Sunday, April 10, 2011

Apocalypse Now ... and Then


It was sometime in the mid-1970’s.  I was sitting on the front steps of my house in Forbes Park, Makati, Manila, one clear afternoon, when a virtual flock of Huey helicopters flew directly overhead, heading south like angry, acking raptors looking for a meal.  Later I learned that Francis Ford Coppola was filming his iconic movie, “Apocalypse Now” in the Philippines, and these helicopters were being borrowed from the U.S. government.  Many of the young men at the International School took an entire month off of classes to be extras.  They came back with heads shaved and several thousand dollars in their pockets, and the knowledge that they had participated in a piece of film history.  In the scene where the cavalry lands on the beach, there is a quick shot of a boy being forced out of a helicopter, yelling, in the midst of the chaos, “I’m not going! I’m not going!”  That’s Alan Penner … a guy I knew! 

Let me introduce you to Steve Valley, one of the extras.  Like many of the soldiers in the crowd scenes, he is a TCK.  His father worked for Lockheed, under contract to build and maintain the C-130 cargo plane.  His work took the family to Saudi Arabia, Tripoli, Libya, Manila, Venezuela and Hawaii.  Steve learned to swim in the Mediterranean Sea, learned to speak Arabic, and got used to the call to prayer broadcast five times a day over loudspeakers.  Fields trips from the Oil Companies School were to Sabratha and Leptis Magna, the oldest ruins on the planet.  Family vacations were to Malta and Tunisia.  The local bread was delicious, candy was from Europe and garbage was burned across the street.

In Manila, life was good.  Maids, drivers, and cooks were the norm.  Like me, Steve was given an inordinate amount of freedom.  Bar hopping, partying and disco dancing was the activity of choice over the weekends.  We drank beer and liquor and lived like little adults.  The only limitation was the government-ordained curfew from 1 a.m. to 4 a.m.  It was easy to get around the city, either by cab or Jeepney, in a mad dash to make it home in time.  It sounds like a sybaritic paradise, but Steve says it taught him responsibility, and kids were trusted to do the right thing. 


But one experience stands out above all.  Steve waxes nostalgic when he talks about his time on the set of “Apocalypse Now”.  He remembers Coppola as being “hell with the megaphone”.  There are memories of long hours spent waiting for a shot to be set up, pouring down monsoon rains and less than ideal (make that miserable) living conditions.  There were open-air toilets, set-busting typhoons and being rescued by the Philippine Army after a storm stranded the boys for two days in an old schoolhouse.  He remembers hanging out with some young guy named Larry Fishburne, 14 years old at the time, Steve wishing all the time he could hang out with a “bigger” star like Martin Sheen.  Sheen did eat lunch with all the boys one afternoon … they were all tongue-tied in his presence, until they figured out he was just another guy with teenage sons.  While they expected the big star to be aloof and lofty, he was actually very cool and willingly signed autographs. 



Robert Duvall, on the other hand, lived up to his megastar reputation.  There was a moment before the shooting of the famous “I love the smell of napalm in the morning” scene, where Duvall was sitting on a folding canvas chair.  Someone whispered “That’s Robert Duvall.  He was in that movie, ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’”.  Another boy replied, without whispering, “Oh yeah, I recognize him.  He was that retard who hid toys in the tree.”  Duvall turned to look at the boy, squinting and frowning at him for an agonizing minute, before he said, “Who the f*ck is this kid?”  The boy was ushered away from the star, “gagging on the foot in his mouth.”

During one scene requiring heavy rain, the crew pumped river water into four or five firehoses, aimed it straight up and let it rain down in huge brown drops on the extras, for hours at a time.  In knee-deep mud they dug trenches with combat helmets, absorbing all kinds of tropical bugs.  As a result, several of the boys came down with a nasty jungle fever, spending nights and days on uncomfortable cots in the humid, un-air conditioned schoolrooms, where they were billeted. 

During the filming of a beach scene, the boys were given Coke cans with beer labels, as they cooked steaks on makeshift grills.  At one point a huge truck of San Miguel beer arrived and the boys lined up to fill their faux beer cans with actual beer.  After getting their beer, they would go to the end of the line and drink up while waiting in line for another fill up.  Some went through the line several times before those in charge wised up and shut the operation down. 

