Discover how the year of my birth intertwines with the release of the Oscar-winning "Platoon," as my co-host Katy and I embark on a journey through this raw and intense war film. Katy's historical insights, alongside our shared reflections, unpack the film's gripping authenticity and the psychological turmoil faced by soldiers in Vietnam. We laugh over Katy's peculiar parallel between a foot scraping and the on-screen pain, yet soberly acknowledge the incomparable realities of combat. The film's narrative, driven by Charlie Sheen's transformation from innocence to disillusionment, provides a powerful commentary on the shades of morality in the chaos of war.
Our conversation delves into the film's production, revealing the extreme measures taken to forge realism, from the actors' grueling boot camp to the poignant choice of having cast members leave set upon their characters' demise. The political climate of the Philippines during filming and the personal history of director Oliver Stone enrich our discussion on the film's legacy. We confront the stark portrayal of soldiers without clear delineations of heroes and villains and engage with the film's controversial elements, including its language and violence. By the end, we extend an invitation to you, our listeners, to become a part of the dialogue, sharing your thoughts and movie suggestions as we continue to explore cinema's profound impact together.
Discover how the year of my birth intertwines with the release of the Oscar-winning "Platoon," as my co-host Katy and I embark on a journey through this raw and intense war film. Katy's historical insights, alongside our shared reflections, unpack the film's gripping authenticity and the psychological turmoil faced by soldiers in Vietnam. We laugh over Katy's peculiar parallel between a foot scraping and the on-screen pain, yet soberly acknowledge the incomparable realities of combat. The film's narrative, driven by Charlie Sheen's transformation from innocence to disillusionment, provides a powerful commentary on the shades of morality in the chaos of war.
Our conversation delves into the film's production, revealing the extreme measures taken to forge realism, from the actors' grueling boot camp to the poignant choice of having cast members leave set upon their characters' demise. The political climate of the Philippines during filming and the personal history of director Oliver Stone enrich our discussion on the film's legacy. We confront the stark portrayal of soldiers without clear delineations of heroes and villains and engage with the film's controversial elements, including its language and violence. By the end, we extend an invitation to you, our listeners, to become a part of the dialogue, sharing your thoughts and movie suggestions as we continue to explore cinema's profound impact together.
One's a movie buff, one watches movies just enough Together.
Speaker 2:fun will be had by all. This is Nadine Cady at the Movies.
Speaker 1:Hello everyone and welcome to a brand new episode of Nady and Katie at the Movies. I'm your host, nathan, aka Nady, of course, and with me on today's episode is my good friend Katie. Hi Katie, how are you?
Speaker 3:I'm doing so great. Nathan, can you explain to the audience what I'm doing right now?
Speaker 1:Are you scraping skin off your foot while we're recording this episode?
Speaker 3:no, I am. I am using a metal scraper to scrape the tissue in the back of my heel because for some reason I, every time I run, I'm like an 80 something year old. So this is breaking up all the tissue anyway. So I just am kind of like a glutton for pain. I just wanted to like empathize with the people from our movie we watched of you know, just like enduring pain, horrible, excruciating pain, because this basically feels like I'm getting shot.
Speaker 1:Wow, you're really comparing scraping dead skin off your foot to what soldiers went through in the war in Vietnam.
Speaker 3:First of all for listening. I'm not scraping dead skin off, I'm scraping the tissue. I'm like loosening it up. So it feels like a deep tissue massage, but not nice. But yes, I was comparing it to the pain it might feel. I've never been shot before, but I imagine it. You know, probably feels just like that, but maybe a thousand times worse. And we saw a lot of that in our movie that we were viewing, which is came out in 1986. It's called Platoon. Platoonium Platoon, platoon.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it actually won Best Picture in 1987.
