Word: viets
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Like Oliver Stone, Dye is a decorated Viet Nam veteran. His was among the first units to splash ashore there in 1965. Over the next decade, he saw buddies die at such hot spots as Hue and Foxtrot Ridge, and he was wounded three times by rockets and mortar fire. "We fought a hell of a war," he declares, "and until now, Hollywood didn't give a damn about getting it right...
...Stone, Dye found a kindred spirit who wanted Platoon's actors to experience the fatigue, frayed nerves and fear that preyed on the Viet Nam infantryman and to understand the casual brutality that often emerged. Willem Dafoe, who plays Sergeant Elias, the platoon's conscience, recalls that "we certainly did get some taste of exhaustion, frustration and confusion." Tom Berenger, who plays the soul-dead Sergeant Barnes, agrees. "We didn't even have to act. We were there...
During breaks, Dye coached the actors in "gruntspeak," the expletive- laced jargon of the Viet Nam foot soldier, and he demonstrated an intricate '60s-era handshake. "I had to keep reminding myself," he says, "that for the younger guys, the '60s are ancient history...
Oliver Stone sprang up in bed and found fear staining his sheets. A dream had startled him awake. He was 16 years out of Viet Nam, but in the dream, "they had shipped me back. Somehow they found me at the age of 38 and sent me back. I woke up in a sweat, in total terror." That was two years ago. Now Stone, who earned a Bronze Star and a MASH unit's worth of physical and emotional wounds in the jungles of Viet Nam, has transformed his war experience -- the bad dream he lived through for 15 months...
Begin with a birth: a baby-faced soldier, Chris Taylor (Charlie Sheen), is delivered from the womb of a transport plane into the harsh light of Viet Nam. He will find death soon enough: four patrols in the film, four wrenching revelations. On Chris' first night patrol he watches, paralyzed with fear, as the enemy approaches and another new boy dies. On a second patrol the platoon enters a village that might be My Lai; anger goads Chris to spit bullets at the feet of a petrified Vietnamese, and before the day is over the group's leader, Sergeant Barnes...