It would be great to see some of rough-cut Keital footage of him playing Captain Williard - maybe as a DVD extra, someday!
But why was he fired from AN?
It's only touched on in this doc, it amazing why was such a great actor got fired by FFC..
I guess he just wasn't suited to the role. Keitel has a cool, street edge to him and I would guess he struggled to show the broken man that the character was.
shareI highly doubt it, watch bad lieutenant to see classic harvey playing a broken down man
- The King is gone but he's not forgotten
That's exactly what i was thinking! Martin Sheen did a great job, i loved him in Apocalypse Now. But you can't tell me Keitel couldn’t have pulled off that role. If he wasn't doing real coke in Bad Lieutenant they fooled me, such an authentic role.
"Happy birthday, Euclid"
It was said in the trivia that he was fired because of "creative differences" with coppola - so go figure. The young keitel was replaceable.
Meanwhile, the big fat brando shows up without doing the prep work asked of him, forcing coppola to do it for him -- he is 150 lbs heavier than the character hes supposed to play, demands the script be changed to his whims, wants to be his own dierector, forces coppola to abandon his planned concept for brando's character and has to reinvent it on the fly. Brando is credited with causing long scheduling delays and is otherwise uncooperative in every area possible.
Brando is way beyond having creative differences - so much so that coppola cant stand to work with him and has to assign responsibility for directing brando to his assistant.
Another source said this:
Army Captain Willard is a largely passive character. In fact, Martin Sheen replaced Harvey Keitel in the role after Coppola decided Keitel seemed like too active a screen presence. Sheen brings a more muted presence to the film than the forceful Keitel and, as a result, is more compelling as the audience’s guide into Vietnam. Willard’s primary action is to kill Kurtz. He spends the rest of the film watching intently and internalizing what goes on in the jungle. In his narration, Willard points out the disturbing ironies of war and attempts to insert a faint notion of morality. As he becomes more alert to the absurdities of war and the darkness of human nature, so do we. Nevertheless, we relate to him slowly, despite his role as the film's protagonist, due to his equivocal and impersonal nature. Willard frequently stares off at a point above our shoulder. The war has shell-shocked him, and the film similarly shell-shocks us.
So very true about Brando – he's the main reason Act Three of "Apocalypse Now" doesn't work, and I wish this documentary dealt more with those difficulties. It gets a bit too euphemistic at the end instead of addressing the elephant in the room.
Interesting take on Martin Sheen vs. Harvey Keitel in the role of Willard. Martin is very good in the role, but I think just a bit more intensity would have helped. The fact that he was recovering from a heart attack during much of the filming probably constrained his character too much.
Dig sheen but I think this movie would have been a lot more watchable if Keitel was the lead.
...Also, totally agree on Brando. He's kinda just horrible in AN.
Coppola can say, "oh, he's a mystical figure" which I see as an excuse for filming Fat Brando in the darkness and so on.. but it's clear that he caused all sorts of difficulties for the shoot; Coppola mentions it in this doc by saying "Brandon doesn't give a s h i t." Well, as an audience member, I don't give a s h i t either... They literally could've gotten just about ANYONE to play this part, some fat dude in the darkness. And they could've gotten them for way cheaper. It's clear from this doc that Brando was completely disinterested in the role -- also, his "improvising" was absolutely horrible.
"I swallowed a bug." is pretty classic though. I think I like this doc better than the film itself!
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Shuji Terayama forever.
Casting Keitel instead of Sheen certainly would have given Harvey an early boost to his career, but I think this film would still have been weighted down by Brando's horrible performance. And yes, I like the documentary better than "Apocalypse Now" because the film had so many issues with the cast that it distracted from the story, particularly at the end.
shareI think that Brando works just fine but the money he cost is absurd. Olivier/Welles/Fonda/Lancaster/Douglas/ could have done the job just as well for half the money and a fraction of the hassle.
share" ... Willard frequently stares off at a point above our shoulder. The war has shell-shocked him, ... "
In the French plantation scene, the young widow says he has the same look her husband had - "Les Soldats Perdu" (the lost soldiers). I believe we now call it PTSD.
HAL: "It can only be attributable to human error."
Because Keitel was to.. energetic, they needed someone alot more calmer like Sheen.
shareIt makes sense. Willard has a lot of moments where he sits and does nothing. Keitel is the kind of actor that doesn't look elegant when he isn't doing anything, a silent Keitel looks more like some guy that is dumbfoundedly looking for something to say, whereas Sheen looks like he is in a comfortable daze or on another planet entirely. Keitel is great when he is active, like his part in Taxi Driver was brilliant, but you can't see him working the calm quiet as well as Martin Sheen in AN. It would have been a completely different character than the Willard that Sheen performed.
sharePacino would've made a great Willard too, he can be calm and quiet yet project an intense observance.
shareIt seemd pretty obvious that Coppola went into this thing not having any idea what he really wanted from the film and he then proceeded to figure it all out over the next three years. Keitel was one of those things.
"My name is Paikea Apirana, and I come from a long line of chiefs stretching all the way back to the Whale Rider."