Libertarian_Guard
14th April 2013, 03:30 PM
How Apocalypse Now inspired Filipino surfers
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.
"Charlie don't surf," says the reckless and irrepressible Colonel Kilgore, in one of the most memorable lines of the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.
Charlie is the American soldiers' derogatory nickname for their enemy, the Vietcong, and the surf-mad colonel is trying to persuade his troops to ride the waves, despite the bombs falling all around them.
Apocalypse Now, released in 1979, depicts the madness and mayhem of conflict, and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful war films ever made.
But it also has another legacy - something that the director, Francis Ford Coppola, could not possibly have intended.
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.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21941069
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.
"Charlie don't surf," says the reckless and irrepressible Colonel Kilgore, in one of the most memorable lines of the Vietnam War film Apocalypse Now.
Charlie is the American soldiers' derogatory nickname for their enemy, the Vietcong, and the surf-mad colonel is trying to persuade his troops to ride the waves, despite the bombs falling all around them.
Apocalypse Now, released in 1979, depicts the madness and mayhem of conflict, and is widely regarded as one of the most powerful war films ever made.
But it also has another legacy - something that the director, Francis Ford Coppola, could not possibly have intended.
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.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-21941069