Platoon
ELIAS Yeah – and has blonde hair and almond-shaped eyes.
FRANCIS Hey man didn’t you say she had black hair?
ELIAS She had blonde hair man. And long tan legs, in those leather sandals you know, with those thongs up to her knees, this musky oil on it … mmmm smelled good when they were wrapped around my face …
They groan, dreaming of Hawaii.
DOC Yeah!
CHRIS God!
BIG HAROLD Please, somebody hold my dick!
ELIAS (in afterthought) … and a broken nose.
DOC Broken man?
ELIAS Yeah, otherwise she would’ve been too perfect, y’know what I mean … some woman. Her name was …
He forgets it. A grass blackout. Lerner urging him on.
LERNER Susan?
MANNY Tamara?
CHRIS Elizabeth?
Elias shaking his head, trying to remember.
KING Merle?
RHAH Merle? Jesus! … Patty?
BIG HAROLD Inga?
CHRIS Jennifer?
HOYT Connie?
Elias snapping his fingers.
ELIAS Dawn! That was it!
CHRIS (repeating it) Dawn …
King listening to the sound of it.
KING Dawn?
The others nodding, musing over it.
BIG HAROLD Yeah, Dawn …
INT. THE BARRACKS – NIGHT
In comparison to the darkness of the hooch, a highly lit atmosphere, attracting bugs … dusty gear lying around a disordered hooch, loud and finger-snapping COUNTRY WESTERN MUSIC playing from a tape deck, a well-known tune, circa 1967.
BUNNY, the 18 year-old angel face, totters drunk with a Colt-45 beer in hand, over to JUNIOR, the badass black kid with the zits, who just lies there on his cot sweating, doing nothing.
BUNNY (listening to the music) Listen to that shit, that’s good shit!
JUNIOR (irritated as always) Fuck that redneck noise, dude. All dem chicks be rappin’ how dey losin’ der’ ho’s and how dey ain’t got no bread for beer. Fuck dat honky shit. Got to get me some motown jams, dig it?
BUNNY (doesn’t understand a word of it) Whaddaya talking shit for man. Hey Junior! Y’ever smoke any shit?
JUNIOR Das right dude. You be tryin’ to string de black man out on dat shit and keep him DOWN. Time’s be coming, my man, when de black man’s gonna throw off that yoke.
BUNNY (lonely in his way for company) Say I can dig it. Smoke that shit everything kinda gets weird y’know? (hiccups, sits) Y’hear that story the gooks is putting chemicals in the grass so’s we become ‘pacifists’ so’s we don fight (to no one in particular) Where the hell’s everybody, they’se gettin high that’s what – bunch of hopheads, they think they special …
JUNIOR (turns away, bored) Don you worry Bunny, youse a killer anyway.
BUNNY Yeah but I still like a piece of pussy once in a while – ain’t nothing like a piece of pussy cept maybe the Indie 500.
JUNIOR Youse so fucked up man.
BUNNY Y’ever look at yoself in the mirror Junior, youse uglier than a dick on a dog man. (laughing)
JUNIOR Yeah, you had a piece of pussy on a plate in front of you, you’d probably kill it.
BUNNY Shit, I bet I been laid more’n you have.
JUNIOR Sure, you probably stick it in tween her knees and think youse there.
BUNNY Yeah?
JUNIOR Only way you’d get some pussy is your bitch dies and wills it to you – and then maybe.
Lt. WOLFE wanders down the aisle, beer in hand, slightly lonely, bypassing FU SHENG, the Hawaiin and TONY, a mustached hairy- browed Italian kid from Boston, who are playing some kind of dice game. They hardly acknowledge the Lieutenant who stops by RODRIGUEZ, the Mexican-American kid who is on his cot in his neatly arranged area writing a letter home with a pencil, forming his words with his mouth, as always minding his own business. Religious objects comprise his few decorations.
LIEUTENANT WOLFE (amiable) How you doing Rodriguez?
RODRIGUEZ Good sir.
WOLFE Need anything?
RODRIGUEZ No sir.
Wolfe winks at him, continues on to the POKER GAME going on in the center of the barracks, the main action. BARNES, Sgts.O’NEILL and WARREN, the quiet sullen black, SANDERSON and SAL play as ACE, the tiny radio kid, and MOREHOUSE look on; all of them drinking beer and bourbon chasers from a bottle.
WOLFE (to O’Neill) How’s it going Red? (using his nickname)
O’NEILL Shit, cocksucker’s got all the cards tonight.
