January 15 1987 - Journal

PLATOON has been a bigger hit than Willem Dafoe thought its completion and the film has garnered nominations for Director Oliver Stone and Willem as best supporting actor for his portrayal as the saintly Sergeant Elias. I've never been to war. I've fought on the streets many times. A man once shot at me in Paris, when I was the doorman about the Bains Douches. The thick glass windows stopped both bullets.

The director Oliver Stone had served in Vietnam. I had protested the war starting in 1969. I saw APOCALYPSE NOW Francis Ford Coppola's vision of Joseph Conrad's IN THE HEART OF DARKNESS first show first day got the Ziegfeld theater. The movie was highly anticipated by the hardcore film crowd and as soon as we heard the helicopters overhead in the opening scene. everyone in the audience was dold that this eas as close to real as it got in a theater.

The same for PLATOON.

The 1959 movie PORK CHOP HILL showed the horrors of the Korean War and in 1986 PLATOON achieved the same for our Vietnam involvement to the American public eleven years after the Fall of Saigon. The movie just told it how it was to those who had not been there. As a war protestor I can't say this is so the Willem's three-angle bump off at the end is how it was and I missed out on something that horrifyingly grand.

At 17 I tried to enlist in the Marines not to fight commies, but just to get out of my hometown south of Boston. I hated nbot so much the town as the narrow-minded inhabitants, but I'm glad my mother refused to sign the enlistment papers.

I would not be who I am today, if I had. Maybe better maybe worse maybe just the same.

In March Willem will go out in Hollywood for the Oscars with Liz and his son Jack. Certainly in evening wear. I'm sure we'll talk to him announcement of the nominees for best male supporting actor. I couldn't happen to a bettet friend. One who has become a household name as much as Ivory soap. He'll transform him from a boy from Milwaukee to a global star all around the world but I know his heart won't get juiced up with ego.

Last week I asked him about his new film SAIGON.

"For once I don't die and I get to kiss a nun."

Sounds good to me.