about the extras right in the film. So, this is also a time, again, of the US Vietnam War and Martial law, and, one of the largest kind of refugee relocation camps, during that time of both Vietnamese and Cambodian refugees is in the Philippines.

07:40 - So, you know, their labor is part of, of the film itself. and of course, you know, the, the natural resources of the Philippines, which includes the indigenous people who are also used as extras, and who actually, if it were not for them, the film itself would not have the ending it has right now. So after watching the film and then the making of, and then, apocalypse Child, right? This indie film is really compelled to, to go to Belaire and see, you know, what remained right there.

08:11 - if you do a kind of search online, most of what you see is kind of the lore, right? Or the myth that, it was Apocalypse Now that brought surfing to Aire. And so Belaire is really known as one of these, destinations in terms of, a kind of surfers itinerary, particularly around the Pacific. and then also to just really interested in, looking at other places where after a film's production, they build a kind

08:39 - of tourist economy around, okay, this is a place where Jurassic Park was made, or so on, so forth. but when I actually got to the place of Aire, all of those preconceived notions were totally debunked, right? Which is to say, you know, this wasn't nobody's land, right? And actually as the opening of, apocalypse Child shows, right? It actually kind of gives you various dates, in history, in the history of Aire.

09:11 - and so there are dates that are pre-colonial and colonial, and then it gets to Apocalypse now, right? But also, too, just in terms of you get there and it's, it's almost, I mean, there was one cafe where there was a poster of Apocalypse Now, but otherwise not really much of a, of a ible mark, right? Of the films making, at least upon the landscape or the places that I saw. and also just, you know, when you talk to the locals, when you go to kind of local restaurants, you see that,

09:42 - the history of surfing, both predates and, extends beyond, right? Apocalypse now is coming, coming to the, to the area. So, so all of these various things really made me kind of question, not just Hollywood myth and LO's making right, of the, the importance of the film and to this place, but also my own right as a, as a critic who's coming, who's of Filipino descent, but from the us. So you think about Philippine martial law,

10:12 - and again, there are various, times in Philippine history where martial law has been declared, but the one that's kind of most prominently known, and especially now with the return of Marcos's son to the presidency, is again, the time period of, president Fernan Marcos and his wife Emelda. and so during that time period, you still have, the structures of us militarism. So, the, some

10:41 - of the oldest US base in the Pacific are actually in the Philippines, and that's ing back to the time of the Philippine American War. and of course, you know, US' colon colonial presence in the Philippines. but having those, those military bases and that presence, right, allowed again, the access to the US military equipment, to the personnel, right? That helped in the backup, as well as, you know, issues of transport

11:08 - and again, the, the mobilization of the refugees, right? from those various place bases to the, the production sites. I think too, you also thinking about the longer history of, of US empire in the Philippines, you see that there's, it's actually a Philippine film industry that's actually the oldest in Asia. and again, this is all kind of connected and bound up with the fact that the us, had a presence right?

11:37 - In the Philippines since the turn of the 20th century, and was using, the Philippines as a site of, production, right? Even since that time. and then finally it's just, you know, thinking about dictators in particularly the Marcos's regime, they were really drawn to bringing the Philippines onto a global stage. this was part of, Imelda Marcos's own kind of cultural policy.

12:04 - so another example is them hosting a kind of, miss, not this Philippines, but the Miss Universe pageant right in, in Manila, and thinking about other ways of developing tourism, right? Particularly in this case for Hollywood and its production. so there are various, actual production stills where Coppola and other production members are meeting, right? With President Marcos or meeting with local officials. so you start to see, right, that if, if it wasn't for, Marcos's interest in, in developing this, this,

12:40 - this film probably would not have been made. Both looking at the production history and visiting the place, I would say really, made me question the, the ways in which I, myself, right? Was looking for a kind of visibility and representation, within US standards. I think more of a focus on production history also made me kind of question and critique,

13:06 - my other colleagues in Asian American studies who often just focus on what's on screen, right? And that, that does tell one story, right? And has, various types of Im impacts, but there are many ways in which it screens out, right? These other kinds of, of history and particularly the role of the Philippines, in the US Vietnam war, as well as just thinking about the US Vietnam War as a, as a global phenomenon, right?

13:31 - as something that was fought with the assistance of various countries. It wasn't just between two countries. I think too, in terms of, going to the place itself, so there's a theme, an Apocalypse Child where, the main characters, and it's near the beginning of the film, go to the, this eo de Aire, and they see kind of production stills and posters, and it's a full exhibit, right? of the film.

13:59 - And so I imagine that's really what it looked like. And, and that is not actually what I experienced, right? So it's just like one production still on the second floor totally tucked away, like not prominent, at all. And so that really also made me question that Hmm, you know, apocalypse Child made by filmmakers, from Manila. And so it was like, okay, so how does the Metropol, right? Or how is the, the cosmopolitan place, the city, look at the province, right? Look at these spaces. but I think also too,

14:33 - and for future research and writing, I want to now approach, right, the production history of Apocalypse Now, through more of an archeologic approach, which is to say, rather than thinking about it as, the Philippines as this Nation where it was filmed, which kind of falls in line or works in line with the kind of lumping right of, of the various local places in the Philippines,

15:01 - I actually want to kind of pay more attention to the specificity of each place, that this film was produced in, as well as the relationships right between them. And again, during a time of martial law, a lot of the focus about Philippine martial law history is on Manila is on the city. and so I think there's a way in which the archeologic, you know, forces us to flesh out and consider, what it felt like

15:29 - for other people in other places in the Philippines.

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