This past month, the popular American war film Platoon finally reached its 35th anniversary. As one of the greatest Vietnam War films to ever be made (along with Full Metal Jacket, Apocalypse Now, and We Were Soldiers), the film was initially released back on December 19, 1986. Just recently, Platoon stars Charlie Sheen and John C. McGinley spoke to The Guardian in celebration of the film’s anniversary. Both stars opened up about the bloody and brutal training camp that the entire cast experienced during the making of the film. You can watch the official trailer for the 1986 film below.
Actor Charlie Sheen had described his experience as being “dumped…in the jungle” and having to go through a grueling training course that was developed by director Oliver Stone. “You had to be treated according to your rank. Willem [Dafoe] and Tom Berenger, playing two sergeants, were in command and I was an FNG – a ‘f**king new guy.’ It really felt as if I was expected to scrub latrines, which I actually ended up doing in the movie,” Sheen said. “I thought we’d go out in the day then return to the hotel at night, but at sundown on the first day, there was no bus pulling up. I looked at Johnny Depp and Forest Whitaker and said: ‘I guess we’re just staying here.’
According to Charlie Sheen and John C. McGinley, everything got a lot worse from there. “At one point, we found a coconut grove and Forest [Whitaker] somehow got a coconut,” Sheen continues. “I can still see him now, trying to line it up with his machete. Before I could say, “Your thumb is too close!” he swings and hits his thumb dead center. He popped it into his mouth and two thick streams of blood poured out both sides.”
John C. McGinley then chimed in on his own memories from the brutal training camp. “Willem [Dafoe] drank water from a river when there was a decomposing ox downstream and he got medevaced, Tom dropped a knife in his fking foot - it was just all getting terribly real. And there were snakes. […] After that boot camp, it took only a tiny imaginary leap to believe what we were saying. When my character said, “I gotta get the fk out of here,” I meant it.”
Probably the worst experience yet was when John C. McGinley almost fell out of a helicopter. The actor goes on to say: “It was up about 1,000 ft. It was supposed to land, and we would run out and past the camera. Something was going wrong on the ground, so they wanted to go to a different area. For three weeks, we’d been drilled that the one thing you don’t ever let go of is your weapon – so as the helicopter turned, I start to fall out because I was holding it. Francesco Quinn, who played Rhah, grabbed my backpack and pulled me in. If he hadn’t done that, I would’ve fallen out. I got pretty righteous with Oliver after that.”
Platoon is a 1986 American war film written and directed by Oliver Stone, starring Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Charlie Sheen, Keith David, Kevin Dillon, John C. McGinley, Forest Whitaker and Johnny Depp. It is the first film of a trilogy of Vietnam War films directed by Oliver Stone, which is followed by Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Heaven & Earth (1993). The film, based on Oliver Stone’s experience from the war, follows a U.S. Army volunteer (Charlie Sheen) serving in Vietnam while his Platoon Sergeant and his Squad Leader (Tom Berenger and Willem Dafoe) argue over the morality in the platoon and the conduct of the war. Stone wrote the screenplay based upon his experiences as a U.S. infantryman in Vietnam, to also counter the vision of the war portrayed in John Wayne’s The Green Berets.
