Daily Dialogue — June 21, 2019
Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that? Lance: What? Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. [kneels] I love the…
dDaily Dialogue — June 21, 2019
Kilgore: Smell that? You smell that?
Lance: What?
Kilgore: Napalm, son. Nothing else in the world smells like that. [kneels] I love the smell of napalm in the morning. You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for twelve hours. When it was all over, I walked up. We didn’t find one of ’em, not one stinkin’ dink body. The smell, you know that gasoline smell, the whole hill. Smelled like… victory. Someday this war’s gonna end…
— Apocalypse Now (1979), screenplay by John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola, narration by Michael Herr
The Daily Dialogue theme for the week: Military.
Trivia: Writer Michael Herr was called in to write much of Willard’s voice-over dialogue and a few scenes. The scene where Roach uses a grenade launcher to kill the North Vietnamese soldier in the wire during the scene at the Do Long bridge is taken directly from “Dispatches”, Herr’s memoir of the year (1967 to 1968) he spent in-country as a journalist accredited to Esquire Magazine during the war.
Dialogue On Dialogue: An example of the influence of military life on Kilgore (Robert Duval), where the smell of napalm is something he loves.