communists!” So we were invited to
all these places. We penetrated the
army because Richard had contacts and
because of me. The army didn’t know
what to make of these Hollywood guys.
Is it true you had a phoney script?
Boyle had dummied the script — I was
not involved in that — so that the bad
guys were the rebels. He went down
there three times. He kept telling me we
could get anApocalypse Nowlook for
$50,000, which is possible. You have
major equipment in Salvador because
the Pentagon is giving them equipment.
They’ve got some big stuff down there:
tanks, planes, helicopters. Two months
later our military advisor, Lt Colonel
Ricardo Cienfuegos, was killed by the
rebels on a tennis court. His picture made
the front page ofThe New York Times.
I never forget when I saw it. Our hopes
to shoot in Salvador went down
the toilet. Boyle’s plan was to shoot
the rebels in Mexico later, which was
a pretty good plan actually.
How did you think about casting?
Originally the idea was to have Richard
Boyle play himself. I had done some
screen tests where he and Doctor Rock
played themselves. It was really funny but
John Daly said, “This guy’s a joke, you
can’t use him, you gotta get some actors,”
so we ended up with Mr Woods and Mr
Belushi. Everyone hated everybody else.
The actors hated Boyle. Boyle thought
they were pussies. It kept going back and
forth for the whole shoot.
What are your memories of that back
and forth?
Woods could not stand Boyle. He
thought he was sleazy. Boyle was drunk
a lot. He would disappear... He was quite
a character but I loved him. He sued me
in the end and that’s where I lost it with
him. He was broke all the time. I helped
him as much as I could. I got him into
the WGA which gave him welfare for
the rest of his life. Richard was the
kind of guy who would run out in front
of a car in San Francisco and get hit
for an insurance claim. To quote the
movie, he’s a schemer and a scammer.
Didn’t you play Woods and Belushi
off against each other?
No, I didn’t, but that happened naturally
because Woods is quite a difficult
character. He was killing it, Belushi was
much less experienced and kind of knew
it. There was quite a bit of give and take.
Woods was quite egocentric at that time.
We fought constantly. There were some
rough days where Jimmy and I would just
go at it. When the confession scene came
along later in the movie, I said to Woods,
“I’m gonna shoot a confession scene, just
say what the fuck you are! A weasel and
a rat!” I didn’t give him any dialogue and
he actually said a lot of the things that
I said to him. I almost wanted to kill him
a few times. But when we finished, he
literally came up to me and said, “I think
you made a great film.”How confrontational did it get?
I didn’t feel threatened by Woods
because he was a coward. Jimmy was
a little upset because we had a lot of war
stuff. I had this plane come in low and
buzz him and John Savage. He wasn’t
used to that. He really thought I was
going back to Vietnam and becoming
a psycho. He was a germophobe and
hated Mexico, was terrified of it. Jimmy
was a pain in the ass but we became
friends. We see each other and we laugh
about it. It wasn’t laughable at the time. It
was as tough as it gets. I guess the torture
bonded us in a way.What else was going down?
Beyond the Woods problems, there was
no money. The currency got devalued
before we started shooting and all of
a sudden our budget had shrunk by about
35 per cent. It was a nightmare. Cheques
would bounce after three weeks so actors
would scream and yell. There were
union problems in Mexico. They were
very strict in those days and they would
quit on us. There were three or four
walkouts. I became so fatalistic it didn’t
bother me. I would just go to sleep and
be like, “Wake me up when they come
back.” But it was fun because we got
something on film.Wasn’t there a run-in with the
woman from the Mexican censors?
That was funny too. There’s no doubt
Salvador is pretty dirty so we’d throw
junk on the street. At one point we
had to get this woman off set. She
would object to all that shit: “We
can’t have that impression of Central
America.” We always had to bargain
with her so I got hold of our very
handsome production manager and
said, “Just go fuck her.” He actually
did his duty and it worked. He got
a promotion.What other guerilla tactics did
you employ?
We lied, cheated, stole. We’d just keep
shooting, keep getting it down. It was
always stop-start, stop-start. I had the
film finance company on my ass all the
time. He was a one-eyed guy, RichardClockwise from
above:Woods with
Elpidia Carrillo (who
played Boyle’s
girlfriend María) and
Oliver Stone on set;
John Savage as
stricken journalist
John Cassady;
Sometime friends
Boyle and Cassady
come to blows; The
horrific aftermath
of war.ALAMY, REX SHUTTESTOCK, RGA