Speaker 3:I saw that Like got nominated for eight different awards. That's pretty impressive.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So before we can get into anything about the movie, we have to go over the synopsis. Chris Taylor, a neophyte recruit in Vietnamietnam, finds himself caught in a battle of wits between two sergeants, one good and the other evil. A shrewd examination of the brutality of war and the duality of man and conflict. This is platoon. Platoon stars char Sheen, tom Berringer I guess that's how you say his name and William Willem, not William. I watched a interview on a talk show and a lot of people would call him William Defoe, but he was like no, it's Willem Willem Defoe. So Platoon, like we we said, came out in 1986, the best year in history. Do you know why, katie?
Speaker 3:no idea it's the year I was born, you jerk okay, I figured, I figured, I forgot you were that old anyway.
Speaker 1:So yeah, platoon is basically like 37 years old. It's crazy, but this movie does take place during the war of Vietnam. It's all about a soldier, played by Charlie Sheen, who goes to fight over there because he feels like he needs to help and do more. And he is like this good guy at first, and throughout the movie he is introduced to really, really bad people. Uh, mostly a sergeant played by tom beringer, who is just will do anything he can to get quote-unquote answers to what is going on in Vietnam. So, katie, what did you think of this movie? Some likes, some dislikes.
Speaker 3:Well, I'll try to start with my likes. It was very much generation kill vibes for me In the sense of I don't love this kind of movie. Uh, it's very violent, lots of language. However, the things I liked about generation kill I liked here, which was because of the brutality and the and the language I assume it's probably pretty close to accurate of what it was actually maybe like to be there.
Speaker 3:So I did read a lot of interviews and watched interviews. I did watch one from the director and I mean he this is based on his memoir and he was there. What's the little guy, oliver? He was actually in the Vietnam war. None of the characters are like it didn't happen exactly this way. So when we say based on a true story, it's more based on a true event and they, some of the characters, are based on real people that he encountered. I'm sure a little dramatized, but man, I didn't find any veterans or military people that watched this that had much negative to say.
Speaker 3:So for that, that was probably one of my biggest pluses as a history teacher. So for that, that was probably one of my biggest pluses as a history teacher. I really appreciated getting to feel what it may have felt like to be there instead of just what I. You know, I'm just teaching from the textbook, also teaching middle schoolers. We never really get into the just the dirtiness of this, like I talked to my students about those holes. I talked to my students about those holes I can't remember what they're called, but that was one big thing in the Vietnam War when we lost was they'd go down in these intricate tunnel systems like completely underground and that was a huge detriment to us. But I never really got to see that play out in a movie form. So, all that to say, I really did appreciate how historically accurate it was, as much as I didn't want to have to see that.
Speaker 1:When I think one of the underground I guess there were foxholes, one of the underground things that they did have they used to get high and dance around and party a lot. If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. If you've seen the movie, you know what I'm talking about. But my, obviously, as always when I watch a movie and I like it, my biggest like is the performances. I think Charlie Sheen does a great job.
Speaker 1:This is, you know, pre crazy Charlie Sheen. You know, nowadays he's pretty off the rails and talks incooherently on in interviews and things like that, but in this movie his performance is great. His character arc is tragic. Uh, like I said before, he starts off as like wanting to be the good guy and wanting to help everyone and wanting to even defend some of the, the vietnamese people that they run into. But slowly, because of circumstances and the interactions he has with good and bad soldiers in this unit, he kind of becomes who he swore he would never become and I don't know how much of spoilers we want to get into, but it gets. Like you said to me before we recorded this movie gets pretty dark. It it does not hold back from what some people may have witnessed during this horrible, horrible war that a lot of people were against back in those days and essentially we did not really win that war in Vietnam and the people who came home were treated horribly when they came home.
