If you ask anyone what Ferdinand Marcos' greatest achievement is you will get a host of varied answers. Many think it's his multitudinous public works projects including roads, public buildings, power plants, and universities. On this
list the Bataan Nuclear Power Plant is touted as an accomplishment despite the fact that it was never even operational.
Are public works really the greatest accomplishment of Marcos? What makes an accomplishment great? The great men of the past are men who transcended their nation and their culture and their era, men who tapped into the eternal longings of humanity and have shown us what we are capable of. Think of the deeds of Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Plato, Da Vinci, Columbus, or any other man who has brought light to humanity.
What did Marcos do that transcends the bounds of the Philippines and rises above all his other works? No one in Germany or the USA will be driving down roads he built or use electricity from power plants he constructed or study at universities he founded. There is only one thing that Marcos did which extends beyond the bounds of the Philippines and qualifies as a great achievement.
He allowed Francis Ford Coppola unlimited use of the military to film Apocalypse Now in the Philippines.
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| The Apocalypse Now Book, Peter Cowie, pg 15 |
Background
President Marcos and his wife were patrons of the arts. Imelda built the Philippine Cultural Centre as well as the Manila Film Centre. Marcos knew the power of film in molding society and encouraged Filipino filmmakers to improve their art. In a September 26, 1970 speech before the Manila Motion Pictures Producer Association he said:
When I speak to this gathering of film producers, artist and technicians. I am aware that I am speaking to a group whose work is vital and whose influence is enormous in our society. Those of us whose work is to lead and govern; look to this community to provide our people a vital and purposive entertainment industry and to harness that industry for the task of building progressives and healthy nation.
The present state of the industry, where it is indeed and how it is making use of its opportunities, suggest to my mind that there is a great deal that we can do to upgrade the quality of our films and to make them truly relevant to our lives and to our history as a nation.
Philippine cinema has simply reached the point where it must either advance or regress, either live or die.
It is for us now to seize these opportunities and make our film industry a truly vital force in the lives of our people and in the economy of our country. And I would like to tell you tonight that you are not alone in dreaming of this advancement; this concern, this hope, we share in common.
Perhaps it was not what Marcos had in mind but during the 70's the Philippines attracted low budget sleaze and grindhouse film productions from America.
They Call Him Chop Suey. They Call Her Cleopatra Wong. They also called them cheap trash. Low-quality American-produced ‘70s movies for kids to make out to in drive-ins and small town cinemas. But they were also some of the most fun films ever to come out of the Philippines.
Standing in for other tropical locations, the filmmakers would often, whether by design or not, obscure their actual settings. The jungles of Quezon province and beaches of Baler became the homes of crazed American doctors, the Viet Cong, even Satan himself. Filipino henchmen’s voices were dubbed to sound stereotypically Chinese, female Filipino prison guards were the “best gunslingers south of Pango Pango,” and black pirates attacked remote Philippine islands. Sometimes, Filipinos remained behind the camera, directing American actors.
Apocalypse Now co-producer Fred Roos cut his teeth in the Philippines making these types of films.
Production coordinator Fred Roos had already made two low-budget films there for Monte Hellman, and had friends and contacts in the country.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apocalypse_Now
These films would go on to inspire the likes of Quentin Tarantino and Robert Rodriguez. Perhaps Marcos saw some of them. Surely he saw both Godfather films and knew the name Francis Ford Coppola.
Securing Marcos' Support
The production of Apocalypse Now is the stuff of legend. Everyone went crazy and the principal actors were all stoned out of their minds during the whole shoot. Getting the film off the ground and greenlit was a chore as well. What Coppola needed was the support of the US military who had bases in the Philippines at that time. From Peter Cowie's book, The Apocalypse Now Book, pages 14-16 we read:
Still hoping for support from the American military, Frederickson dispatched the following brief to both the Deaprtment of National Defense in Washington, and the Armed Forces of the Philippines HQ in Manila.
The story is set in Vietnam in 1968. It is about the demoralization wreaked by the Vietnam war on the young Americans who reluctantly served in the most unpopular war in US history. Nothing in it is derogatory to the Vietnamese nor American people, although its effect would be to question certain once-popular values and attitudes that made the Vietnam possible.
