S5 Ep 1 It’s Only a Movie, Babe

Network Sting: MSW Media

Martin: Hello and welcome to the fourth season of The Martin Sheen Podcast with yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course. And I’m delighted to be back hosting this podcast pilgrimage, where the destination is still and always will be the journey itself. Along the way, I plan to share stories and personal memories of some of the many people, places and events that have helped to shape my lifelong happy and continuing struggle as an artist and a man to unite the will of the spirit with the work of the flesh. I also hope to explore poetry as a powerful form of expression and communication by proxy, as it were, and how poetry is such a vital and necessary component of our spirituality and our public discourse. And from time to time, I’ll invite friends, fellow actors, poets, scholars and family members to join our pilgrimage and discuss what inspires their artistic journey. And so, friends, let us continue.

Martin: Apocalypse This is the End My Friend Now.

The newly inaugurated president Carter walking hand in hand with first lady Rosalind down Pennsylvania Ave was a welcome and comforting sight that afternoon of January 20th 1977. The country was in good hands and so were our four children as we packed for the Philippines and departed the following day entrusting Emilio, Ramon, Charlie and Renee in the loving care and capable hands of our dear friends Mary Arnold, Jimmy Keane, and Joe Lowry for what was estimated would be 8 to 10 weeks at most.

Although we had never left our children in anyone else’s care for that long while we were so far away we were confident that all would be well. Everyone at home were very familiar and fond of each other and they all knew the territory and the circumstances Janet and I would inhabit for the final installment of “Apocalypse Now.” We arranged to stay in touch by long distance phone calls every Sunday evening from Manila and we could always be reached in an emergency at the company’s production office in Pagsanjan or the production office at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

We were met at the airport in Manila by our driver Reno Mahar, who’d become a family friend as well and driven to our retreat at Lake Caliraya where many of our things, including the remaining bottled water and dried food had been stored in our familiar cabin.

After a few days adjusting we reunited with director Francis Ford Coppola and the much-beloved gang of 4, Frederick Forrest, Sam Bottoms, Albert Hall and Lawrence Fishburne and began filming aboard the PBR on the Magdapio River near Pagsanjan.

Most of the major sequences of the film had been completed before we left in December for the Christmas break.

Now all that remained were the dozen or so sequences involving the PBR and the five actors on board. And though there was a much smaller crew and production staff than before those scenes were no less complex and challenging.

Still, we managed to stay on schedule with an estimated, or rather anticipated, target date for completing the film on April 7th 1977, Francis Ford Coppola’s 37th birthday! And the first sequence completed towards that goal was the military funeral of Laurence Fishburne’s character, Tyrone “Mr. Clean” Miller at the French Plantation.

That was followed soon afterward by my least favorite scene in the whole epic and one of the most difficult to film or enact; the tragic encounter of the PBR with the sampan where all the innocent Vietnamese civilians on board were killed, including a wounded young woman whom Willard shot to death at close range. It was a cold, uncompromising and definitive act of mindless cruelty that demonstrated in no uncertain terms

that nothing, absolutely nothing, would stand in the way of my character Captain Benjamin Willard’s deadly mission.

There were many memorable and much lighter moments away from the production and one involved a very skilled young worker at Caliraya who was blind in one eye. His name was Jun and despite his handicap he had a great sense of humor, a wonderful spirit and he was a brilliant electrician, yet he would never raise his head when he spoke lest he reveal his deformed and useless right eye.

Determined to do what we could, Janet contacted Fr. Elias, the American missionary priest we had met in Belar when we first arrived in the Philippines and had stayed in touch with ever since. Known for his great compassion and many charitable connections Fr. Elias arranged for June to be admitted to the Makati Medical Center in Manila where a glass eye was implanted and because the muscle was still functioning Jun was able to move his new eye in coordination with the other one so that you could not tell which was real.

Even own family couldn’t tell the difference but the difference it made in Jun’s life was absolutely remarkable. From then on whenever we saw him his head was held high and he couldn’t seem to stop smiling.

Fr. Elias had organized the entire proceeding, including travel to and from the hospital and an overnight stay there, for a total cost to us of $125 American dollars.