Speaker 1:And it kind of it's just sad to know the history around it and then watch this movie. It's, it's. It's equally sad, but the acting was just, I think, phenomenal all the way around. Yeah, a little, a little tidbit about this movie is that the the actor who played like the bad sergeant, tom beringer, and willem dafoe were actually intentionally cast the way they were, because back in the 80s Willem Dafoe was always known as the villainous character actor and the guy Tom Berengar was kind of the good guy in all of his movies, and so Oliver Stone intentionally cast them opposite of their types on purpose and because of that they both received, like we mentioned before, oscar nominations for both of their performances and the best supporting character. Unfortunately, they did not win that, but again, the movie itself did win and I think that obviously is a part of their performances, is the reason why it won that um, but again, I think the acting was phenomenal. It really took you there, it really made you sympathize and this is a pretty well stacked uh cast.
Speaker 3:um, you got forrest whitaker in this you got a young, young.
Speaker 1:Johnny Depp in this movie. I mean.
Speaker 3:I did not know that. Another thing, nathan it's kind of interesting that you had all these bigger names, but I don't know that they were huge names at the time. Maybe we're just looking at it on the other end, but the fact that it doesn't shock me that there was no Academy Award win, because in some ways that's the whole point there was, these men were disposable. There was so many like that, even your main characters by the end of the movie. Again, this is not a major spoiler, but most people die Like there's probably a list of 20 plus kind of main people you're following and by the end I think there's like two or three that you're left with. I did, I did some research as uh, whether this is true or not, but apparently the director actually had people leave like as they filmed the the movie in sequence. So when the character died, that actor was literally done and like left. They filmed this in the philippines, um, rather than in Vietnam. Obviously it wasn't that long after the war, so they would leave and he talked about how that helped with there wasn't a lot of acting, because when you're Charlie Sheen and all these guys you've gotten to know over the course of filming, they're legitimately gone and made it even more powerful acting. So, to go to your point, I think the acting was incredible, but also at the direction of the director. These guys actually did a three-week-long boot camp. They were actually forced to live in terrible conditions for a tiny bit of time just to really get in character. They're out in the middle of nowhere. Even more crazy, the Philippines were literally having a revolution, so there was actual genuine a little bit of political unrest where they're filming. So I imagine that's why you did get a really good slice.
Speaker 3:I think my other really big like which is not normal for me is I like that. There was no good guy Like everyone was jaded. It was similar in Generation Kill. It was very dynamic. You saw both sides that there was good a little bit. But then also just the horrors of war can change a person and I think that's probably my biggest takeaway from it is watching Charlie seeing Sheen's character be changed. He even says towards the end that his two fathers were really these two lieutenants, the good and the bad, and seeing how they influenced him. He ends up doing something pretty terrible at the end of the movie, which I won't spoil, but you would have never guessed he would do something like that at the beginning of the movie. He's just I think you can call him green. He's just a green little guy at the beginning.
Speaker 1:Yeah, the character arc of Charlie Sheen's character was very, very well done and very well spread out. It didn't happen right away. Like you said, what he does at the end literally happens at the end of the movie before he is spoiler allowed to go home. So he is allowed to go home at the end of the movie, um, and so that kind of lends itself to my other like which kind of dives into a dislike. At the same time, this movie is really intense. You didn't know. I mean, obviously in history you know what's going to happen, but, like in the context of the characters and everything, you don't know what's going to happen and when things, certain things happen. This is where it kind of dives into my dislikes. This movie frustrated the crap out of me. This movie made me so angry at the characters that you're obviously are supposed to be angry at. Um, william defoe, I think will I call him william.
Speaker 1:Willem defoe does a fantastic job with his character. I I mean it's just and it's funny because it's not like he changes his voice. He doesn't change his, he doesn't really change his mannerisms that much. It's still very much Willem Dafoe just being Willem Dafoe, but for some reason it just it, it. It's just a very good performance, obviously worthy of an Oscar nomination, and you connect with this character and you invest in this character. And I know we said we weren't going to spoil but, if you know, I mean this movie's been around a while and if you've seen the poster of Platoon, willem Dafoe is on the cover and he's doing that iconic pose and it just frustrates the poop out of me. What happens to his character? Because he does, he does die and he's and it's not just a, it's not just like the bad guy shoots him, the bad guy shoots him but he's not dead and he gets left behind and he's killed by all the Vietnamese people and it's so it's definitely a huge scene.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's heart wrenching, it's heartbreaking, it's heart wrenching, and I think that's when Charlie Sheen's character really starts to turn like who can I trust? I can't trust.
