10 Bizarre Ways Directors Tricked Audiences
6. The Actors Weren't Always Acting - Platoon
Oliver Stone's Platoon was hailed for its harrowingly realistic depiction of the Vietnam War. The film captures the desperate struggle of young men wrestling with the notions of lost innocence, humanity, and moral ambiguity in a most inhuman environment.
To get the group of actors ready, Stone put them through a rigorous bootcamp that lasted several weeks. During that time they were tasked with digging foxholes, sleeping in the jungle, being subjected to night ambushes, and surviving on army rations. Not only did this create a sense of camaraderie among the cast but it gave them an insight into the experience of the soldiers they would portray.
But towards the end of the the bootcamp, Stone played a pretty ruthless trick on his actors. The cast was given a bunch of coconut moonshine to celebrate the end of their ordeal. They all got stinking drunk in the jungle, with the understanding that the next day they would be taken to a hotel to recoup, before the shoot began.
The next morning Stone had his exhausted and booze-soaked actors taken further into the jungle, were they spent the whole day filming marching scenes. Throughout the movie the platoon is shown slogging it through the jungle, exhausted, covered in sweat, and generally miserable. But that wasn't acting, in reality they were all just hungover as hell.