After the first week of our return we settled into a comfortable and workable routine of filming every Monday through Friday and as Reno had weekends off, we took the bus every Saturday morning for the two hour ride to Manila, stayed overnight at the Philippine Village Hotel, called the family long distance in California every Sunday afternoon, then took the last bus back to Pagsanjan on Sunday night and I would be for work again early Monday morning. We always looked forward to our weekends in Manila but we made a slight adjustment when I agreed to work half a day on Saturday March 5^th. However, since the World Bank was meeting in Manila that weekend and hotel rooms were scarce, Janet decided to go in and secure a room for us on Friday and I would join her after I finished work late Saturday afternoon.

Very early the next morning while it was still dark and a fierce windstorm raged outside; I woke up with a severe pain in my chest. I was alone and isolated and couldn’t decide what to do so I laid there quietly just hoping the pain would subside but it only grew worse and I started sweating as well.

As the sun rose I dressed myself on the floor, for fear if I stood up I might faint, then I crawled out the door and down the cabin steps onto the path that led to the road nearly 200 yards away. Then I stood up and tried to walk but I got dizzy and started to faint so I got back down on all fours and crawled toward the road when a security guard spotted me and brought me to the side of the road at the entrance of the Caliraya Retreat.

As I laid there on the grass trying to stay calm, the guard went to get help and the pain in my chest began to subside. Soon I felt my whole body gently rising up and gliding out over the nearby lake and I realized I must be dying but strangely I was not afraid. On the contrary, I felt a euphoric joy and the flight across the lake continued at my own controlled speed until suddenly I felt a powerful and familiar presence that assured me I was dying but I was about to reach a point of no return and I must stop and turn back immediately before it was too late!

In that instant I applied all my strength to slow down and reverse course back across the lake. It was as if I was awakening from an extremely pleasant dream that I didn’t want to end. But gradually I reached the shore and the pain in my chest returned and grew worse and I knew I had made a very conscious decision to stay alive!

I don’t know how long I laid there but eventually the guard returned and flagged down our wardrobe van on its way to the location. I was gently lifted inside and driven down to the production compound in Pagsanjan where word spread quickly of my health crisis.

I remained in the van and a short time later a local Catholic priest arrived who could not have been more welcome or compassionate as he administered the last rites. Soon he was followed by a young Filipino doctor who examined me and declared I’d had a heart attack and needed to get to the hospital in Manila as soon as possible.

Then Dick White appeared! He was a decorated combat pilot in Vietnam and the chief coordinator of all the helicopter scenes in the film. I admired him greatly for his courage and his genuine humanity. Now he was prepared to take me to Manila in a Ranger helicopter but he cautioned it was risky due to the windstorm that continued to rage.

The alternative was a 2-hour car ride. So, without hesitation I chose Dick White and the chopper despite the windstorm and in less than an hour I was on a gurney heading down a corridor at the Makati Medical Center in Manila when Janet suddenly appeared beside me. She looked down and smiled, then she whispered, “It’s only a movie babe” and I began to heal.

After a week in the ICU, I was transferred to a recovery room on the 11th floor for another two weeks but during the entire time, though a heart attack seemed to have been confirmed, I never agreed to any surgical procedure. Multiple tests were done of course and various medications were prescribed, which I only pretended to take because Janet and I believed I’d never had a heart attack.

Instead, we focused on therapy sessions via long distance phone calls every other day or so with Dina Harris, a therapist in New York, which gradually seemed to work. Oddly enough, nearly 40 years later after I had completed a total physical examination, including a required Endurance Stress Test absolutely no evidence was found of any heart damage whatsoever. Go figure.

After a total of three weeks, I was released from the hospital and transferred to a hotel in Manila for another three weeks of convalescence. Very soon all four children arrived from the States for a wonderful and much anticipated reunion that lifted my spirit and hastened my recovery. But they were not prepared for what they saw; as Emilio would later recall in our father son memoir Along The Way published in 2012, “Dad was in a wheelchair and he looked tiny and pale and scared. It was as if all the power had been drained out of him.”

Though I had not looked in a mirror since March 5th that was an accurate reflection but by their presence alone, Emilio Ramon, Charlie and Renee helped reverse that image and they became a vital link in my recovery that would not have been possible without them, Charlie was one example.

He had brought 2 baseball gloves and a ball from home and every day for nearly a week he would take me down in the wheelchair to a recreation area near the pool and we would play catch for half an hour or so.