Speaker 3:Is there anything good in the world anymore?
Speaker 1:And so that there anything good in the world anymore, and so that that's like the balance of the like of intensity and also dislike of intensity, because I seriously but again, that could be seen as a like as well, because it's directed very well. The performances again lend themselves to you caring about this character. So, of course, if this character, you're going to get upset and you're going to get angry and that's what happened, but yeah, the movie was fantastic Anyway my biggest dislike and I think we're probably say like, just like with generation kill in the context of the film, it makes sense.
Speaker 1:But my biggest dislike was the language. There's a lot of it A lot of cuss words, a lot of F words, a lot of GD, a lot of you know cuss words all over the place. So of course, as someone who's not a big fan of cuss words, that's probably going to be my biggest dislike, but I think that's like my only dislike. And I will say and you may disagree, I don't. Obviously there's violence in this movie, and you may disagree, I don't Obviously there's violence in this movie, but I don't think it was as violent as I thought it was going to be given what?
Speaker 1:the movie is about. Oh yeah, I totally disagree, or I could just be so desensitized by, you know, saw movies and things like that yeah, I think I think you are.
Speaker 3:No, it's pretty violent. It's pretty violent. I wouldn't. So again, this is not my type of movie. I'm not gonna sit and like watch this again. It's kind of like not at all like Passion of the Christ, but in the same way as like it's something that's important to watch for me, but I don't want to watch it all the time.
Speaker 3:Like this is, I think, an important film to watch, but in the context of maybe like a senior in high school in their history class or a college student in history, because I would love to study this film at the same time as studying the history and all the backlash of, like you're saying, like after they got home, all of the politics behind the war itself and leading into it, even segregation. I mean, you see, there's black and white troops are pretty segregated for the most part and there's kind of you know, some racial stuff back and forth, some tension there and all that's happening. I mean Martin Luther King died, was shot when the Vietnam war was happening, so while these guys are over there. So I think that's the reason that this would be an interesting film. Like I don't know what it was like when it first came out. Obviously it got awards. But what a risky thing because it does not shed the United States in a good light, like there's nothing that makes you say I'm proud to be an American after watching this film, which I could see as being a dislike. I mean, I'm, I'm an advocate of truth, so it's not just like for me, but I could understand. That would be very difficult, maybe if you are a service member, to say this paints us in a pretty negative light.
Speaker 3:There's a lot of friendly fire. That happens. They look, they seem chaotic, like there's a lot of um, kind of like in generation kill. There's a lot of like distrust of the senior leadership. Um, I looked up a word. It's called fragging. Have you heard of that word? Yeah, I'd never heard of fragging. So fragging is basically like killing within your own, like your colleagues, so like military killing military, and that happens in this movie more than one time where someone within the military kills someone, um, and so I know that there that was a pretty big deal to share.
Speaker 3:I don't think the pentagon was like a huge fan of this movie, but man, I don't know if it's a dislike or alike, but there was no character I wanted to emulate or that I want my son to emulate in this movie. And I think the reason it's such an important film is it's eyeopening to the, those veterans we have still with us today and understanding what they went through. And I mean, nathan, just being honest, like you live in a military town. I'm sure there's plenty of veterans there. This war happened way before we knew it's something called PTSD. So so you know, I watched some interviews where, like, even watching this movie was very therapeutic for some of these guys because they'd never had to relive that um, and they went down pretty dark places when they returned. So hopefully that's a positive, but I don't know, I can't imagine living through this and then watching that movie I would be interested to to see, or who was like you know what.
