An unfortunate side effect of the move is that we will both be without dedicated working spaces for the majority of the summer, which will of course make writing for TFL difficult. Instead of spending hours at coffee shops and libraries in the evening, we’ve decided to suspend major work on the site for at least the summer months of 2012.

What is in our psychology that is so fragile it breaks down? What are the elements that begin and sustain an unraveling? Sometimes a cause can be pinpointed but more often not. And even an obvious experience, like war, provides a multitude of individual responses. Apocalypse Now provides great examples of how war can unravel an individual’s moral sensibility.

When you shoot a million feet of film, you can probably edit any movie you’d like from it. I’m certain there’s a way that, with the proper voiceover, Captain Ben Willard’s harrowing journey could have been recut as the story of a family man fighting his way for home.

Apocalypse Now is one of those films we’ve been knocking around since the inception of TFL. On the surface it’s an obvious choice, but it’s also an exceedingly complex film by modern standards.

Josh breaks down the character of Max Cherry, as re-imagined from the novel by Elmore Leonard for the screen by director/writer Quentin Tarantino.