Each day he would move the wheelchair further and further away until finally I was able to stand up to catch and throw. Then one day I threw the ball too hard and too high and we watched it sail over his head into the ocean behind him. It meant the end of our game and we were disappointed, of course, but thanks to Charlie I was made to stand up on my own and get back on my feet!  Later he said I should have thrown the wheelchair in the ocean too,

Meanwhile, my youngest brother and fellow actor, Joe Estevez, was brought over to pinch hit for me in several shots aboard the PBR moving along the Magdapio River. He looked enough like me and was filmed far enough away that no one

ever guessed he was not me, including me and I remain grateful to him.

Finally when I was well enough to return to work, Emilio and Ramon returned home but to our pleasant surprise Charlie and Renee decided to stay with us and we delighted in their company for the remainder of the filming.

In my absence filming had fallen far behind schedule of course yet there was no rush whatsoever when I was on the set to catch up. In fact, everyone in the company was sensitive and supportive and gradually my confidence and strength returned and by mid-June filming in the Philippines was completed. But I was a very different man from the one who had arrived there in April 1976.

Janet and I, Charlie and Renee left the Philippines and stopped off in Hawaii on our way home because I needed a few days to pull myself together. We stayed in a beautiful hotel on

the beach in Honolulu but I rarely left my room as I reflected on all that had happened over the past six months.

I still felt emotionally fragile and from time to time I wept at the slightest provocation. Like a deep-sea diver returning to the surface, I had to come up slowly in order to integrate back into my life and Hawaii was an important step in that process.

Back home I adjusted well but something wonderous had awakened in me that early morning of March 5^th that remained to be fully realized and it lived on the back burner of my brain for another four years.

Meanwhile, I may have left the Philippines but I had not left “Apocalypse Now” behind, not by a long shot. Over the next two years I made three trips to San Francisco to record my voice over narration for the film at the Zoetrope Studio as well as several more recording sessions in Hollywood.

Michael Hare, the author of the brilliant best-selling Vietnam memoir “Dispatches” was brought on board to write the script for the voice over narration, and the recording sessions sometimes went on for many hours. Some sessions even stretched into the following day. I recorded a half dozen in all and in the end the narration proved a vital and memorable addition to the film. Besides that, I filmed a few extra days alone on a mockup the PBR on the Sacramento River reading the Kurtz dossier files which Francis directed and were later inserted into the film.

Finally in May 1979 “Apocalypse Now” had its world premiere in France at the Canne Film Festival where it was a co-winner of the prestigious Palme d’Or prize with the German film “The Tin Drum.” I was delighted for its success but even more so I was greatly relieved to learn that the portion of the opening scene, where I punched a mirror and cut my hand in a drunken frenzy, had been removed, sparing me great embarrassment and humiliation.

A few months later however I learned it had been reinserted back into the opening scene in time for the US premiere where soon enough I was invited to appear and asked to join the press campaign for the film. I was extremely reluctant to participate because I feared being questioned about the “drunk scene” as it was being referred to and there seemed no way to avoid any embarrassing explanation in public.

Then, out of the blue, I was offered and accepted a co-starring role with Kirk Douglas in the feature film “The Final Countdown.” It was scheduled to film on location from mid-July through September which foreclosed any commitments or possibilities including promoting “Apocalypse Now.” It appeared fate had intervened and declared me otherwise occupied somewhere at sea aboard the nuclear-powered aircraft carrier USS Nimitz.

By the time I returned, a huge groundswell of interest and support had developed around the film, particularly among Vietnam Veterans including my younger brother, John Estevez, who had served four years in the US Navy as a third-class hospital corpsman, including an heroic tour of duty in Vietnam from 1965 through 1966, much of it with the third Marine Regiment in Chu Lai.

“If anyone wants to know what it was like over there they should see ‘Apocalypse Now’,” he told me.

By mid-October, when the film was about to open nationwide, I was approached once again to do a press tour promoting the film in New York. Now with the endorsement of so many Vietnam Veterans, including my own brother, it was an offer I shouldn’t refuse. So I went to New York and participated in a full week of vigorous promotion on TV radio and numerous newspapers and national magazines, including a cover story for Rolling Stone. Surprisingly and too my anxious relief, hardly any reporters mentioned the “drunken scene” and if one did it was only in passing and I was given the choice to elaborate or not. Advantage Martin!

Afterwards I thought maybe I should finally go see this film I’ve been bragging about all week before I leave New York but I did not want to see it alone so I called my old and dear friend, John Crane, who I’d known since high school in Ohio. He’d been living in New York now and working at the post office. He was my best man at our wedding and the godfather of both Emilio and Ramon and despite the short notice he was happy to join me at the Ziegfeld Theater on West 54th St. for the last screening on a weeknight which surprisingly was sold out.

