Apocalypse Now (1979)

Dennis Hopper: Photojournalist

Photos 

Quotes 

• Willard : Could we, uh... talk to Colonel Kurtz?

  Photojournalist : Hey, man, you don't talk to the Colonel. You listen to him. The man's enlarged my mind. He's a poet warrior in the classic sense. I mean sometimes he'll... uh... well, you'll say "hello" to him, right? And he'll just walk right by you. He won't even notice you. And suddenly he'll grab you, and he'll throw you in a corner, and he'll say, "Do you know that 'if' is the middle word in life? If you can keep your head when all about you are losing theirs and blaming it on you, if you can trust yourself when all men doubt you"... I mean I'm... no, I can't... I'm a little man, I'm a little man, he's... he's a great man! I should have been a pair of ragged claws scuttling across floors of silent seas...

• Photo Journalist : This is the way the fucking world ends! Look at this fucking shit we're in, man! Not with a bang, but with a whimper. And with a whimper, I'm fucking splitting, Jack.

• Photojournalist : What are they going to say about him? What? Are they going to say he was a kind man? He was a wise man? He had plans? He had wisdom? Bullshit, man!

• Photo Journalist : One through nine, no maybes, no supposes, no fractions. You can't travel in space, you can't go out into space, you know, without, like, you know, uh, with fractions - what are you going to land on - one-quarter, three-eighths? What are you going to do when you go from here to Venus or something? That's dialectic physics.

• Photo Journalist : There's mines over there, there's mines over there, and watch out those goddamn monkeys bite, I'll tell ya.

• Photo Journalist : He can be terrible. He can be mean. And he can be right. He's a great man. I wish I had words, man. I wish I had words... I can tell ya something like the other day he wanted to kill me. Somethin' like that.

  Willard : Why'd he wanna kill you?

  Photo Journalist : Because I took his picture. He said "If you take my picture again, I'm gonna kill you." And he meant it! So you just lay back. Lay cool. He becomes friendly again, he really does. But you don't judge the Colonel. You don't judge the Colonel like an ordinary man.

• Photojournalist : [to Willard]  Why would a nice guy like you want to kill a genius? Why? Because they told you he was crazy? The Colonel is not crazy. The man is clear in his mind, but his soul is mad.

• [apologizing for severed heads adorning Kurtz's headquarters] 

  Photo Journalist : The heads. You're looking at the heads. Sometimes he goes too far. But... he's the first one to admit it.

  Chef : He's gone crazy!

  Photo Journalist : Wrong! Wrong! If you were here... if you could have heard the man speak just two days ago... God! You dare to call him crazy?

  Chef : Fucking A!

  Willard : I just want to talk to him.

  Photo Journalist : [thinking fast]  Well... uh... man, he's not here. He's gone away. He's gone away into the jungle with his people. He feels comfortable with his people! He forgets himself with his people! He forgets himself!

  Willard : I'll wait for him.