WOLFE (to Barnes) Looks like you’re doing all right Sergeant.
Barnes, raking in the chips, is the big winner, a light bead of sweat on his forehead and a somewhat glassy look to the eye the only indication he is drunk – his shirt peeled off revealing a muscular, scarred body.
BARNES Yeah, and I ain’t even cheating yet.
SANDERSON (the big blond kid) Have some Kentucky windage Lieutenant. (passes him the bottle of bourbon)
Wolfe takes a nip.
BARNES Play Lieutenant?
WOLFE Nah, I wouldn’t want to get raped by you guys …
O’NEILL What are you saving up to be Lieutenant – Jewish?
Laughes. Wolfe forces a smile, glad to move on. There is a continual worried rodent air about him, an anxiety, a desire to fill the vacuum in his leadership with a false masculinity.
WOLFE Catch you men later. Enjoy yourselves.
As he goes, O’Neill shakes his head after him.
O’NEILL Sorry ass motherfucker ain’t he. You think he gonna make it Barnes?
Barnes plays a card, glances, a minute movement of his head.
O’NEILL (CONT’D) Yeah that’s what I figger. Some dudes you jes’ look in their faces and you KNOW they just ain’t gonna make it.
Barnes looks – with some irony – at O’Neill. The Country Western tune has reached a crescendo whine which now mixes into:
INT. UNDERWORLD HUTCH – NIGHT
Francis, the baby-faced black, and Manny, green shades covering his skinny face, lead with a high blues falsetto.
FRANCIS AND MANNY (singing) ‘People say I’m the life of the party cause I tell a joke or two Although I may be laughing loud and hardy Deep inside I’m blue …
The Hutch looks now like a Turkish bath with minimum visibility, the smoke fumes dense. They are all up dancing on their feet – King, Tubbs, Big Harold, Hoyt, Lerner, Crawford, Flash, Doc, Elias – a few light gestures with their hands above shoulder level, passing around the grass pipes while they shuffle, fingers clicking. The song – Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears” – accompanies them from a vintage tapedeck.
ALL ‘… Since you’ve left me, if you’ve seen me with another girl seeming like I’m having fun although she may be cute she’s just a substitute because you’re the permanent one …’
King and Big Harold wave Chris into the Circle and he starts swaying with them, feeling as if he’s being accepted into a new family.
Rhah watches it all, puffing away on his magic dragon pipe, the shadows dancing on the walls.
It looks like a Saturday night dance party. A yearning for tenderness, for feminity, for a moment of peace in this nightmare life. Their eyes closed, thinking of dance partners that can’t be here tonight. Singing their souls out.
ALL (CONT’D) ‘… So take a good look at my face. You’ll see the smile looks out of place. Look a little bit closer. It’s easy to trace. The tracks of my tears…’
EXT. JUNGLE – NVA BUNKER COMPLEX – DAY
An overwhelming 103 degree heat. Chris is once more on point, a little better now but obviously struggling with a thick unyielding bamboo thicket that forces him forward in a caveman crouch. Napalm jelly is hanging from the trees in great canopies of spider webs, obliterating the sky.
CHRIS (V.O.) New Year’s Day, 1968. Just another day. Staying alive. There’s been a lot of movement neat the Cambodian border, regiments of NVA moving across. A lot of little firefights, ambushes, we drop a lot of bombs, then we walk through the napalm like ghosts in a landscape …
Chris working his way over twisted, broken stumps, branches. On the back of his flak jacket he’s written, ‘If I die bury me upside down so the whole world can kiss my ass’.
BARNES Pssst!
The signal for silence. Chris freezes. Barnes edging up to him.
BARNES (CONT’D) (whispers) Bunker …
CHRIS Where?
Doesn’t see it. Following Barnes’ imperceptible movement of his head.
The bunker, dug into the ground and camouflaged with brush, is staring right at him, not more than 20 feet away. Chris is a dead man if …
Barnes, checking the terrain, signals radioman Hoyt.
Barnes edging up to the bunker, eyes everywhere. Chris following. The tension builds. They come up to the edge of it, peer in. Nothing.
Barnes walks around it, slips in from back. Chris covers him, other guys coming up now, making a small perimeter.
Chris now starts to see things he didn’t see. Right in front of his nose – there is a trench from this bunker to another and another. There is now in his view a complex of bunkers and thatched hootches and lean-tos all blending into the forest. A ghost city …