Frederickson requested military technical advisers, military escorts, aircraft (mostly Huey helicopters), ordnance (firearms, artillery, etc.), military vehicles, and a radio communication system. The project budget is $13,000,000…Preparations and construction will take about 3 to 4 months. Actual filming, desired to start January 1976, may take anywhere from 4 to 6 months. Principal stars will be Marlon Brando, Steven McQueen or Clint Eastwood, James Caan, Yves Montand and Maria Schneider…There will be a staff of 65 foreigners plus about 500 Filipinos. As much as 2,000 local technicians, bit players and other talents will be hired…Locations for the filming have not been finalized. Pagsanjan, Los Baños, Batangas, Zambales, Davao, Mondora and Baler are tentatively considered.
Meanwhile booth Roos and Frederickson had returned several times to the Philippines, criss-crossing the country in search of locations and dealing with the government. One of Frederickson’s best pals during his school days in Switzerland had been Giovanni Volpi, whose family had founded the Venice Film Festival. During a trip to Manila, Frederickson and Volpi met again by chance in the lobby of thier hotel. They chatted beside the pool and Frederickson explained his need to get the Filipino generals to provide Apocalypse production with helicopters and permit access to their military facilities. “He invited me to dinner that night,” smiles Frederickson.
I went down to meet him in front of the hotel and there were these long limousines with flags on the fenders, and we drove over to the palace and had dinner with President Ferdinand Marcos and his aides. They put us in touch with the generals, and from then on its was pretty smooth.
Coppola and Roos subsequently had an audience with Marcos to formalize his support for the venture.
So, in the face of continued aloofness from Washington, a contract was signed between the Philippines Department of National Defense and Coppola Cinema Seven, dated 1 October, 1975. This imposed on the production no fee as such for the use of equipment and personnel, other than actual expenses and insurance against death and damages. Had there been no assurance that twenty Huey helicopters would be made available for the aerial attack sequence, the Philippines would never have been chosen as the site for filming and quite possibly the project might have been scrapped.
What a coincidence that co-producer Gray Frederickson just happened to run into an old friend in Manila. What an even stranger coincidence that this man happened to the be the son of the founder of the Venice Film Festival and was able to set up dinner with President Marcos that very night! Could it be that Volpi was assisting Marcos with putting together the
1975 Metro Manila Film Festival? That is likely and would be in line with his desire to advance the Philippine film industry into the future.
Filming
Filming the movie was, of course, a nightmare. Typhoons, drunkenness, drugs, uncooperative actors, pressure from the studios, and pressure from the AFP.
The Filipino Army and Air Force had, following Roos and Frederickson’s negotiations, been placed at Coppola’s disposal. President Marcos was involved in continual skirmishes with the “Communist“ rebel forces, and so the Huey helicopters assigned to Apocalypse Now were sometimes recalled at short notice throughout 1976.
Cowie, pg. 49
The first two weeks of April involved daily use of the helicopters on loan from the Philippine Air Force. There were only twenty-four operational Hueys in the country, and Coppola demanded fifteen of them for Kilgore’s dawn attack at Baler (after all, the US Army had ordered 838 Huey Cobras by the spring of 1968!) The machines were painted with US Army markings in the morning and repainted with Philippine Air Force decals at night. On 2 April, in the midst of rehearsing for a complicated shot, the choppers were diverted urgently to engage rebel forces in the south of the country.
Cowie, pg. 50
Because of the civil war in the south, everyday, the government sends different pilots who haven't participated in the rehearsals, wrecking tens of thousands of dollars worth of shots. All day today, a Philippine air force general was on the set. There were rumors that the rebels were in the hills about 10 miles away. The Filipino commanders were afraid there could be an attack on the helicopters we were using. In the middle of a complicated shot, the helicopters were called away to fight the rebels.
Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmakers Apocalypse
Marcos even showed up on set towards the end of filming.
The loss of his leading man made Coppola even more defiant. He refused to shut down the production, however temporarily, and shooting continued at the Kurtz compound. Tavoularis had constructed a kind of bunker at the very core of the complex, packed with wires and switches that enabled both lighting and pyrotechnics to be operated by remote control. On one of these March days, President Marcos visited the area and no explosions could be set off by the crew in case he thought it was a rebel attack.
Cowie, pg. 94
How fitting that President Marcos visited the set while scenes at the megalomaniac Kurtz's compound were being filmed. That particular set employed hundreds of Ifugao's as extras and the
atmosphere was very wild.
