ROBERT SMITH, HOST:
On this show, we've been asking filmmakers about the movies they never get tired of watching, the ones they could watch over and over again, including this one from the star of the film "Basquiat."
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JEFFREY WRIGHT: Hi. I'm Jeffrey Wright, and I'm an actor. And the film that I have seen a million times is "Apocalypse Now," directed by Francis Ford Coppola, starring Martin Sheen, Marlon Brando, Albert Hall, Larry Fishburne, Robert Duvall and God knows all of the other greatest actors in the world giving some of the greatest portrayals ever seen in cinema.
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WRIGHT: I guess I was maybe 16 or 17 when I first saw it. And, you know, for, you know, a teenager, you know, becoming a man, there's, I think, to some extent, a kind of natural fascination with conflict and war for a young man. And so this movie, in some ways, was kind of the closest that, you know, I had to a war experience.
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ROBERT DUVALL: (as Lieutenant Colonel Bill Kilgore) I love the smell of Napalm in the morning.
WRIGHT: It's the story of, you know, a young soldier who's given a mission, and he goes on an epic, you know, hero's journey through madness and horror.
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WRIGHT: To choose one scene, why don't I just keep it simple and just start with the beginning, where we find, you know, Martin Sheen, you know, Captain Willard, lying in bed in Saigon and the journey begins.
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WRIGHT: It probably features the most effective narration of any film in the history of cinema.
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WRIGHT: The end of this day, we find, you know, Marlon Brando in just one of the most powerful, strange, kind of wonderfully indulgent performances imaginable. You know, he says - asks Martin Sheen, you know, are you an assassin?
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WRIGHT: His face peers out finally into the light, and he says: You're neither.
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WRIGHT: Grocery clerks, he says...
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WRIGHT: ...to collect the bill, you know, and it's just staggering poetry. It's just magic.
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WRIGHT: The first movie I ever did was a miniseries called "Separate but Equal" with Sidney Poitier and Albert Hall, who played Chief in "Apocalypse Now." And I said: Hey, Albert, oh, man, you know, I've seen "Apocalypse Now," I don't know, probably 163 times. And it's just the most meaningful thing to me. And when we finished filming, he gave me a book, and he wrote inside: Jeffrey, evolution is when a young actor comes up to you and says: I've seen your work, you know, 100-so times. And it has meaning to me. And so, I don't know, that's just kind of an antidote of what it - of what the film meant to me.
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SMITH: That's actor Jeffrey Wright talking about the movie that he could watch a million times, Francis Ford Coppola's "Apocalypse Now." Wright's new film, "Broken City," is in theaters now.
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SMITH: You're listening to ALL THINGS CONSIDERED from NPR News.