Adversity brings people together.  While the creature comforts may have been lacking, the opportunity to be a part of this movie was once-in-a-lifetime.  Like war veterans, they join together on Facebook pages to reminisce and rehash the stories of their experience.  It could be that fighting an imaginary war affected them as much as a real one.  Perhaps being a TCK is itself like being in a war, fighting for our identity and our place in the world.  Thus, like the band of brothers who emerge from the battlefield, battered and scarred, we look to each other to find our solace.  We laugh at the difficulties we overcame and brag about the ridiculous luxuries, but all in all we find, in our commonality, ourselves.

6 comments:

Globetrotter said...

Yeah, Thats pretty much how it went....Tequilla Sunrise was my drink of choice at the Intercontinental Hotel Manila...The "Ellis Island" Hotel of the Day that seem to attract all the "Soon to be Local" Americans and their families.. For some reason that 5 Star Hotel was the first Stop and the Last stop for many of us International Students-

Globetrotter said...

Blair Holmes who now resides in Madrid Spain was the first Classmate that actually made me feel welcome in the New School Manila... I remember it started much earlier than the school in the states meaning for me...NO SUMMER..as I quickly learned...Everyday was summer in the Philippines..We lived at a resort hotel just outside Makati, The Tropical Palace/ El Grande Resort Hotels, We Stayed in one of the Houses they rented out monthly, we had acces to all the Hotels Ameneties, Pool,Tennis,Polo Club,Boating,Fishing , Several restaurants and Spa's
I saw Gloria Gaynor ,Natalie Cole and Several other Well Known Artist of the day in the Hotel Lobby- There were 5 or 6 other International Students that lived there as well, no time for bordem-

Globetrotter said...

My Dad's Plane the lockheed C-130 Was close by at Fort Bonafacio, we often rode down with it to Cebu- Mactan- The Place where Magellen First discovered the Philippines..The Aircraft purchased from lockheed turned out to be a big shopping basket for the Colonels wives of the Philippine Air Force.. Island Hopping from Cebu to Manila carrying everthing from Coconuts,Food,and live goods popular on that island- I laugh when I see the tail Number on such web sites like flikr, " I rode in that Plane to Cebu..More than once!!"

C. Dunning said...

I’m glad I saw this story. No stories of Apocalypse Now ever reference the sheer number of high school kids used as extras in the filming. It was ‘76 when I was 16 when I finally caved, cut my hair off and joined the dozens of other IS kids already working as Apocalypse Now extras. I knew Steve Valley and also participated in the beach scene described in your story. It took three nights to film that beach party scene at a set called “Village One”. And the third night was exactly as described with the steaks and beer. Also at Village One, they filmed the infamous “Charlie don’t surf” scene. I was asked to stand a few feet from the camera to provide some shadow for the lighting and watched as they filmed that scene at least 20 times, often with a fair amount of improvisation from the cast. Trivia note: I saw it reported that this scene was filmed in Baler. It was not. Village One was outside of Pagsanjan.

Another great scene we all remember was the USO show with the Playboy Bunnies. This was filmed at the set called “Hao Phat” (which was the set where “Willard” arrives to learn of his mission to assassinate Kurtz). The filming took all night and we listened to Susie-Q so many times I couldn’t handle that song for many years to come.

Off set, we were housed in a school gymnasium with cots with mosquito nets lining the floor. In our free time, we all walked around town in our fatigues and were treated well by the locals. Going to the set, we would all load up on military trucks and convoy through several small villages where every day the school children and others would line the roads and cheer us as though we had just liberated them from the Japanese.

I’ve seen several IS alumni since those days and as you stated, we reminisce about those days like no other. It was a great time!

Unknown said...

All that cash.. well, it had to go somewhere! We were there in Middle School / High School of IS, rolling into Makati, Dasmarinas August of '76 from the states. The cash? This is how Dominick's came to be. If you went to IS 77-78-79-80, it was off to Dominick's when school let out. Pizza. Beer. 6th graders to Seniors, almost entirely funded by Apocalypse Now! Taught me how to drink proper beer, a lesson that has proven to be invaluable the rest of my life. Also one of my top 5 teachers in my life, Mrs. Maramba. We live in interesting times. Thanks for posting!

Gmoney said...

I have spent a long time trying to find out who the "actor" was that refused to get off the helicopter. Thank you for identifying him. I use this phrase a lot when I don't want to do something (which of course I end up doing because I'm in the military) and I've yet to meet anyone who knows the reference. If you know where Alan is today I'd love to hear from him. Thanks much! G-