Filming Apocalypse Now in the Philippines is best summed up this way:
For Coppola, the Philippines was a cheap stand-in for Vietnam. Where else could he rent an army, build and destroy whole villages and enlist thousands of extras for pennies a day?
Premiere and Legacy
Apocalypse Now had its premiere at Cannes on May 10, 1979 as a work in progress but ended up winning the Palme d'Or.
Apocalypse Now won the Palme d'Or for best film along with Volker Schlöndorff's The Tin Drum – a decision that was reportedly greeted with "some boos and jeers from the audience".
The film was a success upon release earning a Best Picture nomination but winning for Best Cinematography and Sound and has gone on to be included in many lists as the best film of all time and certainly the best war film of all time.
Aside from influencing filmmakers and popular culture the world over the film also turned the spotlight on the Philippines' film industry. The contract Coppola signed with DND Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile set a precedent for future productions to be filmed in the Philippines.
Through it all, the movie left a lasting impression on the thousands of Filipinos who worked on the production, hung out with production staffers, and rubbed elbows with some future Hollywood heavyweights. Careers have crashed, burned, and flourished in the shadow of Apocalypse. Across 1976 and 1978, the Philippines became the unwitting center of Coppola’s hurricane. For a brief pocket of time, the country became a place of interest for Hollywood productions looking for cheap but adaptable locations. According to Henry Strzalkowski, an extra in Apocalypse’s production, George Lucas expressed interest in shooting Star Wars here, only to change his mind after hearing about Coppola’s troubled production.
“It was Martial Law and we had a contract with the Department of National Defense,” explains Juban. “Naka-pirma si Enrile [Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile signed]. It was an honored contract. . . . The guns came from the Philippine Army, the AK47s came from the Philippine Constabulary, the trucks came from the Army Support Command . . . anything they wanted was here.”
“That contract was the first of its nature done and it set the precedent for other films,” he says, “films like Platoon, Born on the Fourth of July.” Coppola had a deal with Marcos, according to the documentary. Production was to pay the military thousands of dollars per day, as well as overtime fee for the pilots. In return, Coppola could use the government’s entire fleet of helicopters, as long as they weren’t needed for the communist insurgency in the South.
Remember the surfing scene with Robert Duvall? Charlie don't surf but Filipinos do. Apocalypse Now gave birth to Filipino surfing culture.
When a scene from Apocalypse Now was shot on an obscure beach in the Philippines in the late 70s, little did the film-makers know they were giving birth to the country's surfing culture.
Apocalypse Now was not actually filmed in Vietnam, but in the little fishing town of Baler in the northern Philippines.
As the cameras rolled, local Filipinos like Edwin Nomoro watched from the sidelines.
Nomoro was 10 at the time, and he came down to the beach every day to see it transformed into a battle scene, complete with an entirely fake Vietnamese village and helicopters swooping overhead.
But what excited him most was the sight of the actors surfing - something he'd never seen before.
"When the filming finished, some of the crew left their surfboards behind, and my friend and I picked up the boards and taught ourselves how to surf," he says. "We've been surfing ever since."
At first, Nomoro and his friends found it difficult because there was no-one around to teach them.
"But we studied it, and learned, and now - no-one can explain what it feels like. Only a surfer knows the feeling," he says, smiling.
Once they got the hang of it, the boys started teaching others, and as word spread, tourists began coming to the little town to learn to ride the waves at Charlie's Point, as it became known.
Nomoro was able to turn his passion into a way of making a living, and more than 30 years on, he still earns money from the industry he helped to create.
"I have several rooms to rent. I also have some surfboards for hire," he says. "It's really improved my life. It helps me feed my family."
Baler's success as a surfing centre has rippled out to other parts of the Philippines, such as Surigao, La Union and Pagudpud.
"Baler is the birthplace of Philippine surfing," says Mac Ritual, a local tour guide.
Apocalypse Now continues to live and breathe. In 2001 Coppola released an extended version, Apocalypse Now Redux. This year, the film's 40th, anniversary, he has released a third version of the film, Apocalypse Now: Final Cut.
Without Marcos allowing Coppola unlimited use of AFP equipment, during martial law and a communist insurgency no less, this film would not have happened. In light of the impact Apocalypse Now has made globally I believe Marcos' deal with Coppola is his greatest achievement. Just imagine if Marcos had denied Coppola's proposal and he was forced to abandon the project?
"The horror, the horror."
