Why was Harvey Keitel fired from this movie?
I heard that Coppola didn't like him as Willard, but anything specific??
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I've heard rumors that Keitel's career has long been marred by cocaine use.
We look back in his career and assume he's had this wildly successful career, and in some ways he has. But he spent a long time in the late 70s and 80s in the wilderness, some of it in Italy doing garbage B pictures as a supporting actor. I don't think he got back on track until the Last Temptation of Christ and then Reservoir Dogs.
It wouldn't surprise me if Keitel's drug use or behavior contributed to getting dropped.
I think overall Sheen's Willard is much better in the picture. That being said, after a watching this movie a bunch of times I kind of get a bit bored with how low key and damaged Sheen's Willard is. I realize this is all part of Coppola's vision, but it feels like a bit of struggle for verisimilitude at times.
Of all the people to be a bit hard-edged and gung-ho in Vietnam, special forces guys from MACV would have been that. I can see a situation where Keitel's Willard, slightly tougher and more hard-boiled, would have had added more needed intensity to the role. I also think it would have created more interesting tension with the PBR crew, with a Keitel Willard pushing them harder and ultimately pulling them into his own madness -- basically a miniature version of Kurtz's path, and with Keitel's Willard ultimately seeing himself falling for Kurtz's logic.
Keitel tap-danced around the issue in his interview for the November 1995 issue of Playboy...
Keitel: That's one of those areas I don't know if I'm willing to get into because it was really a matter of a director and an actor not getting along.
Playboy: What caused the problems?
Keitel: That's between Francis and me. I insisted on auditioning for the part, by the way. It was awkward, but I wanted Francis to know what he was getting. It was a matter of a young actor who was an ex-marine out of Brooklyn meeting up with a talented director who was out of UCLA and some fraternity. I don't think we communicated well. We clashed. Scorsese was a young man from the streets of lower Manhattan. Much different. It's cultural.
Playboy: How long did you work on the film before he replaced you with Martin Sheen?
Keitel: I did about two weeks of shooting in the Philippines. Had I known then what I know now, I would have kept my mouth shut longer and had them shoot so much they couldn't fire me.
Playboy: What exactly went down between you?
Keitel: I couldn't sell myself out to anybody. Not for money or for the opporunity to be successful. I was trembling, but I knew I had done the right thing when I stood my ground.
Playboy: What ground were you standing on?
Keitel: I couldn't sign the contract that would hold me to him for seven years.
Playboy: And you didn't sign it?
Keitel: Well, I'm not in the movie, am I? It was a hell of a moment for me, I'll tell you that. One doesn't give up Apocalypse Now so easily, believe me. It was hard. But my freedom was worth more than becoming an international name.
Playboy: No wonder you once said that you pay a price for not being in successful movies.
Keitel: [laughs] I don't have to expound on that, do I? The price you pay is less work. You get fewer offers.
Playboy: Did it stigmatize you to have been fired by Coppola?
Keitel: It didn't help. Also, I wasn't spoken about very nicely in Hollywood. You know the way it goes.
I don't know if Keitel is accurately describing what happened.
Harvey Keitel would have been good. Perhaps he looks too urban, too New York sounding. That's what I heard. I read somewhere, a long time ago, Coppola thought he was not right for the role and fired him. Nothing personal.
Martin Sheen is from Ohio (like his character Willard). He naturally had the right accent.
Interesting comments Cognoscente.
Thanks.
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