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05/23/2004: "Apocalypse Now Startup"

I'm up late watching "Apocalypse Now Redux" on IFC. The restored "French plantation" sequence is on, and adds ghostly resonance to the war's (any war's) absurdity. .

It also parallels my Vivato experience like the well-crafted metaphor it is.

"Imagine getting on the Disneyland Jungle Safari ride in late October and falling asleep only to have a horrible heart attack-inducing nightmare where the boat continues past the Electric Light Parade and into the river Styx."

Ayup.

The "lost" footage was not simply injected into the movie as it stands. The whole film was reedited from original raw stock. Walter Murch and Francis Ford Coppola took the dailies and rebuilt their empire from the ground up. A lot of the movie rings familiar. Scenes play like songs off an old Beach Boys' record. Even if you've never sat down and listened to Pet Sounds all the way through, you still know the words to "Wouldn't It Be Nice." There are items here that roll out like old favorites in a jukebox: Brando. Charlie Don't Surf. The Playboy Bunnies. Laurence Fishburne at 14. "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning." The "Die Walkure" raid. Even the film's turbulent production process is embedded in the common man's subconscious mind.

Never get out of the boat. Absolutely goddamn right. Unless you were goin' all the way. Kurtz got off the boat. He split from the whole fuckin' program.

and, as I wrote to Ken Biba once, when we were both still at Vivato:

Spokane. Shit. I'm still only in Spokane. Every time I think I'm gonna wake up back in Texas. When I was home after my first month it was worse. I'd wake up and there'd be nothing. When I was here, I wanted to be there. When I was there, all I could think of was getting back into the Valley. I hardly said a word to my manager until I said yes to Saturn V.

I'm here a year now, waiting for a mission, getting softer. Every minute I stay in this shithole I get weaker, and every minute a programmer squats at his terminal in India or China getting stronger. Each time I look around, the walls move in a little tighter...

[Fade in to the Doors doing "The End"]

Everyone gets everything he wants; I wanted a mission, and for my sins they gave me Sandhawk. Brought it up to me like room service. It was a real choice mission, and when it was over, I'd never want another.

I was going to the worst startup in the world, and I didn't even know it yet. Months of work, and thousands of hours of effort, only to be wasted by the REMF VCs at the hands of their new boy, Stalter.

I thought I was Willard, and turned out to be Kurtz.

"The horror..."