There was no way I could prepare John for what was coming but after the opening drunk scene he leaned over and whispered, “That may be who you were then, it’s not who you are now.” And those good words have resonated as a constant reminder ever since.

Of course, I could have wished for a far less challenging and stressful Apocalyptic journey and if I had known beforehand what lay in store for me I would have passed in a heartbeat, no pun intended. Yet despite everything, and I mean everything, I have not the slightest doubt that I made the right choice, the only choice really, because I had accepted the cup as offered not altered and as the poet said, “‘and that has made all the difference.”

Oh, and by the way, I thought the movie was great and still do.

Martin: Consider This from iconic film director Frank Capra, “Film is one of three universal languages. The other two are mathematics and music.”

Martin: Here’s to the Cardinal Puff by W.D. Ehrhart.

My wife and I put out seeds to feed

the little critters in our courtyard:

wrens and juncos, mourning doves,

squirrels, chipmunks, now and then

a rabbit. This morning a cardinal.

 

That reminded me of Cardinal Puff,

a drinking game we used to play

on Okinawa back in 1968; I’ve no idea

why that came to mind. I haven’t

thought of it in years, decades even,

but there the memory was.

 

This was after Vietnam, but I still

had time on my enlistment, so I

got sent to Okinawa. Back then,

Okinawa for a young enlisted man

was something like the armpit

of the universe: MPs everywhere,

little to do off base but pay too much

for drinks and higher prostitutes.

 

So we just stayed on base, where

at the NCO Club, you could drink

Heineken beer for 35 cents a pop.

We went there every night, night

after night after evening chow

for three straight months: Fat Pat,

Smitty, the Big Swede, and me,

stayed each night ‘til closing time,

and drank to the Cardinal Puff,

staggered back to the barracks,

and the next night did it again.

 

It’s what you do, or at least

what we did after our little piece

of that war was over, and we’d

no idea what we’d done or what

we were supposed to do

with the rest of our lives.

 

Fifty-eight years later, I’m feeding

seeds and nuts to little critters

on a cold and snowy winter day,

and here’s a cardinal. And I

can’t resist the urge to ask

out loud: “Is your name Puff?”

Martin: W.D. Ehrhart is a poet, writer, scholar, and teacher, as well as a Marine Corps combat veteran of the American War in Vietnam. His work is a blend of social commentary and personal experience. He lives and works in Pennsylvania and regularly contributes to the New Hampshire Gazette.

Martin: I invite you to delve further into the works of the poets I shared with you, and I hope you seek out writers and poets whose work speaks to your hearts and minds with the power to inspire your life. If you’ve enjoyed what you’ve heard here, please subscribe to my podcast, the Martin Sheen Podcast, with your host, yours truly, Martin Sheen, of course, wherever you find your podcasts. Yeah, I still have to say that. You can find a complete list of the poets and titles of their poems that I’ve chosen at our website themartensheenpodcast.com

I want to thank the people who make this podcast possible. Our producer and research assistant, Renee Estevez, whose explanation of the Internet really gets me thinking “What’s for lunch?” And our sound engineer and editor, Bruce Greenspan, the man behind these rich and seamless recordings with the much-deserved nickname the Sound Surgeon. And I especially want to thank you, our listeners, for joining me.

Martin: And so, friends, we part with the prayer from Tagore.

We are called to lift up this nation and all its people to that place where the heart is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free, where the world has not been broken up into fragments by narrow domestic walls, where words come out from the depths of truth and tireless striving stretches its arms, towards perfection, where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into the dreary desert sands of dead habit, where the mind is led forward by thee into ever widening thought and action into that heaven of freedom. Dear Father, let our country awake. Amen.

The Martin Sheen Podcast. All rights reserved. No part of this podcast may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form without prior written consent of the author and TE Productions.

Renee: The story “Apocalypse This is the End My Friend Now” by Ramon Gerard Estevez, AKA Martin Sheen, is included in this podcast by copyright permission.

The poem “Here’s to the Cardinal Puff” by W.D. Ehrhart is included in this podcast by granted copyright permission of the author, who we thank for this opportunity to share his work. W.D. Ehrhart is currently the only living poet featured on this podcast.