Speaker 1:It's been long enough. I think I want to watch Platoon now. I guess it could be therapeutic, if you're like, because a lot of those veterans probably felt alone when they came back. They were treated horribly. They would were not greeted with a hero's welcome, they were spit upon, they didn't get like these big grand parades and all that stuff.
Speaker 1:And to see a movie that depicts what maybe some of them actually endure, endured, might be like a, in a weird way, a comfort that someone did understand them and decided to put that on film and even though, like you said, it does not, it does not put America in a good light.
Speaker 1:And and even Willem Dafoe's character, who I guess you could kind of say is the lone good guy in quotes he's kind of messed up too. I mean, he's basically high almost the entire movie and says random crap, but he's the only one who sees through the, the bull crap of the bad sergeant the whole time and sees that what he's trying to do is going to get people killed, whether it's Vietnamese people or the soldiers themselves, and that's why what happens to him happens to him and um, but yeah, I mean I think it just goes back to. It is an important film, the performances are fantastic, and I think it's it's one of those classic films that I do think is important to watch, and so I think we both agree with that. And so, with that, let's go ahead and give our rating to the 1987 best picture winner, platoon Katie. What would you give it?
Speaker 3:Not all my genre, so I cannot give it a six. But it is a very beautifully done movie and so I'm going to give it a six.
Speaker 1:but it is a very beautifully done movie and so I'm gonna give it a five and once again we're on the same page because I'm also giving it a five out of six. So that is platoon, and we are almost done with the month of april. We only have one movie left. It's crazy that April's almost done, so that means May is almost here, which means school's almost out for the summer, and I can't wait. But before we can do that, we have to talk about our last movie of April. Take a listen to find out what it is.
Speaker 2:Take a listen to find out what it is. My name is Paul Rusesabagina. I am the house manager of the most luxurious hotel in the capital of Rwanda, a place that my family and I happily called our home, until the day everything changed. Daddy, there are soldiers on the street. They're killing everyone. It's a massacre. The United Nations are here now. We're here as peacekeepers, not as peacemakers. We've got trouble at the gates. This is a four star hotel, not a refugee camp. I have no means to protect these people. When a country descended into madness. They're killing Tutsi children to wipe out the next generation. No, and the world turned its back. How can they not intervene? Hundreds of thousands are dying. If people see this, they'll say oh my God, that's horrible. And they go on eating their dinners. One man had to make a choice. All the whites are leaving.
Speaker 3:Even the UN soldiers.
Speaker 2:All the superpowers, everything you believe in, paul, they're not going to stop the slaughter. We have been abandoned. There will be no rescue. We can only save ourselves. Get down, get down. United Artists presents the true story of a man who fought impossible odds. I cannot leave these people to die To save everyone he could. They say you led the massacres. You will tell them the truth. I will tell them nothing unless you help me and created a place.
Speaker 3:Go inside the hotel.
Speaker 2:Where hope survived. You are a good man, Paul. We need to help one another. That is the only thing that is keeping us alive. Hotel Rwanda.
Speaker 1:Hotel Rwanda. Hotel rwanda starring what?
Speaker 3:what is greg? What an uplifting movie. Well, I mean, we already said before that you know.
Speaker 1:We started with incredibles and the rest of the movie was but I don't think hotel rwanda is red jar straight at pg-13, but I can't. I'm actually excited again. This is a movie I'd never seen before, so I'm excited to talk about it, and that is platoon. And next week is hotel rwanda, and we're gonna change things up a little bit. Katie usually does the quotes, but I thought, hey, I want to do a quote. So here we go.
Speaker 3:Oh, I thought it was because I was sucking it up lately. All right, go ahead. What's your quote?
Speaker 1:I think now, looking back, we did not fight the enemy, we fought ourselves and the enemy wasn't us.
Speaker 2:Thanks for listening to Nadie and Katie at the movies. Feel free to leave us a review so people can find the show. Follow us on all our social media platforms and if there's a movie that you want us to watch, feel free to contact us at nadyandkatie at gmailcom. Thanks for listening and have a great day.