It's crazy to think, but Platoon released just over thirty-five years ago back on December 19, 1986. Well, maybe not that crazy: it's often considered one of the leading war movies of the '80s, after all, and it's most certainly one of the greatest Vietnam flicks ever made, alongside Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now. Myriad crazy stories have been documented from the shooting of Francis Ford Coppola's film, and now, speaking to The Guardian for the film's anniversary, Charlie Sheen and co-star John C McGinley have opened up on the bloody and brutal shoot on theirs.
Along with a novel anecdote about Willem Dafoe having to approve his casting — which he manifestly did — Sheen describes being "dumped ... in the jungle" and put through a gruelling training course by director Oliver Stone, who comes off as nothing less than tyranical. Sheen continues:
"You had to be treated according to your rank. Willem 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. 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 both Sheen and McGinley, it got worse from there: the actors, who were "running around New York's West Village having coffee, bagels and talking about Hamlet" only two weeks prior, were put through the muddy-and-bloody ringer. "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 centre. He popped it into his mouth and two thick streams of blood poured out both sides." Yikes... you couldn't claim the insurance on that.
McGinley has his own memories from the boot camp, which certainly align with Sheen's grim version of events. In his words:
"Willem drank water from a river when there was a decomposing oxen downstream and he got medivacked, Tom dropped a knife in his f**king 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 f**k out of here", I meant it."
But the worst, most dangerous event? Probably almost falling out of a helicopter, as the Scrubs actor describes:
"It was up about 1,000ft. 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."
So, basically: we have Francesco Quinn to thank for Dr. Cox. In Quinn we trust.