it was a potential disaster and martin sheen had had a heart attack and there was a lot of drama around what we were going to see on-screen. that was apocalypse now and then the movie just blew my [ bleep ] mind. the lights are down. you hear and then finally the screen comes up. it was like, wow. this is the end beautiful friend it s a stranger kind of film that more and more apocalypse becomes like a dream or a nightmare in which you re dealing with themes of morality and good and evil. so to me the real issue is that it would be beautiful and in some way would throw light on the subject. i love the smell of napalm in the morning. unlike a lot of the vietnam movies that came later, which tried to be more realistic, this seemed surreal.
and that s when it went from a hit movie to a cultural phenomenon. it essentially is a fun movie to watch. it s been a long time since people have been able to go to the movies and see a sort of straightforward, wholesome, fun adventure. excuse me. that s a bad outfit! as we move out of the 70s and into the 80s, we start to see something a lot more glamorous, a lot more produced. what starts to disappear is the flawed leading man. because you re not afraid of things. afraid of things? why would i be afraid? we see instead stories that are going to make big heroes out of someone who does a good thing. america needed to believe in a hero again. and we found out that there are heroes everywhere. what s wrong? the future. what s the matter with it?
sharp, the way you did in citizen kane, touch of evil. he said, you ll never get it in color. what do i do? shoot in black and white. the last picture show is the movie that made me fall in love with movies. it just blew my mind. it s about everything that holds you back. it s about being young. there s heartbreak. wisdom that comes of age. and young people discovering how fast time goes. in the last picture show, there was a quality of reality. there s no feeling of watching a performance but of experiencing another human being. really, it s a story about america. about the death of a way of life. so, you re closing the show? nobody wants to come to shows no more. baseball in the summer. television all the time. maybe a necessary death of an old hollywood that had to die to make way for a new generation of filmmakers to tell new stories.
there was really this feeling of, how can you top annie hall ? and in many ways, manhattan did it. first of all, it stands out right away because of that beautiful black and white photography by the late, great gordon willis. and of course you had that score by george gershwin opening with rhapsody in blue. it showed new york in the most romantic way. in a way that new york wasn t thought about in the 70s. hi. what are you doing here? well, i m here, of course i m here. here s a movie set mostly in little dialogue scenes between cynical, nervous intellectuals on a giant wide screen. isn t it beautiful out? there s this amazing sequence where they end up sitting on this little bench, and you see the 59th street bridge above them. i made it my business when i was in college to find that bench. this is really a great city. i don t care what anybody says. those are the kind of things that those movies made you do. you saw something amazing. in a part of the city tha
got to cruise easy, baby. the other thing about that movie is that all these actors were nobodies at the time. the biggest name in that movie was ronnie howard who played opie as a kid. there was cindy williams and harrison ford, richard dreyfuss. they all became stars. i just saw a vision. i saw a goddess. the 70s ushers in a new type of leading man that is funny, charming, irritating. they re cute. you go down there if you have the nerve. dustin hoffman, the minute he walked on the screen, he doesn t say hero. he just says, well, this is an interesting-looking guy. the fact that he didn t look like a leading man gave him tremendous latitude to be in all kinds of different movies. you ve said that you don t have the leading man charisma. how could you say that in view of your leading man success? had i been someone like clint