David Halberstam on "Apocalypse Now"
                                                  The Vietnam reporter and author of "The Best and the Brightest" says that Coppola's epic has only gotten
                                                  better with time.

                                                  By Jeff Stark

                                                  Aug. 3, 2001. On a rainy night last month, in a screening room in New York, David Halberstam and several
                                                  other former Vietnam correspondents and "people connected to the war," as Halberstam put it, gathered with
                                                  director Francis Ford Coppola to see what sort of difference 21 years and 53 minutes of new footage had
                                                  made to the original film. Those in the room included Daniel Ellsberg, who worked on staff with former
                                                  Defense Secretary Robert and later leaked the Pentagon Papers, news anchors Dan Rather and
                                                  Peter Jennings, and reporters such as Kevin Buckley, who wrote about Vietnam for Newsweek. 

                                                  Halberstam was in good company. The former Vietnam correspondent had spent two years there himself,
                                                  early on in 1962 and 1963 and again for a stint in 1967, covering the war for the New York Times. Later, he
                                                  wrote his classic book "The Best and the Brightest," an explication of events leading to Vietnam as well as
                                                  an indictment of him, Bundy and the other elite decision makers who led America into the
                                                  war. He would follow that book with several others, some of which touched on Vietnam, including "The
                                                  Making of a Quagmire." 

                                                  He's about ready to release his latest book, "War in a Time of Peace: Bush,
                                                  Clinton, and the Generals," in September. I spoke with Halberstam over the phone
                                                  about his reaction to the new cut of the movie earlier this week. 

                                                  You've called "Apocalypse Now" the best film about Vietnam. 

                                                  Before I saw the "Redux" I would have put "Platoon" ahead of it. But I think seeing
                                                  it again, having 20 years of time, much of the allegorical stuff works better. I
                                                  exempt the bullshit stuff at the end with Marlon Brando because I think it
                                                  diminishes the film a little bit. Because it's about Brando, always Brando and his
                                                  enormous narcissism, which is not about American narcissism but Brandonian narcissism. But I think it's
                                                  more brilliant. 

